SELL THYSELF



                       You must sell yourself, adjures Head of School,
                        a squeers for detail, crudded in Commerce cred.
                        Coalfacers creakling criteria, balloons of missionspiel,
                        elbow for Freddo Frogs up ladders of P.D. (Ed.).
                        There’s no such thing as B+

                             ‘Seems’, madam?  Nay, it is.  I know not ‘seems’ . . .

                        Drafts must be chased, checked, churned without fail.
                        The Bored Studs avows one single, solitary draft,
                        which I interpret as one draft for lingual control,
one for vocab, one form, content, intent, extent, craft . . .

                How absolute the knave is!  We must speak by the card
                Or equivocation will undo us.

Change your image, Head emails Senior Humanities,
who, stricken, juvenates as Henry Bucks dummy:
hairpiece tinted russet, forelock tipped magenta
ultra-kool but no Borgia for hidden agendas.
Renaissance Man lies a-dyeing

                You go not till I set you up a glass
                           Where you may see the inmost part of you.

Merv, trotting with clipboard, Phiz Ed dynamo
- facts, fax, facts, a gloss of glyphics -
Health and Hygiene Himself, exercising his ego,
prodding dotheboys through showers steamy then frigid,
with glazed eye and sodden Leviticus.

                            Nowher so bisy a man as he ther nas,
                            And yet he semed bisier than he was.

            Behind the Head’s arras, the Chaplain, a gowned greaser,
Intoning Tone and Morale, Parking Perks for the Executive,
            Homework Ethics and Uniform Conformity that middle tackers
            freak at shadows of vampire wings beating up the crucifix.
           Thou shalt button up on pain of det.

            . . . if gold ruste, what shal iren do?

Sell yourself, says Careers.

                                                                            Michael Small
April 22-May 17, 2003

pub. LiNQ, vol.31, no.1 James Cook University, Queensland, Australia,
  May, 2004

           



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