Damian Garside

GHOST WRITER

you asked me
to ghostwrite you life

put into
the written word
all those
spoken memoirs

to stay
on the outside, remain
almost anonymous
completely invisible

pretty much
exactly as I was
during the course
of your life

DUENDE

DUENDE
“All that has black sounds has duende.”
Federico García Lorca, Theory and Play of the Duende_

drank (was drinking)
a glass of red
ate
(was eating)

a bowl of red
which was even redder

sat next to
a strange-looking man
with the darkest
of messages
speaking German
with a moustache
that
said everything

gave me a pine cone, bade
me take
good care of it
in a way
that seemed possessed
at which point, upon receipt,
my nose caught
(or perhaps just imagined)
an odour between
that of orchid and
that of hyacinth

whereupon
he disappeared with a
Schwarzenegger-style
promise to
be back

and now
the very Earth itself
seemingly keen
on swallowing me

whispering like
some seductress, that
she
was a myriad planet
of so many styles
and forms
of death

and, if indeed I knew
what was good for me,
should write
them before I myself,
as might happen
any day now, die

convert
      every
red taste remembered to
solid black

       point taken, like you
seeing myself, if just for a flash,
for a moment,
dead snake
      in my pocket facing
a firing squad

nothing ever found, Federico,
to confirm that fate

DIFFER

you say
I can’t
write
poetry

you say
my voice
is not
truly
South African
(whatever
that means)

with which
I beg to
differ

beg to
ever so moerse
slightly vokking differ

RAINBOW

I was inside
a rainbow
playing
Chess

Queen’s Gambit Accepted
which I was
once warned to decline
but now,
as a matter if course,
of course always accept

the pieces shifting from
shade to
shade
(fuschia versus turquoise,
lavender versus burnt sienna
never
black versus white,
or, for that matter,
white
versus black)

and me, since we
were going
classical
not blitz,

having time on my hands to
do a bit of devilish intellectual
handiwork and
imagine a
world where
one might insult the law
savagely, force
a backrank mate in
the opening and
prance
away, scotfree

living to fight
another way, show
the world a
better way

but then, as always,
with all your
vast YouTube tutoring you
indeed
got the upper hand

gave me
your most gracious victor’s
handshake, and
indeed kiss
which was sweet, and fine,
and almost everything
but it was
not what
I had in mind,
not the bearhug my heart
was set on

but so it goes
time passed, would be decades
before our rematch

revisit
that old rivalry, rekindle
what, if anything, left
of that
old desire

light that candle
point it at the heavens
aim it
at a star

one at the heart of a rainbow nebula
one that
tells a different story

from those who string us along
with wild musical metaphors
of pitch
and tone
and, above all, resonance

everything connected by
what we cannot see,
simply
too complex for
this dimension

and yet carrying this song
everywhere instantly, all
at once
hither and thither

the game
already played, outcome
there in that very first move.

HONEY

do not presume
to tell me
what
is forbidden

is the sky
forbidden?
the sea
the Sun
you

yourself
forbidden?

are all the things
in your book
of prescriptions
ultimately forbidden?

what of honey
is that too,
forbidden?

bees may sting
but the make it freely

as is the case
with honey, your honey

it is the sting
itself that makes it what it is
defines it as honey
not quite
the same
as venom

and so please
before you
close the gates
shut
the hive
lay the mines
string the wire

as a matter of gentility do
tell me what is forbidden
point to
what is forbidden
in all this honey

that I might discover
taste, feel,
judge for myself

TWO POEMS

AND HERE

and here we are
first time around
or
back again

who can say?
nothing
to tell

geisha, ninjitsu,
daimyo, ronin
or samurai
time
of
sengoku jidai
and all that that means

your roles
will become apparent
as you step into them

and perhaps
in this version of
our eternal tale

you have
a destiny, you
have a future

and to
cap it
all

allay
your fears

that whelp with a stick
and bad
skin condition

will
not be Musashi

thirteen years old and
lightning quick
knocking every
atom
of life out of
you
with aforementioned twig

before
you might
unsheathe
your katana
slightly

adjust
your armour

****

WITH THE TREES

tried to
share something
with the trees

but the afternoon light
scattered across
their leaves

left me
bedazzled
dazzled me

so much
to the language
that trees speak

SOMEONE

someone
on YouTube complaining

the fish have
vanished, the
bugs have gone

the Sun which
he recollects as always
adhering to a
shade of
pleasure yellow

today has drained
to a harsh, and almost
abrupt white

yes, these people
on YouTube always
getting
the wrong end
of the stick
terrestrially, cosmically, speaking

they take a

look at that poor
dead stick

and immediately generalize
it to swathes of removed forest
leaves
worse for wear
as the
magnetic pole shifts, increased
radiation leaks

draw absurd, ridiculous conclusions with which
I entirely
agree

TERRA MYSTERE

propped up and plodding on
trusting in my faithful
cobta-headed
walking stick

I head out for the first
of what I hope will
be many horizons

before
the door shuts;
time runs out

as it is everyday
I edge further and further
into the territory of the ancient
such poor progress
that I make
might as well be
in reverse gear

and I had hope
to traverse them all
terra mystere after
terra mystere

find, envision
endless true wonders

no smoke
and mirror, no
trick of the light feeding
me mirages

for what else
battle like an ant setting out
to cross
the canyons of Mars
our Earth’s Sahara

a realm my cobra
knows so well
being (legend has it)
one of
those stick-to-snake
transformers beloved
of Egyptian
magicians and their
relentless, legacy-
driven Pharoahs

in my mind
now a pyramid
conceives
of itself
in the sky high above me
descending, debating where to land

THIS ONE; THAT ONE

this one
a chess prodigy
playing a killer
opening
he devised himself
against the world champion

their hands a blur
as they smash time itself
on the regulation clock

a whole game done
and dusted before
you can
take a breath

and even
in blitz
not a second-rate move
never mind
a blunder

that one
lives time differently
hopes for monotony,
exists as pure
duration

way down
the silo
behind titanic
blast door

waiting for the launch codes
hoping they
will never come

knows
they are bound to come

FOR THE RECORD

the needle stuck
unable to move

doomed to persist in
this groove

me
likewise keep harping on
clinging to all
that I
once felt about you

who felt so
always out of reach
stuck in some
mutual exclusion zone
the pair of us

our story, such as it is, whatever
it was, easy
meat for
all those fake
grammarians of desire

and this the fate
for those who read,
who write,

looking
for that true text
that hides inside, lingers
perhaps beneath

between the lines
if there
ever were lines

demarcations to
keep our darknesses
strictly apart

disregarding
the Sun, the light

you in the
arms of
what I could
only presume to be
a living god

me
finding myself,
imagining myself, however
far-
fetched a, follower of Francis

yearning for
a sanctity poverty might address