Damian Garside

SKY CITY

cities in the sky
beneath the waves

circling the Moon
dug into
the rock on Mars

towering structures of
steel and
glass

not for me in my lifetime
this realization of
all we
did dream

not
for me
but
for you
maybe

maybe these
wonders
for you

or your children
or your children’s children

if you
have
a lifetime

and they
have any
kind of
existence at all

SKY CITY

cities in the sky
beneath the waves

circling the Moon
dug into
the rock on Mars

towering structures of
steel and
glass

not for me in my lifetime
this realization of
all we
did dream

not
for me
but
for you
maybe

maybe these
wonders
for you

or your children
or your children’s children

if you
have
a lifetime

and they
have any
kind of
existence at all

FURTHER

You are so far away now
and so substantially your light has dimmed

it is only possible to observe you
through acutely magnifying
optical devices

soon given the speed
that I am travelling
relative to your crawl
will have aged
you aeons

and my fellow travelers
will be drinking my good good health
with the advent and
on the occasion
of
my next birthday,

FIELD

find me in the quantum
vacuum
for if you do not, if
you fail to
then I will find you

will watch as you count your
store of hours, minutes, days
getting spent

blowing kiss after kiss
to blur, to spoil,
cloud that mentality
of linear trajectory

and when the light comes
wave after wave like
warm sea washing over you

know that it is I
who once was something
different entirely

know that it is I
realize it is
me

soft surge of
energies can
cannot be

NEW LEAF

How can you be
bankrupt

when money
is invisible
hypothetical

unreal

when it is no longer
worth the printing paper

or,
when laundered

its weight in bright, seductive
coca leaf

(green
for green)

Rewatches

What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?

Edge of Tomorrow (film) Fringe (TV)

POETICA

I wrestle with words
mud wrestle with them

take on every kind of figure
of liberation and repression;
tag-team fight with tigers
real and paper

never win however, my
career pretty awful
bereft of any victories

perhaps something
in the mud
consistently on
their side, already purchsed
to favour

when I get down and dirty
never really thought
how down and dirty
could
play so dirty

and the great gods of
our body politic bound
to cheat
as a matter of principle

anything in that sub-sphere
vaguely harmonic, barely
poetic

going to get the absolute
skew-eye when it
comes to
judicial image
as framed
smoking gun when
we go to VAR

(all that mud

they get to sift through)

Repeated watches

What movies or TV series have you watched more than 5 times?

TV: Fringe, Suits, Lost, Film: Citizen Kane, Arrival, The Godfather I & 2 , Edge of Tomorrow, Now you see Me, Avatar, District 9, The Three Muskateers (1973) Skyfall, Tristram Shandy (A Cock and Bull Story) Gladiator, The Parent Trap, Master and Commander, 2001, 2010, Blade Runner Staeship Troopers Repo Man Robocop Budapest Grand Hotel Goodfellas, Empire Strikes Back

SOMETHING

something there
is that wants to
get in through my doors
get in
through my windows

drag me before a mirror
make a blood bath of
my resignation
iron
on iron
sharpening
massacre my comfort zone

lead me out through
the jagged glass
into dark pastures
where the Earth has
opened up
is truly volcanic
and my house, once so
safe and secure, boarded
and guarded
is now a thing that
can scarcely be regarded more
than a gutted shell