Author Archives: Damian Garside

KUNG FU SOUL

KUNG FU SOUL

float
on wires

I do

free spirit
angeling
hanging
     below
the ceiling

skipping
across rooves

am a
great master of
many lives

from
ancient
times

beautiful spirit
harpy
of bad, worst dreams

badly dubbed
I speak
out
   of synch

but my words
are memorable

let
the instruments play
string, woodwind

at the
   moment of impact
the whole
of creation
    resounds to
my

crouching turtle
hidden
    salamander tune

AUTOPILOT

AUTOPILOT

“Vada a bordo, cazzo!”

I was admiring a metaphor but then it sank
not in wine-dark ocean, somewhere between Charybdis and Scylla
but in turquoise sea, shallow, placid
verging on perfect island.

Earlier
the Captain himself had
put us on autopilot, too suave a narcissus
not to entirely confuse skirting sexual danger with
courting maritime disaster

and complete disaster was it too, for all the beauty of vista and shallowness of water, though not without its
comedy of cruise-control leading to full
Groucho Marx-moment of
tumble into lifeboat (what could be
more providential? did he not think, was
He not reminded of
Freud’s philosophy of the ship and
all of those jokes about being in
a boat and not finding the boatman?)

What serendipity should we ignore, dare
we escape without
risking the Olympus (albeit these days that
Poseidon, at least has grown so tiny)?

Always the softness of the parallels
that rise to haunt us
even though
we did not see
doomed forever to fail to see them

no matter how careful
we navigate
carefully, frantically, at

full panic station scan the horizon.

BEE DANCER

BEE DANCER

I am a bee (be
a bee)
alphabetically
entomologically

finding my
sharp little way

flower
       to flower
heading home
stacked
   with pollen

return
      heavy with tales
exquisitely choreographed
of
  how
to navigate

paint them a path
sweet
    as perfume
honeyed with heart

each tiny
          lemniscate
danced with
delight
      danced till I drop

love
   each figure of eight

AS IT DID UNFOLD

AS IT DID UNFOLD

unfolded the Universe
as if it were

an origami

but on that paper
                           much

to my
        surprise,
                        disappointed,

nothing to find
                              nothing
written

except the thought dawning that
all this time the

                            Universe

         reading me

TETRA

TETRA

they swarm like neon tetra
towards the light
     or perhaps

away from it
out at six back
at seven

this is the lifestyle
that the planet
prayed for

behind
these walls, these gates
every
    modern convenience
means of escape

but me
       having drowned
once already

prefer the death deep
of dark indigo

down
    where survival is
impossible
amongst the incredible
legions of
myth-denizens

and creatures
of infinite aptitude
biding their time

they swarm like
neon tetra, first cousins
to piranha

towards what
they believe just
has to be the light