Author Archives: Damian Garside

MAYBE NOT THE IDEAL WAY TO PROCEED

MAYBE NOT THE IDEAL WAY TO PROCEED

We cavorted

went head
to head

compared the surefire compromise
we had to make

laboured the comparison
between polar opposites
detailed the conjunctions
between
two circumscribed lives

and, under strict supervision,
loosened our tethers
allowed our
shadows
to waltz, tango, samba,
breakdance together

behave like popular conceptions
of writers, poets, dictates
that we should

strayed (hip-hopped) so
far from the truth that you
might be brought to
swear that
the point
was missed entirely

so
resolved (as if
signatories) that next time
(or if ever)
our words cross paths
that we delegate
to shadow
everything to shadow, realm
you have barely no sense of

so starved of
knowledge of all
we have
spent lives excavating

need to
plumb some of
that darkness to
have any
hope
of progressing;
ever hope to proceed.

TALL TALE COME TYE TAIL

TALL TALE COME THE TAIL

let us
meditate

chant
our mantra

meditate
on meditation

see how recursive, meta,
M.C.Escher
brain-
twister
our soul journey
dare be

stick these consonants together
the most magical of chants
can become
a real
tongue-
twister

leaving your with so
much sheer enlightenment
to piece
together

you will need a clear foundation
to separate all that counts as headline
from all that, in the
final analysis
simply appertains to tail

WOOLWORTHS

WOOLWORTHS

we were
in Woolworths
when it went down

all Hell breaking loose
then suddenly darkness
my store card
melted

and you
no longer there

the other customers
and staff
no
longer there
either

I was next to the fridges,
checking on the frozen foods
when the world went catastrophe

up-
ended itself

all our pretensions of
a utopia of seamless
and glorious production
having dissolved

RED SHIFT

RED SHIFT

blue shift
red shift

we are moving towards
now moving away
from each other

I can see you
from my point of vantage
our
   realities just
a little off, between
us just
a smidgen of difference

out of synch
as we are
      I can still catch a
glimpse of a white hot streak
of a shock of silver hair
that will
outlive the ages

shocked by the realization
that you are about
to midwife yourself
into the birth
of a brilliant idea

leaving, if space and time
were a train with carriages
and track
and station

your precursors who got it
so wrong
     stuck on the platform
eclipsed
    forever

but
   you can help them, assure
them, mitigate the error,
when you
       stick them on
your torch beam, jujitsu their
brains into
fully understanding
     my forever is
not your
forever
     no forever is
the same

if forever were a river
once, twice,
try
   to get your
head around it, you
can never
step into it

step
   out of it

you are in that river, are
that river

time for
you to realize how these
rivers (so
many rivers)
run
   so fluently

blue shift
red shift

you came I came
we saw we
(almost)
   intersected

and as
    things do, gaining, losing
connected, disconnecting

we watch
                waves lengthen
were tears
         departure, arrival
laughter

inside out by now
you know
the spectrum

bitter irony
in the colours warming
fatal
    shift in
the palette

simply, it must be
said,

things disappear

DARKO

DARKO

Darko (what a great name!)
watches
     worlds collide

sees, in his, mind’s eye,
molecules taking
an entirely different shape

thinks the sentence
that rewrites
all the rules

writes it on a wall
in alien script no one
has ever
read before

just a drop of
the divine, juice that
the Universe built itself
out of
    doing its job, evolving awry,
turning the planet
to sand
    in one blistering millisecond
or rather, moment
by moment

minds reeling, suicidal panic
in Central Park
for Christ’s sake it is
all just purely speculative,
a text
    a radio broadcast
a twilight programme

not
   to be taken so deadly
seriously

as if
    suddenly an outer limit
a roadside picnic
manifesting itself

suvin suddenly
in your own backyard.

SECONDS

SECONDS (for Manchester City Football Club)

So, in hindsight,
it was all spectacle,
all show

Matrix football, the machine
having flipped
the switch of power

cheat code running, who
can live with you
and you
were flying high, state
of euphoria, football utopia

but then
        sadly

got found out
got shot down
plummeting to Earth
bad
   blue moon
riddled like Swiss (UEFA)
cheese

and so we have
to adjust, history
insisting we edit

give each
         one an asterisk

stick inside
inverted commas (task
of Herculean proportions
now to clean
           soon mountains
of damage
to repair, oceans of discredit)

but
   all with fade, get forgotten,
our saving grace to
let
   it tarnish

some will take long years to
forget, forgive
     some of that false gold gone
in thirty seconds.

HITLER

HITLER IN MANCHESTER

Hard to believe it
but Hitler is not in Manchester today
neither visiting the museums
nor watching the Manchester Derby.

He is in fact in Blackpool
recovering from the latest
amongst the host
of victory parades.

Tonight he will,
with  few choice SS guards,
find himself
strolling the promenade
taking in the lights
thence
   up the top of the tower
surveying the Irish sea.

The town
conscious it cannot
compete with Paris, but
is determined
to show its best face.

Seems he heard about Blackpool,
the Las Vegas of Lancashire
whilst munching on
his strudel whilst still
a young, maladjusted boy,

but now
the propaganda ministry
finds itself with
far too many
photo opportunities
that it knows
what to do with

but did get
an endearing clip shot
by Ms Riefenstahl
of the Fuhrer barefoot
testing the sand with
his toes,
paddling, sticking
his feet in the
freezing sea (impudent
frothy ripples washing
right over them)

smiling,
      not just for the publicity,
but out of a growing inkling
that the conquered English
(or should he
say “British”) are
at last
    beginning to warm to him

an encouraging sign, this
melting of hostility, he
tells himself
          tiny wooden spoon
trying to dig out the last
morsel from
the bottom of the
tiny tub
   of truly delicious, blackcurrant and vanilla Italian ice-cream.