WORTH THE SACRIFICE

WORTH THE SACRIFICE

I will be gone (perhaps)
before that
bomb fragment gets me, or
a shock wave, or
nuclear firestorm

before a drone pitches up
buzzes into
my neighborhood
with my name locked
into its fire
control system

perhaps it’s
me
all me

perhaps I am the malign demon
responsible for the mess
of violence we are in

when I am
gone
the world will suddenly
turn to peace and serenity
absolutely

burn all weapons
write
new books

in which case, perhaps,
I should make
a small sacrifice

go a fair
bit sooner

than I had planned.

SLIP

I’m chopping spinach
jungle green spinach, green
deep and dark as
a vegetation god
 
who will have his blood sacrifice
should my hand slip.

Excerpt From: Garside, Damian. “Zero Gravity.” Xlibris, 2014-02-10. iBooks.

BED-TIME STORY

I read
a
soft, cuddly-toy
Nietzsche bed-time story

in which we do not see
Dionysus beaten like a
bad dog so
all his human
impertinence leaks
out of
the divine side of him

trickle-down times, my dear,
not the gunpowder treacle
Catholic blow-
up Protestant parliament treachery

the Guy burning
(even in
our ritual immolation such
an affinity with him)

but this is so
tepid a thing when
self-same bastion of
liberties legislates itself
divine-right privilege
(no
resonance to
the metaphor of
exorcising the
demon
of a sacred heart).

GREEN

the edge
of the forest

brings fears
and

expectations

the supposition that
(at some
level)

much deep blood red is
needed to
change colour

to fuel the verdant fire, keep
this world
steaming green

SHOULD IT NOT

bleed too
much for your art
will that not
turn you
insipid

take air
out of lung never
mind sails?

should it not be
clean self-sacrifice
what we
are looking for

one wound with the pen
gushing forever forth
too
fierce to heal?