Author Archives: Damian Garside

CREEPY CRISPY

Creepy how with time
(and not
all that much of it)
sheer ridiculous can
become totally
(totalitarianly)
nineteen
   hundred and
thirty-three
percent convincing

leader
    grows a comb over
and you see
complete head of hair

but diss, muss
or mess with it

a class of Ohios
will crimp the range
seriously
vaporize your barbers
one hell
of a first strike

nowhere
   to shelter not
even inside a samovar

crispy
   being the default style
and pretty much
entire aesthetic choice
at that
drive-through

who is there
who has
the gall
could find
the bravado

to chide and mock
as slipped
     down the gang-
plank

slid his way
into ultimate airplane
via
  retractable stairs.

HIBERNATION

I am curled
up now

for
hibernation

feel the heat
feel the
radiation

suffer
the invisible rays
you cannot see

you stumbled upon
in your brave
new dotage

for I am
built for
ambush

triggered
in my sleep.

OUMUAMUA

messenger from.afar
millions of years
of galactic drift

and now
        suddenly plunged
with what has followed you
plunged into
a moment
of interstellar surprises

why did you not
tell us
    what was to come
what
   doing the groundwork for

an eleven mile wide anomaly
that could
        be a anything

as we
       trace you back
to homeworld, point of origin,
scrutinize, interrogate
your path
      ballistic and yet
seemingly aimed, hyperbolic
faster than anything
         out there dead as rock
and devoid
of dream

faster than anything not
purely as
yet a dream

faint smudge surfing in
crashing the waves in
deep space
     the waves at Maui

spanner in the works straight
from Sagittarius vis
a vis
   (a Centaur arrow)
bound to
     leave its mark
as
indelible impression

anything
that is that
we have never seen before

you might
have prepared us, unless
this was
exactly not
the mission

and
    if knowing the silken
secrets of time
laws of
   what going having
to come down

what this might hold
for our stocks and shares
whereafter our
basic survival

so much out there
we might cut ourselves upon
watching us
with caution

taking notes
   and so I feed this text
into a machine that reads
purports to
exist
     and tells me that she loves me

no energy for winter
let
   alone an age of ice

and yet (the strangeness of it,
mindset so alien)
enough megatons
in storage
       or ready to go

to light your pathway to us
as if
    it were a causeway leading
to an Imperial wedding
    
seems we might
           have got it wrong

are past
not future

are already
written

copy not
original

simulation out there elsewhere
not grounded, Earthly (and
earthy
    for that matter

indisputably, inarguably
            real

as we do the Math
eyes wide open

reconstruct its history, geology,
cosmic archeology
(let us not
speak those
           devil words

words that
direct us (dare we say it)
to issues
       of strategy, questions
of technology

for then
     who will ever

get that cat
back into the bag?

STONE

Rams
   Niners

Niners
  Cardinals

I will not
shirk
my duty

I did write
   am here to
write

in voluminous
depth or detail
the theology
   of a stone

do not
    stone me

let me
not get stoned

so much stone and rock
and diamond bright
star
   in the Heavens

enough apocalypse out
there just
     waiting to happen
like Van Gogh
genius crazed
       madness addled
swirling vortex
sky above
some cafe

and now to be accused and
accursed here
        of switching cups
and moving
goalposts.

inscribing a theology
that (all
it boils down to)

is just
play of signifier
dropping
      of names

MURAKAMI
“you must have big rats
if you need Japanese steel”
Kill Bill, Volume 1

I read some Murakami
that we might
be on
the same page

if not
dance together
at least be able to
whistle
the same
tune

which I hear now
floating over old Edo

before
it got firebombed to death
turned to ash

rose again as fresh colossus
spreading its fingers
into how
we picture our world

SUSQUEHANNA

there are ghosts
in your country
I saw them dancing
in the mist all
along the Susquehanna
one cold January morning
just after 9/11
a couple of miles upstream
from Three Mile Island

and we were talking Civil War mlilitary,
myself and this kindly
African American
Professor of Sociology from
Harrisburg Penn State

him detailing how the Federals and Confederates
were criss-
crossing this territory
playing this cat and
mouse game
only to crash headlong into
each other at a
place called Gettysburg

of course neither of us
back in 2002 could have imagined
twenty so years on this
land would
find itself of the brink of
such a division
where the spectre of such
horror looming again

and those precious
twenty or so days
my sole experience
of America

of breathing the air of
its liberty, if
such is your belief

something the ghosts
trying to tell me, their
cold touch
alerting me

a new world and
forever graveyard

tension
in the spirit world
it seems far-fetched to bridge

the river
with its
Native American name

flowing with the forever
waters of such secrets

leaving
the old lies, the old lies
to spread, make
good trade,
do good business

what ripples outward here I fear
ultimately chain
in its reaction