CATULLUS AT THE TAPE

CATULLUS AT THE TAPE

 
By the sack load
Catullus dragged them in: the big, the fat, the sexy, the sloppy,
 
those with much tongue.
 
Pound for pound
no poet
ever kissed better
 
above his weight, what
did he fear

“what did it matter?
 
in the pouting face of
full-lipped love
 
no one ever
so hard a hitter

Excerpt From: Garside, Damian. “Zero Gravity.” Xlibris, 2014-02-10. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

MAKE TIME

forget the scansion
the rhyme scheme

just
let go

what if you
can’t find
a seventeenth syllable
a fourteenth
line?

just let go
make time

PERFECTLY SURREAL

he took a chisel
and tried to
chip
sculpt a cloud

took a brush
tried to
sweep the
sky clean

leaving the day
(or night)
perfectly surreal

MANTRA

if you are not
travelling
at the speed
of light

there is no centre

if you are,
say something:
just a
phrase, a word

can be our mantra

SOME DAYS

Some days I cling
to my remembered Englishness

and some
days it clings back
or claws at me
drawing blood as red
as a George’s cross

leaving me, wounded
to think of
other prisoners
Catholics at
Tyburn
streams of bright young
Imperial things
doomed at bayonet point
to build a railway

and there is Japanese, incredibly,
in my soul too

I ran
through my childhood before
the mail ship came
for me
waving a stick sword like
(as if I were Mushashi)

little lapsed Catholic boy
too high on
delusion of glory for

resurrection, repentance.

NOT STRICTLY ACCORDING TO PYTHAGORAS’ THEOREM

NOT STRICTLY ACCORDING TO
PYTHAGORAS’ THEOREM

 
tut tut
you say
 
man and woman
 
not a neat
equation
 
no way
 
the square of his
hypotenuse
not quite equalling
 
the square root of
the diagonals between
 
her two sides

Excerpt From: Garside, Damian. “Zero Gravity.” Xlibris, 2014-02-10. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

WAKE

This is the poem I read and explained on campus radio on 26/2/2015

WAKE

(for Stephen Watson)
 
Slow down; slow down;
what is that you are
dragging in the wake behind you?
 
This mountain is one
an ancient glacier called to account.
Beneath its flat crest now
much daily business, bustle, hubbub
 
and beyond, beneath that veneer,
deep undertow, contesting currents whittling
down sandstone and granite to a
“peninsula even thinner.
 
I also learned here
beneath the mountain, in this wet place, something
to last me through dry nights bereft of wine, malt,
sumptuous communion of bodily fluid. But
 
with so much sun, shadow
must follow, the words have
long lineage, there is
aphorism locked in
their seeming innocence
 
a dark truth, to break
whose code you will
have to dig
deeply or
 
take with you, take home,
keep for later, carry
across other mountains, across other oceans,
last, last sea
 
 
 
slow down, slow down, unhook this promontory, unfasten this kingdom,
swim alone, long last, swim
forever,
 
swim free.

Excerpt From: Garside, Damian. “Zero Gravity.” Xlibris, 2014-02-10. iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

GOLDEN AGE

there is no
golden age
of poetry

barely a
silver moment

Sisyphus rolling a bag
of thunderous words
up a mountain
off a cliff

leaden day
after leaden day

IMPERFECT

I wanted
perfect sex

the perfect tattoo

and you
who were so
not quite perfect

I spent my life
wanting you.

AWAY FROM HOME

I am imagining
my quantum-
connected
alien other

how
her landscape looks
the
deep geological strangeness
of its rock formations

the
surreality of
all its
contours

home
away from home