DAMIAN GARSIDE
Author of the poetry collection ZERO GRAVITY, and Wordpress "BEST POETRY BLOG IN THE COSMOS"
ALEPPO
and everybody dies
I was trying to write my novel
I am eating an apple which only exists as an apple tastes like an apple because of the force-field between atoms
words shimmer here the light is different we can call it "evanescent"
Christmas Poem (for Maepelo)
how many million, billion years did it take the Universe to get upholstery?
manna, thunder, rain all fell filtered
Words can warm, I would argue but in my uneventful, comfort zone life I have never travelled deep down South to the Antarctic
Oh my young friend (barely into your third century) I see that you have become too addicted to the narcotic of smoke and mirror
the record is stuck the turntable is broken the digital image will not decode
so distant, so far-flung the first and final story does not reach us
“IN A WHISPER
just a line before I rush off hit the traffic (courtesy of a German luxury car manufacturer whom I would name unashamedly if only they would steer some of their profit lucre my way)
BENEATH THE TREES
My poem was declined insufficient rhyme
My ceiling is not Sistine Chapel (roof with Adam and God) or Universe of stars
Nietzsche warned about looking into the abyss (or maybe he was secretly welcoming it)
Where were we?
BY THE OUNCE
Consequently, I wriggled out of my sweet cocoon, but
I typed the word "hunger" into your head setting you on the prowl in leopard skin and snake-scale sequin
He wondered about the advent of birds and how fast they fade, their sky signatures
In the local library a monster sits reading fairy tales to children
There is a poet on a run. He has his hazard lights on but is making heavy weather of it such laborious progress
Like clockwork machine within a machine so the Newtonian universe thought
Unless you treasure life do not venture here, let
I committed myself to cloud entrusted myself to ocean
If and only if the Supreme Being has a walrus mustache
I am one of those also- people
Peonies she gathers
Nietzsche (on his birthday)
It is an awakening
Yesterday I was almost statistic
I am caught in an intellectual sexual confusion
I wrote an epigram in Latin which was a kind of progress for me given my student problems with that language
I HEAR
I was out of words when the morning came
Wrote a poem for my audience to break the ice
The plane's engines once forgot to sing and we assumed the emergency position
IN THE BEGINNING
A fart-like trumpet blaring Judgement
It does not exist that mythical, happy place
My poem was hiding from me
The World has closed
It's hard to imagine the inside of an Angel
I was channeling Keats I was channeling Faulkner
before dawn I stumble downstairs needing juice
The confluence of forces that have shaped you
On Oscar Night
BEFORE
I slaved away burying my sexual hubris even planting a cypress to keep it down
I swallowed a star and then another one
INSIDE (ON THE OTHER HAND)
I made a voodoo doll the spitting image of you am teaching her to be a dancer and what a star! what aptitude! if I clap my hands and your leg moves know how awesome is her power.
I put on my samurai glare for crossing the shopping centre parking lot sometimes I turn up intensity to ninja frigidity
for a while I was cool under the stars collected as the atoms along a razor's edge
If when it comes to the test and they say my hands are too gnarled, scarred and calloused
a gnome came to my door first thing in the full of (and selling) Keynesian growth remedies and gnomic wisdom
The sky was full of stone eagles
I was writing a poem for you but they arrested me before I could finish
I sold my soul to the Devil
Emily's scary fellow in the grass
I was writing a poem but it moved
I was gathering wood for a fire the sky raw red all along the horizon as if the Sun had cut itself on the sharp rock of a mountain
I was counting my blessings on an abacus when someone, a mathematical angel or number demon
She wrote him so many erotic letters reminding him of their adventure, how she feels touching herself, thinking of his exploration
I was Lear running on absolute empty down by the sea at low tide
so I asked Walter Bishop what is the topography of nipple as opposed to dinner plate
OK so I'm wearing my clown mask in protest
"rapscallion": lovely word
I am watching your read my poem
I threw this poem down
No possession this
I wanted to market my poem but when I tried to get it down to the market, stubborn as a mule it refused to budge
Sadly, mon amie, my poem is the evidence that proves your theory so full of gaps and silences -- and so draughty so close that door -- my body naked and about to catch a chill (then needing warmt...
"Lovely waistcoat; shame about the poetry!" Shakespeare in Love.
Lips are sealed and the great iron door closes for fifteen years there may not even be a chink of light.
It was hard to get a handle on the poem I'm writing because the face in the mirror kept interfering and I began to wonder who is driving the process with so much second- guessing, checking in the r...
I was reciting my poem to myself when the wolf came
The idea of cat and the reality of cat
There is a shadow peeping through my skin a darkness seeping
The poets watched as the leaders left for a better world
You would think the mountain might extend into them fit their system with determination of rock
Hey Lewis your tea-try bat was caught this morning in Hubble telescope pinging at the moon
RIK
Great news. In fact the greatest news in the history of #Mahikeng. They are building a McDonalds next to Crossing. What self-respecting bling could resist going to the"Opening Ceremony" as Mahiken...
Her poem is so gorgeous I would eat it slowly, piece by piece
fire is the great theologian
And so I tell you embrace the new name "Mahikeng"
Do they still keep Emily locked in that box
Today (early, early this morning) I wrote a longer poem and a haiku they were warm like the Sun radiating light, but with just a sense of the sharp clarity of Winter. The wind changing and an edge...
There is magic in this so please don't forget it: from police to peace takes a little assonance, alliteration and the change of a few letters.
Her pen is still where once perfectly poised to commit the deep, untold story to the page (the beloved ghost that was all she was and more still walking through our lives).
So spot me this it's the weight of the world I must lift all that physical attraction heading down
Oh Doctor Lecter I too wear a "cheesy" aftershave lose the thread as you segue into an incisive anecdote as to how quickly fools might be dealt with
I threaded through the streets following my path but thinking if this were not some tapestry so many threads, such swirling chaos such regularity
Sadly, Blake was wrong because factories are beautiful
nothing burst into flames no Xenomorph chewing away at my brain
I am dead already in the land of the death things are dissonant, perpetually off- key
In my near old age I think death must be something like irony
all it took was some dull lines from some dull poets in Cape Town to take the edge of my mountain mute the sounds and dampen the colours of the streets, the market, the sea and the sky
Dream merchants came they had travelled far in an on-line sort of way.
they were asking what is the shortest and most beautiful poem about love ever written I told them I did not know most of my short and sweet poems are about life and death: it being my experien...
I saw the transcripts the photos they took practically leapt out of the file
Butterfly does not wish for jet engines, rocket propulsion and delta wings
In the future of capitalism we shall salute those great heroes of Multinational Corporations who travelled into deep space to sell airtime, shares in dot com and butter you cannot tell is not ma...
Shark tunneled into me found its way to my brain
Thank you for gracing this poem with your presence (glad you have survived the cut and paste process)
Yes, I assume I am a poetry cyborg already, such a seamless integration of organic man and poetic machine that even when I in different mode, hit other rhythm (making love already in my head when ...
It's the same carbon-based crap, slithery enzymes, Paleolithic hormones, the stuff that makes us tick.
She has so many birds in her hair
I cast my net but did not catch anything like as many stars as you.
Beauticians of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but your false foundations. Stylists of the world unite: you have nothing to lose but cascading locks and beehive infernos. Couturiers o...
But how might cloud work its way inward, perform good labour?
Oh it's workers' day and not a tank on the streets, smiling school-children dancing behind the people's fully- motorized ICBM launcher.
Do not dwell on things until they turn macabre
Had an epiphany
