Part One.
"Utterly, But Naked."
Well the bankers had taken over the asylum
and I was still waiting for our ship to hit the fan,
for the shit to hit the shore and leave the sure behind,
unsure of just what the shore is for
As we walk through the streets of debris,
the valley of banality -
the cultural desert were the only thing that grows
are the plastic plants of distraction;
TV’s the size of guilt complexes,
& opiated computer games so hip
that you don’t even need to play them anymore,
just drop your pay-cheque off at your local store
& take their word for it,
while you get back too earning money more, more, more,
which it seemed to me was our state religion.
So I got this job ringing people and hassling them
about the job they were doing ringing people & hassling them
into buying some consumer durable drug or exotic drink
so that they could forget about much how they hated their job
ring people & hassling them
into buying some consumer durable drug or exotic drink,
so that their bosses could ring & hassle my bosses
into hassling my supervisor
into hassling me into hassling you
about the level of harassment you been receiving of late
from the makers of fine consumer durable drugs & exotic harassment,
and round and round and round it’s goes
like the boiling fur in my toilet bowl,
‘cause I couldn’t give a damn if a toilets clean when I’m blue
& in the end it’s just a choice between being scared or being bored;
bound up and bored as a battery hen,
or single and shit scared
as a feral stray cat in a McTuckey Fried Pie factory -
Utterly, but naked.
Utterly butt naked
Utterly butt naked in the beautiful eyes of the world,
Utterly butt naked in the sad taxi cabs of existence,
Utterly butt naked on the 422 to Tempe Tip & Temporal reality,
via Newtown North & Newtonian Physical myths,
Utterly butt naked in the ocean of amore,
Riding the waves out to sea
& leaving the sure behind.
Part Two
"Pub"
So we gave up on sobriety
and dived into the peculiar sea of our local piss hole
where the patrons garbled and yarbled in the pidgin English of Pub;
the soapy beer washing their brains into the guttering around the bar
as steroid raddled dogs ran rabidly after a rubber rabbit on a radio in the air around us
just like the debt of gambling addicts
abusing the invisible bitch of Lady Luck
that they’ve failed to pick up again
but putting another lobster on Race 6 at Dapto today anyway where
“My Embittered Liver hugs the rail against Sweet Escapism”
as they hug the rail in vein around the TAB betting desk
between the bar and the junky blue lit loos
as we sit surrounded by the salty ugh sounds
of the homoerotic violence of rugby
emitted by the pay TV in the corner,
till it’s turned down of an evening only to be replaced
by the post midnight mumbling stumbles and stupid attempts on
any females unfortunate enough to be in the visual perimeter of The Pub
“Where anything can happen, and probably won’t”
says the cynical amphetamine fuelled freak next to me, buying me drinks,
and wishing he could roll a number,
or a number of numbers, of Lebanese Hash,
but he can’t,
even though you can purchase a bag of sad cones
from the yob drinking himself to death with the off duty cops in the corner
who only stop to oil the reams and reams of pokie machines
lined up against the wall like loaded fits
as the patrons garble in the pidgin English of Pub -
the soapy beer oiling their libidos
like the legs of ex-lovers lulling in laughter in the back of their brains
and driving them to drinking games,
till they’re drunk enough to act as stupid and insane
as the school boys they become again.
`Till something goes wrong
and the humidity puts humility on heat
and some drunken punter gives somebody else their fist to eat
“‘cause they were talking like a horse’s hoof, with aspirations Mate!”
and we begin to think that we might be mixing our drinks
a little too untactfully to keeps ourselves intact round here
as my companion hits the pavement like a packet of beer nuts
& begins to scat “Taxi, Taxi, Taxi, Taxi”
like an old snare drum
and I’m thinkin’ that maybe what I need is The Wagon.
Part Three
"What For Reality?"
Well like you do I crawled out of the doona
and gathered up a shadow of my former selves,
bounced a Berocca off the bottom of a glass
& prepared to “take on” once more my intimidating existence.
And then it occurred to me,
what for reality?
