Damian Garside

AND NOW YOU DON’T

here we are
yet again

tooth and nail
battling upstream
insane in our search
for
forever narrowing

until
as always

the river
swallows itself
contrives
to disappear

UNTIL

poetry is
the easy way

simplicity itself
line

of least
resistance

a quantum wave
of words
about to
flow

no huge
necessity this
be

in any structured
shape, size
or form

any
particular direction

in your head
mon lecteur acad-
                 emique
length
     of line
geometry of page
                slice and dice
of caesura
stanza

and here
we have a bitch of a poem
that refuses to budge

your fingers hovering above
the page
a picture of frustration
portrait of
inertia

nothing ever seemed
so impossible
until it didn’t

nothing even
beginning to flow until
it would
not stop

poetry is difficult until
it isn’t

poetry
is no way
easy

until it is

until
(out of nowhere)
it writes itself

MILLION WATT AMP

I espied Apollo there
with his lyre

or maybe an
old banjo from dust bowl
heartlands

I am no
expert on music though
strolling through the stadium
with his
half-brother Dionysos

both exchanging at that moment
a sort of knowing smile

my guy
wondering what it might sound
like and,
more importantly, what
that sounds might do
to the
structures of
society

if it were seriously electrified
Marshall amped up to the max
(not ten
but eleven)

fuzz-boxed, wah-wah pedal led
and shaking the foundations
of Heaven
through
something close
to a million Watts.

ANACONDA

syllable by
masticated syllable

came across you
filling that legendary belly
devouring every
morsel
of my name

seems
my being a snake too
according to
the ancient astrology

made me
as regards foodstuff
near
exact fit for you

a task for you
to slide into wisely
without apprehension

if you were
to call it
a marriage here not
of convenience

but
made it Heaven

consummated
in Hell, in devilish fashion

I would have
to agree

although
equally I might just add

it sounds
just
as good

the other way round.

TIMELINE

Christopher
in this timeline

never makes it
to the New World
his ships got stopped
in their tracks
by metal flying machines
with stars on the wings
and the power
to sink his
every ship
in half a second

huge metal boats
surfaced from under
the water
which appeared to
have a few aboard who
could speak Spanish
or Italian

who told him
in no uncertain terms
to return whence he came
M
there, upon his arrival in Cadiz,
no one would believe
his story

and even under torture
the Inquisition in Madrid
could not extract
a plausible account

and, thus, in these
grave circumstances
determined he must be silenced

the thought of such
an advanced civilization
across the Atlantic
would shake
the Church to its core
and threaten the sovereignty
of every European nation

deconstructing
every
rational premise

from final straw
to germ of an idea.

DO SHEEP?

do sheep dream
of electric androids?

last night I dreamt
of the temple
of the high abbatoir

scouting out which
I circumvented the butchery
in the dark, dense forest

perfect place (as
opposed to a desert) for
such slaughter
to be hidden

place
where two and two
make five

or will do if
they tell you it does

TWICE

was sittimg in the
recreation centre of
the Event Horizon

watching the movie
Event Horizon

having my
doubts about this mission

all that horror footage
getting me
to think twice

about the nature of film
nature of fiction

things that play with
the idea of fourth wall

NO SWEAT

I smell
of sweat

smell of death

a smell
to savour
sweat
laced with death

raw odour
needing a tad more
of your perfume
and spice on my skin

and so this alchemy
whose secret
barely hidden
opens itself
to scrutiny

lead
turned to platinum

gold
to glazing

crystal to
diamond

water
to steam

and star blazing
fissile energy
force of
such
fusion

stuff of that
industry
to thing that you are

which
that old skald, old troubadour
Saxon
Norman Viking
Celt
within me

can sing of hesitantly, imperfectly,
the superabundance you require
so
much long gone
all its
revelation

lending itself
to
all
that
is rival, separate
Other

distant in time
faithfully elsewhere

whilst
I smell of sweat, do
speak here
of death
and other transformation.

****

THE REST

Verb
is alchemy

the rest
litany

as with big bang

making
some big
once-in-a-universal-lifetime statement

ever –
unfolding text.

INHERIT THE EARTH

day blaring rock
cool jazz

night universally
reserved for
rhythm and blues

and would that
not be old Orpheus
picking, plucking at strings?

master of the fretboard can
make Rickenbackers roar
Tele-Stratocasters sing
so that all
   beauty-smitten stay
for the duration
trapped
in that chord-sequence
.
and she
whose memory so jars me
following me
   from the underworld but
how faithlessly
I turned
.
so arrogant to assume
that time
    my be conquered, distance
a thing
to laugh at

freeze – framed, an
ice
sculpture

Aphrodite’s Adonis as
disaster made plain