Author Archives: Damian Garside

IN CAREFUL HARVARD NOTATION

IN CAREFUL HARVARD NOTATION

let me
   (consults thesaurus)

shepherd you here
Instruct you
on this

guide you
gain your trust

Inform you how it is
we like to see ourselves reflected
there as we are
our mirrored reality

not a single syllable to interpose
refract, distort,
do the
   things words do

are doing here

but let me proffer
an almost alien, hyper-
linguistic perspective

since
   albeit we have our Grecian ideal

Achilles, Penthisilea,
inside, outside
their armour
     who can, dare, resist them?

but our biology lacks the nous
for this text of desire

on balance (and
off balance) fraught with
imperfections
    from my
outlandish P.O.V.
(point
     of view)

and our history
(as book) closing
before
   we even
get to the races

feet
  barely off the ground
(so say
    the seers, in careful
Harvard notation)

a

AS HARD AA YOU CAN

AS HARD AS YOU CAN

“I want you to hit me
as hard as you can”.
       Tyler Durden “Fight Club”

signed a contract
with the Devil
ratified
   in ink
signed in blood

this done gaily,
performed without reservation,
having entered into
so many contracts
with felines previously,
exacting dotted
line documents
selling
   my soul
to a cat

worst of all mammals
and yet how we
worship them

knew
   the Devil
would cheat me
           worse than any bank
or as
bad
   if not better

in terms of which
I did hereby agree
to kill
    countless fellow humans,
consent
   to destroy the world

or
stoop even lower
in terms of malign
sexual practices

you
     know how bad they be
measuring the evil
in terms
of the pleasure

and what,
    amongst these juicy crimes,
could
   be wrong with that?

SQUALL

SQUALL

oh these brutal
summer storms

full-on squalls
hot you full
on 360

whack you full frontal
stop you
dead
in your tracks

just a couple of hours ago
there you were
sweltering under
a cloudless sky

the Sun flash frying you
like you were getting
toasted
in a Bunsen burner

and now the rain hitting so hard
the hail big as golf balls
the weather
seeming so up
to shit

you wonder if the great powers
who should know
so much better
haven’t conspired or
contrived to
drop
the big one

every really big one
and all the others
no matter
how small
the size

summon a squall
enough
for us all

RAN OUT OF TIME

RAN OUT OF TIME

ran
out of time

for, as we well known,
time is sand
time is granules

time is not flow
it is
    by no means elastic
bent by
speed, bent by gravity

it is
   forever backdrop

and
   will carry on timing us
for all eternity

until you punch a hole
through the wall
to other
dimensions

let it all
flood in, all
that is within

blessed to find
the aperture created
by your dirty great
fusion bomb

WITH THE GREEN COVER

WITH THE GREEN COVER

I was reading your
second novel

the thin most writerly patriarchal trauma one
with the green cover

wrote a iffy little academic article about it that I let
myself be fooled
was
   so on the nose
close to the bone

and me
your student, forever
your student, never
going to escape
out of
the heart of
that shadow

and now
        that I am older even
than the oldest character
in that tortured idyll

I begin to wonder about all
the ghosts and their voices
and
all the spirit rivers
shapesbifting entities of
standing
   in this land

Oh we have our angels and demons and
rich tapestries of mythology,
you yourself
so valiant
    in the resonant
production thereof

to the extent that if
I am ever going to
escape
    myself
escape anything, everything

am going to have to
return to those pages again
yet again

unmiss
what I most certainly
did miss
    hope it hits  me his time
truly and viscerally

WITH THE GREEN COVER

WITH THE GREEN COVER

I was reading your
second novel

the thin most writerly patriarchal trauma one
with the green cover

wrote a iffy little academic article about it that I let
myself be fooled
was
   so on the nose
close to the bone

and me
your student, forever
your student, never
going to escape
out of
the heart of
that shadow

and now
        that I am older even
than the oldest character
in that tortured idyll

I begin to wonder about all
the ghosts and their voices
and
all the spirit rivers
shapesbifting entities of
standing
   in this land

Oh we have our angels and demons and
rich tapestries of mythology,
you yourself
so valiant
    in the resonant
production thereof

to the extent that if
I am ever going to
escape
    myself
escape anything, everything

am going to have to
return to those pages again
yet again

unmiss
what I most certainly
did miss
    hope it hits  me his time
truly and viscerally