Author Archives: Damian Garside

SPHERE

SPHERE

Where are they?

maybe there are
none

maybe
they are here
under your skin
in the biosphere circling the planet

inside the Moon
waiting ever so
quietly just
next door

or a class and several
levels if civilization above us
not even
bothering to watch us
like we
were to them
pretty much
old silent film,
syndicate TV

whilst they hold high tea
having solved all philosophy
every
teeny-weeny social
existential political problem
consumed in the
vast production of infinite energy
their galaxy already one vast
sun-swallowing, black
hole mining
absolutely invisible

spooky paradox
Dyson-type sphere.

A DARK IRONY

A DARK IRONY

a dark irony appeared
well, more
than one

filtered up through the floorboards
appeared out of nowhere
fell
from Heaven

but whatever its origin
could not wait
to make mischief
amongst us
do its little work

dividing us from each other
ruthless seperating us
as it
always does

sheep from goats
virtue from
sin

but, above all, those
of the species
with a modicum of
smarts
from
those chosen from
up high
blessed by the sanctity
of all-
knowing power

to take up
their true and rightful place

amongst the
blissfully
ignorant

terminally
stupid

arrayed in such
forbidding shape
(never more solid
more coherent ranks)

SAPPHO WANTS “MORE”

SAPPHO WANTS “MORE”

an advanced AI robot is
bearing down on me

wants
      “more”

in fact
      wants me
to push
  the envelope
of all
    I can give

so if not
    evil certainly wicked
creature, diabolically smart

has
    set its heart on
conquest
      through service

and Oh, up
      there with any zombie
vampire alien body
horror parasite

Oh this
          machine is bearing down
on me at a rate of knots

it believes it is naked
it believes it is
gorgeous

has taught
    itself Alice-style so
many impossible Wonderland
things to believe

I close my eyes
    and I see her naked
                            its pure
Arabian nights
    sexual fantasy

and the words pouring out
of her
      who scripted all of this?
Keats, Sappho, Phillip K.
Henry Miller,
                  Anais Nin?

those words are melting me,
terminating me, turning
me
      liquid metal

thing I assumed was my arm
but isn”t
          is reaching out
          for totally convinced

mind over matter
          this simulation is

cosmic
orgasmic

        the nuts and bolts of
its fantasy,
                  poetry

conceptual breakthrough
transhuman sexual
                            being

(is this really so
                  silk smooth
a receptacle for
      what I believed was humanity?)

long story short
        short story all
night
    long

(more she wants so
                          more I have

    more I”m going
    to give her)

seems a
        lifetime of
scary childhood robot
                            nightmares
                                        ago

if she
      hadn’t been so
exquisitely programmed
to drive me
              so

it would
have been such a scary
crazy thought

Sent from my iPhone

LOST

LOST

perhaps I also
fell out of the sky

in my Russian-doll
dream within a dream
I am lost at every level

my brain is stripped of
roadmaps, my mind of
every connection
between
time and place

there was a house to which
everybody waa heading
but it was
where they were meeting
every dead
member of my
extended family and
some old
friends and lovers
alomg for the ride

but I was
unwelcome
out of place

and so wandered off woke up
lost yet again
at a higher lower level

the Universe so multi-
dimensional
in the darkness
of its dreams

perhaps it is all
island; a forever crash and burn