GIULIO MAGRINI

 

My Life In Empty Space

 

Everyone has it

What they were was taken

Or left

Expelled with the trash

The residual leavings of successors

 

Excreted lifeless empty

I am left with the holes of memory

Through the laughing smiles

The touch of a small hand

The eyes ascending

Loving the birds

Especially the red ones

You remember those days of dressing up

She hated the attention of her favorite color

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

Until her design finalizes in 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 me

 

There is no me without us

And that is my life in empty space

 

A Response To The Loss

Of Sinéad O’Connor

 

Not the previous and unscented fragrance of lavender

Soft caresses on eager bodies

That would have welcomed tenderness

 

What to do with love spoken to the deaf

Unheard and expressed to a rubbery wall

Of elastic spirit

Defaced muted mocked

Flowing in a river of callous responses

Within regretful days

 

Sleepwalking within her unburied corpse

Regret surges through our decaying hearts

Memory endures withered and foul

Stuck in contemporary sorrow

Missed opportunity

And incessant loss

As every fresh emotive attempt

Befouls in exasperation and futile continuation

 

To these present smothered

Expressions without blossoms

Wilted wasted withheld and unreceived

Now choked and rotting in full view

Living with a prophecy detailed in song

By a priestess of memory and enlightenment

 

And the art remains but the source

Suffocated by worshipers

Naïve of complicity

In the murder of genius and discovery

The killing gene dominates and continues to triumph

 

“Can't you forgive

What you think I've done?”*

*From This Is a Rebel Song by Sinéad O'Connor

 

Tread Softly Because

You Tread On My Dreams

There is a picture of my Nonno with an inscription of the last line from a poem by W.B. Yeats called: He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven.

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Unwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.


My dreams were your ashes


Downtrodden


Not embedded in luxury

A leaden crucifix and greasy black beads

The pen knife and smile as you cut the peaches

Rendering the sweetest offerings

To tiny fingers wiggling impatiently

Sticky and outstretched


My fantasies occupy

Your stars

And reside in infinity


You told me your dreams

And I danced in them

I listened with delight

At the melodies in your tunes


You arranged the synchrony of our spirits


Sí… Che bello…


We share our steps

In dances of rapture and revelation

Our blood and spirit

Twirls enchanting tender couplets


First you with me looking up

As I always did

Until this final turn

To welcome the face of stars in the firmament


We are primed to take our places

In supreme excursions together

To converse with the countenance

Of ecstasy radiating in every heaven

GIULIO MAGRINI

 

GIULIO MAGRINI has been nominated by Lothlorien Press for a Best of the Net award and for a Pushcart Prize by Brownstone Poets. 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. I will pay all mailing fees. 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.”