Four Poems by Giulio Magrini

CHRIST WAS CRUCIFIED ONCE



The rest of us were made to be recidivists

Perspiring fingers slide along beads

There is no resting place for the weary

A miraculous and continuing

Engorged tank of sorrow

Draining the mystery of soul

Assigns an amorphous vagary that holds grace

And fuels your spirit to enlightenment

Advertised in elite journals

By shrewd and consecrated mystics

Contented appeased and evacuated



From baptism to extreme unction

A travail of suffering and penance

Must be tallied by

The most terrible and officious



Auditor in the sky



Sometimes greasy haired interpreters

Direct their luminous teeth and thunderous voices

But not always loud…

Celebrants chant in the background

Hymns are sung and there is no doubt

These voices are synchronized with rustling cassocks

Bursting within the sacristy

Enthusiastic and resolute ministers

Benign and solicitous fathers

Masters of the soft sale



Despite what you have heard

Or seen in the neighbourhood

The streets where you live

Are not their screaming streets

Or their whispering streets

From pulpits or television amphitheatres



We are their fertile ground of imperfection

We are the seeds of their ghastly farm

Do not cry the blame is their greatest exploitation

We only need to remember



As we walk through the carnivals

Eating a hot sausage grilled by Mother Mary

That ring toss for Jesus

Will not decrease the souls in limbo

And the grateful tears at sermon’s end

Will not pave our way to paradise



Your humanity is the key to their grift

And the recurrence of sin comprising your heart



Gauge the satisfaction of your devout collaborators

They taught the pushers their game

Their perpetual currency is repetitive castigation

Love your flaws while you can




FROM THE STRANGLED ARTISTS WHISPERING TO THE DEAD



We proudly offer our scribbling wanderings to the world

Through perceived essence of art and literature

And the structured and learned halls of academia

Develop the totality of poetry



An aesthetic jumble here

An incomprehensible insight there

A precise axis of contempt

Erupting as a literate sandbox

And you wonder if these are the playgrounds

Of Pablo, Sylvia and Langston



Is this examination virtuosity

Or clever comedic extracts?

A snare drum rolls and a gaudy declaration…

“This is one from my innovation period”



We are the community of living writers

Avoided and impractical

Disrespected by the beloved generic

Or used to elevate patriarchal arrogance staring downward

Look for us among the unpaid

Visualizing dreaming and yearning

In maudlin recantations



We write in tears and frustration

We reflect our anger of world

Like our stiff predecessors before us

Their ancient dust seasons our time

And we in turn yearn to enhance the future



We are befuddled by our position in this technique

We have not been told by our forebears of our future glories

A perverted clock has governed every artist’s time

From today’s strangled to yesterday’s dead



We can accept the army of ghosts from the past

But it is more difficult

To explain ghosts of the present

Skulking on the internet



They compose intricacies of words

And thoughts that blossom new insight

That flourish in obscurity

It is not because no one reads poetry

It is because no one reads



Amongst the infamous scarce productions

Of their gasping choking existence

They petition like wild dogs for LIKES

To satiate their hunger on social media



The homeless want a dollar

Their last capital spent

On a marker and cardboard

We live in the strange dynamic

Of letting the dead rest

What alternative dynamics are there?



Maya, Yeats, and Bukowski

Left us with the stimulation of their work

We are in the inspiration business

No words were ever for sale

Even when we try




MY LIFE IN EMPTY SPACE



Everyone has it

What they were was taken

Or left

Expelled with the trash

The residual leavings of life



Excreted lifeless empty

I am left with the holes

Of memory through the laughing smiles

The touch of a small hand

The eyes turned upward

Loving the birds

Especially the red ones

You remember those days of dressing up

She hated the attention of her favourite colour

And was patient in the museums

Odd for a child her age

You wondered at the joy she commanded

Where would it take her?



You dreamt for her

Her choices viewed from immature bows and taffeta

Your charge to plan and dream for her

Until her design finalized by her seasoned choices



That season never came

And it was never planned for

Because there was no plan

And there was no life

That made an allowance

For unbearable terrible eventualities

Possibilities that are unthought

Through the moments and breaths

Of a child’s happy gasps

Of one more time Momma

One more time



What can we do with these empty spaces?

They will never be her

And what have I become living as a minus

From the memories of her in my heart

There is no reckoning of us left or of me



There is no me without us

And that is my life in empty space




HER DELIGHTFUL SMILE



Axiom: Beaming deception is shrouded by constant smiles



Janet smiled to excess

Happiness exists in flashes

Not in perpetuity

A bewildering obscurity

Glistening behind conspiracies



This is the one with the cackling sister

Behind the curtain

Plotting against the naïve brother

This was the main feature

Unveiling the cartoons of my life

I have seen this one

Janet the flying monkey

Grinning madly in the air



There was no awakening

From the nightmare of Janet

Hallucinations night after night

Calling for my little sister



We spoke for years and years

In the terrible daylight

Her incessant smiling

Continuing and chronic



Truth was a stranger

When I shared my pain

She replied with a smile



I grasped for her but found smiling desolation

She is gone but her smile remains in memory

And now I rely on the remembrance

Of her smiling face

And the nothing it gave me

Giulio Magrini started writing poetry in the early 1970’s, and takes most of his inspiration from the darker sides of human nature. He has performed at the Three Rivers Arts Festival, and many other venues in Pittsburgh. Giulio has conducted poetry workshops in alternative high schools, prisons, drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers, and hosted a radio show for local poets. His book The Color of Dirt will be published sometime this Summer by Word Association Press. Magrini has always preferred the performance of his work over publishing, until now.