What for all this rat race of running around
like a mixed metaphor with it’s head cut off?
Or worse still, waiting around frustrated on hold
for something, who knows what, to happen.
“your call may be placed in a queue,
and you may be slowly tortured by classical muzak
till you learn your lesson and stop ringing us.
Your life may be placed in a meaningless void,
and your calls for help may be unmonitored.
If you don’t wish this to happen, tough.
Your self esteem may be placed in a precarious position
above a vat of boiling innuendo,
if you wish upon a star, press on.
Your sense of place in the universe may be placed in a vice,
& dropped slowly into a bucket of warm nuns
were it will be tortured by Catholic and Capitalist Guilt.
Due to current demands on our operators
you may have to wait as long as six incarnations
for anything bordering on a sense of enlightenment.
Reality doesn’t so much apologise for this inconvenience
as lay in the corner of the room having a quiet chuckle to itself.”
What for all this eat, shit, sleep, eat again?
“give in to temptation: a quarter pound of fresh lard in every
Mc Pig-Fat shake and bake - good on ya Mum, Offal’s the one.
Tar and feather me Colonel with Kentucky battery farm strange fruit McUnidentified Pie
and the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan’s 11 secret herbs and steroids.”
What for paid employment?
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
drink and shop till you drop,
no time for art or beatific visions, cause you must
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can
Make money to buy food to have energy to go to work so you can…
What for money?
“It takes money to make money
money makes the world go money
shut up and do what your money told you
I can’t get by without my money
money knows best
Money, just killed a man;
put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he’s money
money put aside for money will money into money
and on Money Street today, Money up five points against Money
so I suggest you money your money on super money till you retire at 60
then money that money straight into a super duper money
till you’re bed bound and have lack of bladder control
then e-money that money into trust no fun money
till you are blind, deaf, senile and coughing up blood.
Then pull your money out of money
and let your money realise your money’s dreams
as you of course will be busy dying.
Which is one thing you can put money on..”
So what for wake up in the morning?
When your dreams are bound to be better
than the day time TV that reality tends to be
Coz’ life’s a pitch
and then you buy it
and everyone in Sydney’s an actor anyway
and all sincerity is these days is something you gotta learn to fake
as you sit there suffering one another’s small talk
then swing back the symphony of sycophancy to
Me, Me, Me!
Before diving once more into the
beer and bullshit laden seas of socialising,
metaphorically pulling people off for fear of getting passed up for promotion
or perhaps netwanking with other stressed out wannabes
in conversations about as captivating as watching
the Weather Channel, or MTV
just so they can help justify your drab existence by
making your film or fucking you,
staging your play and publishing your “poise on us” poetry
till you cum all over the public’s face in a vile volcano of kudos
or am I just being cynical?
Coda.
(am I) Playing the game just as much as the rest of them
licking their bits with my B-Grade wit,
so I can feel superior to the suburban saps that I grew up with
wasting away on the factory floor as we speak.
Well the answer, of course is yes;
I’m just oiling the wheels of wank with my whining,
and wasting more minutes of your precious existence,
and therein lies the irony , sleeping liking a...
So I’ll just shut up now,
cause I’m sure you’ve got some very important shit to get on with.
© Benito Di Fonzo. 2ooo.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Poetry - I’m frightened, and I want my money.
Disclaimer: This piece, like reality, is a work of fiction. Any similarity to persons or corporate entities living, dead or all points in between, is purely poetical.
So I was talking to this girl in a Paddington Hotel. Her name was $12,000 in a long term investment hope to put a deposit on a Darlo terrace by the end of the year.
She introduced me to her friend. This, she said, is an apartment in Woolloomooloo, with water views and a company car. She goes out with Sony executive just back from business in Beijing and New York.
He’s friends with just brought out his second top ten CD and touring the States next month but still slum it occasionally so as to keep the street cred intact, they went to school together at Daddy’s a Corporate lawyer but he smoked pot in the sixties and we’re just dabbling in rock n’ roll n’ smack till the inheritance kicks in Private College for Privileged Little Boys. They had some wild times together.
