Author Archives: Damian Garside

26 KILOMETRES SOUTH OF RAMATLABAMA

“Everywhere the announcement prompted spontaneous
and often abandoned celebrations, a nationwide
street party which produced, hangovers apart, the word `mafficking’.”
Lawrence James The Rise and Fall of the British Empire

“Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall”
The Beatles: `Day in the Life’, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

The rain came
but it did not save.

The rain came
but it did not cure
did not save

The rain came
but the blind duo outside SPAR kept warbling away,
guitar twanging, getting great counterpoint on the
old gospel classics in Setswana.

The rain came
turned streets into rivers, rock-hard ground
into a morass

and I wondered, at the border
at our new flag’s edge,

if this is
not the same Africa
I stood waiting for
watching the old, blanched white world
with all its delusions of
rule and Empire
scurrying

and here
         monitoring carefully
every change of climate
pertinent
    to a tropical continent
kept against
its best
interests
    frozen in time

under a few strategic stones, I do crawl,
to
hide, figure
things out, find true
self, learn how
we were always
wedded to, rooted in a theory
of blind right.
now
need to sit
this one out
become model
of quiet study.

And the shell-shocked lost soul from 32 battalion
ambushing me for bus fare,
old shoes and coffee

his talk an
incomprehensible mishmash of
Portuguese, Afrikaans, English, Setswana
rich in
idiomatic store
what things has he seen
expressed with a brutality we could not dream leaving his life, his
sanity left way behind him at Cuito Carnivale?

Who were we then
and long before
in those wars that shaped us, which
still shape  us?

What shape in the distance, what
Identity envisaged?

Today I walk the streets
amongst the chaos of my reflected humanity,
envisaging new shapes, hoping
to glean
a truth of a history
as I follow the railings down
past to the taxi rank, to the old station
(the line that followed the
contours of Empire, when this place was
strategic, when
this place was central).

along the railings down to the bus rank
past the quick cash places, and lingering smell of excrement,
stuff
imprinted on my brain well
before I get to know about it

floating in
my system, in
our system

mirrored in the mortal soul of
every brother, sister, father, mother

as they walk by, who
just happen to pass.

Where were they
at the Berlin Conference? Why did they not
address all
of humanity
from the floor?

Was
all of this envisaged
by their imaginary
boundaries,
in their paper parameters, the
defining latitude, longitude, lines
of our being
whose stories we
must tell, whose
new kinds we must
endless navigate (new
Homer, fresh
Theseus, old
Odysseus) must navigate endlessly
(and Escher’s hand
painting itself, is

the very emblem, essence of
every self-
referential scenario).

simple poetry for simple times
simple readers
              crisis upon crisis
in the writing

my text all over the place, total
proliferation, scant
consolidation
       text tumbling out of
wardrobes, spilling from desks
and cupboards
carpeting the floor

****

So quiet
this town

not
  always thus

once
at the epicentre
of that fiction
called Empire

after the celebration
they
danced so hard
that blood
seeped through
the cobblestones,
danced like it was 60s cultural revolution
way before its time

after the celebration, after they danced so hard that
blood dripped onto seeped unto the tarmac, after
as if it were one huge Beatle-jacketed 60s party
with much
coloured smoke, ribbon, acid, mescaline,
they mafficked themselves silly,
victory doves pouring out the windows
of what is now the old museum

and still the tale of
joy and victory, if you
were like the hunter-gatherer you once were,
to follow the trail of broken beer bottles along the Nelson Mandela Rylaan,
once named after a certain
sticky-ending guy called Verwoerd,

yes
my hunter gatherers
go with the flow, jumping
lane to lane, jumping
stops and red robots like a spawning salmon.

And yet, despite our sins, terrible sins if
not of a theological, of a political nature
are we not
despite ourselves
still

missionaries at heart,
committed to proselytize,
to bring to the
word, fresh
worlds and
their creatures?

