Michael Small: Selected Poems

i’m not cock-a-hoop cooped in this hoop doing solitary feeling seedy i’m bored just perching around or lurching to ground crestfallen how can I keep my pecker up when the crooked bill frames me, sets me up? whenever some canary squeals                                     hello cocky, hello cocky!                                     who’s a pretty boy?   who’s a pretty boy? it sticks in my craw, gets up my dander i want to scream           not you, you stickybeak                     ...

William Hare   Alan Head    Jack Face Donald Beard Kenneth Back     Gary Hart Gerry Hand                                                            David Lim   William Dick                                    Sir Keith Seaman      John Legg                                  Sir Alfred Kneebone ...

                        Factory fleets making the long haul from Japan                         trail longlines sinking to depths of murk.                         Sharkie s, vision poisoned by waves of mercury                         and the yen for shark fin at restaurants refined,                         scour like sea eagles for the streaming of tuna,              ...

            which was insipid really, like typical American tea;             not like a cuppa steeped in the Earl Grey tradition.             ‘Ahoy there, if you please!   Ye shipmates!   Look lively!      Welcome aboard, ye Patriots and Sons of Liberty! This stout vessel is the Beaver II, a Danish replica circa 1973. My name is Samuel Adams, a Federalist and your Party host. The cradle of the Revolution is Boston’s boast, as reckons every true mother’s son of ye.  Patrick Henry says cheapskate British merchants sell us low-grade bohea. Its veritable bitterness will be the death of all ye. You’re from Philadelphia, right?   Let’s hear it for Phili!   And you?   From Melbourne?   Sir, you’re an honorary revolutionary.   Prithee, feel free ...

a mozzie firing range     strawberry pips     spokes as weals                      hot point sprocketed into cold shoulder               foreign lesions running blistered                             these hives are humming   baby                one flaming pain in the glands    stiff jarlsberg!                     what brand of rashness   burn-out   guilt                 ...

                                    At Kashi one cremates to break the cycle                                     The soul levitates to break the cycle                                     Even a ruminant acts like a human model For the cow liberates to break the cycle Serving before self in deeds most humble Desires she sublimates to break the cycle Yields milk for curd to nourish her people The cow lactates to break the cycle What else delivers the street wi...

                                   ‘Don’t make my people beggars!’                                     Kangana shows me that bazaar in Agra.                                     God!   Urchin eyes smiling, snaggled teeth, mouth jiggered.                                     I shudder and turn away, a co...

                                    Hen-speckled haunt, those royal chatris,                                     hallowed stone hollowed, visages gaunt as                                     bronzed old sages, knuckling the azure                                     with domes, turrets crowned with cupolas ...

Just as an iridescent butterfly shakes free from its communal tent and to its former self dies, so I emerge, at last content (children choofed off to uni residence, hubby busy married to Life Insurance), set to spread diaphanous wings and fly the groves of higher learning: kundalini, prana, tai-ching . . . Guilt, where is thy sting?             GOING   UP                                                     GOING   DOWN                                         ...

Ziyang collected words like shells:                         argonaut paper nautilus combed with spiral chambers                                                                              chitons in coats-of-mail, limpet mines in amber                         cones of deadly poison with stinging harpoons barbed                         & f...

          Now she could wear a personal dresser with strategic fit.           Jaguar red her hue and cry:   company auto, bolero, nails . . .           Fought tooth and claw to board the executive.           Her porkier package scraped the budget’s barrel.           Noshing at Chaucer’s with other makers and shovers,           she thrived on hyped ham and cocktails potent,           bubble-nosed the A-team with Friday champers,           then stretched the envelope with the boss’ secretant.           Best practice?   Liposuction of the lingo:  ...

Fog, as if Christo had hung a winding-sheet. Facades grave enough for Stasi reunions, some puckering, pocked, untucked, all barely ribbed, jerry-built by Dr Mabuse: thousands upon thousands of square eyes, sockets filleted, ostere, post-nuclear. Fernsehturm etherised has lost its toothpick: Big Bertha’s barrel detumescing in smoke amidst skeletons of scaffolding, sculptures of rust. Plonked there, grim as a small-time undertaker, with Engels, a little stiff, standing in as pallbearer, Karl Marx, bronze lustre gangrened to granite, limbs tubed like Oliver Hardy, feet fat and flat, stares out into the dead space of the Forum, as if grieving for the Allee Katz stoned at Café Moscau.                                               ...

                        If motorbikes took drugs, Harley-Davidson would beef up on steroids             If cars drank liqueurs, Celica would slake on Bailey’s Irish Cream If fridges turned musos, they’d perform the Humming Chorus from Madam Butterfly             If beds wrote their memoirs, Capt’n Snooze would be a wet blanket             If closets came out to visit a psychoanalyst,     they’d twitch about desertion by young gays                         If clouds wore raincoats, every cloud should have a silver lining. If mountains moved, Buffalo would stampede from the Chalet If lakes medita...

                                                To beguile or be gulled, that is the quest.                         Whether ‘tis bolder to frame one’s changeful face or –                         Soft!   Doth the King play the devil, Machiavel?                         Nay, not a whit.   I am an ass to think on’t.                   ...

                         green ice-cream holder             Stalinallee:   a board game for honour & knowledge             GDR hammer & compass coffee cup             green man T-shirts, oven mittens, rose–stem holders, serviettes & iron-on patches                         D for Club Dynamo wine-red pennant & football shirt, beer tankards galore             bust of Karl Marx in gypsum, alabaster or linden             walk The Wall map, colour-co...