Damian Garside

COMMON DENOMINATOR

only the rich
have franchise

are the only people
to have a say

they are our common
dominator
common denominator

all our gods and
devils
brutally pray
they will amass the good fortune
to have their way

CLOSED

everyone
is an unreliable narrator

third person
omniscient
does not cut it
any more

open ending, minimal
the sense of closure

and yet
the world is closed
the walls shifting inwards

maybe it is your brain
contracting its sphere of power

maybe it is that
we are all trapped in
a prison simulation

literal
metaphoric

who knows the code words
for our liberation?

so far
and no further

in this supposed dawning
of Aquarius I think I have
been
a character in
this sorry tale beyond the human

capacity to
survive and thrive

GOLDEN

Show me
your golden ratios

love the very idea
of Fibonacci sequence

that I am blood but
I am
also code

blood and code both
what could be better

warm
as the Sun not
too
Platonic but
perfect the images
your philosophical
Matrix and
most sumptuous cave.

LOUVRE

LOUVRE

the Russian
poets
are all

at war

shooting the Ukranian
artists flinging grenades
from opposite
side of
the battlefield

producing the kind of
Surrealist landscape
will
alter history
forever

best splattered onto a canvass
and hung
in the Louvre

PUT DOWN

Put down
your candy crush game
(would so
like your candy
to crush)

but first a word from
our advertisers

if you went professional
option you would get
premier service and not have

to worry about anything

meanwhile in the simulation
that is the poem
we are either particles
or waves or
both or neither

so let me crush your candy
whatsover

catch you me
cheating on the two
slit experiment

by the time the last line enjambs

many many alternate universes
(eat your heart out
Michelle Yeoh)

up and running, teeming
with our joint energies

ESPRESSO

was malingering in Hell’s
best coffee shop

started to fancy a coffee-
coloured barista
serving espresso
shrouded
by steam

and yet
still no mistaking
her demonic beauty
(so on point with
these fine surrounds)

and me
trying to catch her
jade green eye and
lure
it
towards me

as if she might fall
for a run of mill, ordinary devil

such as
the one there
in the corner
writing this thing

MONETIZE

monetize
demonize

I am
writing a new thesaurus
looking for
a common denominator

even as you
wait in the shadows
crumbling
to dust

once wondering but
now given your answer
as to
how it is

all going to
end

RAIN

the writer writes
the end of
the world

but the paper
is putting up
too much
resistance

somehow he just cannot
write his way to
his vision of
an ending

quietly cataclysmic
apocalypse falling
upon us soft as rain

SOFT

your poem
is soft
is malleable

when you call
it answers
fawns
rolls
at your feet

always there
to do your bidding

is as safe
a wicked pleasure as
anything the Universe

contrived
to devise

as harmless an intervention
as can be imagined

desperate to
appeal

this
I really feel

deep in the heart I’m
pretty sure I have

GAME

saw you reading
my poem

in a Video game
and there I was
writing this poem
as part
of that narrative

an Escher etching hanging
on the wall
windows
mirror
smoke dolls and
boxes

looked around but failed
to see anyone writing
about to
reboot me

so I just
drove to the ocean

to admire the artwork
the artwork there almost
beyond belief