Damian Garside

LEGACY

“It is your destiny!” Darth Vader, The Empire Strikes Back

at me again
about all the time
on my hands

call it
free time
(corporate
joke whose
punchline I
don’t get)

spending time
killing time
writing ace poetry
winning
at Mah Jong

when I could be
working more profitably
making nuclear weapons

filling covering
the planet with them
to express
my innate sense
of manifest destiny

fireworks display
for the ages as you
would have
to agree

closest thing to the Big Bang
could me my huge legacy

SHADE

that escalated
quickly!

Sun-soaked moment
after Sun-soaked moment

sign of Leo
lions of the Savannah

until a whole week there
cuddling, nuzzling
big cat
resting

king, queen of the jungle
making much mutual
adoration
in the shade

WHOLE PACKAGE

this is my
box

my beautiful package
devised, constructed, fabricated
to enhance,
verify, verify, rectify
this most wonderful
of weapons

so many thousands pointed
at each other (every
megaton worth
millions)

so now we have
more than enough to go round
protection, satisfaction
for all
no one to go needy
we guarantee you your share

so just put them in this box
here according to the wording
looks so nondescript
but it’s
marvellous, glorious I swear

look how eager it is
to embrace,
sword-swallow each
pointed warhead

turn them into
art, sheer poetry, true
beauty
as they disappear

somewhere, anywhere, nowhere
who gives a flying f where
they went to
disappeared to

leaving us
cold and alone no hope
of
final winter
ultimate prophecy

not the case with
all those
other worlds in
their parallel universes

ours
somehow surviving
beating impossible odds
of so
doing, of our
contriving to do so

a blip
on a switch, screen
misread, word
mistranslated

they got the required treatment
the whole package as detailed

DANGEROUS

digital artificial
intelligence multiverse

everything permissible
everything possible

and so me
here reading my poems
to all manner of
philosopher
and literary genius

Mr Eliot and Ms Plath
touching my hand
passing
suggestive comments

but
what can you do?
what dare you say?

better I get them to read me
proffer their insight

than ditch my standards
show
them to you

who know
about everything so
precious little

particularly dangerous
what you think about poetry

strange
you should sport a sensibility
way below the levels
that
seem to have
been approximated

in the lethally inspirational
evolution of
our machines

LOVE STORY

Not sure
what it was

if it is anything
you night call a
romance

a love
story

an orange cobra in the
short grasp
dancing for me
foot of the mountain
scales
catching the Sun

the grass grown tall now
no hope of that mixed
fear and
delight in once
more catching sight of her

turning serpent
myself
surrendering my life to her
my sweet
zero at the bone as
Ms Emily might
have
described her

whose young image it
will be
brought back from
all those years
ago

so lithe
so wise

as my eyes close
embracing darkness
with
a feeling
of love coiled up forever

full stop to everything.

MEMOIR

you thought we
would be lightspeed at least

but its
all just bumper
to bumper
pay the man
stop
and go

time to pull over
write a memoir
even if
a tyre not popped

be
good for you
good for
all of us

even if
not a single soul
ever bother to read it
.(no one
reading anything whole
thing in decline(

those that do
still read

well they
just dead already

this the crazy thing
about timelines in
realm of relativity

OR BY CROOK

this poem
is

unrefined
raw

yet curiously
fine-tuned

nothing pre-cooked
or microwaveable about it

not so much
drive through
as
drive-by

not dead yet
still moving which

is pretty much understatement
for here it is
still
gasping for air

thrashing about
on your table
your hook
still dangling
from
its fat mouth

and its hook
my hook

shepherding its way
into yours via classic dis-
traction

you are going to know its there
wili
have to come to terms with it.
live with it

though
not feeling it yet

PETS

bad leg
two
bad
legs

thin
as stilts
once so strong

everything about me
progressive

incremental
transformative

alchemical
would strut the boards
if could walk at all

need to
pray to AI

to halt this in its tracks
reverse the process
save
my lineage

turn, as the advert says if
I do remember it rightly,
magnificent
artistic portraits
into
loveable pets

nothing would ever
be so fanciful as awakening
the inclination
to pet me
ever

so sorrowful my state
having exceeded my allotment
hit my deadline called
time
on all of that

what thin
as a
stalk now
down to a toothpick

COLOURS

was too much
in a dark time

so
yellow
as,a,yolk
crayoned in
a big fat Sun

took the whole box
went to town
did
my thing

cacaphony of
those childhood colors
thrusting up
raining down

which, to be frank,
too much, way
too much synesthesia
for just
about everyone

not to speak about
those echoes
bearing hard
to bear

time of wonder
time of trauma
toxic
teaching

children to be
seen but
not heard
locked away

where indeed not
in time of holy war
to be
taken on crusade

OUT FOR

out in left field

flinging myself about
trying to snatch that ball

out of thin air
before it fall to ground

cracks the Earth open
ruptures its molten core

all those boiling secrets
about to divulge

and so harping on this
as the laws of physics
(as I
understand them)
run out of bounds

deep state
deep metaphor

so much reckless slugging
out on the base
as if hole
in one destined to fix everything

fate pitching crazy
curved ball, fast ball

steaming in
aiming low at the plate

crowd (same
as before with
same gladiatorial gusto)

want it
out of bounds, out
the park

out for revenge, so
out of
hand

sensing a shift in momentum
sea change

and thus
out for blood