Damian Garside

SUPERPOSITION

I am your
local, friendly
quantum
mechanic

here to fix
your
robotic
companion

no
ulterior motive
no
judgements cast

will just
Turing Test him/
her/it
take it through all its
algorithms
its binary times tables

soon you will be talking
like two telepaths

perfect synchrony serendipity
and fits-like-a-glove
superposition.

EDGE

I have seen
enough
Black Mirror

not to swoon over any idea
of cutting edge

dystopia puts a different spin
on everything

blades whirring blending
liquidizing
making
everything the same

PIE

PIE
“a piece of pie”
2010: The Year We Make Contact

A piece of pie this monolith is
the cosmonaut said, unaware
how he was caught or
framed by
HAL’s beady eye (I say
“HAL” but you know
I must be alluding
to his Russian equivalent)

the monolith such
an iconic object by now
in all technologically advanced
civilizations

giving us the smarts to
nuke the entire
planet in
defence of our waterhole

and all on that hill
we havd sworn to die on

no the monolith though
teeming with stars looks
like a thick sheet of rolled steel
block of
planed wood

so much in our culture (ask
HAL!) revolving around
the battle
between steel
and wood.

POST YOUTUBE

post YouTube
we live in a differenf Universe
where aliens
fly through our atmosphere
like sardines
in the sea

and there is great conspiracy
to create
the ultimate conspiracy
in theory we know
just how diabolical this can be

so just
sit back, relax
watch on two screens so
you can becoms your
own twin-slit experiment
you may not
know her beyond
her avatar but
you do seem
hopelessly entangled

and if those sweet words
professing love eternal
spiritual
sustenance and
emotional protection

sound
too good to.be true
don’t worry
my child, soon
they will tweak your bestie
rework their
AI
and soon you
will be
squabbling so
intimately human

post YouTube you can
TED talk it through

ACTUALLY

actually
I have fought for love

actually I am still
fighting on love’s Russian front

taking huge losses
grievous wounds

the snow, ice and frost
freezing my body
until my limbs
snap off

lost all
space to maneuver
room to move

CHIME

beware
when things go
against the grain;
Emily chime

when nothing
could seem so innocuous
with
good reason

when death is civil, mannered,
unrushed, polite and smiles

when zero fellows creep
and crawl

and voice
too suddenly bone —
gone the good old swagger
thrush of life

and poem
absorbed in stone
— dumb tone!

SAILOR

I sailed out to the end of the ocean
but found only
meaninglessness
when I had been
expecting land

and in this space
where nothing is of consequence
everything forced or
obligatory
I found myself
in one sense floating at random
through a cold, deep darkness
in another sense
absolutely rooted
to the spot

but that spot moving because
here there is no stationary
and yet no
clear causality or
direction
to follow

and I wondered about love
and every love message

were they spoken too softly
or did I, to my shame and
destruction
of life somehow
someway

contrive to channel
them away
blot them out

I sailed all the oceans and
appear
to have learnt nothing

(IN THE) LOOP

Let me impose on you
even though
this is poem
that has not happened yet

waiting for you to
observe and measure
me

get my wave front to collapse
fall into interaction with
all your fields

enjoy splitting off from
our secure comfort zones

creating
tiny shifts yet big
and passionate enough
to totally
satisfy every
feedback loop

generating parallel universe
after parallel universe loving the mystical

truth we have found and
articulated
in each other.

PART AND PARCEL

You have read this poem before

when we were both splashing
in the light
the light dallying with us
before
quantum dreaming

and infinite means everything
no matter how absurd
will happen
is possible

we are
just echoes here of the future
shaping the past
consolidating whilst
we retrace our steps

are changed
change everything

we are how the Universe
sees itself
paints our skin
moulds us within

all that body paint magic
box of many colours seeping through

imagining you imagining me

imagining us read
spun into awareness
as all that
makes us possible, decides
to be
all it ever
felt it should be
adjusting for a shift in temper
change of
mind heart retrospective shift or turn
total sea change.

And so
you have read this poem.before
are part and parcel
of it forever changing

being the best
the only we have
no choice but to believe the Universe a

forwards-backwards forever
echoing dream

the lighf forever in your eyes
your hair
doing to me what
it has decided it must.