Author Archives: Damian Garside

OFF THE MAP

you lovd to frustrate me,
fire at me,
play sexual politics
strike true anti-colonial poses
revolutionary stances
in the bedroom
and pretty
much everywhere else

slide of lathe
recoil of the typewriter

hostile gestures of
a body
at large

naked in its knowledge
stripped of all pretension

the cement set to
seal the concrete of
your foundations
still
   bottom of the harbor wet
as absurd
  a lockstep as you
might
   manage to get

Oh, you say, Medusa eyes
fastening upon me

we are that absurd
complete creature whose
permanent state of ecstasy
no god
    or goddess could withstand

absurdly un-Platonic in the
daft contours of its beauty

and Aristophanes (for
it was he) rueful
of this
    surgical separation even
if carved
by divine hand

at one stroke a lost comedy
and hydra of philosophy

from Socrates to Nietzsche
the words of
the mind to
     bring merciful spin
to
   the painful ontology
premised upon

that forever division
distinction

chasm
   in the heart of desire
between woman and man

****

SMALL

here be
magic mirrors

reality killers
things Harry
Houdini found
in the book
of Thoth

magic they are
mirroring their means

but your inner
weather being stormy
heart
    cloudy
they show only shadow
an
  essential condition

and here we have
halls full, a glade
mirrors
   covering, mapping
an entire topography

every mirror
giving room
for reflection, a room
a boudoir that
is a reflection upon
all
that is
hidden perspective

room within
a room
tesseract mirror
containing its
own reflection

and you
with pencil and paper tasked
to sketch
   this truth in
myriad dimensions

all
  unfolding
in real time

tiniest of spheres, indeed
infinitesimally small

yet
  containing the Universe
containing every everything

****
DOWNSIDE

feel I am
going down

bound to get
relegated

have already fallen
half the distance
of any
  dark angel

down a division
in fact
   every division

imparting a whole
new meaning to
the word
“relegated”

but if
jury is already out
and what be
must be
   (to the tune of
Helter Skelter no
lesser
   lovey-dovey tune of
Messers Lennon
         and McCartney)

into that place far from self
from the centre
from
   the presence of
God (here I go with Augustine,
father
     of Bishop Prevost lately Leo)

but not
     for pride or for wrath
or envy
    (or my worst, sloth)

but simply, honestly,
inescapably
     for lust

for lust is hardly the deadly
to destroy the world

hardly the deadly of
the prince
     of darkness (once light)
his
     most precious self

and
   in my defence to all
those who

never felt
your touch, ever cast
eyes upon
you

and yet
    so quick to cite text

an eternity of torture worth
every second spent