Author Archives: Damian Garside

AUTOPILOT

AUTOPILOT

“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”

Sank in the shallows
actually needed
more water to
make a good job of it

the sea sparkling
Champagne clear
nothing wine-dark
about it
and yet without question
still the lair of Poseidon

and he in charge, at the helm,
somehow abstracted, too
pressed uniform
for any hero’s journey

everything analytical
set
to pause, cruise
control selected for
vital and most critical

falling like Pantaloon
by sheer outrageous luck
into first seat in
first lifeboat

skew serendipities:
disaster sloshed out of
its amphora
as superrich cocktail

and no
tripartite structure: beginning middle ending
rushing
like an express train
(where
there is a will there
is a way and
rudder should find it)

catharsis — this the thing
if we are chosen to survive
we may well talk
about later

hubris: most brutal, un-
forgiving of our flaws

always available
to shoulder the blame.

IN THE GREAT LIBRARY OF MOSHAWANE

IN THE GREAT LIBRARY OF MOSHAWANE

sometimes I wake up
in the great library of Moshawane

and suddenly ir has become
all the great libraries
in the history of the world

the place is so quiet
has a charmed silence

and I think of she
who kept the library of
Alexandria
until they burned her
books and priceless scrolls

books so easy to burn
to take your anger
out on

to torch to suppress any
inconvenient thoughts, words,
expression of ideas

that do not fit the mould
that we are better
off losingthe circle of all we love

and know
needing to be
drawn
smaller, smaller
than any fabulous circle

until of a size
no bigger
than a noose

and here I am telling you
what it is the books are saying
talking to each other

in this charmed silence
feeling to
humble to speak

waking up in a library
of dream

EVERYWHERE

EVERYWHERE

everything is moving
and we
are moving with it

takes you by surprise
doesn’t it
to find there is
no still point

and this poem:
you think it is on
the page, on the screen

of this you may
be certain but actually it isn't

the words are, yes indeed
the words are but the poem isn't

it’s location is unspecified
somewhere betwixt
and between will leave you to find, discover exactly where

for I must fly
by metaphor and
transport

GAZEBO

I built myself gazebo
step by step
in my mind

hoping that it might be
pretty much the ideal
place to write Nature poetry,
Japanese tanka, and haiku

can close my eyes
feel centred, grounded
and put
pen to paper

shut out, if but for a moment,
the world of worry, serious debt,
huge obligation

alone except for
things I host
with a yen to explore

things curiously ambivalent,
hybrid-seeming, here
from the dawn
of time, perhaps,
but currently sharing
this address corporeal
in
manner internal

could be of our world,
most secretly so, or

genuinely alien, of home-
world extraterrestrial

creatures in size ever-
shifting, unphased by
change of shape
wholesale genetic
adjustment
and spatial orientation

like this exquisite, verdegris
dragonfly with
what looks like
neon
under-lighting

buzzing around my head in
size and demeanour
flitting across the

breadth of
every spectrum, between
tiny, metallic waspy thing

and
titanium-alloyed killer
drone

but
this my gazebo
this my throne.

PLEDGE

PLEDGE

I would have pledged
allegiance
to the planet

but the planet
doesn’t much like me
wants me dead,
or so I fear,
for it
has good reason

so I would pledge
to busy-body about
writinv stupid little satires
like that one
and this one

insread of getting down
on my hands and knees
cleaning

trying to
restore your majesty
restore your glory
all super-
reflective, super shiny

but not your power
I balk at that, have grave
reservations about

what that
power can do

FURTHER

FURTHER

it is amazing
what pressure pushes
a sapling through the soil

think I read a poem
about that once

furthermore,
it”s amazing, history tells us
how slowly, when the poets are
gathered to watch,
the leaves fall

and how they blaze
drifting downwards
less earth
in their nature
more air, and fire,

history tells us too
all you need to know
about mythology
and meaning of tree

how trees weep, bow, fling
out there arms in joy

or gather, in deepest irony,
to watch us
at our darkest

knowing how, in sacred
fable
we once fell

observe us, the chemistry
of rebirth
locked into
their sap fall further, much further

STONE’S THROW AWAY

STONE’S THROW AWAY

I think there is a moment
of pure clarity
but then it goes
then everything goes

never having experienced
any such clarity, indeed
anything pure

I am at a loss
to extend you an image
provide a metaphor

but
time draining away
like someone of something
nicked
its artery

that moment of clarity
of deep and complete
change in perception
must be near

if not at hand
but a stone’s throw away