Author Archives: Damian Garside

BREATHLESS WITHOUT BREATH

BREATHLESS
WITHOUT BREATH

got no Elon
Musk starship

no Colorado Mountain
bunker with
all the mod cons

so let
the bombs fall
missiles zero in

let my self split into
muliples like
every heavy
metal atom
under the Sun

who cares
if the system burns
the towers collapse

not me
    nothing got to lose
as indifferent as
the darkness
    of the Universe, to
how
  the dice fall, what
comes about

the life of all those digital
billions of
pure
    civilization

gets flashed, windstormed
burnt to ash

BLUEBIRD

BLUEBIRD

there’s a Bukowski in my heart
that wants to get out

and in the heart of that Bukowski
a bluebird that needs
to learn
to fly

but first
crack its shell, hatch,
escape, aspire
for the sky and
outer
space beyond

but as
for that Bukowski
I have no
whiskey for
him
no cigarettes
to dole out

and, to add
to my ignominy, no
checkout girls to
flirt with
grocery clerks to give me
at most a secomd glance
(best
I can do, best
I can get
is mountain of
rejection slips, is
debt collectors swarming,
crawling
all over my ass

yet
he survives, he obdures
this Bukpwski with
his bluebird

I just
cannot express

TROUBADOUR TOWN

TROUBADOUR TOWN

we spent a day
and  night
in
troubadour town

you
with your passable Italian
fiuenr French

and me
with smatterings
of Esperanto and
Provencal

rode every ride at the carnival
having
   put our books down

feastimg on pizza and shwarmas
homemade beer and bread
tasty bake potatoea
and
   much meat pies

and me a card-
carrying vegan before
this date
      was less contrived

than magically
came about

and at
     the day’s dizzy pinnacle
the death
      dipper at its height

we wondered if this
were Heaven if
Heaven might
be real

then
plummeted (air
sucking the
screams
out of
our lungs

runaway trian on
crazy
    tiny
    track

full
roller-
              coaster down

can sing
of our day in troubadour town