UNDERINSURED

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poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

UNDERINSURED

this poem
is underinsured

against such things
as sadness
and naked sunlight

full of the Sun
once I ran
fast as a
steam
train (and
here you are
expecting “legs
like pistons”)

Oh sadness
I have drunk so much
of that stuff they say
I’m a bona fide sadoholic!

the more

scarcely the merrier

unless you
are right
Madame T

and I secretly love this lead-gray heavy heavy
want all the dark energy in the Universe
to gather up
in a Prufrock ball,
steam-roller me

but who are you (whom I
sort of remember from
another Eliot poem)

from birth
it would appear, you
have been shadowing me, getting
me to judge myself impossible
by your ultimate standards

“sadness” you say
“try this for size and we
will talk sadness!”

my fingers finding
wounds and
stuff

and blood that won’t wash off
still warm and wet (thank God)

nothing in my policy speaks
of cover for any such event

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THEY

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poem, poem poetry political moral, poetry

THEY
they died in
a wasteland fighting
for green fields

Wilfred your poetry stilled
at maximum moment by
Maxim machine-gun

that England
you were fighting for
the Shakespeare England and
John Clare

now a no-
man’s land of
ultimate hostility

covered in a concept
of barbed wire

GRENFELL ALBUM

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poem, poetry

GRENFELL ALBUM

I scroll through your names
read each snapshot of your lives

think of the human pity that
there is no mitigation, no
quiet book-closing fatalism
to let us, your readers, your
imaginers, down gently
no soft euphemism
to kill the horror
recoil from
terrible truth of fire

Oh little children, Oh lover
of song and
of dance

and saint-like altruist, hearts of
poetry, minds of philosophy
we see
now exactly the loss

it’s balance with cost
and wonder why the Universe
would be so
heartless to
Insist that price was paid.

***

Oh let us never forget this album
and what
pain and
love
learnt with every page.

PENNYWISE

Tags

poem, poem poetry political moral

Pennywise
is a cruel philosopher

clowns around
about taking you down
(sinking like a market
in the throes of depression)

to where we
all float safely, after being
politically dismembered,
hollowed-out
with fear

that peace in living-death
worth all the war really.

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?