I’m beside myself Mass-producing miniature clones. Papier-màche marionettes That look just like me.
A matching set of gamblers, Gamesters, holding a handful of playing cards. Poker face opposite poker face I call my bluff. I don’t let on.
Fairground mirrors stretch Out-of-shape my figures of fun. With inward-looking in-jokes I mockingly rib myself.
By myself; inside my bedroom, Bizarre boredom multiplies. Working on my tiny toys Making my own company.
Manufacture my latest line In clockwork replicas with fitted voicebox. A walkie-talkie robot that repeats; “Who are you looking at? Who are you looking at?”
Often, I open my mouth Fall headlong into my huge trap; Make my role-model a purse-lipped puppet And keep it to myself.
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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