Damian Garside

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.

SURE

couldn”t sleep late
this Sunday
had my talk of Biotechnics
to revise and then prepare

wish I had all sorts of inputs, downloads,
screw- ins, prosthetics
seamless interfaces
between
flesh and mechanism

then would my TED audience
see and hear
something unbelievable
something they had
never witnessed
on stage before

not one of these killer points
lost on them my speech as a whole

a beautiful joy ride
from
take off to
maximum elevation

and here I am up
on Sunday around dawn
battling to
get anything
down on paper

in search of something

pretty sure Sunday got
to be the day
of the week upon
which I
leave this life

infinitely more secure

UNIQUE

let’s broadcast our best
science fiction movies
out into deep space

none of ths ticky-
tacky stuff, I’m sure
great alien civilizations
have
got no time
for cliche

but it will put it out there
for them all to see

our traumas our fears our
nightmares our loves
our dreams the treasure-trove and

nest of vipers that
are our personal
and collective unconscious

out of which so much we see
as alien is projected outwards
onto every screen

and if the darkness still
terrifies after our search for
light across
that list of centuries

at least the monster
is our own

the face of terror
so much our own

the painful beautiful paradox of who we are
cannot
be unique

TRUST ME

trust me
you would not want
me to love you
as if you were
a work of
expressionist art

dripping paint all over you
hammering, drilling, lathing,
shaping
you get that modernist
industrial aesthetic right

attacking page or canvas
with slap-dash fury
mesmerized by flood of colour
or raging tide of words

and
that love

is no longer, age declination
assured, no longer
accessible
to me

best I can do
slow Pygmalion mould
define

that no-time to waste Tik-Tok
lap dance six pack push up
bicep and rich
cleavage love

not quite the thing for me

TUNE

looked in
your eyes

your light
is out

you have
no power

easy to
puppet you
in the dark

pull the strings
you never
realized
you had

get you walking
this way
that

and, above all:
dancing
humming
their tune

(surprised to
hear you
so
in tune)

ALL

so this
is community

this
is liberation

I heard the TED talk
saw the notes
on the board

listened to
your drone hoping
for
hive mind

liberation of one
sadly, not
liberation
of all

RINGER

message massage

he thought
TV
was a
mirror

a magical mirror

said
as much

and so it was
the world
laughed at him

that laughter
pretty much a dead ringer
for all
the canned laughter on TV

Sent from my iPhone