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 Three Rivers Arts Festival, and 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. He was asked to perform one of his poems, The Pittsburgher, as an elegy honoring the late mayor Richard Caliguiri before the Pittsburgh Symphony at Point State Park before a 4th of July crowd of over 100,000 people. That poem is now archived in the Heinz History Museum. He has recently been published in many important and intimate presses like Dumpster Fire, Alien Buddha, and others. Magrini has always preferred the performance of his work over publishing. This work is a preview of a book of poetry and prose to be released later in the year. 

CHI-CHI ARTISTES

Historical obscurities
Fall from the poet’s tender lips
In drops of solemn black rain
Open-mouthed listeners
Stare bug-eyed
Comatose
Scrunch their eyebrows
Do the heroin nod
Blissful smiles portend
An indecipherable clarity of understanding

The disciples
Are under sedation

The poems of icons
Are venerated quietly
In shadows and rows
As the artiste masturbates
Fifteen-watt bursts
Of antiquated mystery and symbolism

Golf applause
Golf applause

Who can appreciate
The mysteries of the gifted?

Watch them slowly now
As they scratch bleeding fingers
Into the stony dirt
To praise truth and beauty

Defined today
As a cloudy day 
In the tomb

These trembling mystics
Posture and quiver their art
It is spun to us
This is the language of prophets
And the prisms of the Lord

Within the radiating jurisdiction
Of publicity men
That may be known 
As the beat and swirl
Melody and word man
Initiates a brilliant twilight separation
Between those who are artists

And those who are not
We are told of their muses 
Voices 
And foggy peculiarities

They’re complex and neurotic
Zealots of the first order
Undisciplined in the use of 
Controlled substances
And it is whispered
They empathize 
With minority causes

Artists feel pain we can only
Hope to feel

We are apprised 
This is the artist’s mystique
Oh ladies and gentlemen
Thank you
Thank you very much

I have two special friends
Who close their letters
With the phrase,
“In poetry”
How right they are

Everything 
Is “In poetry”

Not poets 
But people
People who write poetry
Do it because they must
Poetry is their natural continual reflection

Everyone must write because
We are the people and
Our voice is true

DISCOVERING WE ARE EXTINCT

INTRO


In the remarkable aspect of time
Grotesque merges to familiar
Infiltrates the caress of phantoms

Pirouettes of lunacy
Straddle the boulevard
Overlords march in
Shrouds of patrician pink
To goose-step directives and
Pound a tempo of bureaucratic chic

I can hear them 
Chanting in contentment
While they prey over me

I chirp my schedule 
To the numbed associated entirety 
And appreciate that 
Zombies cannot explain my load
Or advise how to discretely carry it 
As I continue to converse 
With flattened stone

At the very brink of deluge
I am promised anesthesia
Temporary abatement
From the beatings and slander

A kindred spirit promises
That I am alright
And whispers 
I will never be alone

DISCOVERING WE ARE EXTINCT

I see my rippled image
In the diluted lakes of your eyes
Where is the cleansing of salt
That intermingled between us?

It has occluded inside me
Where it preserves my vitals
Crystalline and dormant
I become the focusing 
Through the fog 

I remember whimpering promises
Before the bruises and bleeding
But my congealed cadaver
Is displayed in disarray
In a land absent of rainbows

There is no dispensation  
In a state populated by the dead
Where the only legacy 
Is that the obsolete 
Cannot be damaged beyond extinction

We are the undiscovered fossils
Beneath the steps of the living
Dry bleached and lifeless
The memories of our bones 
Loiter under the abiding mess
Obliged that no one examines
The failure of our remains