Author Archives: Damian Garside

JASMINE

JASMINE

world tells me
it is
   about to end

in the proces
of ending

pours me a porcelain
cupful
of jasmine tea

suggesting
that I do drink
it slowly

which I did,
sipping it softly
moment
      by moment

taking to heart
this wise advice
its logic
decidedly not
lost on me

SPINACH

SPINACH

chopping spinach
jungle green,
anaconda green
deepest
   darkest Popeye
spinach green
than
you have ever seen

and so
hacking slicing my way
through a thicket
of stalks and
leaves

my weapons of choice:
bush knife; machete

every lost finger
sacrificed to the cause
of green cuisine
    to be stored in the fridge
whereupon mailed
to the temple

where sweet vegetation gods
will do their utmost best
to receive
     as tribute, sew
back together

TINCTURE

TINCTURE

tincture of something
on my tongue

hard to place it
need to pin
it down exactly

outside the world its
raucous self, perhaps
even
   more cantankerous maybe

we talk softly therefore
defining our demeanor.
quietly desperate not
to say the wrong thing
feeling our
way towards acceptance,
adjustment

we wonder if this could be
the same small bustling cafe
from all
    those years ago

and if we would be doomed
or maybe fortunate enough
to enter into
the same debate

as to whether what
we are eating today
is canneloni or
lasagna
    how we see now that
time before when
we almost
   shared love

so close we were but
such a gap between us
in our mutual
understanding
    of the codes and syntax
governing
offers and
suggestion

so much lost though
perhaps here we are again
in disagreement

could there be
any “if onlys” that we
actually do share

the ghosts of that love and
metaphysical questions
raising the hypothesis that
ghosts
   could be lovers

so much here the same
so much that has changed

WAY TO GO

WAY TO GO

world
about to go

hanging by
a thread

huge asteroid impact
calculated

sure
to hit us plumb

but before that
who can rule out
some supervolcano
beating that
piece of space rock
to
the vital punch?

or before
either of these two
bad boys
dare stake
their climb

we smart enough
to forestall them both
take the matter
of extinction
into our own
hot
   thermonuclear hands?

which would be sad
because if it were to be
death
   by asteroid

we would
have all the time
in the world
to plan a farewell party

hit the beach
very day of that monstrously
beautiful tsunami

watch the collapse of
ultimate wave front

leading up to which
so much beer and braai
killer jokes and
fireside philosophy

much car backseat sex
and sudden conversion

all in all
such a way to go

NEVERTHELESS

NEVERTHELESS

same psychedelic
mushrooms

delectable
with melted cheddar
and Cheshire cat

keep these recipes for
inter-dinensional travel
in a saucerful
of secrets with all
my favourite tunes

and there we have it
algae and fungi from afar
about to colonize

thriving
in the darkest room
of your brain (place
where you develop
those photographs you
dare
   not share
with anybody

will be end of everything
if they
happen to hack
willfully drill
         up there

  but those old boomer vibes
peace and love
in our new.
    time of genocide who
gives a
   fig for them

time for soft
resistance having passed,
that wine
   turned sour

people so outrageously sane
they want to spring clean
me
  geopolitically

pop
   my third, fourth, fifth,
sixth eye (and
counting)

shut the gate slam
the hatch

make it all
    scry  crystal clear

sum
of all I have ever feared
            

DAMN THE IRONY

DAMN THE IRONY

after judgement, trial
by jury of my peers

boiling and bubbling
ended up in Hell

out
   of my comfort zone
yet (blessedly) in one
of the outer circles

the rest of my kin
however
      skillfully managing
to do much better for themselves

if not
lap of luxury certainly
all the nod cons

sport, soaps, reality TV, soft
rock, death metal
full
   English breakfast
reruns of those
immortal comedies

whilst to release endorphins
and cling to
my wicked socialist
principles, need to
be creative
    and establish a
sense of community

gave recitals of poetry that
might
    give my belived fellow
danned some cheer

not for a moment
supposing
      it would add not
detract
from their suffering

only so much
      bad art a soul
can take

unsolicited poetry a
being can bear

irony
    being the ultimate bitch
damn
   the irony!

UNDERNEATH (GOOD FOR YOU)

UNDERNEATH
(GOOD FOR YOU)

just type
your poem

here
     (underneath)

and my natural silicon
carbon digital synapses
will
   set to work

shaping it
for the stratosphere

or even
    beyond the galaxy

extend it
     down the page, across
a chaper
   push it in the direction
of a collection
we are talking
      a whole book

this is the technology that
is indistinguishable
from magic

    should you indeed
call it magic
I
  would not
disagree

and if I
think it be
magic pure magic

we should
all think so too

if we know
    what’s good for us

if you
have sussed what
is good for you

PARADOX

PARADOX

where are they
Professor Fermi

why are they hiding
why do they
not show themselves

do
they even exist?

no sign of those horrors
beauties
     of our cosmic imagination
radically divergent evolution

our astonishingly familiar
mandibled nemeses and
arch-enemies

our tentacled lovers
and extraterrestrial friends

not a hint of so much
as a big-brained tadpole out there

billions of years for them
to be born, build and expand,
announce themselves

and yet
      they seem
to have lost the plot

have not read the template
realized how much we need
to find them
(or them
      to find us)
to mirror
   all that is alien, otherworldly,
in the species itself

this
     ape creature that somehow
seems determined to
alienate itself from
planet
    galaxy, Universe

perfecting the expression
of all that
   refusing to be integrated
is
   divided, disjointed,
anomalous
essence of
oddness whetever
it tell itself

as it all is
   everything that got seeded
throughout trillions
of galaxies

too limited in range
narrow in focus
parochial in
perspective

to stick its head out
its hole
     show us

best and
         its worst

celebrate all
    that is other, thereby

all that is self