Damian Garside

WHAT I TOLD THE SUPERVISOR

WHAT I TOLD THE
SUPERVISOR WHO
ADVISED ME MY
EDITING WAS
SUBSTANDARD

yes, ruefully,
grudgingly
I do admit it
this time
I messed up

maybe i’m
not cut out for it
perhaps
I should
stick to
what I am
good at, or
then again
try something
different

take poetry.
   there we have something.
comes naturally
to me
   possibly one
of the best
in the country
sort of
    like my
first language

for I seem
to suck
at editing, though
maybe not as
shit at it
as you are
thinking

not as
shit as it
as you are
at
teaching

being a bitch
and a teacher
seems
a bit of a
mismatch

don’t
seem a
good
fit

kind of, if you
can forgive
me for saying so,

need
some humanity
to get
through to
people

no, run
with what you
are good at

interior decorating,
playing power games,
arrogance,
        cooking
(though there the
worry being
     you may well poison
bodies
as much as you
poison minds)

RESEARCH METHOD

if I see another research onion
eye-balling me
from the page

I think I might puke
possibly in many coloured layers

why not
a research orange?

or, better even, a
research banana

best of all
research pineapple
you eat
your way up through
the fruit until
you reach the spiny leaves

hard, tough,
that’s why you need
coding software

or a Likert Scale
choose one for good
two for bad and
three
(obviously) for
ugly

now we have finished
this poem
please be assured your
responses
will be

kept confidential
protect you from punchlines
to this and
other jokes

suddenly hitting you
with terrible laughter, mild
amusement

things outside
your paradigm
that mess with
your categories
and other bumps in the night

got
your onion

be
sure to hold it tight!

BELONGINGS

Went through
your belongings
before the wake

found at the
bottom of an old
locked drawer
I had
to force open

a musty barely
legible document
you penned
in your
youth

dated it may
have been but
it spoke
with passion, felt
not
without
relevance
said

“after the R”
(R for
that other word,
opposite of
restoration
the
word that now
no longer
may
speak it’s name)

“we should gather
the teachers
together

all the teachers
those that teach
and those
that don’t

the former to
dream the new foundation

the latter
the eternal
shirkers

to
dig

dig until they
can dig
no more

until
they strike gold”.

FRAGRANCE

arrogance
your fragrance
of choice

(euphemism alert)
the android that frisked you,
sidetracked you
these
last few hours

having Turing tested you
to your briny limits

blew you a fake
farewell kiss

snort that one
with some white powder
will make you
feel better
get you in the mood
for nursery rhymes

shame you are become
so iconic
last home for humanity
out the window

I see it now clear as the
pain, existential doubt
in any
Jackson Pollock

this is the best that the fruit
of Eve’s tree
could give, stoop
crawl
roll over backwards
to provide

arrogance is
your fragrance

it burns
like hot white phosphorus

lingers
like airstrike napalm

GO OUT SINGING UNDER THE MOONLIGHT

GO OUT SINGING
UNDER THE MOONLIGHT

on your last legs
you old stage prancer

living (still) legend
wish I were
there for your
rock Götterdämmerung final

owing you so much
could have
owed you so much more
you loveable lithe lion
of a man
king of rebels (rebel
beast)

yes could have
been deeper in your debt
if I had
heeded your call
had the courage
to answer it
internalize the message
learn
to love, live with
my demons, be cool
under shadow

with that last song
it is
the end of an epoch
not just an era

end of life
as we know it, under
this configuration
constellation
of stars

history will
forget, as it is won’t
your
name Michael Phillip

but not
that riff, that rhythm
that
supreme satisfaction

one
two

and so
last song under moonlight
then
the cosmos give you shelter

go wherever you
now go to

bearing the knowledge,
fully aware
that you are

not there alone
have a piece of my soul

GOING WITH THIS

up
down

vertical lateral
throw me a lateral, tell
me where
we
are going
with this

what brain flashes
will consolidate

translate into
paper, paper

with markings
(English
not Martian

as in
some bizarre
alien postcard)

how it will all
all evolve

grow, take shape

find its genre, its species,
whole
poet biology

spawn of some sort
seed set there
but
sewn
up

every stitched
ripe for receipt

LOUD AND CLEAR

LOUD AND CLEAR
“I do not think they
will sing for me.”

