Damian Garside

DIG

dig deep enough
and
for this moment,
for God’s and.
all our
sakes

forget your pretensions
of becoming a gentleman
recent
revelations have
proved that tribe extinct

quibble with me if you must
temper getting frayed
delving
into dissonance
sounding like
a squiggling saxophone
as Wallace,
high priest of poetry and
its elite gatekeeper
might have said

but there
of a sudden, shovel scrapes,
spade makes good
motherlode
of dirt
and debauchery

low organs finding it
hard to be
their own
true selves in
the highest places
searching for
compliance, rule
by fear, a
surrendering niche

calling it
by its name, spadefuls
of names
as we begin
excavating

proof
that nobody is above
but then the
below

happens to be worse
than you thought
anyone can go

and yet
you found this treasure
only to get
it crime scened
with all
that that means

knowing
the sick beating heart
of this
corruption

intense as demons
we will still dig
indeed keep digging

for God’s and
all our sakes
we have nowhere left
to go

THE DAY THE FUHRER LANDED

the day the fuhrer landed
home land security and
immigration
were put on maximun alert
rushed into action

terrified that there would not be
enough babies and flowers,
guards of honour

rapturous screaming crowds
to welcome Herr H
to his
final, true home

OVERNIGHT

Decided you all deserve to be scared out of your wits now WW3 starting in the next few days is probably in the region of a 99.99% certainty.
OVERNIGHT

after the war
I found myself
to have spider legs
and tentacles
a thousand eyes

which would have made it difficult to prove my identity,
nationality not
to speak of humanity

a sitting target for homeland
security
except there
is no homeland

and if anyone comes this way
calling me
into question
will be
the very definition
of a suicide mission

gone in thirty
microseconds
having written thirty poems
a novel, and the
definitive history
of this
the last human
armed conflict
(armed
conflict, without arms)

overnight genetic mutation
having
some advantages,
no way entirely and
absolutely
necessarily a
world ending thing

TICK

beware the
time, of the tick
your speech
already rambling
pretty fucked up

and
tick yourself
you bite, you suck
give yourself
permission to leave
the table Harkonen
blood-bloated

who were meant
to be more symbiotic
than parasitic
in style
of leadership
delivering so little
promising
so much
taking so much

you said you
would drain the swamp
end up draining us,

draining us, denying us,
despising us, depriving us,
meant
to uplift

giving new sick meaning
to the image of bounty,
symbol
of overflowing

but
speaking of symbolic
it seems you eschew
all that
is indeed so
better to stick to
the sclerotic, the
crying out for diagnostic ,

tick
gets pulled
tick gets squashed
all its pilfered, stolen
blood
one fat smudge
of what
it was
nothing else to see

THERE NEVERTHELESS

we both got
Daddy pressures
both got
Daddy issues

lifetimes (mine longer
yours, shorter) of pretty much
failed adjustment

tough to find
a resilient forgiveness
strong enoigh to survive
first emotional storm

and since
we are comparing wounds
(our best effort at
any kind of
hoped-for intimacy)
i might suggest
though mine is deeper
yours deep enough
that there
is no
stopping the bleeding

a red
deluge in the making

mine
a wound no one, nobody
ever there
to care about
presume to notice

yours, pages and pages worth
unbandaged, still
outpouring

everyone there for you
(too hideously late) but
there nevertheless

HOLLOW

I believe it was he
who wrote The Hollow Men
so obvious
person to speak to
fighting this
emptying out
inside me

tried to track
him down
show him my words
ask why they sound
like
empty shells, receptacles,
dull and
distastefully metallic

scoured the deserts, every
academic precinct, places
of learning on
both sides of the pond

Nobel Prize man, last
I heard of him
his very words
being mouthed
magnificently by
Mr Brando, renegade
colonel
stripped of every shred
of normalcy by
anti-coloniaj war,

by now
the malaise my words
spreading paragraph
by paragraph
turned exponential

a death pallor already
so far down the line hardly
worth talking about.

LABOUR OF LOVE

we are
so unlike

she creates landscapes
has always had
her head
screwed
on tight

sees
the picture
implements
the dream

no place, space
for irony, ambiguity
sudden shift
back and forth

between
high and low
East
and West
North and
South
inside, outside
nightmare and dream

this very enterprise
premised on
shift and change,
subtlest suggestion
fluctuation

ah, yes
there we are, out
of nowhere had to
just
stumble upon it

world’s apart these practices,
so entirely alien
to each other

labours of love
for us both

THIS PICTURE,

THIS PICTURE

it is not what it seems
nothing is
what ot seems

an armada
sailing East
sailing across a
sea of mist, across
Homer’s wine-dark
smooth as
glass
could not
be unruffled

and in
its secret stockpile
many a
noose of light
for the Sultan’s turret

ships
big as cities
whose meaning be war
war
their entire industry
gliding to
their assigned
positions, making headway

nothing being
wrong with this picture

everything wrong
we can
no longer see

everything, everyone,
insisting it is all
a bad dream

the night, so dark
mother of
storms
about to
break

the story
so thin we are
about to see through it

far too late
to do anything

CLOSE SHAVE

first shave
close shave

so relieved
it was not
an open razor
I piped like
one of Blake’s angels
of his demons

but fatherly shadow
stalking me from childhood
lurking now
that I have
come of age
unable to deal,
with what
got twisted
in his own childhood

now praying that my
hand strays
cuts
a neat necktie
about my throat

or worse
spectral, haunted,
down-levelling figure
for whom
sons must
stick in
neutral or
pose insurmountable threat

and me
not in eager concurrence
to proclaim
all sacrifice sacred

find any
solace
in theological
explanation

striking out alone
at this late, perhaps final stage,
wondering what
merit
in trying to be wicked
daring to be profane

writing the peverse new
script of my entire being

on the surface of
this mirror, drafting
the introductory passage
to a great
memoria

finger
sliding across reflective glass
recording as condensed steam

IN MY STRIDE

ever looking
for the real deal

spoke Latin, Greek,
Italian. Aramaic,
finally switching
to Arabic

of which I knew
more than a smattering

always
on the lookout
for great voices

texts steeped in wisdom
prepared to give you
their all

and now
in this time of ghosts,
abounding spectres

I take all
of the evidence
close to all your hearts,
for and against

as it comes
in my stride