Interview with Ulysses Fruguglietti – First Friday Open Mic at Dagny’s, May 2, 2025
By: Carla Joy Martin
Ulysses shared two poems with us at our lively Open Mic. Here is the first poem:
Anxiety
Hey just a quick note for this crowd
I’m not really good at speaking aloud.
I’m not really good at much these days
except having a lot of feelings
and having a lot of things to say.
But mastering this dichotomy
would have been a hell of a lot easier
had I not performed an emotional lobotomy.
For too many years parts of my person
were stored in mental compartments with an
unhealthy dose of self-injected lethality.
Dissociation was in the mortar, poured from my
corrupted coping machinery, and in that
lay the groundwork for my concrete conformity.
Unbeknownst to many, every cell screamed as they
were subjected to this containment and
waged an internal siege. So now, here I am
queerly striving towards opening all those
compartments and nursing them back to a healthy reality.
This new person standing on the recent ruins
of the one I used to be. Analyzing my pulchritudinous
existence with healing brutality.
Q. What inspired you to write your poem? What is its back story? Did you see or hear something that took you back in time? Were you grappling with a dilemma?
A. Anxiety is a poem about coming out and communicating caused quite a bit of the title. Life altering changes and so much processed through this poem. This is a constant returning to remembering who you are and where you’ve come from. So much healing in this life underwent and happily undergoing towards sharing my quirky nourishing self. It’s a remembering from a long-ago feeling and an overcoming of fear by knowing it cannot rule your reality anymore.
Ulysses also read this second poem to us:
Tarot
Fallen for a fuck up. A fool
pulled, naively prancing
the path of love. Aren’t we all just that?
All fools in love. So why not apply
this rule to oneself. Tumultuously
forgotten baby steps from
emotional storms of eons
ago taken toward this acceptance
accelerated to balanced. Amorphous
bespoken shapeshifter, becoming,
no longer debilitated, no longer a deserter.
Love like beach sand gracefully lost
slowly through panics temporary silent
harassment. Honorably foolish, here
still seriously silly,
levied all old sullenness. Loops laughing,
muzzled no longer, coy courage. Mountains
of insurmountable grief offerings
shedding like water off a duck’s wing, silent.
Everlastingly too late. Never too late ever
in love. Or so I was soulfully informed.
and now just as
fucked up on forging a future.
Q. What inspired you to write your poem? What is its back story? Did you see or hear something that took you back in time? Were you grappling with a dilemma?
A. Tarot is a poem of self-love. It’s fully accepting who I am and understanding people’s paths aren’t always aligned with yours forever. Inspired by the thought of loving oneself as foolishly and with grandiosity as one can love someone else. Reinforcing a little humor in the humility of my personal naive perspectives and trusting yourself again.
Q. Do you like to read poetry? If you do, what poets have influenced you? Who have messages you connect with, or styles you admire? If there are musicians or artists that inspire you, mention them as well.
A. I love to read poetry, and love even more to have it read to me. Poets that set my soul on fire in inspiration and admire beyond belief: Edna St. Vincent Milay, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Oliver, Alok Vaid-Menon, Ocean Vuong…the list can continue and leaving out so many. Continuously a sap for those folks and all their written works.
Q. What advice would you give to other folks wanting to create poems? How do you make a poem? Do you have a special place you go to, or music you listen to, etc.? Do you just let it flow, or do you edit every sentence? Give us a glimpse into your creative process.
A. ‘Write every day’ was the best advice I have ever heard and the most beneficial to my art. Even if it’s a crappy strung together sentence, or a beaut of a line. Personally, let emotion turn into purpose by giving it punctuation. I write everyday with that mindset. When a prompt forms like a lightning bolt of something to form, I have to jot down the idea in my phone or something handy. I am a sucker for editing and finding the right words as a poem or work of writing emerges. Poetic passion gets struck and I try to get as much of it down as I can before beginning the game of researching the right phrases in editing.
