Damian Garside

THERE NEVERTHELESS

we both got
Daddy pressures
both got
Daddy issues

lifetimes (mine longer
yours, shorter) of pretty much
failed adjustment

tough to find
a resilient forgiveness
strong enoigh to survive
first emotional storm

and since
we are comparing wounds
(our best effort at
any kind of
hoped-for intimacy)
i might suggest
though mine is deeper
yours deep enough
that there
is no
stopping the bleeding

a red
deluge in the making

mine
a wound no one, nobody
ever there
to care about
presume to notice

yours, pages and pages worth
unbandaged, still
outpouring

everyone there for you
(too hideously late) but
there nevertheless

HOLLOW

I believe it was he
who wrote The Hollow Men
so obvious
person to speak to
fighting this
emptying out
inside me

tried to track
him down
show him my words
ask why they sound
like
empty shells, receptacles,
dull and
distastefully metallic

scoured the deserts, every
academic precinct, places
of learning on
both sides of the pond

Nobel Prize man, last
I heard of him
his very words
being mouthed
magnificently by
Mr Brando, renegade
colonel
stripped of every shred
of normalcy by
anti-coloniaj war,

by now
the malaise my words
spreading paragraph
by paragraph
turned exponential

a death pallor already
so far down the line hardly
worth talking about.

LABOUR OF LOVE

we are
so unlike

she creates landscapes
has always had
her head
screwed
on tight

sees
the picture
implements
the dream

no place, space
for irony, ambiguity
sudden shift
back and forth

between
high and low
East
and West
North and
South
inside, outside
nightmare and dream

this very enterprise
premised on
shift and change,
subtlest suggestion
fluctuation

ah, yes
there we are, out
of nowhere had to
just
stumble upon it

world’s apart these practices,
so entirely alien
to each other

labours of love
for us both

THIS PICTURE,

THIS PICTURE

it is not what it seems
nothing is
what ot seems

an armada
sailing East
sailing across a
sea of mist, across
Homer’s wine-dark
smooth as
glass
could not
be unruffled

and in
its secret stockpile
many a
noose of light
for the Sultan’s turret

ships
big as cities
whose meaning be war
war
their entire industry
gliding to
their assigned
positions, making headway

nothing being
wrong with this picture

everything wrong
we can
no longer see

everything, everyone,
insisting it is all
a bad dream

the night, so dark
mother of
storms
about to
break

the story
so thin we are
about to see through it

far too late
to do anything

CLOSE SHAVE

first shave
close shave

so relieved
it was not
an open razor
I piped like
one of Blake’s angels
of his demons

but fatherly shadow
stalking me from childhood
lurking now
that I have
come of age
unable to deal,
with what
got twisted
in his own childhood

now praying that my
hand strays
cuts
a neat necktie
about my throat

or worse
spectral, haunted,
down-levelling figure
for whom
sons must
stick in
neutral or
pose insurmountable threat

and me
not in eager concurrence
to proclaim
all sacrifice sacred

find any
solace
in theological
explanation

striking out alone
at this late, perhaps final stage,
wondering what
merit
in trying to be wicked
daring to be profane

writing the peverse new
script of my entire being

on the surface of
this mirror, drafting
the introductory passage
to a great
memoria

finger
sliding across reflective glass
recording as condensed steam

IN MY STRIDE

ever looking
for the real deal

spoke Latin, Greek,
Italian. Aramaic,
finally switching
to Arabic

of which I knew
more than a smattering

always
on the lookout
for great voices

texts steeped in wisdom
prepared to give you
their all

and now
in this time of ghosts,
abounding spectres

I take all
of the evidence
close to all your hearts,
for and against

as it comes
in my stride

VRAIMENT MR T

what do we have here?

a walking talking
bloated embodiment
of force majeure

impacting us all
driving all and sundry
across the edge of insanity

walking talking
force majeure
(except not
walking so good and
talking
even less good, no
doubt about it)

and force majeure
itself obviously taking
no pride in this embodiment,
as embodiments go

so much of the force
and the majeure
utterly
pissed at all the
roleplay about it

FROM YOU

Tabanda must be old now
remember teaching her

scariest student
ever to come to
the language college

frightening the life
out of
all her middle aged
female teachers

me
just knocked for
six by her beauty

her quiet
kindness, less
than innocent laughter

she must
have become quite old now
hope the war
heading her way does
not touch her

or touch you
my incidental muse
my friend
from a
dead different planet

opposites attracting but
not where
too
opposite

to find, keep,
a connection

I hope this war
stays far away from you

scary threat
to all her middle aged
British

THE POEM ITSELF

structure here
is simplicity itself

dawn to dusk
birth to death

form
following function

maybe
you were lucky
enough to
live a war

even luckier
to have
up down
all turned
around
by revolution

maybe something
was quietly said, was
not felt
but could only
have
been past
on

sealing the deal for
our entire evolution

the poem
     ending
             somewhere
in its music
                   between joy
and far less

form following
function
the structure here
simplicity itself

ALL APIECE

“Seven days in sunny June/long
enough to bloom/ the flowers on that sunbeam dress you wore
in Spring.” Jamiroquai

Can’t believe
they called a flower
“honeysuckle”

begs
the question, what were
they thinking?

that’s real
bower of bliss. midsummer
night’s dream stuff

all apiece
with
lords and, ladies. fairies
and mechanicals doing
their thing
prancing around

which beats
sharing a melting icecream
with Doja Cat and
Slavoj Zizek

fanning myself,
taking a break away from
finding myself
always haunted by
sublime
prospect of
things
before my very eyes
turning from real
to surreal
to hyper-
real

nothing every returning
to braveface the real

as Janet croons
seductively to inform us
regarding
the nature of love and
its, inevitable destiny

must have
been brain dead to
love
as I did for
so many years

can’t believe
they called it “honeysuckle”
to my mind that
for better
or for worse

in sickness or in health,
really takes the cake