Mario d'Offizi is a Cape Town based writer and poet. He is also assistant editor of Sawubona magazine.
Mario's work has featured in many publications over the years and his writing - prose and poetry - has been critically acclaimed thanks to its unfailing honesty and the warmth of his poetic voice.
NOW AVAILABLE...
Banana Crates and Wire Mesh spans several decades and sheds Mario d'Offizi's unique and often brutally honest light on a wide range of subjects, from the taboo to the mundane. Mario published his first poetry at an early age, but Banana Crates and Wire Mesh is his first anthology - it's a book that brings a lifetime of observations on the minutiae of South African life to the fore.
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In the media...
Manie
Old Manie
with the horns
tattooed on his forehead
one above each eye
high into his receded hairline
like the devil
the children taunted
but so far from the devil
was Manie
he tended the roses in the Parliament gardens
and was a gentle drunk
we used to leave our kitchen door
open at night for Manie
a blanket on the floor
for when he couldn’t make
his way home; he, innocently dead-drunk
in the neighborhood
a story was told to me about Manie
by his friend the blacksmith in the blacksmith’s yard
adjoining our kitchen door
that Manie was in fact
an English gentleman from good stock
who on his return
from the great war in France
all shell-shocked and broken
was turned away from his family
and quickly dispatched to the Cape
So here was Manie
a friend of the blacksmith
and our family friend
I used to help Manie blow the bellows
in the blacksmith shop
and he drank wine with my brothers
very early one morning
after a terrible, terrible winter’s night
one brother, on his way to work to catch the train
found Manie curled up on a bench
on Wittebome station
just across the road from us
He tugged at the sleeping Manie
but Manie was dead
one of us had mistakenly
locked the door
Old Manie
with the horns
tattooed on his forehead
one above each eye
high into his receded hairline
like the devil
the children taunted
but so far from the devil
was Manie
he tended the roses in the Parliament gardens
and was a gentle drunk
we used to leave our kitchen door
open at night for Manie
a blanket on the floor
for when he couldn’t make
his way home; he, innocently dead-drunk
in the neighborhood
a story was told to me about Manie
by his friend the blacksmith in the blacksmith’s yard
adjoining our kitchen door
that Manie was in fact
an English gentleman from good stock
who on his return
from the great war in France
all shell-shocked and broken
was turned away from his family
and quickly dispatched to the Cape
So here was Manie
a friend of the blacksmith
and our family friend
I used to help Manie blow the bellows
in the blacksmith shop
and he drank wine with my brothers
very early one morning
after a terrible, terrible winter’s night
one brother, on his way to work to catch the train
found Manie curled up on a bench
on Wittebome station
just across the road from us
He tugged at the sleeping Manie
but Manie was dead
one of us had mistakenly
locked the door