Cesare street-bellows above the bells; Red wine has reddened his tonsils. His blackened lungs tarred by Camels.
He’s the local lunatic around whom stories circulate: Of a life ruined all too quick. Of a foreign legion escapade.
Were his dice destined bad playing fortunes dicey game? Or did he risk all he had with no-one but himself to blame?
Now he gobs, the gobshite fool, Fumbling phlegm from his chin. An underdog is nothing new nor the in-crowd who outcast him.
My first year in Italy was in Monza in 1992-93, and I wrote this poem about Cesare. I went back to Monza last week after 32 years. Met Roberta there who remembered Cesare who’s, not surprisingly, since died.
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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