Author Archives: Damian Garside

ON MARS

ON MARS

do not breathe the air
the atmosphere
will scramble your brains
more than
they have already
been
scrambled

this is the red planet
getting redder by the day

planet of war and
hard masculinity
in human mythology

sister planet; brother world
look into this glass
and see our world, the one
you left behind
collapse into chaos

the Martians, though, are
ready for you
     have read that story
by Ray Bradbury

are about to lull you into
the belief that
there can be a place
in this Universe to
find or build
equivalent to Heaven

will strike and destroy
when you are living that
dream
     threatening to
destroy their civilization, colonize
them out of existence

sometimes ones salvation
lies in the strategy
     most insidious of all

SWAN SONG

SWAN SONG

was singing the multiverse
thinking of travelling under
an alien ocean
in Nemo’s submarine

light years from our home planet
travelling metres deep
twenty thousand leagues
         under that sea

the pressure getting to me
rivets popping

no one
   able to make sense of my
song
        as it rises from alien
depths to cultivated surface

finding the ears
     of beings like me except
they have
     neither space, nor time

for outlandish things

ON MY PART

ON MY PART

was going to send you
                  an audio

making love to you
with voice

reaching those spots
other voices fail to reach

but
    I held back, pressed
record

but no speech
on my part
nothing came out

think it must
     be the terrible fear
that something
spoken
        sensuously
will
  bounce back

and before I know it
there I am once more
falling for
      you again

desperate that all the pleasure
I talk, is pleasure
that in my
heart I still
hope of talking you into

lying back on my bed night
after night alone
longing, dreaming

one day
we will touch
   

MOVES

MOVES

I like your moves

how you push your queen
killer dress and robe
drippimg pearls
       and diamonds

up against
my queen

inviting exchsnge

which means
         something bad bad bad
for me

if I were
   to succumb, be seduced

lose all my acumen at the
exhilirating prospect
of such a luscious transaction

where
     discretion and evasion
would be

the more solid reaction.
..

Queen

CARNIVAL

CARNIVAL

the carnival
has up and left

it is
all downhill
from here

colours unsaturate
coagulate

everyone has a problem
with my greasepaint
like I am
some shape-shifting
monster hanging
out
in,
calling out to you
from a drain

Oh I need to get subterranean
work at you
via so much
exposed nerve

do the serpent alchemy
that turns hot spittle
into
golden venom

so much beautiful
bad will in every single drop

when you
hold it up to the light

Carnival

AJAR

AJAR

listening to progressive jazz (Ian Carr’s Nucleus
            with Chris Spedding
                                on guitar)

same time ploughing through Joyce’s Ulysses
say ploughing but sometimes
                                  one is surfing there
on a glorious wave, following the sweeping tide

nothing I can think of
could exceed this configuration
                                  in respect of
artistic complexity, cerebral
                                      integrity

unless
      twin philosophers of the body politic
were
    (becoming Maenad, going full Dionysian)
to pop in
      for a spot of ménage a trois

or
  no less exquisite
the
    jam session
    to end all jazz
                      jam sessions

in case
      they coming left the door ajar