I watch the entertainment With beer in my belly. The woman who has two heads. Her husband who has three. The world’s ugliest twins And the tight-rope walker Who first fell in infancy.
A little later, the midget act ends And a midget collects small change. The passionate fire-eater Who recalls an old flame. The clown who clowns And ‘The Amazing Memory Man’ Who forgets his own name.
The illusionist levitates in mid-air Raised by her magician parents As Houdini, having escaped, Captivates the audience. The barrel-organ grinder And the bearded woman Who first shaved as an adolescent.
Finally, the cobbled street Rotates like a kaleidoscope As head-over-heels in love Albert the acrobat somersaults. The world’s strongest man And the human cannonball who hurtles Head-first down the sword-swallower’s throat.
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 