Damian Garside

YES. MAXIMUS

YES, MAXIMUS

yes, Maximus,
we are entertained

we watch the spectacle
are the spectacle

are so glad to be right up close
close enough
to smell the blood

a little too far
to feel the steel

(the sacred heart of
Empire itself

loving
the power
of this shock reveal)

HEY POEM

hey poem

structurally
speaking

are you
wrestling? are
you
striptease?

looked for you
in Barthes mythologies

did not
find you

maybe you are
not a part of
any
system
of signs

have
nothing to do
with culture
at all

SOMETIMES

SOMETIMES

sometimes
I am
just
randomness

Cummings words
jumping all over the
quantum page

as if
twin slit experiment

(the smile of physics gone Gemini
getting our minds pretty
tangled up together
you tell me coyly
inform me
in no uncertain terms)

if it cannot be
real
this everything

if it is lax on locality

could it
be dream?

I asked this of the iconic cat
in the box before it
disappeared

and now I am blessed with
the answer but sworn to secrecy

science
now in uproar

doctoral candidates frayed
fissile

exploding in clouds of
white chalky dust
as if
made of talcum powder

all over Tesla’s headstone
thinking of
the half-life of what
lies
in that grave

Sent from my iPhone

SPOOKY TO THINK

SPOOKY TO THINK

Here is my poem
wrapped up inside
another poem

not sure exactly
which poem it is
you are reading or
whether this
that you are reading
counts
and qualifies
as a poem at all

by any stretch of
the imagination
and relativity (special
and general) and quantum
Physics
have proved beyond
a shadow
of a doubt
how elastic and
multi-dimensional
your imagination can be

reading this rubbish here
and making gorgeous
sense
of it, leaving me
wondering
what gorgeous sense it is
you might make of me
(could well be)

but first operation
would seem to be
to dissolve the space
between us

to act as if we are entangled
in the way we spin
(universes
spinning around each other
like bubbles of froth in
the foam of your latte)

and your
wisdom such as
to leave me
gaping, gawping
foaming at the mouth

neither
of us here empirically
or raw-
red physically

our existence co-created even
as we reach this sentence at this very

future past present moment
forever
postmongering

spooky to think

spooky to think.

INSIDE

poem is the fiction
of interiority

trying to persuade itself
it is
what lies inside

ad infinitum
again and
again
and again

sometimes with quite
spectacular transformative effect
(who in
their right mind
would doubt there
is an
inside
after that?)

MANUAL

this is the manual
that goes with
the reading
of this poem

it is not a manly manual
since it has to accept
shifts and slides
facts seduced
and opening themselves
up to
surprise reversals and
ongoing (nigh bottomless)
process of
constant interpretation
leading to
infinite possibilities for
re-
reading, rethinking, reinterpretation

and yet
even though metaphor
is itself a metaphor
is shot
through with metaphor

I do indeed need
to get my meaning across

this stanza break first up
but then
from me to you

so that you might run
with it, or perhaps walk
or at
least crawl

tenor vehicle literature
is a machine says Mr Calvino

but would
not wish for you
to stumble and fall
before
you are behind the wheel

before
you get the feel

before you are writing poetry for yourself

SOLDIER

poem is
special
forces

is soldier in the war
against being
dumbed down

will
teach you
how to fight
feed you ammunition

one, two, three
programs on TV
crafted supremely and carefully
to dumb
us all down

enough there for more than
the odd pot shot
need some serious serious
poetry
great poetic guns
with heavy
metaphoric artillery
your intellectual life
here
in my hands