Author Archives: Damian Garside

MOSSLEY SURREAL
(LONG STORY)

I was there the day
Mossley, town
of my birth,
went
  as surreal as it could

the day this, little Pennine town
hosted a visit by
the completely surreal

and me
in my parents’ nice
little 40s brick
semi-detached house
up to their crazy nonsense
I was to yet figure out

down from Manchester
(where I would go
to university) on
a camel, in a caravan,
the surreal
   on its way

to mess
with our field gray
Northern Englishness
us afterthoughts of Empire
who maybe
had not seen better days

too early to
pose the existential threat
of psychedelia
doom us
     to a world of
Sergeant Pepper colours
snarling Jagger Stones
up
   in your face

fish and chips, that staple fare,
squid, octopussified
by the brush
       of the immortal Dali
decades before
colonization
     by McDonald’s

and then the vagrants, puppets,
teddy boys and
ne’re do wells
      up on the moors turned
raging rebel

nor did the Anglican Church
up in Micklehurst
for all
    its solid stone and
hegemonic presence
survive this
assault
       unscathed, do any better

and me
    just ten and

confused as shit, but sticking
my neck out to
           understand what
going on

laughing my head off
             as this
my little
    former world went wrong

that head
   rolling rolling rolling

the length of England down
to Southampton

for crisis crisis
    my father fired and
can get
no job

trying his luck
       in an apartheid white
Christian national
land

and me
       long story

living that
bad surreal through
                              to its

happy surreal end

in my twilight as
        overly surreal sort

of South African