Just then the pungent perfume of her friend approached, and she introduced me as Thirty years old but still on the dole day dreaming idealist failed writer from share house in Marrickville. I tried to smile warmly but got little response from the squeaky clean just a clerk for a multinational conglomerate but I wouldn’t wipe my bum with your BA, you pseudo poetic hipster doofus, if you were the last alcohol addled artist in the universe Smithe III.
Anyway, so we ordered a round of overpriced cocktails, as you do, and they talked about how they’d hated ‘Big Brother’ but you just couldn’t tear yourself away from the screen really could you because I mean ‘Johnny’ and that’s nice but please don’t mention politics because you already bummed a Campari off us and why don’t you just go out and get a proper job so that you can buy you’re own drinks, but on the other hand maybe you’re right, & it’s as hip as Hep. C for us to patronise the arts.
So then walks in I’ve read plenty of Kerouac so I know where it’s at man but really I got a great career in I.T. now and sure, sometimes I find it hard to sleep at night because I’ve got no time or mental energy left to write, but what about when I’m old, and she’d leave me if I was an idealistic idiot like you so I’m always good to hit for a drink Goldberg.
And he was with I’m thin, blonde and bohlemic so I’m going to become the next great Australian Hollywood export if I have to frig every nit that came out of NIDA so I’m really good at pretending I’m interested in your life and beaming a smile as genuine and wide as a Nazi annexing Sudetenland Johnson.
And Benito, that’s a ‘Multicultural’ name isn’t it? You must know Nik Popular Ethnic Stereotype, I just saw his latest ethno-realist happening in Melbourne, “It’s a Wog Way to the Top.” Anyway, my uncle’s just bought a villa in Tuscany and that makes him more Italian than you really doesn’t it, because you can barely afford the bus fare out of here, hmm?
I was riveted to my seat as she explained to me how she’d once met a successful novelist at a three month dance party in an abandoned abattoir in London, and how he’d just bought a piece of dirt near Knightsbridge for six million pounds, and I said really, that’s wonderful and what’s his writing like?
And she said that he’d also bought a farm in California for ten million where they grew bread and wine and it was just like a novel by Steinbeck, or so he told her, and I said really that’s wonderful but what’s his writing like?
And she said that rumour had it that he’d been romantically linked with that transsexual model that won the Eurovision song contest, but was now very happily married to his New Yorican publicist with whom he shared a twelve million dollar Manhattan apartment, and who herself was rumoured to have once had an affair with Michael J. Fux All The Finest Models in Malibu, and isn’t it awful I saw him in Who Give’s A Shit Weekly battering a photographer to death with his son, just like that Sean Pun, I mean he sure can act but who cares now that MacDonna’s dumped him, and I read that Special Sauces closes to her say that their marriage was about as sincere as McHappy Day anyway. Which brings me back to those 11 Secret Herbs & Spice Girls…
And I said yes but are his books any good? And she said that she didn’t know, that she didn’t have time for tomes like that, but that she’d seen an ad for his latest novel in No Idea magazine. It was the third book in a series about a former Navy Seal who had become a well-meaning Southern Lawyer that hunted down strangely literate Serial Killers, and that it had had glowing reviews from Jeffrey Archer.
And they all agreed silently that maybe I wouldn’t be such a drain on the GST if I just wrote books like that? And then my mother walked in and said that they bought stories in The Australian Womens’ Monthly, and why couldn’t I write nice things like that? Some thin watery romance that you can flick through at the gynaecologists and no-one need be ashamed of.
I was about to ask my mother what the fuck she was doing there anyway, but before I had a chance Jamie Packer walked in with a quivering grin and a pair of silicon breasts under each arm, and immediately collapsed in tears and said someone had left his ego out in the rain, and the orange icing was flowing down and growing hard around the Lilliputian sized lights of the latest in mobile phone technology, and that he didn’t think he could make it cause it took so long to fake it and he’d never have that recipe again.
