Author Archives: Damian Garside

SCRUB

scrub what I
said

previously, delighting
in your company

I am not prone to
insincerity, bound
to lie
about my infidelity

not going to dictate to you

theoretical or
otherwise (perhaps
the thread
running
counter-clockwise)

nor will I
allow myself to be
railed (meaning
mono-rsiled)
unwittingly into it
led by
the nose to find
Nature’s soft truth
bound by
those laid-down trails
marked out
as alluring reams of
ribboned finery
that all the world
might see and believe

no let me
unusually direct
sparing in
extravagant epithet
or punctuational necessity,
far from being
abstract voyeur or
philosophical contemplation

stuck at my window desk
sifting through papers
so much
     snow, white
space
inside and out
already falling, falling
beginning to fall

already
       up to my neck in it
obviously lost count of it

not a
bird (in the hand or
bush)

nest
to cuckoo in
within a proverbial mile

BANK ON IT

would not want anyone
written out of the picture

nor should I agree
with law of the bottom line

a wild economics
of division, profit, superfluity,
greed
    will not stand, leave
anyone standing

alternatively, I do not
see myself, feel myself
in my millions
spruced in
standard blue overalls

waving proverbial red book
to spite laws of Nature

would
that we
      had such power
were
a true collective

but
bells roll
walls fall
astronomical figures
locked in binary
simply
    disappear

my anaconda
mythic tail-
swallowed, tale closer
inches closer

I hope
pray to God
I reach the counter before
countdown to closure
.
before
    time goes Dali, melts
at its
leisure

but it would not
be prudent to bank on this

IN PARTICULAR

so much to give
no one
to give
it to

you in particular
telling me you have
no need for charity
(or space
for that matter)

and me
here laying before
all that I am

every tiny package
oscillating,radiating energy

enough
to cure, curve
kill

perhaps I should
stretch my mind
to accommodate,
rethink everything

no one
affording me
the time of day

giving me the feedback
needed to survive

PURVIEW

What is you woke up
none too tetchy this morning

only to find your whole lived life
was dream within a dream?

what would be
your prevailing emotion:

terror?
anger?
confusion?
something that you felt
no word might label?

would you
      compose a haiku?
draft
  a philosophical compendium
truly titanic tome

floating fine but
then there was this iceberg

a thousand pages devoted
to every letter entry
(except
    for S
which got a thousand-and-one)

or would just as you always do
always have done

shrug shoulders
take it in your stride

why to worry about
metaphysical mayhem

when comfort zone
is
   somehow there
ss logical necessity

infinite realities and
yet
within or
way beyond
your purview
it

keeps its name
forever stays the same.

FOR ITSELF

I skinned
that poet

who dissed me
most uncivilly

and now
strut
my stuff

wearing him
like a hat

and since he
figured himself
to be the next
Shakespeare

the finery of
my millinery
has to
be de rigeur
so obviously

worn with
    a stylish slant

that speaks
for itself