Page Content © Benito di Fonzo
Benito Di Fonzo is a journalist, playwright, poet and performer.
Benito has written for, and been profiled by, some of the finest, and lowest, publications including The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun Herald, The Weekend Australian, and Bardfly Magazine, of which he was the editor, and possibly the only reader.
Benito has performed his poems and tragicomic travelogues in theatres, bars, pubs, piazzas, toilet cubicles and radio studios in London, Edinburgh, Sydney, Melbourne, Rome, Adelaide, Perth and Ubud (Indonesia).
Several of Benito’s plays have been performed at The Sydney Opera House, which is that big place on the harbour with the wings. He has written radio serials and plays for both 2SER and 2FBI, and has performed his work on those and other stations including ABC 702 & Radio National, and Resonance FM (London).
Benito’s most recent production “The Chronic Ills of Robert Zimmerman, AKA Bob Dylan (A Lie) A Theatrical Talking Blues & Glissendorf” was the hit of Adelaide Fringe 2010 and was followed by sold-out seasons in Sydney and Byron Bay that received a litany of glowing reviews. It will travel to New York in 2011.
In 2001 Benito was awarded the Inner City Life Literary Award by The NSW Writers’ Centre. His favourite colour is irrelevant.
Here is Benito on stage with John Maddox at WordinHand, September 2010...
Filmed and edited by Shannon O'Connor for STO'C Productions.
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Here's a link to Benito's BLOG.
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Sunday Mourning
(1st Prize 2oo1 Inner City Life Literary Competition.)
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 in Surry Hills
where you can purchase a gram of Turkish delight to lull away the recovering day.
As I pedal my feet down the street,
my blindman's brain riding my body like a battered bicycle,
the sick sweet stench of beer and kebab 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 turn inside out.
The bouncer outside Feedback,
his bored broad shoulders bursting sluggishly through his superfluous suit,
looks as fresh as the apathetic frankfurt 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 restlessly 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 pre-dawn clouds, black & blue as a boxer's brain,
change hue to glaring bright blue
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.
© Benito Di Fonzo. Oct, 1997.
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