Author Archives: Damian Garside

SUCKERS FOR PUNISHMENT

SUCKERS FOR PUNISHMENT

there is no time
there is
no reality

it is all just a dream
with special ingredient:
suffering

so
you have
been here before
.
with me
again, back for your,
and yes, my sins,

reading the poem
which you could not recognize
if you were not
already remembering,
already familiar

shock
(slight aftershock)
of recognition

sucker for punishment
(we are all
suckers for punishment)

SORRY FOR ASKING (SCORE)

SORRY FOR ASKING (SCORE)

Sorry for asking
but are these rituals
not meant to show
continuity
rather than rupture?

I sat and watched
the whole gaudy display
took me back, Coronation
Babe that I am
to those early wooden
watch-it with Mothers
(by which I mean benign
Matriarch, not
Frank Zappa,
no place here
for Beyond the Fringe Satire
though Python
himself did say he
found it Pythonesque)

but it was hard to square
Hal at Agincourt, Edward
at Towton
with that solid golden
carriage

the Met swooping in for
the kill
to add more stars
onto their shields

determined that
everybody asking will
be sorry that they
did so

forgetting history”s great,
great capacity
for evening the score.

THERE IS CHESS

THERE IS CHESS

there is chess
and then
there is
the Universe

a game of the fixed and certain
a machine for generating
strategic revision after
strategic revision
endless permutations
no game
ever the same

life and death and final
conflict
across a square board,
by another name

and beneath it all
this quantum ocean
softly fluctuating
dreaming
its dreams

the dream of chess
a beautiful one, a demonic one
a clear-cut straddler
of every division
between beauty
and nightmare

the pieces waiting
at your command

ready to talk their talk
ready to follow
the script

carve
you new pathways

the dark or light wood
moving across the board
pretty much
sub-
light speed

breaking the bounds
of hyperspace
navigating
the labyrinth
inside your head

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

it is a prologue of sorts;
at least it feels like one

Modiegi and I
are at the ocean

she has
never seen the ocean before

words are battling to
express what she feels

sentence structure is
creaking and groaning

I am overwhelmed
an old vessel trying
to cope with this
odd flood
of happiness

hard to tell
if we are both alive or dead.

MACHINE

MACHINE

the machine swallowed you
but not like it did
the Chaplin prole

not like it did that voiceless
Harlan Ellison being
stitched-up cross-
hatch in order
to make

the horror
more delectable

no, this machine
going to give you
an executive suite
ply you with
business class
and expense account
Martinis

keeping it all coming
keeping it all coming

lights out
at one two three