****

Da
Diddy da

da diddy

diddy
da
da (DADA)

Gospel rappers
Jesus blasters

yours is an identity
lived across the airwaves

hard-raining us
assailing us
answering all
our supplications (no

surer, truer, cooler, groovier path,
for scoring with the babes in
the Eternal Kingdom)

stuck
in a void
but can still sing about it

Whilst, personally speaking,
if at last I may intrude into the world of my poem,
so many disjunctions do I find
this extraordinary Sunday,
making love to you as if
we were
velvet-lined machines, conjoined
souls with perfect gearing,
riding the power, soft
power to a
sublime enforcement
(as is
our duty and
our pleasure).

Sunday
  how the bells speak this day
with such brazen assurance!

Then
as if
wholly on cue, the
bells do arrive, earnest in
the summoning, stirring the flock with
much brassy clanging

who pour like a river, released from Eros grip
stream to the bridge.

***

City of gravestones. Pithy
little epigraphs, circumspect last meanings.

City of potholes, dust and paths disappearing.

City once of
splintering Creusot shells, scattering murderous shrapnel.

City where
herded towards the turnstiles, the people
find, inexorably drawn to that huge sports confection,
everything reduced to its level, to
shared common denominator.

City where,
truth be told,
you are not a
city at all, just
a border terminus on
the road to nowhere.
but a place of despite, a refuge for the gray, the spent, the
forgotten, the unmeant,
perpetual conundrum, pilgrim’s non-progress

domicile to legions of the non-descript who spout ,
sprinkle  and counsel all the right noises

sitting (as if super-glued to their seats) for
hours strategically spent thinking
rich development options in a ditch-water-
dull boardroom

for which
i can do nothing, by
which I mean

nothing in my head could ever enliven this
desperately turgid impasse, this
stifled, engine-seized terminally
conflated, convoluted, con-
fusion of a stillborn
situation

there’s always something shabby
about culture ultimately

what it all
fat in the fire, out
of the frying pan, boils down to

City of reductions, obligations, lowest
common denomimators, strictest
bureaucracies, old Imperial traits
                         still serving
the interests of power

City
take us to a place
(even
despite yourself)
where we
might
see things differently

fashion new beginnings
found whole new typologies

****

Do not think
the stones are silent

do not think
that seemingly inert
they have nothing to say.

Here there was war:
here

is where we fell, humans,
titans, gods in
enduring epic struggle, where

the last echoes still resounding, we
gaze out into the darkness, swept
into cold rapture by
an infusion of stars.

Steak on the griddle: let it sizzle. And
sun scowling down make umbrellas blossom.

suns
are stars that scowl
like flowers
   they do wilt

****

Her name is `Casino’ and she wears it well
       carries it as far
as the business will let her.

By your fruit she
would says she knows you, has met you
already.

Has heard, in the shadows, every
spider twist in your repentant tales of predation.

Just
follow her
protocols. assume nothing
in that space

as then
as indeed you must

roll
the dice,
Mr Snake Eye,

diamonds, clubs,
hearts, spades,

sixes,
sparkling diamonds,
zeroes
    that betray

makes no difference to
the game that is played.  Queen

of your night,
Empress

in a
garden

of toxic blossoms

under her
sign

everything is source, flow, return, beginning,

everything you ever
are with her is

a
broken song, a
sterile
play

a shattered poem.

****
Seraph, Soundbite, Magus, Parasite,

who is the one
who
is always with you, close
as if handcuffed, who

prepares your way; walks beside you
gives you licence
not just to digress, to
describe not
just an arc but
an entire tropical circle?

digress
swing by
follow the arc of
your trajectory

If
I were a
satellite orbiting
were I
    indeed
a satellite

such great
feedback would i give you
blow upot the size of a galaxy
the incredibly
small

could see myself blending in. In
my insect-small world a
near perfect fit

thinking thoughts
a scorpion, an ant,
a lizard might consider,

be happy to ponder,
cogitate, relate.

****

Gatekeeper
what falls within your field of focus?

what images sharpen as
night draws near?

