Damian Garside

CELL

the taste
of serrano chilies
burning my tongue

the shark
that eats me

all good
all same

same scenario
same game

life pouring out of every
crack, every avenue

poem to write
across every white walled
page
of your prison cell

WHEREVER WE GO

never done it
with another snake

by wbich
I mean snake person
person born
in the year
of the snake

the surprise
of our bodies
fitting exactly
the coils of our
twinned souls
intertwined

finishing each others’ sentences
Before they end
half way through
before
they even started

so same-same locked in
slithery sensual immortal combat

elapid, viper, rattler, ambush predator,
neuro hemo exery kind of
cocktail of venoms
to soothe, kill
in microseconds
straighten out
where not python, anaconda
boa constrictor

so dovetail, stovepipe fit its
boring

so much hiss talk
best footloose, foot sure,
rootless footnotes
to Plato

snakelets, snakelings such
an otherwise joy in the making
unless
for this world just too
way too intense

curse of the snake being one
to the core
same cosmic signature
whatever do
wherever we go

losing out in this time of bondings
bindings self-
reflection

never
made it with a snake of my
species opposite
of my gender

any which way how before

STRANGELY

“No mind!” The Last Samurai, dir. Edward Zweig

let the picture dissolve

always a picture
inside, behind
the picture

empty everything
in order to
let the
poem fill

you completely
devoid of void
somewhere I have
never been

and yet
have seen, know
intimately

strangely

SMACK

this is your
Mike Tyson smack
in the mouth moment

not yet
punch drunk
flat on the floor
like a sweaty carpet

see how well you
can
pick yourself up
get back into
the fight

weave
and bob

sting
with your jab

recover
sprightly

take the fight to me
jam me up like
Foreman did
to Ali
rope that dope
in the corner

not the time to talk smack
to rap
no close in for the kill
pure poetry
this whole
stanza

butterfly and bee
no where to go
no possible
counter
solid defence to speak of

MADAME SNAKE

don’t let her
be a snake

slithering into your life
Simone de Beauvoir smart
sexiest of
philosophers

God, if she be a snake
you better
have some
big thoughts
you better have read
those big books
in the library, know
your
stuff backwards

wouldn’t want her
to get feisty
try to
swallow you one go
anaconda you
entirely

smitten by her beauty
behind that face
     to launch a thousand ships
lies the brain that knows,
can recite
      the Iliad
and much of everything ever
written
        recorded word-
perfect in
those coils

madame snake will
       take such sweet delight

in teaching you
a thing or two

she
slithered into your
life so
skin
tight

what else can mere mortal
hope to do?

EXTANT

It is my death
so do not covet it.

Allow me to decide
to keep this experience to myself
not to be shared
with anyone in
any
size, shape or form

my life for better or other
its course
already run

no desire to hobble through
inch by inch
ss this body battles
the odds
desperate to live
still extant
determined to extend

LEFT

before the storm came
we were all
Lamborghini and
Cabernet Sauvignon

apoplectic (not yet
apocalyptic) the Atlantic
Ocean emptied itself

tipped all its extreme troubles
out over our heads

leaving us baffled in the extreme
wondering what could have possessed
the Earth and its oceans
to turn that gang
so vindictive

the rain
battering us, batting
us down as if
an intensity close
to boiling
point was now being
exceeded

a head-scratcher for all
st least all those

with
heads left

thesell words you might
judiciously
elect to reject

channeled from
the glib mouth of one

whose head feels already
marked on Nature’s
list

currently wobbling, about
in next to no
time
experts sugges4

to lose all contact
with sensible sense

teeter on the brink and
then
so obviously fall

DRIP ZONE

I am
in the drip zone

a bit like
but to be distinguished from
the dead zone

drip zone is dead zone
but with the possibility and
yes promise
of complete recovery

incredible the magic
can be coaxed
from that wand

but me
beyond it all
to all intents and purposes
except when it
comes to unreal fantasy
when it comes
to abstract theory (theory
stuck in
the abstract)
.
no
those heart pills with the
golden side effect
you know
they cannot fix it

no tantric teaching making
an exception
no swottng techniques
(special love kata)
to ace that
acid test
practical examination

and certainly nothing to find
by way of succour
from word
of mouth

exception perhaps yourself
garrulous avatar that
you are
nothing further from
hermetically sealed

can Gemini me now
go totally Virgo on
these poor bones
(kingly joints
once
upon a time perhaps)

and that Cupid bow of a smile
arrow frown

something Homeric, Classical about
tells me best place
to afterlife could
be your secret island

if I drip so too
the ambrosia we
spoon-feed the most
fetching of those goddess ones.

FLASH FLOOD

as the Cheshire Cat
did say
(not in so
many words perhaps
hinting
in a haiku)

chess and
sex be
the
upside-downs
of each other

this taking Alice, now
a grown woman,
somewhat
by surprise, somewhat by
storm

that former
and latter, latter and former

here where the sacrifice first
delivers surrender

there where
surrender yields the sacrifice
that
needs to
be believed

and thus
I would tender, taken together
sex and chess

both tender

the
flash flood of
a brilliant move

pretty irresistible
when

making war in bed
making
love to you across the board

in not so many
words perhaps if
the poetry comes through)

FEEL THEY ARE THERE

you can mine this poem
but there is no deep seam
of anything
vaguely precious

just the usual trace elements
nickel, tin, platinum,
plutonium,, uranium,
irony, cobalt
sulfur, silver

maybe the odd crystal
certainly
whiff of fissile material
finding its way
into my system from
nuclear
test site

exciting the life of
your everyday, regular
typical Geiger
counter

those cell smashing huge
particles
ever so
invisible but
we can feel they
are there