Michael Small: Selected Poems

                        La, la, la, lera!   Largo al factotum della citta!                         Un segreto d’importanza!   Una voce poco fa!                         Ah, compose, rehearse, conduct, dash from two-bit theatres                         To flea-bit lodgings, commissioning librettos,                         Held under lock and key by lackeys of impresarios,         ...

We sailed the bay and spied the heaven We heaved the anchor and rowed the shore We assured the blacks and offered the beads We beat the drum and spoke the signs We hauled the seyne and hid the intent We pitched the tents and scrubbed the bush We ached for scrubs, entreated the gins We sank the gin and whetted the axes We hacked the trees and dug the fences We fended the blacks and sowed the seed We seized the roos and caught the rays We raised the flag and sought the pine We pined for home but stole the land We landed marines and imposed order We ordered muskets and discharged thunder We charged the spears and wreaked the dolour We grabbed the dollars and bayed the sale                                            ...

                                                                    (to upstage the work of William Safire)                         And these precepts in thy memory                         Look thou character.   For a writer                         Must not shift your point of view.                         And you yourself have of your audience  ...

                                   When I am dead and vermicelli,                                                             What will be my epitomb?                                     A life measured out in coffee grounds:                       ...

            Kennel the canines.   Engrave VTR.   Programme the light switches.             O Father Time, the Mother of all ditherers, how you fly             like a fugitive shade from the russet-mantled dawn.             Gussets.   Panties-oh.   Have you packed your spare tights?   Your province.             Maps.   High definition.   To navigate the configuration of your heart.             To avoid the skein of varicose roads and free-wheel free will.             My fingers have tiptoed your peaks, ear-marked your lobes,      ...

Yo, to be in Yonkers                                     Now that April’s sere,                                     An whoever wakes in Yonkers                                     Sees, some morning blear,                                     Rows of hoists an forklifts an factories smokin...

(breathing stertorously) . . . I'm standing here . . . in the middle of a puddle . . . it’s a very large puddle . . . as you can see . . . so all around me lies an expanse of still cold water . . . but not just any still water . . . for here . . . amongst the last melting ice floes of Antarctica . . . exists that rare commodity on planet Earth . . . the like of which we shall seldom see again . . . I mean . . . chemically pure water . . . cool clear fresh water.                                     Michael Small July 9-10, 2002    published Kensington and Chelsea Times,                         London, February, 2013

              Van Gogh’s ear + sunflowers (lot 43 + lots 44)                                                                   the mo of Salvador Dali or Mona Lisa                                                                              ...

                                    Much have I journeyed through gaols of infamy,                                     rubbed shoulders with slags and dossed with scrotes,                                     where even the screws inhale leaves of the lotus.                                     Worst was ...

O Collegiality! Art thou driven by fear of litigality? Thou dancest the hokey cokey with bumptious zeal, But thy all-embracing kneez-up is too warm and fuzzy, plain unreal. Thou art the new chum on the block. Wilt thou too be axed like Heideggerian hermaneutics and construct validity post hoc? What was wrong with ornery Supportivity? Or Collectivisation? O Collegiality! Thou who fraternises and sororises with Duty and Unity and Immunity,                                                                    Impunity, Anonymity and Dozy, Thou wearest an earnest face beneath thy boater, Blessed with enough iota to tote a tertiary education quota. ...

                        Come, come, Ophelia, give me up the truth.                         Was it so long ere I forbade you boil that young egg? Cast off the knighted clouds that weasel your brow.   By the by, doth Hamlet paddle fingers in thy swansdown trim? Importunate ingrate!   Still slandering my daughter, eh? Repel you not his trifles, his letters, his oeillades? Remember, green damson, the prince’s will is not his own. I charge you, therefore, guard your chaste treasure As the portcullis the tongue or day night. Look to mine honour, not tenders of his affection, Lest you tender me a tedious old fishmonger. To be passion’s slave beggars the knavest basery. No infidel harries worse than bad counsellery,...

You want a freshly thatched roof, Balan? A bicycle, a handcart, a brick wall for your hut? Then you give me your kidney. No, listen.   I give you thirty thousand rupees. Do not worry, please.   If there is internal bleeding, I will sell litres of the stuff.   Like the juice of nipa-fruits. All for your daughter’s dowry. But Villivakkam people are proud of their scars. The men lift their shirts high. The women adjust the tops of their saris, swivelling so gracefully to show off their caste. Ho yes, I know the scars run for thirty centimetres around the left side from the waist up the back. I am not a body-broker for nothing, isn’t it. Okay, so you can buy patches of skin to heal the scar at one thousand rupees per patch. That will come to no more than five thousand. Holy cow!   You would rather die? Then permit me to sell your corpse.   Three thousand the lot. It looks in damn reasonable condition, considering. My cut?...

                        Now, gentlemen, the environment.   It needs refining.                         Take the grass.   It’s too green, too intense.   Too real.                         Lawns have gotta come up to par.   Shaved like putting greens.                         Another thing:   mountains smoking with mist are passé.                         Our clients might think it’s cane burning off.   O...