Say It Now

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-12-29T00_59_17-08_00

I’m losing my shit.

It’s running down my legs.

Say it now or forever hold your peace.

And the poetry came to me like a thief in the night.

And it saved me from myself and for that I’ll be forever grateful.

And the moon hangs in the empty sky spinning its pulp fiction lies as I await another surge of inspiration to kill me dead.

I’m not talking about a physical death.

I haven’t been physical with anyone for so long I’m not even sure I’d know what to do.

As I wrestle this existential crisis to its unforgiving, unrepentant conclusion I swear I’m through blaming myself for not taking responsibility when a gun was placed against my temple and I was given the choice to either give up names or die a sniveling deserter.

We drive through the rain like a country song that’s drunk itself into an early grave.

We drive until the wheels fall off and burn and that doesn’t even do the trick convincing us we’ve pushed ourselves quite far enough.

I became lost in the folds of your poisonous chapbooks long before discovering myself captivated by your smelly sex and obscene gestures of self-gratification and self-hatred and even that didn’t help me to see you for who you really are.

I want to say it now, but what if the poetry reveals nothing more than a cathedral full of sheepish believers praying on their rusty knees to God only knows what.

I remember the first time I licked your finite pussy and how I did it without a roadmap or some other GPS device leading me to the X that surely marks the spot.

I’m losing my shit, but I guess that’s to be expected when I was never very good at making up for lost time or going to bed early enough so that I’m ready for a new day and a new way to finally absolve myself of all these readymade sins.

Charles Cicirella

12/27/15

Wideopen Exhaust (For Don Howland)

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-12-21T21_52_29-08_00

Tear it all down.

It makes no difference anyhow.

And this poem probably will not impress you, but that’s not my problem and even if it was I wouldn’t own up to it.

There is shit and there is shinola and what’s in between is anyone’s guess in these hellfire times where the good guys are on the run and the terrorists rule the roost.

It’s no small thing being a rock ‘n’ roll intergalactic luminary especially when the underground has gone the way of New Sensations and the wolf that was once waiting patiently at the door has been fed upon by vampire sheep high on a tenured professor’s blood.

You didn’t feel like going anywhere. You wanted to stay in and deconstruct more songs from your fractured brainstem, but oftentimes when the creative juices start to flow you lose all control and it’s no longer up to you who will stay and who will go.

Some people have no clue what it even means to make a difference in this corrugated world of snapchat and drones that go bump in the night, while you have always been aware of how out of control things can get once the doors of perception have been cleansed and you go cold turkey from the Ritalin you’ve been taking since you were a hyperactive child and focus was a burden you could not square.

It really doesn’t matter if we ever play together because your diddley bow strangulated anti-sounds will reverberate inside my skullbank until I’m either freed from my chains or my chains do me in.

And this poem. This poem is just my way of saying thank you for never backing away from the fire because you know better than most if you don’t burn then what’s even the sense of waking up in the morning and taking a big, healthy dump?

Charles Cicirella

12/18/15

We're All Refugees

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-12-21T14_36_33-08_00

We’re all refugees. Each and every one of us.

And no one is better than anyone else.

Caste systems are complete and utter bullshit.

White’s not better than black and if you think it is you’re just wack.

Being a gentile is no better than being a Jew and if you believe that it is you need to go back to school and learn some honest to God respect.

This idea that someone’s religion makes them a terrorist is worse than caveman logic and proves you’re just a schoolyard bully who needs to learn their place and to keep their mouth shut if they don’t have anything nice to say.

No one is going to make America great again by throwing mud at everyone.

And the idea that because we have a black President we’re somehow less than what we were before is so out of line I’m not even sure how to tackle such outright bigotry without throwing a few punches and grinding your pale white ass into the dust.

We’re supposedly the most developed country in the world and yet we seem to have forgotten that just because someone is the loudest voice in the room doesn’t make them anymore qualified to be President.

We’re all immigrants. Each and every one of us.

Unless you’re a Native American and don’t get me started on the raw deal they continue being handed because the colors of the American Flag seem to have more to do with might than they ever had to do with who's actually right.

"The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" only appears to mean something once we’ve removed every impediment standing in our way and that includes women and children and very little has changed today. I am proud to be an American, but that hardly means I take pride in our past or have much hope for our future if we continue to spill blood in the name of God only knows who and that includes bombing hospitals because of bad intel or because we’re just plain fucked in the head.

Charles Cicirella

12/21/15

Toh kum ha ra (For Tommy)

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-12-18T22_39_06-08_00

At a loss for words.

At a loss for everything resembling mental health and a feeling that I’m grounded in some honest to goodness reality.

I think reality is overrated. Of course I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about because I’ve never felt clear. And I am not talking about Scientology. I prefer to leave that bloody cult in the dustbin of history.

At a loss for the cries of silence permeating my soul like a rescue dog gone rogue.

I was in the wilderness when I first happened upon my inner child. A primeval relic who believed in doing whatever it takes to stay out of sight.

And it made all the sense in this invisible world when everything started to break down and you were on the other side of the opaque wall looking through me with your ray gun eyes and a Judgment at Nuremberg resolve that brings me to my knees to this very day.

Repeat this mantra thirty three times every hour on the hour and call me in the morning.

I’ll be the doctor who’s not really a doctor, but plays one on TV because that’s the only part I could find that would accept me for who I was and not for who I wanted to be.

You’re something else and I mean that with all of my lobster bisque heart. Of course my heart isn’t what it used to be. Not in these days of obsolescence and a civil disobedience I cannot quite wrap my head around.

I’m tired of being tired and sick of feeling unwell.

I am also sick and tired of calling up friends and unloading on them when I’m quite certain there’s no one they want to hear from less.

I made my bed up on the floor and now even that floor space is vanishing. I feel like I’m becoming invisible and even the ghosts no longer have any use for me.

Charles Cicirella

12/17/15