Images of closure
are coming full-circle

every path taken is
bringing back to the start.

And me
posing in a Carnaby street pastiche of
an Imperial officer�s jacket

buzzing like a beetle caught in the floodlights
at some imaginary frontier

happy to pose,
pretend,

that I am
some shape-shifter at
the edge of the imaginary. Bearer of tales of
terrible transformation
to tell
at your wedding, to
inflict on your soul shading
towards death

hoisting the mast, ready to set sail
so much sand, so much sand, where

is the tide and
how might we catch it?  There are ships in the night but
never in this direction

nothing new, nothing different, nothing
ever surprises

nothing Mr Ezra, professor possum, that
we might create as our own, nothing
that seems to
ask that we
follow

you may
wish (or prefer not) to
follow

and then when we arrive

to dig, excavate, scour, scavenge

see how much the
world has changed

how they thought so differently, saw so differently, how
everything here was different perspective

before the asphalt, before
the diamonds, platinum,
before the gold

and now
the word
changes things in an instant
being electronic

the word
has made the world different entirely
this morning

has allowed me to capture all those pixels, mega-pixels
an entire cross-section, a gallery of
history entirely simultaneous, absolutely at once.

****

Suddenly, like

a returning pendulum,

we are back
with the lovers (in
our default position)

watching, listening, observing,
how distinctions are dissolved, with

every touch,
caress,

eroded, displaced,

this our great
lesson.

swing
   like a pendulum
be both Sun
and the rain

****

After the service
came the RAINBOW

but the rain
did not refresh, did not
answer prayers.

Before the service
an irreverent dust devil

swirled provocatively before me
snaked disrespectfully, contemptuously,
across stone and sand like
a reborn Hebrew temptress.

maybe
I�m a dust devil
swirling provocatively to
offend
   all and sundry

am the wind from the sea and the stones
come from far far away

****

The rain came
but the blind gospel couple
with organ and guitar kept twanging away
for all the SPAR patrons

to repeat the old promise of salvation, absolution,

and the cars swam
like gondolas (for the duration) along
the canal streets of Venice. And

following this logic we
have a dream sequence, find

clues for
a future, missing
pieces of puzzle

lines from a script
inexplicably missing and

in the air
so much dust

filtering the sun (around the
tree that
once was, where
before chopped down, where
many swallows gathered).

****

Where did it start? Where is
the beginning I will have to go back to?

Where did I

leave through some corridor, pass
through a door

step out into the light, put
myself squarely
in the picture? and where
now, Great Caesar
is the coin unto
you that
I should render?

Da

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

And this a thought
I leave for you
(camera panning, tilting, shock
sight of boom microphone)

the blind duo at SPAR,
nothing concluded there, but
still singing away

whilst the rain
when it falls

falls
without due regard, without
discrimination.

And

when
that
rain
falls

all roads evanesce
way of drowned tarmac
way of all flesh

****

Behind those eyes,
your eyes,

what do you see?

What songs
in your head

are songs that need singing?

What in
your heart

has no need of
translation

will come
straight to me

faster, more sure
than anything I could possibly anticipate,
could ever have imagined,

words full of wonder, could

should

spirit me away
like a balloon, like
a kite
on last
great journey, like sacred ibis North
to Anubis; everything
receding into
the distance,

scrape away
the layers
find new space, to
paint under to
paint afresh

plot a path that has meaning, has beginning, middle, end
conclusion (in which we come away with
resolved meaning).

steeple people far beyond, not
feeding back into, fuelling
ancient enmities that
still slither, set
boundaries, tear

the body divine limb from limb, scattered
like so many stones whose

voice now
so many voices, ghost voices,

take us to a place where
past finds a future with which it might settle,
where all
that is stored, remembered,
stacked in lost
archives of hope
is finally delivered.

here
to take stock; to take store
to ask
   (and answer) the question:

What did we envisage
lay across
the horizon?
what above, what beyond
did we believe
   would appear?