Yeats on steroids
Yeats on steroids

that’s what he called me
avatar of that man

whose every
photograph suggests
crusty, prickly

whose every word to me
so generous,
illuminating, out
of left field

such a rooted traditionalist
yet swing door open
to extreme
innovation

to speak soothing words to
the loneliness of the soul

and me
like your Prufrock, like
that aging Irish senator
propped up
on a stick
talking to school children

them wondering
what that
old fool
was talking about
(as kids
will always do)

and you
I laughingly told you
that your
Wasteland was a
(how did I put
it my
memory failing me
Oh yes
I have it!)

ghost tapestry,
tapestry of ghosts
tissue
of allusion

which is rich
coming from me, standing
before you, metaphorically
speaking
(could not be
more metaphorically speaking)

alluding to you
your poetry

my sense of your presence

how it was back then
some lunatic giving us
a slice
of What the Thunder Said

for, of all things, our (my)
fucking matriculation
English
examination

who is that one who
walks beside you

that ghostly
desert voice you cannot hear

but is
the poem, your poem

my great beloved poet and poem
possum, Mr, Professor TS, Tom

I hear you
loud and clear

do not need
my steroids
to hear you loud and clear

DEGREE

I stole a read
pilfered some ideas
thoughts
I thought figured
I might
recycle

stick them somewhere
stick them here

not as if you
know them already, read
them yourself
might recognize

turn me in
get me arrested
have
me executed

banned from
the library

complain
to the authorities
receive a medal
even honorary degree

third
degree

STARBOARD

why am I not
at the river mouth?

where sea, ocean
swallows what the river
has to say

in some old boat
navigating this estuary

removed from every regrettable
trait of this mechanized,
corporate
academic world

nothing to edit, lecture
to prepare
article to co-write

just
time turned irrelevant
as we lie down in the keel
of this celebrated
drunken boat
your drunken boat
that took
the Seine by
surprise, by stealth,
by storm,
as we
quaffed the green absinthe
until we ourselves
became luminous
yellow-green

nothing quite
to meddle with your mind
like that
beverage

and you mumbled your plans
in a spray
of wild poetry:
gun running, Africa,
early
iconic death

lesson that the wild electric
children of tomorrow’s
tomorrow
could ape, imitate
freely swallow

and there now we see it
and steering to starboard

the first of his kind
to fight
to destroy Empire,
renounce this world

and its rules and its laws
and its doctrines and
its claims to
power, mastery and
authority

that sleek terror monster
beast of rivers and
curved sheet steel

and its Captain, oozing nemesis
and the anger
of a subcontinent

there to
take us aboard

we angling to
be taken
aboard

leaving the river mouth
for depths beyond imagining

taken
beneath

own world, our world,
world of our own there beneath

REWINDING INGRID

saw you
undrowning,
undrowned finally

the people at Gordon’s Bay
doing their beach thing
no idea
they are.
moving backwards

everything now
by cosmic decree
in reverse
.
and, then I saw you
leave the water getting younger
unwriting every
poem
reliving ever relatiobship
every sexual
moment
from its end
to the beginning

and there your monument
of course, that was doomed,
to die as it
         became newer, more
pristine
   less weather-scarred, beaten
and thing of deriliction
whose plaque
no one
   ever reads or heeds
.
now suddenly
      before it all gets dissolved
deconstructed by
the return
to its creation

this text so lucid, so
bright and
clear

like her poetry
when we all used to read it

Sun now
rising in the West you
might say.

setting before it rises.
logically, I suppose,
we all
headed for the womb
and that
thing which
is death, and yet
has
to be death’s opposite
polar different

and when
all rewound, not
a star
born yet

let’s
start again; press play
be better this time