Damian Garside

PLAGUE

after years of boarding
and other water torture

he wrote his poems
to continue
the struggle

ease
his pain

avoiding
the word “raindrop”
like the plague

CHAIN

For you, Sir,
who have
seen been everything
and so much besides

I am here to announce
my bright design:

a
Seraph

in a clam

can
evolve to
the summit
Sirrah,
can do what it can

cutting out
the middle man

whose passes
everything up
down
down
up

in the chain
of command

STEAM

let’s make
fire together

in
our little boat
bottom of our boat

when
the sea rushes
in

we may drown
well drown

unless the fire
the water
go
for each other

turn us
to steam

COMPOSITION

pass me your pen
and I shall note down
those distances

the chalk on the blackboard
having list its imperative

the writing
on the wall changing
the moment it
gets written

the truth of relativity
not yet board-dustered off
yet already
done and dusted

and how many tiny white
flecks
look like motion-
captured stars, galaxies
in their movement?

at if
squeezing
the truth out of us,
pinching our analogies

the Universe were
writing us
writing the Universe itself

putting us
into, pulling us
out oh the picture

trying to figure out
which composition
works best

which
makes the
most sense

CHATTER

the forest chatters
so much
to talk about

stuff
every tree and
squirrel
needs to know

and you
keen to listen in

lacking the equipment
to tune into
those airwaves

wondering how
much you
have
missed

how key
these messages
going over
your head
(in a
manner of speaking)

IN AN IDEAL WORLD

fishing
for jellyfish

wouldn’t know
how to start

unless
common sense dictate

candy rod
sugar sinker

gelatinous hook
baited with
(in an
ideal world)

strawberry cream and
vanilla custard

KUNG FU SOUL

float
on wires

I do

free spirit
angeling
hanging
below
the ceiling

skipping
across rooves

am a
great master of
many lives

from
ancient
times

beautiful spirit
harpy
of bad, worst dreams

badly dubbed
I speak
out
of synch

but my words
are memorable

let
the instruments play
string, woodwind

at the
moment of impact
the whole
of creation
resounds to
my

crouching turtle
hidden
salamander tune

AUTOPILOT

“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”

I was admiring a metaphor but then it sank
not in wine-dark ocean, somewhere between Charybdis and Scylla
but in turquoise sea, shallow, placid
verging on perfect island.

Earlier
the Captain himself had
put us on autopilot, too suave a narcissus
not to entirely confuse skirting sexual danger with
courting maritime disaster

and complete disaster was it too, for all the beauty of vista and shallowness of water, though not without its
comedy of cruise-control leading to full
Groucho Marx-moment of
tumble into lifeboat (what could be
more providential? did he not think, was
He not reminded of
Freud’s philosophy of the ship and
all of those jokes about being in
a boat and not finding the boatman?)

What serendipity should we ignore, dare
we escape without
risking the Olympus (albeit these days that
Poseidon, at least has grown so tiny)?

Always the softness of the parallels
that rise to haunt us
even though
we did not see
doomed forever to fail to see them

no matter how careful
we navigate
carefully, frantically, at

full panic station scan the horizon.

BEE DANCER

I am a bee (be
a bee)
alphabetically
entomologically

finding my
sharp little way

flower
to flower
heading home
stacked
with pollen

return
heavy with tales
exquisitely choreographed
of
how
to navigate

paint them a path
sweet
as perfume
honeyed with heart

each tiny
lemniscate
danced with
delight
danced till I drop

love
each figure of eight

AS IT DID UNFOLD

unfolded the Universe
as if it were

an origami

but on that paper
much

to my
surprise,
disappointed,

nothing to find
nothing
written

except the thought dawning that
all this time the

Universe

reading me