And everybody in the bar placed their arms around him and began to comfort and softly fondle him while I seized the opportunity to quietly rifle through their wallets and packs of cigarettes, before screaming triumphantly, Calm down Packer you poor little entrepreneurial prick, the next shouts on me rich kid!
But it didn’t work, and little Jamie just sobbed and wailed, I’m frightened, and I want my money. I’m scared and I want my money to tuck me into bed at night. I want my money, because I’m scared of things that go bump in my life. I want my money and I don’t care what it costs, I want my money and I don’t care what I might have already lost. I want my money, because I’m dark, and it’s frightened.
Anyway, by now I was so disgusted with the whole affair that I sculled somebody’s beer and just walked right out of there.
Benito Di Fonzo. 2oo1.
So I was talking to this girl in a Paddington Hotel. Her name was $12,000 in a long term investment hope to put a deposit on a Darlo terrace by the end of the year.
She introduced me to her friend. This, she said, is an apartment in Woolloomooloo, with water views and a company car. She goes out with Sony executive just back from business in Beijing and New York.
He’s friends with just brought out his second top ten CD and touring the States next month but still slum it occasionally so as to keep the street cred intact, they went to school together at Daddy’s a Corporate lawyer but he smoked pot in the sixties and we’re just dabbling in rock n’ roll n’ smack till the inheritance kicks in Private College for Privileged Little Boys. They had some wild times together.
Just then the pungent perfume of her friend approached, and she introduced me as Thirty years old but still on the dole day dreaming idealist failed writer from share house in Marrickville. I tried to smile warmly but got little response from the squeaky clean just a clerk for a multinational conglomerate but I wouldn’t wipe my bum with your BA, you pseudo poetic hipster doofus, if you were the last alcohol addled artist in the universe Smithe III.
Anyway, so we ordered a round of overpriced cocktails, as you do, and they talked about how they’d hated ‘Big Brother’ but you just couldn’t tear yourself away from the screen really could you because I mean ‘Johnny’ and that’s nice but please don’t mention politics because you already bummed a Campari off us and why don’t you just go out and get a proper job so that you can buy you’re own drinks, but on the other hand maybe you’re right, & it’s as hip as Hep. C for us to patronise the arts.
So then walks in I’ve read plenty of Kerouac so I know where it’s at man but really I got a great career in I.T. now and sure, sometimes I find it hard to sleep at night because I’ve got no time or mental energy left to write, but what about when I’m old, and she’d leave me if I was an idealistic idiot like you so I’m always good to hit for a drink Goldberg.
And he was with I’m thin, blonde and bohlemic so I’m going to become the next great Australian Hollywood export if I have to frig every nit that came out of NIDA so I’m really good at pretending I’m interested in your life and beaming a smile as genuine and wide as a Nazi annexing Sudetenland Johnson.
And Benito, that’s a ‘Multicultural’ name isn’t it? You must know Nik Popular Ethnic Stereotype, I just saw his latest ethno-realist happening in Melbourne, “It’s a Wog Way to the Top.” Anyway, my uncle’s just bought a villa in Tuscany and that makes him more Italian than you really doesn’t it, because you can barely afford the bus fare out of here, hmm?
I was riveted to my seat as she explained to me how she’d once met a successful novelist at a three month dance party in an abandoned abattoir in London, and how he’d just bought a piece of dirt near Knightsbridge for six million pounds, and I said really, that’s wonderful and what’s his writing like?
And she said that he’d also bought a farm in California for ten million where they grew bread and wine and it was just like a novel by Steinbeck, or so he told her, and I said really that’s wonderful but what’s his writing like?
And she said that rumour had it that he’d been romantically linked with that transsexual model that won the Eurovision song contest, but was now very happily married to his New Yorican publicist with whom he shared a twelve million dollar Manhattan apartment, and who herself was rumoured to have once had an affair with Michael J. Fux All The Finest Models in Malibu, and isn’t it awful I saw him in Who Give’s A Shit Weekly battering a photographer to death with his son, just like that Sean Pun, I mean he sure can act but who cares now that MacDonna’s dumped him, and I read that Special Sauces closes to her say that their marriage was about as sincere as McHappy Day anyway. Which brings me back to those 11 Secret Herbs & Spice Girls…
And I said yes but are his books any good? And she said that she didn’t know, that she didn’t have time for tomes like that, but that she’d seen an ad for his latest novel in No Idea magazine. It was the third book in a series about a former Navy Seal who had become a well-meaning Southern Lawyer that hunted down strangely literate Serial Killers, and that it had had glowing reviews from Jeffrey Archer.
