“Next to mine own shippe I do most love That old “shippe” in Exon, a tavern in St. Martin’s Lane.” (Francis Drake, 1587)
Sir Francis Drake supped With sixteenth century swank As his naval ship-mates tottered with rum-tots On oaken floor-boards, walking the plank.
I wonder whether he boozed harder As his Elizabethan world view blurred; Head spinning, he spun the one about the Armada, Slurring the Spanish as his English words slurred.
A Very Important Pirate, he autographed beer-mats For West Country folk, his Exeter fans As in his favourite watering hole, he happily spat Making merry in Merry England.
Meanwhile, having had no success with the weaker vessel, His crew poured out of the tap-bar, lamenting Hello me Hearty! Having had their melancholic fill They set off to drown their Tudor sorrows at sea.
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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