Sunday Mourning

This is a poem I wrote in my head while stumbling from a party in Stanmore to my home in Erko and managed to get down on paper while still fresh. It went on to win the NSW Writers' Centre's Inner City Life Poetry Prize in 2001. After helping my cousin Achilles with his video montages I decided I should start doing them for my own work - so much more interesting than a talking head I hope.


"Sunday Mourning" by Benito Di Fonzo
(1st Prize 2oo1 Inner City Life Literary Comp.)


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
where you can purchase a gram of Turkish delight to lull away the recovering day.

As I pedal my feet down the street; blindman's brain riding my body like a battered bicycle,
the stench of fresh sick 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 suit,
looks as fresh as the apathetic kebab that I purchase next door
as he sways from sole to sole, wishing some young Goth would 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 paramedic like a drunken fish.

I dive through my back door as the dawn clouds change hue, 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.

Australian Tragic by Jack Marx

My rating: 4 of 5 stars While at first this took a little time to take hold of me, about halfway through something happened and I became gripped by these poor victims of pathos and warm tales of bathos. Of particular mention are the stories of the bush doctor who performed miracles with monkey glands only to have his research lost to a funeral pyre, and the anger-inducing anecdotes of injustice to simple warm-hearted working folk and felines through nothing but cold greed or apathy. These are tales that will haunt me as they obviously did Marx, when he wasn't fearing alien abduction that is (you'll have to read the book.) Equally fascinating is the fresh angle Marx gives to familiar tragedies such as Steve Irwin as a study in media back-flipping that would make Rupert Murdoch look idealistic, Martin Bryant through the eyes of his father's conundrum, and Micheal Hutchence as he would be considered had he not pranced around impersonating Jim Morrison in front of some fortunate synth players but rather just been some bloke in the corner of the local beer garden. By the end I put "Australian Tragic" on a par with what I consider Marx's masterpiece, "Sorry: The Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright." (www.goodreads.com/book/show/4450564.Sorr...) Buy it for someone for Honika or Christmas, then borrow it back before you leave. Or like me, just knick it from Tug Dumbly's kitchen when he's pissed. BDF View all my reviews >>

Benito in Cordite # 31

Go to http://www.cordite.org.au/content/poetry/epic/ to see it, and feel free to comment (being firm but fair.)