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Benito Di Fonzo is a poet, playwright and journalist whose awarding-winning works have been performed everywhere from The Sydney Opera House to pubs and piazzas in London, Edinburgh, Rome, Adelaide, Ubud (Indonesia) and Perth. Benito’s most recent play “The Chronic Ills of Robert Zimmmerman, AKA Bob Dylan (A Lie): A Theatrical Talking Blues & Glissendorf” toured Australia to rapturous reviews and was nominated for the WA and NSW Premiers’ Awards. He can be visited online at www.benitodifonzo.blogspot.com
Benito’s Poem
Sunday Mourning
The sun’s coming up on Sunday
as I stumble out of Stanmore,
and the cabs crawl out like cockroaches
onto Enmore Rd.
As I steer myself down the spirituous sidewalk
I see them search the soiled streets like Sirens
for lost sailors to entice with their
warm vinyl Islands,
and directions to their cousin
Abdul’s in Surry Hills
where you can purchase a gram
of Turkish delight
to lull away
the recovering day.
As I pedal my feet down the street;
my blindman’s brain
riding my body like a battered bicycle,
the sick-sweet stench of beer and kebab
swims towards me from the bent over boy
in the Commodore door
as he attempts to kiss the tarmac with his intestines
like a Pope turned inside out.
The Bank Hotel’s bouncer,
bored broad shoulders bursting sluggishly through his
superfluous suit,
looks as fresh as the apathetic kebab
that I purchase next door
as he sways from sole to sole,
wishing some young Goth’d get smart with him
enabling him to expel that pent up energy
that bubbles inside of him
like a nun’s libido.
I veer right and roll towards Erskineville, where
outside The Imperial,
a cornucopia of subterranean scenes
blend like Bailey’s and cream,
and a boy with a beer glass
embedded delicately in his face
boldly refuses an ambulance
as he floats, painlessly, on
beer, battery acid and testosterone,
then falls flatulent and flat at the fatigued feet of a
fatigued paramedic
like a drunken fish.
& I dive through my back door
as the dawn cumulus,
black & blue as a boxer’s brain
change hue to glaring bright blue,
and I escape the segue into day.
Yeah the sun’s coming up on Sunday
as I collapse on the couch like a concubine,
with the kidneys of a cockroach
and a liver like a stone.
