Hunchbacks give hunchback rides round la fontana dei matti as round the cloisters st francis goes batty talking to birds of the feathered variety.
You can easily vanish off the face of the earth where you’re lucky to be born with your date of birth; godfearers in umbria in unforeseen trouble get gobbled up by earthquake rubble.
Gargoyles at the churchside come a poor second in the village’s annual gurning contest to your neighbours, gap-toothed and goyaesque, pulling faces that knock spots off the rest.
From their hovel next door you hear one of them sneeze as rats race round forcing the working population to its knees; the whole continent in sepia, and a plague painting each town red you hang on to your dear ones, and bring out your dead.
John Di Girolamo was born during the swinging middle ages as the Battle of Hastings raged outside on a cold, miserable Saturday evening just outside 'The Juggler's Arms' in Oxford, Torquay and Exeter at the same time. Born to a family, he spent most of his early years learning how to open umbrellas for a rainy day, and the runnings of horses and sword swallowers and the costs they incurred. Having graduated in 'Circus Management', he took to spinning plates for a living and persuaded his father to buy a restaurant to fund what he believed would be a lucrative career move. However, in the the days leading to The Age of Post Punk', he quit and would embark upon what was to go down in history doodles as a notebook.
Few knew it then but he had already started copying poetry, and often written by other people. As the minutes passed by, and Sardinia loomed, the idea of collages and drawings suddenly hit him as a way of filling up what had become a kind of book with pages and all. One day while storming off in a huff because his mum told him to, he struck upon the idea of putting it all together over a long-playing record (later a CD) and during a commercial break in the digital age, decided a blog would end Cromwell's ill-fated republic.
Sent off by recorded post, it would be by chance that his poems would get to their ultimate destination as, meanwhile, his pigeon who had queued so loyally for so long, sadly died the day before it was sacked.
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A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 