And they all agreed silently that maybe I wouldn’t be such a drain on the GST if I just wrote books like that? And then my mother walked in and said that they bought stories in The Australian Womens’ Monthly, and why couldn’t I write nice things like that? Some thin watery romance that you can flick through at the gynaecologists and no-one need be ashamed of.
I was about to ask my mother what the fuck she was doing there anyway, but before I had a chance Jamie Packer walked in with a quivering grin and a pair of silicon breasts under each arm, and immediately collapsed in tears and said someone had left his ego out in the rain, and the orange icing was flowing down and growing hard around the Lilliputian sized lights of the latest in mobile phone technology, and that he didn’t think he could make it cause it took so long to fake it and he’d never have that recipe again.
And everybody in the bar placed their arms around him and began to comfort and softly fondle him while I seized the opportunity to quietly rifle through their wallets and packs of cigarettes, before screaming triumphantly, Calm down Packer you poor little entrepreneurial prick, the next shouts on me rich kid!
But it didn’t work, and little Jamie just sobbed and wailed, I’m frightened, and I want my money. I’m scared and I want my money to tuck me into bed at night. I want my money, because I’m scared of things that go bump in my life. I want my money and I don’t care what it costs, I want my money and I don’t care what I might have already lost. I want my money, because I’m dark, and it’s frightened.
Anyway, by now I was so disgusted with the whole affair that I sculled somebody’s beer and just walked right out of there.
Benito Di Fonzo. 2oo1.
Free Preview of "Her, leaving, as the Acid hits."
This is a free sample of the 81 page verse novel "Her, leaving, as the Acid hits." which was first published in 2004 by Independence Jones Guerrilla Press and is available at www.IndependenceJones.com, www.Lulu.com, www.Gleebooks.com.au or from the author who can be contacted by leaving a comment on this blog.
Or for a free MS Word download of this preview go to http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_2/151000/151780/1/preview/acid_preview.doc
Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments section.
Preview Part 1.
Breaking up is Hell
at the best of times,
but on acid
it’s Hell in a burning hat-basket
slowly sinking in a river of
diuretic demon’s semen
whilst being poked
with an ever morphing
pointy stick.
It all began one night
in Newtown,
at the Town Hall Hotel,
somewhere to the left
of the 1990’s.
There was this angry little dwarf
of an evil barman
that jumped from behind
the horse-shoe bar
surrounded by the mouldy mismatched
fake wood panelling
that adorned that pub
in the days before gentrification
and the saccharin lure
of the yuppie dollar.
This evil little dwarf of a barman,
and you’ll understand
why I refer to him as such later,
leaped over the horse-shoe bar
towards my belle of the day;
a recent literature graduate
and aspiring White Witch
by the almost name of Bjeck.
I looked down at the dwarf’s
stubby pink palm
and saw the four
litmus paper squares of acid
littering his jelly-meat flesh,
hoping that through some error
they were just bits of the
torn beer coasters
that littered the
sticky black brown green carpet
around us like dandruff.
Preview Part 2.
….. (20 pages later)….
As my head came down,
the dwarf smiled.
This is not a good sign I thought.
Just then
the bored Samoan bouncer screamed
“last drinks,
move towards the front
now!”
It was 5am
and I had just taken
Bacchus knows what.
I could see this was going to be
a long day.
Preview Part 3. (page 33)
She told me
she was leaving me,
just as the acid peaked.
She just said it in one sentence,
no additions or explanations,
her eyes still
freshly skinned marsupial wide,
her lips clamped shut,
silent,
and at the same time
The Velvet Underground
finished their song again,
and there was that slow clumsy clunk
of the turntable as the stylus
moved back to the beginning.
