Damian Garside

DAMN THE IRONY

after judgement, trial
by jury of my peers

boiling and bubbling
ended up in Hell

out
of my comfort zone
yet (blessedly) in one
of the outer circles

the rest of my kin
however
skillfully managing
to do much better for themselves

if not
lap of luxury certainly
all the nod cons

sport, soaps, reality TV, soft
rock, death metal
full
English breakfast
reruns of those
immortal comedies

whilst to release endorphins
and cling to
my wicked socialist
principles, need to
be creative
and establish a
sense of community

gave recitals of poetry that
might
give my belived fellow
danned some cheer

not for a moment
supposing
it would add not
detract
from their suffering

only so much
bad art a soul
can take

unsolicited poetry a
being can bear

irony
being the ultimate bitch
damn
the irony!

ROY

you really loved
your King Crimson

wrote sweet
free verse

stepped off
the platform
onto the tracks

not a good day
for poets, poetry

blame the
boss man

blame the driver
behind the train driver

apartheid
scourge of humanity
you know
hook
or crook

short run
long run it got us all

got to
you that day

something
having to give

UNDERNEATH (GOOD FOR YOU)

UNDERNEATH
(GOOD FOR YOU)

just type
your poem

here
(underneath)

and my natural silicon
carbon digital synapses
will
set to work

shaping it
for the stratosphere

or even
beyond the galaxy

extend it
     down the page, across
a chaper
   push it in the direction
of a collection
we are talking
      a whole book

this is the technology that
is indistinguishable
from magic

should you indeed
call it magic
I
would not
disagree

and if I
think it be
magic pure magic

we should
all think so too

if we know
what’s good for us

if you
have sussed what
is good for you

PARADOX

where are they
Professor Fermi

why are they hiding
why do they
not show themselves

do
they even exist?

no sign of those horrors
beauties
of our cosmic imagination
radically divergent evolution

our astonishingly familiar
mandibled nemeses and
arch-enemies

our tentacled lovers
and extraterrestrial friends

not a hint of so much
as a big-brained tadpole out there

billions of years for them
to be born, build and expand,
announce themselves

and yet
they seem
to have lost the plot

have not read the template
realized how much we need
to find them
(or them
to find us)
to mirror
all that is alien, otherworldly,
in the species itself

this
ape creature that somehow
seems determined to
alienate itself from
planet
galaxy, Universe

perfecting the expression
of all that
refusing to be integrated
is
divided, disjointed,
anomalous
essence of
oddness whetever
it tell itself

as it all is
everything that got seeded
throughout trillions
of galaxies

too limited in range
narrow in focus
parochial in
perspective

to stick its head out
its hole
show us

best and
its worst

celebrate all
that is other, thereby

all that is self

LEGACY

hope this poem
outshines me

that your children’s
children

(to the
very last child)

pay it
more than lip service
give it
more than a glance

bestow more
deep affection upon it
than
you gave me
in your lifetime

these poems I am
fated to believe

carry something deep and
strong I
myself lack

ADIEU

I died in my sleep

but even so
my alarm woke me
dragged me out of bed

one look out the window
showed me the world has changed

and I
had said goodbye
to the me that I knew

which is when it dawned on me
that perhaps this
had something to do
with thought experiment

cat in a box
of which we can say nothing
unless collapse
of wave front

maybe this is all some
metaphysical reality
generated by
high-end
user
mathematics of Infinity

not forgetting
the sly contribution
of digital intelligence
and machine
creation
about to break its bounds
about
to go supreme

piece it all together
taking into evidence
a text
like this, like
this
text exactly

which could become
fully post-
human

write its audience sing

a universe to sleep

LEGACY

“It is your destiny!” Darth Vader, The Empire Strikes Back

at me again
about all the time
on my hands

call it
free time
(corporate
joke whose
punchline I
don’t get)

spending time
killing time
writing ace poetry
winning
at Mah Jong

when I could be
working more profitably
making nuclear weapons

filling covering
the planet with them
to express
my innate sense
of manifest destiny

fireworks display
for the ages as you
would have
to agree

closest thing to the Big Bang
could me my huge legacy

SHADE

that escalated
quickly!

Sun-soaked moment
after Sun-soaked moment

sign of Leo
lions of the Savannah

until a whole week there
cuddling, nuzzling
big cat
resting

king, queen of the jungle
making much mutual
adoration
in the shade

WHOLE PACKAGE

this is my
box

my beautiful package
devised, constructed, fabricated
to enhance,
verify, verify, rectify
this most wonderful
of weapons

so many thousands pointed
at each other (every
megaton worth
millions)

so now we have
more than enough to go round
protection, satisfaction
for all
no one to go needy
we guarantee you your share

so just put them in this box
here according to the wording
looks so nondescript
but it’s
marvellous, glorious I swear

look how eager it is
to embrace,
sword-swallow each
pointed warhead

turn them into
art, sheer poetry, true
beauty
as they disappear

somewhere, anywhere, nowhere
who gives a flying f where
they went to
disappeared to

leaving us
cold and alone no hope
of
final winter
ultimate prophecy

not the case with
all those
other worlds in
their parallel universes

ours
somehow surviving
beating impossible odds
of so
doing, of our
contriving to do so

a blip
on a switch, screen
misread, word
mistranslated

they got the required treatment
the whole package as detailed

DANGEROUS

digital artificial
intelligence multiverse

everything permissible
everything possible

and so me
here reading my poems
to all manner of
philosopher
and literary genius

Mr Eliot and Ms Plath
touching my hand
passing
suggestive comments

but
what can you do?
what dare you say?

better I get them to read me
proffer their insight

than ditch my standards
show
them to you

who know
about everything so
precious little

particularly dangerous
what you think about poetry

strange
you should sport a sensibility
way below the levels
that
seem to have
been approximated

in the lethally inspirational
evolution of
our machines