Author Archives: Damian Garside

DEVICE

DEVICE

it’s good that politicians
measure blood exactly

know to the recurring decimal
how much blood
resides in
an eye
      when
exchanged for another eye

or a liver, spleen
or a brain

or a fat ton of innards
ripped out of the belly
they were
always in by
lethal fragmentation
               weapon

or anti-personnel
explosive device

the weapons market considers
rather nice

ENHANCE

ENHANCE

not enough
outrageously wonderful
stars up there

need some more
to stop it failing
as a spectacle

paint me, etch me
an additional few up there to
give everybody
in the galaxy
something to think about

we’ll keep it a secret between us
exactly what we did

no one else having the faintest idea
     where this brand new
Rigel, Vega, Betelgeuse
and Sirius came from

the more
     the merrier they
will probably say

not the great cosmologists though, their knickers
surely now
    going to get
             into a twist

knocking their careful relativity
space-time curvature calculations
uncomfortably cocked-
hat sideways

not their thing really
to find their all-
conquering physics suffering
a degree of
     unnecessary embarrassment
in the cause
of our natural human
creative desire
    for the ability to
transform and artistically enhance

PROFOUND

PROFOUND

locked and loaded
you heart is chambered
with a single round

deep beneath those waves
I hear all echoes
of those pressures

the music of
that trio who drowned
as the deck slunk downwards
opened to ocean

and we
     so open there

who will ever
surface to speak
of what we have become

commerce with this
so ruled and regulated

of
all our undertakings
without doubt the most profound
(and word
     wheree there is little choice
save love ot hate
the completeness of sound)

completeness
       and dare I say finality
of its sound

IN VALHALLA (ALMOST)

IN VALHALLA (ALMOST)

In an anteroom
to the Halls
of Valhalla

the poets sit
drinking tea;
eating wafer biscuits

the sounds of joyous warfare
emanating from
deep within
occasionally driving them
to put pen
to parchment
write a poem

on some heroic theme
though this has not happened
for many
      a century

hard to glorify
cliuster bombs
and multi-barrelled
machine guns
psi ops
and assassinations

bullets from
silenced pistols
to the back of the head