Author Archives: Damian Garside

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

ABOUT TIME

ABOUT TIME

spoke to the clock, my
wristwatch,
     a nuclear count
down
about time

they all gave me
different answers

which I took
to be proof of the pudding
that calls
      itself relativity

your and my time zones
so out
    of synch

the words stuttering, splutt-
ering across the page
begging
    for flow
                      flow to go
                    (about
time I say)

PEAKY DISTRICT

PEAKY DISTRICT,
(WAGON ROAD)

was watching
Alfie and Tommy,
Jew and Gypsey
butt gangster
heads
   navigating their way
through Oswald Mosley
visions of
a future that could not
be more pure

there is an Auschwitz there
somewhere buried
in the heart
zombie
         brain
   of every true
     self-devouring European

and my Mother
wanting to wash off every
connection
    to Wagon Road Northern working class
abject poverty

cannot let any
trace of Romany stain
those
   lily white sheets

and my father sometimes
coming over proto-Nazi
with neat, nice
line
  in anti- semiticism
(even TS Eliot
never plunged so far
     down into the Styx of
full-on
political unconscious)

and me here grinding ny teeth
as the syllables spit bullets

going full AK
full Molotov

bury me in red flag, crimson
shroud
    so close to the grave

on that beach Alfie and Tommy
caught up in some deeply
personal
     ideological cross-
fire

this
the street history we
were never taught in school