Damian Garside

PIECES

the pieces
never lie

they never fail
in their mission

so
let me contemplate
inhaling fog
gorging on smoke

not under the precise
thought contraints of
chess
clock time

whether
two squares, one square
whether to advance
the d or
e
pawn

alternate universes
hanging on my choice
life
or death
for them, spinning
out of contol

and in that discarded,
broken universe
where we
never met
never spoke

no victor, vanwuished,
joy or
sorrow

just other pieces, pawns,
Kings, Queens
following their
scripts to
a T

wonderful games, though
I never get to hear of them.

HOME

Thank you
members of Congress
for helping us achieve
what you were
voted in for
what we all so much
wanted to see

you have done your duty
helped us create the great
America we hitherto
could only dream of

a state so
safe and secure, which
could not be more decisive,
powerful protected

we cherish your devotion
without you we would
have been
unable to
achieve this

an armoured convoy
of militarized police
will do the honour
of escorting you home.

SILKY

regular/Cum Laude
no one ever received a doctorate
for discovering their humanity

got
their Ph.D (still less) for
acting human at all

but Silky, amongst all felines,
is there
at highest of higher
degree levels

their Socrates, their Einstein,
out-thinking his paw-peers

running
rings around me daily

PROVE ITSELF TO BE

inspire me
write me a poem
where each line travels forever
journeys through the abyss
finds the light

and when you find the light
bring me back a tiny gleam
a small sprinkling
nothing Betelgeuse, nothing
Aztec
nothing spotlight on
the stage, searchlight at
Belsen-Belsen

but fairy tale forests you
can do me too
but no
Hansel & Gretel house, nor
immaculate little for
Kamp Kommandant
and his spouse
and their
endearing toddler

inspire with great epic tales
with which I can regale
aforementioned
toddler
that he might become
even after this horrible,
treacherous start,
truly
incandescent, fellow
with an unfathomably deep
humanity

redeem the world through
the seeming impossibility
of his own redemption

hard to quantify, even venture
an estimate
as how crucial to
our salvation,
beyond inspirational such

a turn for the better
             could, when the final
reports are
in
   prove itself to be

CRAZY WEATHER

We exchange our meticulous observations about the weather
backed up by graphs and pie charts
every kind of graphic to
capture the statistical truth
we are trying to relay

hard
to stick with the established
conversational protocols and
explanatory paradigms

when,
as we were just saying,
every caldera blew, and
the resultant tsunamis

reshaped the lie of the land, leaving
existing maps invalid

and
the human life experience
somewhat changed.

CORRECTION

correction, you
were
a political animal

but
something happened
are one
no longer

which is
for the best, perhaps,

since
it marks in you, in
all of us

a decline from
our old
humanity

less
like a tragedy
more just atrophy

put simply,
this is all I have left
to say on this score

OR CONVERSELY, IF HOMER HAD WRITTEN DONALD TRUMP

OR CONVERSELY, IF HOMER HAD
WRITTEN DONALD TRUMP

Sorry to say,
your text, though
possibly exceeding all
expectations
could not ascend to
the the whiter than reality
of driven snow

let him
be insufferable, insist
on correction, extractions
with a sharpie
(thing he wields as if
Achilles’ great spear)

meanwhile the critics
seem majorly underwhelmed
by what
the script has
shown them

believe Aesop, Aristophanes
might have contrived
a more believable plot.

meanwhile the great sagas
of your contributions
at Troy
are filtering through,
crossing the seas
to spite
Poseidon

of your
great fraternal connection
and military alliance
with the Cyclops
Polyphemus

your insistence
that the horse of infiltration
be
aircraft-
carriet large

already whispers of
these epic
achievements
reaching
the ears of young Penelope
(in our
rendition old
enough to
be your daughter)

every day
down
at the harbour
here in Ithaca
dreaming of, longing for,
dreading
your return

making her sacrifices
to Aphrodite

has a (had to have a)
secret life she daren’t (under
any circumstances)
tell you about.

SINGULARITY

stand behind me
step

inside me
presto before what trails
across the page
becomes
more than
just mushy
along the edges

you
and your colliders
it is the dream to
quantify
every dark particle

prove
every hypothetical
to be wired
and grounded

but when
you speak their truth
you sound
so fabulous, not
making any
concrete sense
(terrify
that every new coinage
might sprout
a singularity)

PROXIMA

I am about to start crawling
to the nearest star

will be
a trillion years older than you
thanks to
time dilation

returning to a world
a Universe that no longer exists

out there in the whatever
orbiting forever
having
evolved to survive
the lack of everything

now
there is no human warmth
no human cold.

ICE AGE

need just a sprinkling
of tactical nukes
to restore
the balance
once in our favour

pop a
couple off

one,
two,
perhaps three:

instant, drive-through victory,
no fear of nuclear winter

those
being nuked
proving themselves rational
enough to keep
everything
within bounds

and yet
the spectre of this
alone
enough to get me
to freeze over

the blood in my body
every thought in my brain
frozen block solid

going
new Ice Age.