Author Archives: Damian Garside

MAESTRO

MAESTRO

maestro
coverts everything into
four cubed

you and I see
trees and grass
but he sees pawns
and
major pieces

Kings and Queens in a
stylized death dance

can predict their required steps
six moves ahead this is how

his needle-sharp
fine-margined world
is choreographed

and you and I taking
world more multiple, less
polar, binary

awash
in all that green

you thinking how lovely
memorable as lived
here and
now
sensory (if not
sensual) real
experience

me, anguished at the thought
I might just mess
up the meaning of
all of this

in my
inescapable, all of
a sudden

win or lose
attack at a poem

DEMON

DEMON

I’m a
shit poet

with a name
that sounds
like “demon”

so go ahead
demonize me
Frankenstein monster me
Salem witch trial me
send
me to Guantanamo
have me up
before
the House Committee

in an ideal world you house
will have long gone and
you
and your House Committee

will no longer seem vital
for the protection of
power and
reputation

will be a footnote
to a footnote

to
this poem
(we demons know
best revenge and shit

poet or not

how to
take care
of our horrible little selves)

MATCHSTICK

MATCHSTICK

was thinking of
a thougjt experimemt
with matchstick men

not involving
time and sunbeams

light
split by gravity
from
a distant galaxy
a million years
took to get here

who knows how
much has changed
if anything is
left there

or it can give me fuel
for my thought experiment

which involves
imagining a world
where these figures of
matchstick
do not keep ending up
setting themdelves alight

or fattening themselves up
with demonic projection
with shadow matter
to become
multi-dimensional, warpers
of the fabric
of the Universe
in their
own right

building such figures
in their own image

only
able to
self-duplicate

hold in each flawless hand
the truth, the logic
every secret of fire

key to
forever advancement

sublime destruction

POEM IS

POEM IS

poem is
the private show

no one
can vote you out of

I see no very British
person giving me
a killer crit
sitting in
a swivel chair

Simon says
Simon says do you see

a Simon says
anywhere in this poem?

do you see any cameras
there to open my world
to your
every surveillance?

strategically placed for every possible

secret revelation

to thrill you
to the core with
the unquestionably banal

EASTER POEM

EASTER POEM

this morning
noticed a book on the
topshelf of my library

“The History of the World”
as if
there could be
only one

but history must end some time surely?

and what happens then?
who can write history
once it has gone, it is over?

felt that this thought
had been
in my brain before
and was coming back again

and for its part
the book behaved itself
did not spring magically
up off the shelf and
down
onto the floor

all the pages breaking out
of their binding and
flowing as
if upon a river
across the hall floor

and into the lounge
and dining room

telling all my other books
their gospel news

so many other books
for my sins I am
a many book person, unfaithful
reader

should be sworn without
possibility of divorce to
the one true word

but as true words go
the narrative is scary
and there are dark,
brutally rich figures
hoping to
make it so

for what is wealth and power
if you cannot freeze-frame
time at
moment of
immortal Empire

for it is their hard work, sweat
and acumen raised them above us

and righteously

it is therefore correct and proper
that not as slaves, but
as gods
they should walk amongst us
be almighty

more than correct
and proper

it is written: they will make it so

WINTER

WINTER

you do it an injustice
to call it Winter
blithely so

even to inflate it
metaphorically as
a disastrous winter,
bringing storms
of Shakespearean proportions

no, this is something
of another order entirely

you would have to turn
to turn to the ancient
scriptures to have ang idea
of how terrible
it is, the narrative
we are all about
to enter now

one story
fits all

one story
destroys us all

and you thought the
crazy symbolism of
apocalyptic ending was just science fiction

was just poetry

the words are there

they are waiting for you

the power is there
the storm is here