Small Man Syndrome – 23rd August 2025

~ shaun tenzenmen

A builder’s grip
Trading advice
A drunken lip
Unbroken ice

A childish bloke
He’s five foot three
An Irish joke
He’s Me! Me! Me!

An open eye
Telling the tale
A felon spy
Always on sale

The golden ride
A target made
Empty inside
A debt unpaid

A found affair
The truth undressed
A Swiss au pair
Simply impressed

A sailor’s song
Sung out of tune
It’s all gone wrong
A burst balloon

A foreign mind
Alien fakes
Contract unsigned
Golden handshakes

Unsweetened words
The cruellest lies
Unrule of thirds
In silent sighs

An open mouth
An empty wit
He’s all gone south
A dribbled spit

The perished love
From pride or spite
When pushed to shove
Goodbye, goodnight!

Shared with Poets and Storytellers United – small
Loosely based on my old co-worker who suffered somewhat from this syndrome. It was always amusing to watch and he wasn’t as bad as the words above make out. This write was originally inspired by two misheard lines in the Jesus Lizard song ‘Monkey Trick’, which I turned into ‘a childish bloke, an Irish joke’ and so I maintained the 4-syllable lines throughout.

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