Author Archives: Damian Garside

IT WOULD SEEM

IT WOULD SEEM

blood drips
flows
drains away

and this elastic stuff
kind of drips too
falls a grain
at a time

but I’m hindsight (taking
stock
taking account)
you
can feel
how fast it flowed

somewhere along the line
that dribble must
have spurted
gushed arterial

and now
you see it, the mouth
of a river
within paddling distance
from the ocean
and what an ocean!

ships heading
for port but
you my friend

only the immeasurable
vastness of the sea

blood driven
time driven

forever
it would seem

WHY

WHY

why be so singular
writing it as a poem
when you
could have (fire away!)
written it in prose

did you not
require clarity, transparency, conformity,
syntax you might
micromanage?

all of which (we
do believe) prose
alone is
the form
that
can secure

you see
the path
you see the doorway
avoid the kitchen,
drawing room
above all
the boudoir

for all
their highfalutin veneer
patina

there much
distraction and divergence

that way
leads
to carnival, sideshow,
introspection
all that
reeks
of
orgiastic pantomime

pathways opening but
then
immediately closing

rawness, roughness
that could not be more refined

but here
I am simply reminding you
of what you clearly already know

LOVER

LOVER

is
love

distinctive?
instinctive?

base?
superstructure?

merely lip service?
meandering midnight
love poem
   that simply
   never ends?

let me
stand back a bit
mirror this
big boudoir moment

(purely
   for the big picture
no
   ulterior motive)

your beauty such
that taking one look
gives
  me such confidence
for the continuity
of the species

unless
   it evolve as regards
shape and form
to obviate
  all discussion
of humanity’s preservation

and so
   you stand appalled
expecting so much more
expecting something different

and me
in hot debate
with her
     nonetheless.

Queen of
Confessional Poetry herself

no
   love poem
in the air

I ask for the words
for sauce
   but get insouciance

not a hint of nuance, colour,
love code and
all its protocols

Hallmark of
all that a love poem should be

having
   lost so much at love
so
  bereft of energy

HARD TO BEAT

HARD TO BEAT

no tiger claws
no vampire teeth

even so
walked through this door
and I was recruited
for murder

all above board
Geneva Conventioned

quickly prepped
armed
   and parachuted

into the fray
proverbially armed
to the teeth
(aforementioned teeth)

and what teeth!
less of interest to a
naturalist than
an orthodontist

not much good
for snarling or
biting
   through arteries

but pretty
good
   with pins

and securing commando
knives between
teeth whilst
leopard crawling

pretty
   good
    with pins

at pulling them from
grenades with
my teeth

   pretty hard
to beat

HEROES

HEROES

we asked for Spartacus
we got Julius Caesar

we enquired
about the availability
of the Buddha
and you gave us Genghis Khan

history always
switches on us
tells its
own punchline

holds us up
to bad joke scrutiny
makes sure
we miss the point

demolishes
every hero
fighting
for humanity

tells us
      who to
follow, obey,
even love

in a voice
you make our own

INCH

INCH

slowly
inch by inch

ripple
by ripple

you and me imagining
we are edging
closer to Heaven

closer to the truth
(whatever
that might be)
about the Universe
about ourselves

in this post-everything
world we currently inhabit
post-modern, post-structural,
post-punk, post-capitalist,
psychedelic,
        funkadelic

where
    you and me
doing the best that we can
at every turn failing

focused on
     completing
this ancient ritual (at
least its
bare essentials

basic equation)

DESTINED TO END

DESTINED TO END

Ah, poetry (let’s
out a breath
hears
syllables
expire)

hard to love it
impossible
to destroy it

Eliot, Richards,
Yvor Winters

all those years wasted
learning about it

from first
stumbling days on
the Rondebosch campus
then in red drag
robe
   about to be
your Dr G

which does the job
for would be rapper
of academic professional
(professional
      perhaps not
in the
dolling up to
take on the streets
revolutionary
of pleasure sense)

but
   incoming! a fat
opening line
fully
   armour-piercing
iconic Krupp
88mm

flouting itself as it
whistles upon me
fade to
   black. fade to
white

lap dissolve and then
match cut as it
demands
all my time

wouldn’t you
know it, have guessed it
something this
agonistic
simply certain
to happen

popping
     onto the page
exactly where we are, here
of places

oddest location where
we swore
    never again, would never
see
  let alone entertain
each other again

so
adamant this
would be so
      and yet
look what just happened

both
of us cast headlong
shades of the Lady
of Christ’s

angel
of free speech, secret cosmic rebel

off to the races
newly redefined spaces

no way of knowing
where this poem, this
thing poetry
             ever began

where (and how) in Hell, on Earth,
it is destined to end

QUESTION TIME

QUESTION TIME

great question
(such that it
should be
bolded, italicised,
written
in capitals)

let me
do it justice

let me
work on it
sit for a week
            a month

a lifetime
ten centuries

hopefully coming up
with an answer
summoned
       from below
dredged
from above
(the kind
    of deep break-through
that might well promise
to change everything)

ideally
by which time
(so many aeons elapsed)
whatever Dawn’s
upon me
greatis by no means
completely redundant

the world
    our world (if
it still be)

unrecognisable
gloriously, horribly,
indescribably altered

now
     to proceed

what
was it again

       that question

great question?