Damian Garside

PUNCTURED

on its way
to a smooth landing
3I/ATLAS must
have decisively
punctured
Fermi’s paradox

unless it didn’t
unless
it was just a comet
after all

a speed freak comet,
utterly anomalous
without
respect for comet rules
and the abiding
principles
of our scientific community

and all that talk of
lights nicely
    planned trajectory
(worryingly
       strategic) and
messages sent to
NASA telling
us no
    worries within
the hydrogen band

just the usual junk
that orbits
common sense in
our media eccentrically

product of our
demand for excitement,
need for
hysteria
fear of annihilation

longing
for signs and
last ditch
hope that the cosmos
might notice us

assign us place
and propriety we

just do not deserve

ACCORDINGLY

they branded
me

no name brand
inked my
barcode
on my palm

shaped
my image
professionally
for my launch

structured
me accordingly
inside and
out

every thought
and feeling
precisely aligned

TESTED

Turing tested
you in depth

took you out
on the road

put your through
preposterous strains
and stresses,
accumulated
pressures

and how
in return
you shifted my paradigms

reduced me just
to subtext, secondary theme

note
in your silver
metallic song

strange how just
a simple perusal
of your geometry

has opened my mind
to infinite shape.

THERE

we poets
talk
whisper
mutter
to

shout
at each other

trade in each other’s carbon
signature
breathe each
other’s rich
careful air

have constructed a web
that all of you
might
carry with you

in heart, mind
or stored on a disk or
stuffed
into a pocket

something in this time
of plunging darkness
needed to
spell out
every which
way

threaded through every
atom, molecule in
all possible
states, positions,
configurations

we are there
imagining

imagining
we are there

NOT EMILY; NOT SYLVIA

a narrow fellow
in the grass

many
narrow fellows
in that casket

a multitude
fat ones too

an eager worm
for every image
let alone
entire stanza

but your
career my dear Sylvia
so opposed, openly
celebrated
out there

no corpus magnum
opus kept
under lock
and key

which we do discuss
you and I
you and me

through interface
in the other of your soul’s voice
relayed to me
filtered through
divine circuits as
pure
simulation

Lady Lazarus how
quietly you rose

how agreeable you are
how bizarre it be
and treasured
thing
the very metaphor
of our shared
laughter

me
your narrow fellow
in everything

happily
accomodating
being accomodated

TOLDYASO

stumbled into a herd
of toldyasoes

having a meeting
by the watering hole
creating havoc

thought it was
a witches’ coven
at first
but it was
worse

these beings
far uglier across
every category

worst of all
having managed
to notice me
they fell upon me

spouting their rancidly acid
monstrous putdowns

that ultimate negative7 perspective
it is their life’s mission
to foster and engender

got it from
their parents
compelled
to pass it down

and so I barely escaped
alive to nurse

a shredded self-worth
mauled and
lacerated confidence

wondering
with all the huge inventories
amongst the great powers
and
so many many many
beyond budget
that they
all could easily spare

why no thermonuclear warhead
came parachuting down
to split
the atom
airbursting overhead

none
available when
you really
really need one

to cut
these toldyasoes once
and for all

calm
these creatures down

3I

last fly-bye
was spinning surfboard
heading for Maui

this one, Atlas
with the three eyes
is
completely different

calling it
a comet but
I don’t buy it

smart comet like this got
to be
billion to one
shot

yep, maybe
it’s a probe, probe self-
illuminated
full
of Sagittarius

perhaps it is something
beyond any
sci fi imagining

here to
    enlighten, give
us a vibe
        (this year
of snake
being
     absolute
right time)

or maybe it’s payback
verdict
from the cosmos

saw
read the truth
of evolution, stink
stuff
in history

emissary from
the deep

somewhere in its hold
our statement
of account

final
rejection slip

come to
personally deliver
eye to
3 I

WHERE FROM HERE

we lie together

when
we lay together
made love

it was
a moment of truth

intoxicated by desire
yet such
sharp clarity

we lie together
wondering secretly,
privately

where
do we go from here?

ON THE DREAM DESERT ISLAND

on the dream
desert island we have
created

we lie half naked
eyes burning
in the dipping Sun

exploring our ideas
of life and love, poetry
philosophy

exquisite notions
touching on everything

until the physical world
with warm insistence
magnetic forces

turns our thirst
to explore
from abstract
to concrete

the here and now of
desire and
union

under this sky on
this sand beneath
these palm trees

TRAJECTORY

Mr
Lego man
Professot
bricks and mortar

great Mathematician
moron philosopher

suspected
right from the beginning
something inside-out
about all of this

something the Universe
not telling us
about your Principia
and its golden equations

that shifty cosmos
keeping so much locked up
not for general
or even
intellectual consumption

not
showing its hand
hiding itself

feit
something not
followed through in
all your
computations
laying of foundations

not
for a second or
a minute
or any sweet gradation
in pure classical time

nothing linear
hard-edged, firmly molecular
about this
big, self-consistent
picture

clunky put together
patchwork killed
by thought experiment

so much out there
waiting for
a thumbs up
to chose
the path in most
simple
mindblowing
double slit experiment

so obviously
an interface
brain-filtered
metaphor of
a mechanism

giving us
back our own image
round and
round 360 sure

upon
    which to
spin those wheels
inscribe
       worm
holes
                (back pedal
now
   upon
        it)