GIULIO MAGRINI

 

 

Rosebud Becoming Mumbles

 

You mature and become an adult

Others look at you and laugh

Make a proper living

Despise yourself

Try to be a respectable person

You do not deserve what you have

And rosebud continues to bloom

 

Nonno says many deny it

Humiliate rosebud

Saying it has no value

He says they are wrong

It is precious and the key

That unlocks splendor

In every human action

 

He declares rosebud will be there

After you are searched and stripped

Washed and sprayed

Put away from the rest of the world

It will be there when they tell you

Murder and destroy

Lie and cheat

Transgress and steal

 

Some smell rosebud

And become disturbed

They disapprove and look away

Declare rosebud is unpleasant

And Nonno whispers of abiding phases

 

There are others who imagine

They experience rosebud

When they give 10% and obey suspicious laws

Wander in churches and synagogues

Subjugated by water, smoke, and wafer

Praying and chanting

Oh Lord where is rosebud?

 

Others search for rosebud

Thinking they can find it

And it is not rosebud

But an illusion

They believe it, they live it

And it is sad

 

Nonno says rosebud waits for us

After mid-day betrayals

And through his continuing smiles

Below a battered gray fedora

Advises we will reminisce about rosebud

With old friends and little children

 

Nonno softly expresses

Others would not understand

And will be mystified

With an old man’s mumbling

 

And the triumph of rosebud

Sinks to traces and ashes

Uncaptured and futile

Brushed away by the wind

Decaying as a name on an old sled

With every lost memory

 

Not Dancing

In The Ashes Of Dreams

 

Unable to dance

They slosh

Trudge in the ashes of dreams

The pace inexorably withdraws

Backwards

 

Cruel voyeurs

Examine deteriorating

Expectation’s limp and gasp

Clutching the golden years

 

And the LPN asked

What was it this time?

They stretch desperately

Reach for recollection

Embrace the retrospect

And see the bygone dances

 

We told them

That if it were

Ever thus

And they had noticed

What was present

Where had they been?

 

They continue adrift

Through the cognitive fog

Cuddling the images

When they emerge

And vanish in the clouds

When they disappear

 

Ponder the frustration

Of everyone

Outside their dance

As there is no pleasure

Caressing the dead

 

GIULIO MAGRINI

 

GIULIO MAGRINI: Giulio Magrini has been nominated by Lothlorien Press for a Best of the Net award in 2024 and a Pushcart Prize in 2024 by Brownstone Poets. He was also nominated for a Best of the Net award in 2025 by Lothlorien Poetry Journal. The Color of Dirt is an anthology of his poetry and flash fiction. Giulio asks interested readers in the USA and Canada to contact him by email at: giulio27@verizon.net and request a personalized copy. Other readers may buy the book through the usual internet sources at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. As Giulio Magrini tells us, “We have put our hands in the dirt and sanctified each other.”