When fearing curses dominate verses and pure coincidence leads to waking dreams of waving friends ignoring passing hearses with odds in favour of things going well and mouthless spirits gagged from spinning their dark spell, that little voice in your head asks ‘But am I that jinxed to be voodoo chicken led?’
When going mad and being reckless with bottles pouring out their medicine poisonous joining in the drinking and daring yourself to dive in at the deep end of red water as you burp out speaking speech bubbles live that little voice in your head eggs you on to repeat what you just foolishly said.
When quiet and deaf to tut tuts. When as sure of yourself as a self-contained saint. When talking to yourself with no ifs or buts. When no negative thoughts can taint feelings of doubt that little voice in your head whispers assurances like a newlywed.
That little voice in your head is your saviour and your executioner. The one that plays on your better and worse judgement and your amateur schizophrenia. The one you call little but which sometimes booms and clangs like heavy lead as you sleep off your days as light as your primary school snores of felt Zs.
(from ‘Ventriloquist Dummy Voice-Overs’, photo from graffiti in Cagliari)
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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