Author Archives: Damian Garside

THAT KIND OF THING

hungry for poetry

a nibble
a banquet

ravenous, you say,
we can whip
up a smorgasbord
for you

dream up a thousand
variations of
honey mustard pickled sushi
                                           alone

should your
predilections incline
you

  cast you
before all and sundry in such a way

you find yourself a helpless sucker
for that kind of thing

****

X (FOR XMAS) MARKS THE SPOT

a little
red cap
mushroom

all you need
to tell you
it’s Christmas

get you to
imagine you see
Santa’s elves,
German shock troops
climbing out of
their trenches to
dish out Bavarian cheer

every chimney
turned horn of plenty

every fairy lit tree
groaning under the weight
of what
    came into being
this day

****

CUCKOO

know
a bird

accustomed
to line its nest
with newsprint
during each
and every
famine of poetry

this
   during the age
of folk wisdom
before we
all
went digital

before information
eschewed paper, expanding
exponentially
virtue of
its own self-importance

cuckooing all
its sphere
        as it collapsed under
sheer illusory
weight of
its gravity

induced
a black hole

****

BUT IN THE BEGINNING

whilst (in a figure
of speech) creating the Universe
the wish came to mind
to write
the character of darkness
seriously double down

depict as it
in essence is, devoid of mystery

yet
   turned out a
vanity project

battled unsuccessfully
so much light
piling high
bleaching everything
written, every imagining

swamping every pen stroke
blinding every impure
shade of thought

terrifying meĺ
with the fear
that it
all
   should end here

and the light
come take us all

****

BREWING

a storm is brewing
category five

levees, dykes,
all about to blow

in my teacup here
everything
is perfectly
still

(the tea house itself
projected to fall)

IN PARENTHESIS

Long division
square root

she has gotten into the habit
of reading me like
a novella,
a very short book

backwards, forwards,
start to finish;
finish to start

goes overboard:
dividing, multiplying
working
     her way
down and up, up
and down

searching for that quotient
hunting that
             divisive dividend

her face
     a picture of joy when
it comes
to multiples

(our
lowest common denominator
a value to espouse).

AFTER THE WATER TORTURE

after the water torture

what he feared
above anything

was the terrible, brutal,
focused power

of
a
single
rain-
drop

101

postmodernism 101
will be written
in the Mirror Room

make sure
you look good
and agree with
your reflection
before taking
the examination

the notes for Chaos Mathematics
will be issued on holograms
every
   key theorem
broken into fractals

delivered
should systems collapse
by android
drone butterflies

well
before the hurricanes hit

the one caused by
the stress and
agitation
       suffered by your
fellow chaos
students
   writing the same exam
                            in China

****

COPERNICAN SYSTEM

tellers of tales
doctors of spin

the world
is a globe
it is
an LP record

it turns
with you, against you
within you and
without you

it is the Centre
of the cosmos
it is
a billion light
years from anywhere

screaming
    ahead of
    languishing behind
the times

common as muck, forever
plucking treasures
from the heavens

out
of the blue

****

RORSCHACH COYOTE STORY

swear I saw
a coyote testing me

not quite blotted out
motioning
     for me to follow

teaching me right there
and then
       every trick under
the Sun, aphorism
in the book

a wealth of key tactics
and strategies
        to cover my trail
dupe this
queen of analysis

****
SET IN TIBET

I perused Tibet

conferred
with a Llama

found
wooly enlightenment

the exact
moment a star
went supernova

somebody’s Sun
exploding overhead
a million years ago

RIDDLE

who
am I

what are
we?

did any of me
manage to
ripple
    through

or bump into you
heading my way
from
the opposite direction?

If so
I trust this was no kind of clash
only the softest
of encounters

as yet unlived life touching
yet unlived life

meeting at a cafe
we both conjured up
from somewhere
arguing over
   whether it is
spaghetti or
fettucini as we did
once and therefore
must always do

the same ghostly liminal
coffee shop
that always somehow
is deternined to
serve us pasta

and being
       a coffee shop
we both scan the tables for
the archetypal presence
of existential philosophical
and literary intellectuals

huge heavy hitters
conceptually speaking

who have
    no idea how
wondrous a fallacy it
would be

to take on the grounds
of consciousness alone
everything here
(as the
    regulars believe) is
incontravertibly real

****

LET THE POEM FAIL

let the poem fail
allow its words
to slur against
the grindstone

halt
  to such
an idea!

under our (your and my) watch
no King shall fall
no Queen tumble
no
   sans coulotte tumbril
(marking
  a change in style)
taxi these
sweet royals to
a one and done audience
with this most
sharp-
    spoken of Madames

yes, and no
booby-trapped package
to drop
through some
key letterbox
     escaping our surveillance
   promoting
the cause of anarchy

and
    God forbid we fail
to deflect
that burning fuse cocktail
named after Mr Molotov

landing
   bull’s eye
in your breakfast cereal

putting
    fire in your tank
adding punch to your day

let us
    leave this here, all
to fate these
terrible days

let the poem fail
it has no
power
except to

say
what it says

****