Author Archives: Damian Garside

ELEGY

ELEGY

elegy trumpeted
my sadness

painted my grief
in matt black paint

or was it gloss
or was it indigo
forest green
     steel gray colour
of cold Northern ocean?

so many in mourning
at your passing
               so conceited
as to think my loss
beyond bitter,
intemperately special

as if I the only one
to truly know
   what an incredible being
to have
here disappeared

TREAT THIS AS A UFO

TREAT THIS AS A UFO

treat this
as a UFO

a piece of space time
bent into a shape
beyond our comprehension
who knoes what
makes sense
who know what they
are meant
to be doing

i wonder about all
of us, cause for concern,
all our crazy.
suppositions.

should we disappear
all theze, moments
on Olympus
disappearing
with us

and here you are
with your best-
selling materpiece
on The Great War

summit of
our failings
wrecked the rest
of our history
from beginning to end

tteat this
as a UFO

no way of understanding
what it is all about

WRONG WAY

WRONG WAY

do not take this
the wrong way

do not
take it all
quite so personally

the best metaphors
are the ones
you cannot help
but take personally

the worst,
the ones you take
the wrong way
are
   diabolical, lethal

some unidentified metaphors
on and beneath
your radar
are winging their way
to you right now

even as we speak, shoot

the breeze, could
be angels,
might be devils

might be
    arrows

soaked in love
killer envenomed

not being able
to duck them dodge them
shows
    for better or for worse
they have
your number

can’t miss
about to hit

TO YOU THROUGH ME

TO YOU THROUGH ME

have to confess
to not being
supremely invested
in anything

birth death cycles
blind repetition
in perpetuity

my eyes opening
for that first time
learning to ride my
bicycle
in the cemetery

doomed to retirn to re-
learn as if
on some Escher loop
believing I have
duly departed
but here
I am
returning again
and again

finding my way back
to the graves
I do remember and
each tiny
funeral chapel.

much hidden history
in every
      minor variation on
pretty standard epigraph

taking them on board
as I free wheel along
the lanes
    between the graves

and here I ask you
as you, and indeed
my sister
   ride alongside me

to define, via differentiation,
what penetrates
and, there again,
what remains

taking a deep long draw upon
that cold Northern air
as it comes
to you exactly, if things
should vanish,
happen
   to burn, if smoke recalls,
does at all remember
.
a complete, and, yes, complicated
tapestry
    we all swore to finish
but never do

and me thrown by
the strangeness of each
and every queation
                      unsure as to

where they
came from

and how could possibly
                   find their way.
to you
   through me

INFINITESIMAL

INFINITESIMAL

my desire
for you so binary system massive

so why
didn’t space time bend
everything bend
to my will
and with it,
            you?

everything stop
in its tracks slow down
to extremity?

must be
    what you felt for me, tiny
a void, antithetical, infinitesimal

as quantum
probability
        worst case scenario

thing massive in its negativity
whole universe size
singularity

HONG KONG ZOOMED ME

HONG KONG ZOOMED ME

Hong Kong zoomed me
loaded with questions
about my
Viking heritage

don’t know
if I waxed lyrical

don’t know
if I spilled the beans
since we
are old friends,
philosophically cannot
say we
chatted like
old friends

jabbering, joking,
exploring the very
concepts of
difference, sameness,
myth, reality
and construction
of identity

a dragonship longboat
out there sliding up
the river
as requested

what is Viking within me
having first
claim on my soul

Hong Kong zoomed me
questions seeking
me out
finding acceptable answers.

GREEN LAND

GREEN LAND

they hashtagged
hyphenated

took away the sky
up there, a tiny square
Mr Rockefeller,
Jets and Giants,
have to
strain your neck
to see it

before
their thoughts lurched upwards
it was the green
they took
had disappear

no one casts their mind back
to dawn days of arrival
striding across the shore
feeling
exceptional
albeit just a sprinkling

a dust of darkness
misconstrued in the light
but
    not entirely for the better
changing everything

and we
too
   were disappeared, story
of our disappearance,
that
   disappeared too

ghosts and bones
beneath those cities,
remembered
     perhaps as irony, regrettable
tragedy, parody

voices long gone
and with them all the words

other green lands out there
waiting for
     all this to repeat

BARBED

BARBED

Martians had landed
were disintegrating
every one
and everything
left, right
and centre,

the radio told us,
warned us
   was very clear
on this. broadcasting
every horrific detail

we ran
for our lives
all the five boroughs,
evacuated the city

except
the stoical, smart few,
aficionados of
one or both
    of Orson and Herbert
those unspeakable twins
in everything
but blood, though, well,
their surnames
spelled out that affinity

and there they were, those
apocalyptic sci fi diehards,
desperate
      to get a glimpse at
a tripod, if  not
an extended peek or
even guided tour
of the, cockpit

which might
just have shocked them,
seriously subverted
their assunptions

to find
these hideous, monstrous
creatures,
    having an
affable, charming side,
with poetry and
painting, culture, architecture,
religion

as alien as us
on the outside, and the inside,
as human
as us too

like us
     spreading their humanity
in their worst
possible
     most human way.