The "Everyday I Write The Book" Dream.

Anyway, so I was somewhere with Sam, she wasn't saying much but she sure did look purty. I was thinking of all the things that I was supposedly doing with my life; finishing plays, finding fables for Czech puppet shows, features as yet unwritten, Bardflys, Post-Grad (UTS vs RMIT?)Melbourne (including subcategories - if/ how to move, how to open Bar di Fonzi's on Brunswick St., etc.)

Suddenly, I found this book. Can't remember the title, but I know it was a hardback with a dusty cover (Dusty Cover; good character name?)

This book, somehow, this book ('this book' should be pronounced as by Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction saying 'this watch' with all the image evoking grasp of Stanislavski Method,) this book had the answer to all my problems. The solution to everything. The big gig in one big hit. Somehow this imaginary book solved all my problems. It was quite a relief. At last.

Upon waking, and realising that I couldn't remember the title, or any of the contents, I was quite annoyed. My first word of the day rhymed with "You luckety lucky duck," but meant nothing like it.

I realise now that the whole point is that the book doesn't actually exist. That I have to write it. Like those films I dreamt of. In a sense we all have to write the book that solves all our problems. Every day we do it.

As Elvis Costello said, "everyday I write the book...." (blah, blah, lah, self help bollocks.)

Ironically, he said using an often misused term, by the time we got it written it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil as it were. Death is a kind of publication... (Blah, blah, blah, arty poetic nihilistic crap.)

Anyway, Sam's dandy pancakes are ready... I can smell them... Salute.

The McGonagall Award for The World's Worst Poet

I have been informed that the world's worst poet ever is The Great McGonagall. I have read his work at www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk and it is truly appalling. I particularly like how he rhymes New Year with... New Year in his classic "'The Tay Bridge Disaster"" which you can go straight too at www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/poems/pgdisaster.htm

He would travel the UK reciting his woeful work and, due to his reputation as the worst poet in the English language, is still in print today. Now do you see the brilliant of my idea - fame through bad poetry, not good! In our time it's the only way.

Incidentally, McGonagall was also renowned for his truly awful productions of Shakespeare's play, which he would direct as well as play the lead... what a piece of work is this man! Famously, in his production of Hamlet, in which he played the Great Dane, the entire audience had left the theatre before the end of the play.

In acknowledgement of this great man and his achievements, I have decided the Earth's Worst Poet will be awarded with the McGonagall Award.

Discuss.

""Benito Di Fonzo's Travelling Search for Australia's Worst Poet""

from an idea that would only emerge one velvet morning on a festival organiser's lounge room floor in melb comes - (drum roll and barking penguins please)

""Benito Di Fonzo's Travelling Search for Australia's Worst Poet"" ,

as part of the larger

""Search for The Earth's Worst Poet.""

with heats around Australia, and eventually the world, with a winner at each crowned that current Master of the ancient art of Malpoesia (trans: bad/sick/evil poetry.)

open sections with invited features of past masters Benito has encountered in his travels.

hosted by guess who...

Who will be crowned the ""Il Duce e Malpoesia"", of the World's Worst Poet?

Who's on board this great hangover idea?

Stay tuned for more deatils.

Poetry - The Lonely Planet Guide to Samantha F.

I tried to find The Lonely Planet Guide to Samantha F.
I tried a bookshop on Brunswick St
The State library, and Woolworth’s

They all sent me packing

I searched the Lonely Planet website
But it was almost as if
They’d never heard of you

So I hit a bar
praying to Allah to just make my brain shut up
but it didn’t work
and I just kept imagining
all the detailed maps of your Newtownian torso
that I was missing out on

the full colour guide to your
panda eyes and Mediterranean thighs

a dozen things to do in a single day
Maneuvering your subway

And countless other lists of great spots to see
on the under-explored parts of your pretty person

Not to mention where to sleep,
eat and play on a limited budget

and when I asked the barman
if he knew any facts for the canny traveler
of Irish Sicilian violinists from Inner Western Sydney
he took offence
and attacked me with it

short of breath
I hid in the public library
and asked if they had perhaps
The Complete Idiots Guide To Seducing Samantha F.

“”Piss off pervert,”” said the kindly old spinster at the desk

so I went to a kebab palace and requested
The Beginners Guide to Sam’s Multifaceted Psyche

“”Lamb yeeros or asto thealo re vlaka”’

the search was getting hopeless,
so I bought the burnt baby sheep meat
ripped it apart, and attempted to read it

but once again the old Greco got angry
and I split, my dour hands dripping in tatziki

I was angry now as I stormed across to Footscray
And kicked down the doors to Lonely Planet Head Quarters

Quickly cornering the elderly founder
And demanding an explanation as to why he hadn’t commissioned a guide to you
As I casually threatened him with the remains of my gyros

Eventually he stuttered that
“”Perhaps YOU should write it then?””
before collapsing in a pool of lamb fat and tears

Hence this letter
requesting a visa
to explore the backwaters of your bella figura
you can pick me up from the airport on Monday
don’t forget to bring a couple of beers.