Marco Montalto was born on the 14th of May, 1979 in Malta. He attended Primary and Secondary School at De La Salle College, Vittoriosa and later read Psychology and Theatre Studies at the University of Malta. He has been writing poetry since the age of sixteen and also writes short stories as a pastime. He also has various ideas for installations and ready-mades, which he would like to see set up. He aspires to become as famous as Giuseppe Calì and live longer than Anton Inglott. Apart from a certain Anthony, he dedicates his recently published first book of poems, Anthology: Passages of Love, to all the patients at Mount Carmel Hospital.

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SELECTED POETRY

by
Marco Montalto

REMEMBERING CARAVAGGIO

Stay with me for a while,
Just a little while,
For songs never last long,
And there is still so much to be sung.

Come along with me and I will show you
Things you’ve never ever tried:
Together we shall traverse this desert,
And arrive at a place where mosquitoes,
Inebriated by wine,
Make love to dahlias that sway in a
Cool blind light.

Let me show you the infernal abyss that is my heart,
Where festering corpses sings requiems for unlived loves,
Where mirrors can’t tell the old from the young –
A place where illusions forfeit their trust!

And when the old blot comes,
With his mouth full of praises,
And paraplegic stiffening in his thighs,
We’ll look at each other in the eyes
And say that is was good.

© Marco Montalto

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UNTITLED

You wage war on yourselves
Whilst I garland my forehead with roses.
Go on. Don’t mind me.
They make fine blooms these days.

© Marco Montalto

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THE ONLY HOME

As my parched newspaper of a body
Lies sprawled on the sill of my bedroom window,
What always lies before my eyes
Is the tall, lean house with its
Three windows – one on every floor –
Sandwiched between a relic of a house
And a block of flats – a pigsty.

I used to talk to the house in my
Sing-a-long days.
I even used to scream at it,
Thinking the blocks that held it in shape
Were my listeners.
I didn’t care a jot about its inhabitants:
Their stories held no interest to me.

Just like St. Barbara, I felt a longing
To occupy the house.
I would walk past its front door
And ring the doorbell:

- Hey you, what are you doing?

- No, nothing! Calling on the dentist.

- No dentist lives here! Fuck off!

So there I waited, waiting to be called in,
Like a beggar at an almshouse.
Now the house does not greet me anymore
With that glint in its eye.
Gone are the days of holy communion between us.
Torchlight flickers now and then through the windows
As if the house of prayer is being robbed and silenced.

© Marco Montalto

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#1

Who did I say I was?
Although it is cooler under the water,
the faucets must not be left running.

In you a swelling pregnancy:
a cornucopia of placatory margins.
In me - God knows what!

Who did you say she was talking to?
I forgot to hang up after you called
and the line remained busy for over a day.

© Marco Montalto

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#2

Among the bulrushes,
the wind gently blew,
till it yanked the rose
from between Romeo's teeth.

Up in the ivory tower,
noiselessly sat Juliet weaving,
amidst lines and parallelograms,
a tapestry full of white colour.

Their hair got caught, one day,
in the tendrils of the grapefruit tree,
and soared above they did,
and lived in a dream.

© Marco Montalto

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#7

Redressing the imbalance in
D. H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers:

"Oh my mum, my mum, my mum!"

© Marco Montalto

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#9

Sitting at an open-air café in Valletta after buying a Boney M. record

Big black fly on yellow topaz
Yellow topaz on green emerald
Black onyx on yellow plastic bag
Discarded fly-infested yellow plastic bag in green fields

© Marco Montalto

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#43

I

Trembles the clef
within the ocean's stomach:
trembles a clef.

Booming bass,
and the horses gallop:
booming bass.

Shattered and feckless
like a cherry tomato:
fecklessly shattered.

II

Swore to the night
that I would part with the past;
had told of my misery to too many guys.

Like a rotten tomato
I gather together swarms of flies
and impeach the ones with the guns.


III

Hopelessly freckled
like a Chinese doll:
freckled and hopeless.

Blond and blue-eyed -
they say nothing of my times:
blue-eyed blonds.

Crowds standing in a scanty millennium -
pull your pants up and eye
scanty crowds!


IV

Distrust.

Mistrust.

© Marco Montalto

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#46

Reason -
"Well! As a matter of fact..."

Jack says:
"I was only stating the facts as..."

A matter of fact:
the residual wisdom
come precipitating on me
through the ages and whoredoms.

I am bewildered and estranged,
as a matter of fact.

© Marco Montalto

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#47

Death's head looms in front of my eyes:
Clara notices the wetness in its stare.

The baby bird is nestled in its side,
like Sarah's cat snuggled in an array of pillows.

Beatrice's head is drawn with razor-sharp accuracy,
just like an onion in polygons.

The background is painted positively negative:
an immersion into Mary's immense anti-matter.

© Marco Montalto

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