Damian Garside

MOSTLY

“They come out at night. Mostly.” ALIENS (1986) (dir: James Cameron)

so quiet
almost peaceful

in space
a hydrogen bomb drops
fast as a feather
equally silent

here however
our parents together
gambollihg in the garden

innocent
unfallen

not even
a grazed knee

everything on course
ticking like an Swiss watch

ticking
also
somewhere down there
way beneath their feet

something in
the rock and stone
down below the earth of Eden
that nourishes everything

shedding heavy particles
yet
no need for caution, nothing
yet to worry about

and there
to one side
a much disgruntled, disfigured figure

recent transformation
put him in the arcana
rendered him archetypal

whose tale
could be more cautionary

whose loss
the stuff
of insanity

and yet the flicker of a smile
a flash, a spark
and with it
a vision
of annihilation
.
countdown close
ending begun

SOLVE

to comprehend the lie
you would have
to go back
to the beginning
of life
before
the fetal position

read everything scan all
those media flashes and
opp ends
from before the
dawn of time
masts and headlines

kick up
a fuss
deconstruct
every word, not
believe anything

sift through
every fable
every conspiracy
every secret
every
hole

back to
Plato’s cave
and its
very first troll

and
every major minor
gaslight that
masquerades as history

liberal radical
whatever what
not worth
the clay
tablet
so-called stylus
scribe
wrote it down on

and there it is
here’s where
it starts
chain reaction
of all
that is
unquestioned

where
it all
got stuck
became impacted

unable to solve
resolve dissolve

impossible
to redress

DEAD

trust me, it’s complicated,
but if you
are reading this poem
you cannot
be dead

maybe
not quite alive
but cannot be dead

no paradox here
neither the trivial
nor the magical

just a philosophical aside
regarding your
spiritual condition

not alive perhaps
but not yet, definitely
not yet
not completely dead

so many
I know (have the pleasure)
would argue
totally gone
do not yet realize
it
but beyond the pale
dead

but
step up
to the mike

and give me
your best whisper

here I feel, hear
breath, am certain I feel breath

WORM

not just
cocooned

bookworm
is dead
and he, she
having passed
we
must lament them

and so all
is left
all that survives
be text
worm and woodworm

would that
they did exist
did ever
exist
(thinking now of
sweet prince
so obsessed
with wormwood)

nothing left
on the planet
to mouth, tongue,
suck, kiss
speak

swallow like the anaconda
devour like a dragon

all of this text
this smorgasbord of snippet

or do
the drive through

read as per graphic
point with long finger

so many choices
all fast and
neat

so
good
for the
soul

eminently digestible
fully branded and packed

EYELINE

my eyes
slowly adjusting
to the darkness

yet in the same darkness
my mind going
billion percent Lovecraft
gone
in thirty seconds

imagining every
conceivable category
of inconceivably
ghoulish beings

and most
truly terrifying thing
of a writer
one who
lives and
dies
by imagination

no paper
no pen

not a scrap or
stub at all

FIN

we are
at the end of the last reel

the sea is out there
other mise-en-scene

steadicam shot tracking
us as we
go our separate ways
last piece of
dialogue

syllables exchanged
words spoken to each other

the crew are removing things
the theme is ending
catharsis death

back at the studio
a nightwatchman
flicks the on off switch

GENUINE

“Oh this isn’t a copy, this is it.” The Freshman (1990) (dir: Andrew Bergman)

could it be
a hypocrisy

to think
of this poem
as “genuine”
whatever
that means

written
in free verse
stolen from others

needing to
be “liberated” absolute
prerequisite?

and so
the question arises
raising its hideous
beautiful head

what to do
with the rules?

with Robert’s net
we have removed
trying to
define
our own trajectory
less travelled path

keeping it
rich

right words in right places
worthy of keeping
in the Louvre

behind glass
genuine,
unless
there is a copy
we know nothing about

PAY GRADE

no clear
consensus
about
consciousness

cannot see it
but its
jumping us
from behind
slapping us
in the face

take this entity
on the periphery

I shout
I speak I whisper
but no
answer
do not respond
do not reply

no wonder there’s
fertile field out there
researching
the problem
of other minds
(present
company
existentially excepted)

so
quiet
between jobs
between mirrors
between
operating systems

let us
Turing you
let us bombard you
with
standard twenty questions

are you

rock? robot? stone?
xenobiological?
home grown creature?

thing made of
carbon, silicon,
titanium, gas plasma?

thing with other specialities
beyond linguistic aptitude?

or are
feedback, repartee,
dialogue, duet

things above
below beyond your
pay grade?

not your thing
your buzz
your way of showing
me
whole new archetype
for inner self?

DISCLOSURE

Oh dear

we somehow ended up
in bed together

at which point
it emerged
was disclosed

we are just
not never on
the same wavelength

one is
a FM local station

the other
a set of interlinked SETI
radio satellite dishes

picking up pulsars
deep deep in
far flung space

pulsating
at the dawn
of the time

not the loving aliens
sending us love
letters
wanting to get
down with us

come travel light years
to be with us
teach us

the harmony concord we desire

MIDTERM

got an ‘F minus’
for my midterms
in erotic theology

basically because
I could not wrap my
head around Harvard
Referencing System

felt there must be
some abstruse conspiracy
behind such an innovation

some dictat that it
should be so
which was communicated
from up on high

a brain so great
was not just subsumed
but swallowed whole
by terminally
expanding
artificial intelligence

things that
bodies, structures,
and walking dead conglomerate
corporates

find themselves determined
by the way they
believe
instinctively and
instinctually need to be

curtailing any tendency
to
think
out
of the box, each
and every box

pull out
of the hat, out
of thin air; out of nowhere