Author Archives: Damian Garside

CATS LITTER-TURE

CATS LITTER-TURE

cats love writers
writing

my cat curled up
on a sheaf of what
I do believe
is my best
work yet

lying there
begging to differ
Tom (named
after a
certain Mr Hardy
and a
certain Mr
Eliot)

kneads the priceless
text with
kitten claws

interviewed afterwards
(in French) tells
some other
feline
   intellectuals

of his
great love
and respect for me
even if what I write is shit


GUIDED TOUR

GUIDED TOUR

I remember Paris
will Paris
ever
remember me?

I came to listen
I came
to write things down

repair my words
speak the language
of those horrible invaders
my ancestors

you see the imprint here
on everything
I say

wandering down
the left bank
hunting for absinthe
signs of
Rimbaud’s
drunken boat

ghosts and absences
mist at dusk
and in
the morning

making my own way
finding things out for myself
unlike the Nazis
in 1940

no one
giving me a guided tour.

AS YOU RECITED

AS YOU RECITED

was following you
up the hill,
climbing, climbing,
as you recited

but then
looked back (fatal
flaw) only to
realize,
what was a mighty river,
now, barely a stream,
now just a
couple of intrepid
stragglers,
the number diminished
so many disappeared
and now

just you and I until
with shock I
realized
that even you
had, lost heart, had
lost faith, or
it was
always a con

not willing
to die
upon
that hill

the whole of humanity
regimented, controlled,
faithfully in
line

told
what to do
marching off
to war
for Empire

to shed their blood
die in
droves

that power never
show
its
powerless face

POOR OLD

POOR OLD

poor old
dystopia
what is
there
left to say

sadly, can
no longer
be science
fiction creature
of dark imagination

your evil
become so ordinary,
everyday, run
of the mill, super tawdry,
ultra banal

here is
Hannah Arendt
left
     totally gob-
smacked
  
nothing to add to
the discourse, not
a single
    cutting to
the heart erudite
contribution

to capture the moment
define the terrain

TALKING DESIGN

TALKING DESIGN

Chomsky being currently out of commission
dunno who is going to
explain to me

whether love
is transitive
or intransitive verb

and then,
    as regarding the word
as substantive
is it here
by design or
off the cuff a thing
we just
make?

and talking design
blue prints, project management,
where are
we exactly now as
everything
         ebbs and
flows?

time not just elastic
but a kind
of liquid

I have felt that before
and,
    Occam’s razor aside,
do believe it confirmed

inside outside
don’t spook me out
with talk of wall to
wall
     consciousness
sloshed around
like buckets of whitewash

yes
   talking of design

why were we not all created,
designated, love engineers,
exquisite
     mechanics of pleasure

so much in our specs (as
sent out
    into deep space)
to have us believe this
well within our range
  

CORE

CORE

Marco Rubio
in his, speech
to the Munich Putz
crossing
the Rubicon

Rubicon
Rubicon
  let’s in his honour,
rename it
the Rubiocon

don’t came us waiting
here in Africa
anxious
    for your hard
regime change
outright colonization

the soft big mac and coke
and Hollywood
attempts to
       colonize by
mind assimilation

not
    cutting the mustard
not cutting
anything
     any more

carriers
in our waters, marines and
ice police
on the shore

bulldozers, cranes and
every means of
excavation
     screaming, streaming
to the Core.