New Release: Mendes Biondo- Young Cruel and Hungry was the Night (Holy &intoxicated Publications, 2019) 18 pages

Mendes Biondo is a young Italian journalist and poet. This chapbook follows two of his recent publications, the bilingual Italian/English “Spaghetti & Meatballs” (Pski’s Porch Publishing, 2018) and “Where Hot Rods Run” (Cajun Mutt Press, 2019). Biondo’s poetry is like hot spilt blood on the page. His work is raw, exuberant, angry and full of imperfections. 

Biondo’s poem “Fighting With Blood-Swollen Veins” is amongst the best which recklessly expresses his passion for life. It is a kind of manifesto of anger in which Biondo openly vents what makes his blood boil. He gets mad, raises his voice and never holds back. He even reckons  that “it is good for my heart.”

In Young Cruel and Hungry was the Night, Biondo writes about writing poetry, Bukowski, fucking and dying. The title of the collection derives from the poem “Landing Phase.” In the concluding lines of the poem, the speaker presumably Biondo, describes the “inner death” and the sense of loss he feels after leaving university:

as far as I am concerned

I feel that gasoline flowing into my veins

I’m just a tired bull

running through the streets of Pamplona

I can feel I lost a unit

like the space rockets do when they abandon the earth

but I’m still waiting for the last hit of the matador

to fall on the ground and drink my own

young

cruel and

hungry

blood

As indicated in the above passage, Biondo likes using mixed metaphors and he especially loves extended metaphors in his poetry. His poems “Boxing With Life”, “Homecoming Blues” and “The Night Death Came To Drink Something With Me” are memorable examples of this trait in his writing.

In the following poem, Biondo draws the incongruous comparison of death being a sexy temptress:

The Night Death Came To Drink Something With Me

she was a redhead woman

               or maybe she was blonde

               I cannot remember now

               how I imagined her

mrs. death

the stiletto-shoes-woman

the sexiest person on earth

so sexy that we all have to pass

a lot of time

with her

at the end of all our struggles

the stiletto-woman was wearing a tight dress

wrapping those rollercoaster

people use to call breasts

and ass and hips

they were shining in front of the moon

             she was sexy and she knew it

my house was a real mess at the time

I lived alone and my only mate was the microwave

a funny guy dreaming of becoming a wooden oven

one of these days

she took out the rum bottle I hid some days before

she opened it and she poured the human gasoline

into nutella branded glasses

                don’t judge me

                they were good glasses

                after all

so it’s my time to go?

not yet

why are you here?

just looking

looking for what?

how did you feel

bad as hell

I know my man but stay cool it will pass

another sip of rum?

yes thanks

we talked with the same rhythm

of a typewriter

crying out a blue story

on a white sheet

then she shut up

               the moon was high

               and we were drunk

so we danced

slowly and tenderly

a cold and reassuring hug

just me and

the death

our glasses of rum

swinging with her stiletto shoes

For more information about this limited release contact Holy &intoxicated publisher johndrobinson@yahoo.co.uk

Featuring Adrian Manning

......................................................

Hard Skinned

lizards, snakes 

and toads

infiltrate my dream

scurrying into 

the cracks

or leaping at me

cold blood and 

soulless eyes

hard skinned in 

reptilian

madness

increasing in number

a virus

crowding the nights

silent space

until I wake

sweating

damp and

cool

and

joining them

in my 

sickness

.................................

We Are Three Old Friends

sat around a table 

with a fresh round of drinks

and the laughter

from so many years of 

not taking anything seriously

still rumbling in our guts

so now when we riff 

on the state of the nation 

and the decline of civilisation 

we can disagree and 

forgive each other

as easily as the rain falling and evaporating on the window pane reflecting 

our gentle leaning

toward last orders

at the bar

.............................

Music and Noise

music without words 

that’s what I need right now

some space to breathe

noise static works

sound almost unbearable 

but

there’s comfort in discord

.................................

Das ist Alles

ok

it's been a ride

but

let's forget it

let's call it quits 

let's get out of here

and really make it

you'll know where to

find me

longitude -1.139759

latitude 52.636878

you may hear me 

coughing into the clouds 

sometime 

somewhere

maybe you won't 

be listening

but

you know where 

to find me

and

das ist alles

das ist allen

...............................

Codeine Coincidence

I’m sat in the doctors

waiting room

reading a book of poems

by John D. Robinson

while a woman is

talking loudly with no

sense of her own privacy 

about her codeine

prescription 

I turn the page to read

‘codeine haiku’ 

the next poem

as the receptionist tells

her that her script is

with the chemist

“Is there plenty of it?”

the woman asks

and I look at the page

thinking there’s more

around

than I thought 

obviously

the screen flashes

and she is gone

I’ve turned the page 

to the next poem

and that is the end

of the codeine 

coincidence

and

I sit hoping

everything will be

ok

A bio:

Adrian Manning is a poet from Leicester, England. He has been widely published in magazines, online and in a number of chapbooks. A full length selected poems collection “Digging Up The Bones” has just been published by Uncollected Press (https://therawartreview.com/books-for-sale/ ) He is also the editor of Concrete Meat Press.