This poem was written for a collection I did 2010/11 with poems written inspired by groups and singers I love as if they’d written the poem or lyrics. Remembered this poem because of Andy Rourke’s passing this weekend, fact he was only 59 like me, and the photo was taken in a cemetery in honour of one of my favourite Smith’s songs ‘Cemetery Gates.’
You’re a demanding little so-&-so and a real tug-of-war to-and-fro but don’t take it to heart; Never in a million milliseconds will we part.
I’m so middle class, one day it’s poverty the next day it’s wealth. I could just die for a spot of good health. You’re the one who knows me well and I’ve you to thank for this flaming hell.
Ohflaming hell! And bloody laura! Will I ever write again amidst flora and fauna? The good old days with straw and hay in our frilly frocks on a harvest day?
Though it can only ever end in a hospital bed and round the bend, go straight on, and second right and please, mr bendy copper, don’t stop me tonight!
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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