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Tuesday, November 12, 2019

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

Saturday, November 9, 2019

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.