waiting to defer to our special shaman
much schooled in metaphor
to transport us through
               what would ne
our very last portal

back to the place (and all its future forms
extending way beyond this life span)

place where
these words sprang from

pale shadows of what
we need yet
          labouring with love
to speak the speak of desire

****

he is always on the borderline
straddling the fence
hopes it well give
him a bonus
or at least
earn him a discount

we all
deserve a discount

soul surrenders
reason
   gets hijacked

what is there left to live for
if not
   media stunt charity
from the Man

***
stuck in the throes of
some thought experiment

he envisaged a line
infinitely extended

visualized himself
reeling it in

wondering
   what cosmic wonder
might have
taken the bait
   willing, eager, to
be captured

but as for borders
yes, you might well
pillow-box them
but
   dotted lines do tear

and though
   we be
moments in time
points in
gravity
   we do fall under,
there are those
who have jurisdiction

and you
      cartographer, navigator,
of your
lover’s body

find yourself
gone AWOL
on walkabout

and me
writing you
   heard the voice of God
once but
without translation

Hebrew text
streaming out of my computer
via my printer

lightning message
flashed
    from the clouds

standing before
God
   without a thesaurus,
without user’s guides,
or even
a manual

naked as
you came
   without
(signifier, signified, codes)
the semiotics
of clothes
  
****

death
demanded time
with me

exchange some
lively banter
debate our
difference (most
radical
in perspectives)

ghosts with
voices
ghosts
with voices

sometimes I do
mistake them
for something as
non-occult
as shady inner
monologue

(when
   Wifi is down my
only
  connection)

across the road next
to ultra-Protestant steeple
the toxic
   gorgeous flowers
of the night
would gather
   caravan of cars
in tow

but someone saw Jesus
who must have
hated whores
and loved
street
    cleaning

so now the streets
are pristine
again
    we are
back
  in Eden
and Adam and Eve (if
not Lililth)
are scortchingly happy

***

my text is
all over
    the place

the Stones
are singing
murder
and
   Mick is
(cry
   everyone)
fading

nothing on the page
coheres
   need to figure out
fast how to shape shift to
the edge of the imaginary

before
   melted crossbar
soccer stanchions

rugby poles
   bent twisted out
of shape
   our apocalypse legacy

stuff warped worse
than you could ever believe

****

sometimes
the sky
looks
    passé

sometimes what you
think of as sky
is just hiatus

absence suddenly
of divine show, gas lighting,
heavenly propaganda

sometimes all up
there that looks so infernal
is just projection,
recognised as such
    easy
      to reconstruct collapse into
the internal

and here I find myself
having wandered into
Woolworths
    must be responding .
subliminally to
some ace advertizing

dream world purchasing
buy now
          pay later

buy now pay
for the rest of your life

****

****

there is a tide
                   but

we have missed it

are told to return
    assume the
default
position

learn
    what can be learnt

teach
    what can be taught

remember the lesson
if it is
    a lesson at all

strewn everywhere
pieces of the puzzle

the stones are silent
the stones
    have broken out
in a sweat

appear
so agitated
      cannot stop talking

Beatle-jacketed
   looking for all the world
like a foppish, dandyish
parody of
   some silk-pyjamaed elite

I was panel-beating, shaping
a bronze icon
of the Sun

wIting for its mastercopy
to ascend to its apogee
things
    at their zenuth
the light comely
and effulgent

wedded to self-confidence, authority, certainty

Location, location, location.

put
    down roots, eschew
all tourism

26km South of Ramatlabama
as good (or bad) as anywhere
a place to be

driving
   across the border into Botswana

my poem is borderline
I am always borderline

hard to
find a free-lunch, survive debt,
get discount
      stop your soul
getting hijacked

imagining myself in my old
coffee shop, reading
writing to a
throng of
devotees

never
ever
going to happen

needing place
to give me shelter
until I fade away

the ghosts on
these pages finding
their
   way to you

extreme off chance speaking
in a voice you
    might care to hear.