The track starting again,
“Sunday Morning,
brings the dawning,
I got this feeling
I don’t want to know,”
and Bjeck starred through me,
silently, and
with all the empathy of Hemingway
starring down his prey
and seeing nothing but a
particularly nice new
Homo-erotic trophy.
Meanwhile
I had a road-train full of confusing fears rumbling quickly into my
very nervous system,
but for the song,
it was silent.
You could have heard a pun drop.
Preview Part 4 (page 61)
and that’s where Phil left me
as he bumped into ash covered furniture
and giggled awkwardly
down into his basement,
me
lying on the dirty tiles
of the bathroom floor –
nothing but a hollow ghost
of my former self,
as my girlfriend cavorted somewhere
with a drug dealing dwarf
and his bag of cheap leaf,
and the Velvet Underground
kept whining in the background.
“Sunday Morning,
brings the dawning,
I got this feeling
I don’t want to know.”
Let’s just say
it wasn’t one of the high points
of my existence.
It was then that my friend J. arrived
to take me to Sandor’s funeral.
Or for a free MS Word download of this preview go to http://www.lulu.com/items/volume_2/151000/151780/1/preview/acid_preview.doc
Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments section.
Preview Part 1.
Breaking up is Hell
at the best of times,
but on acid
it’s Hell in a burning hat-basket
slowly sinking in a river of
diuretic demon’s semen
whilst being poked
with an ever morphing
pointy stick.
It all began one night
in Newtown,
at the Town Hall Hotel,
somewhere to the left
of the 1990’s.
There was this angry little dwarf
of an evil barman
that jumped from behind
the horse-shoe bar
surrounded by the mouldy mismatched
fake wood panelling
that adorned that pub
in the days before gentrification
and the saccharin lure
of the yuppie dollar.
This evil little dwarf of a barman,
and you’ll understand
why I refer to him as such later,
leaped over the horse-shoe bar
towards my belle of the day;
a recent literature graduate
and aspiring White Witch
by the almost name of Bjeck.
I looked down at the dwarf’s
stubby pink palm
and saw the four
litmus paper squares of acid
littering his jelly-meat flesh,
hoping that through some error
they were just bits of the
torn beer coasters
that littered the
sticky black brown green carpet
around us like dandruff.
Preview Part 2.
….. (20 pages later)….
As my head came down,
the dwarf smiled.
This is not a good sign I thought.
Just then
the bored Samoan bouncer screamed
“last drinks,
move towards the front
now!”
It was 5am
and I had just taken
Bacchus knows what.
I could see this was going to be
a long day.
Preview Part 3. (page 33)
She told me
she was leaving me,
just as the acid peaked.
She just said it in one sentence,
no additions or explanations,
her eyes still
freshly skinned marsupial wide,
her lips clamped shut,
silent,
and at the same time
The Velvet Underground
finished their song again,
and there was that slow clumsy clunk
of the turntable as the stylus
moved back to the beginning.
The track starting again,
“Sunday Morning,
brings the dawning,
I got this feeling
I don’t want to know,”
and Bjeck starred through me,
silently, and
with all the empathy of Hemingway
starring down his prey
and seeing nothing but a
particularly nice new
Homo-erotic trophy.
Meanwhile
I had a road-train full of confusing fears rumbling quickly into my
very nervous system,
but for the song,
it was silent.
You could have heard a pun drop.
Preview Part 4 (page 61)
and that’s where Phil left me
as he bumped into ash covered furniture
and giggled awkwardly
down into his basement,
me
lying on the dirty tiles
of the bathroom floor –
nothing but a hollow ghost
of my former self,
as my girlfriend cavorted somewhere
with a drug dealing dwarf
and his bag of cheap leaf,
and the Velvet Underground
kept whining in the background.
“Sunday Morning,
brings the dawning,
I got this feeling
I don’t want to know.”
Let’s just say
it wasn’t one of the high points
of my existence.
It was then that my friend J. arrived
to take me to Sandor’s funeral.
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