A Complete Unknown—Not a review.

   I think the thing I’m most surprised about with all the press this movie is getting is that neither the general audience nor the reviewers are talking about how dark this movie is. I mean, it’s really dark, and I’m not even talking about the parts related to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The film, perhaps like any fairy tale, has its share of monsters and maidens, but the monster that seems to be wrestling with the most, shall we say, demons, is Bob himself. I think that’s what I found myself liking the most about this movie (I am going back and forth on whether it actually is a Hollywood movie or more cinema vérité) is that it doesn’t shy away from the fact that the main character is kind of an asshole as Joan Baez says to Bob in one scene. With all the countless songs he has written and the influential and sound-charging records he has made, silly me thinking that, at least, at times, the movie would celebrate his creativity, and yet instead, the creative process is rarely examined. Even during iconic scenes, like the recording of “Like a Rolling Stone,” the scene is given short shrift, and it’s a real shame when the actual facts that we know (gathered from Al Kooper, among others who were in the studio) are so interesting, and I believe would have been fascinating to watch play out on screen. I guess, like Dylan himself, you never know what you are going to get, as quite often what we may have expected is turned upside down or even inside out depending upon Bob’s whims. I walked out of the movie with such a strong sense of impending doom, and I haven’t been able to shake it. Perhaps this is what Bob Dylan himself feels, and if it is, I think I’m starting to better understand why he tries to stay hidden.

Charles Cicirella

12/28/2024

Coffee Tastes Good

Coffee good

Poetry gone

Another mass shooting, more empty words

 

Chaos washes over me like orange marmalade

When I was a kid I read Paddington because I too felt like an orphan

These days I do my best to keep my head down, I’m Jewish and have a target on my back

 

Persecution is never the game I play

Unless it has to do with nailing myself to a crossbow like Robin Hood  

Religion another loaded chamber filled with bullets and searing reprisals

 

After centuries of beachcombing the human condition finally became inhumane

Even poets have a red line or red lion depending on the zoo they frequently visit

Word on the street is he reeks of ketchup, BO and ass and I believe it.

 

Charles Cicirella

1/5/2024

I wrote this about the new Bob Dylan Bootleg Series Fragments - Time Out of Mind Sessions 1996-1997 The Bootleg Series Vol. 17.

“Well, my nerves are exploding and my body’s tense”

God is his shield as the blues rain down like Biblical prophecy.
 
  First time I heard this record was on a cassette as I lay on a couch on Maynard Ave. reading Philip K. Dick. As epiphanies go the songs washed over me like dirges as the Shroud of Turin made its presence known. Bob comes clean on these songs like he hasn’t before and on disc one with the sheen gone these songs become even more confessional and cantankerous. We’re witnessing the blue boy step from the wet, oily painting to shake hands with death and demand his comeuppance. I’ve never attempted to parse his words because what would be the bloody point when transgressions are revealed and the sun shines upon him like an unkempt prayer. This music is personal like a secret only revealed once you’ve knelt down and acknowledged that your creator is neither your best friend nor worst enemy.
    
  Imagine the tragedy to befall us as another lifeblood-refrain tears us to shreds. I’ve always heard “Cold Irons Bound” as a road song. A song Lincoln would have played as he freed the slaves and dealt with his own oppressive demons. The glass is shattered as Bob steps closer to the edge and questions his impermanence. I believe the record is more life affirming than people realize as Dylan wrestles with the muse that has him in a chokehold. One’s legendary status only gets in the way when you’re as hungry as a wolf and as treacherous as a quisling. Nothing makes any sense as these fragments are rubbed into our wounds like fire and brimstone.

Charles Cicirella

Poem 4

Drinking water

Half-naked

Limp

Charles Cicirella
8/21/2022

Poem 3 (Groceries)

coffee

creamer

garlic bread

coca cola

Charles Cicirella
8/21/2022

Poem 2

Lying on the mattress, cowboys and injuns making bedlam on my soul                                                                                                                                                                                      

                                                                     I cannot breathe this                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                     polluted anxiety anymore

Charles Cicirella

8/21/2022 

Poem

The raging river sounds like a highway of tears repeat after me I will not drown in my subconscious I will not drown in my subconscious

Charles Cicirella

This is how I write.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2022-07-16T03_52_57-07_00

It’s how I’ve always written.
I’m in and out the door in ten to fifteen minutes.
The imagery lies in wait like a big cat on the prowl.

Streams of consciousness freely flowing like jagged puzzle pieces down an opaque river.
Poetry is in my blood like chunky alphabet soup served at the shelter for the culturally ill-defined.
This is how I write as I hardly break a sweat churning out the pulp like a versifier high on noir and sodden bread.

Reasonable doubt goes out the window as a jury of my peers stare blankly back at me from gothic mirrors leaving nothing, but the macabre to the convulsed imagination.
I believe I fell in love because her soul was just as polluted as mine and when she did the tango it was for keeps.
This is how I blindside you by not once coming up for air until all the inflatable poets are deflated and another beat writer rehearses for his overdue retirement.

This game of to have and have not never impressed me so I left community college and refused to look back.
The stage like the gallows is the only place I’ve ever let it all hang out as an audience of Titanic faces fights over the very last lifeboat.
Look up at the moon and tell me how little it has changed since first writing about it thirty nine years ago.

Charles Cicirella
7/12/2022

The Blood

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2022-07-12T09_11_38-07_00

  His voice uncovers the great mystery. Darkness lifts as the stone is pushed away and a new man walks free. Rob’s “A Voice from on High” is the song the Israelites heard as they escaped Egypt because Rob carries a great burden in his soul. All honest to God prophets must sacrifice everything before a burning bush is revealed to them. Blood covers his voice because it’s Blood carrying us through as we’re freed from bondage and enter the Promise Land dressed in sackcloth and fresh tears.  

Charles Cicirella
7/11/2022