Stand Your Ground

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-12-21T17_04_35-08_00

Words are consequences

The division of right and wrong is not partisan

Both sides of the aisle is cooked up spin and divided we fall

Loosen the screws

Prisons are full of parole violators

Drive into the crowd and claim religious intolerance

At some point might making right and determining policy needs to cease and desist

Our end game of the end always justifying the means doesn’t amount to a hill of brown or black beans

Social justice has been hung out to dry as we’re put back into chains and the truth has been sidelined by a man-child whose only plan of attack is distract, distract, distract

I want what’s right

You want what’s right

Or are we ready to simply settle for what’s convenient as we drive thru yet another Starbucks and get our fix of designer caffeine and Hail Mary innuendos?

Our word should mean more than just a Caesar salad and our inability to squarely look our own Foggy Bottom reflections in the bloodshot eyes

Why is it so tough for liberals to push back on conservatives? It’s most certainly not because the right has the left beat on the issues

I believe if we don’t stand our ground sooner than later we’re going to lose more than just our consciences in this fight between the haves and have nots

Are you willing to sell your country out for a few more votes?

The Republicans are and did

Are you willing to just look the other way as another human being is treated like they’ve no right to say anything when they’re manhandled or even worse raped into silence?

Are you just going to stand there and do nothing or even worse add your vote to a chorus of dissenting voices on not only the rule of law, but the rule of humanity in our closeted system of reprobates and soiled Bible salesmen?

Charles Cicirella

12/19/17

Rough and Tumble (For Joe Cohen)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-12-19T07_41_19-08_00

We were in the same homeroom all through junior high and high school.

He was one of the popular kids. Me, I knew all of the popular kids, but I didn’t fit in anywhere. Not even with the other outcasts.

Joe had this way about him that always made you feel good about yourself and I believe that’s because he accepts people for who they are no ifs, ands or buts.

When I see him at the reunions I always feel like I’m meeting the Godfather of Mayfield Heights or wherever it is he resides because he carries himself with such an unmistakable confidence you know messing with him would be a big mistake.

I was surprised when he told me he reads my poetry that I post on FB, but that just goes to show you, you never know whose paying attention and what interests they may hold.

Going to watch another episode of The Walking Dead and try and get it out of my head that I may soon be on the street like an overzealous zombie or disabused Democrat.

The wind is breaking and there’s a good chance it will never get put back together again. Not if the deregulation continues and the climate deniers refuse to see the inconvenient truth through the burning trees.

Some people are probably wondering if this poem is about Joe Cohen, me or our screwed up politics that has us under siege and my answer is simply that this poem is about everything and nothing.

It’s about laying down a gauntlet or drawing a line in the sand or whatever metaphor makes sense to you as Joe and I catch up over lunch and for at least an hour or so I feel safe and like no one can touch me because Mr. Cohen has my back.

Charles Cicirella

12/19/17

Am I Hot?

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-12-17T13_34_10-08_00

There’s more and more crust in my ears.

Probably because I am showering less and less.

I’ve been depressed since before the burning bush took residence in my head.

I remember when I was a kid not being able to push down the malaise covering me like Paddington’s orange marmalade.

Only trips to the library on my yellow Free Spirit ten speed did anything to lessen the fear and anxiety I was experiencing.

When I started to write at fourteen it was like I’d finally found a friend and didn’t feel so lost or uncomfortable in my own skin.

You want the truth?

You want to know if magic’s real and if wishes really do come true?

Watch me ride into Jerusalem on the back of an ass and never forget how easy it is to get lost in your own complex of martyrs and Minotaur’s.

My crotch smells like the cheese rotting in the fridge and I’m resistant to taking a shower because I don’t particularly like the water’s fingers touching my opaque skin.

I know I best drag myself into the bathroom no matter if there’s a door or not because bathing is a part of life like the Heimlich maneuver and five o’clock shadow.

It’s always been so much easier to write a poem than to do the day to day things we must do to stay human like laundry and finding gainful employment.

Even other poets don’t seem to get me and that’s okay because I’ve never much trusted the status quo or the academic sludge passed off as poetry.

I wonder if when Christ returns if he’ll have any time for me or if he’ll dismiss my chosen status and instead pick someone else to play on his basketball team.

My fifteen minutes of fame escape from my penis like Stormtroopers hell-bent on protecting the Death Star or at the very least making sure George Lucas is not disturbed.

There’s less and less skin being left in the game as high-ranking insiders decide even their own companies are no longer worth investing in.

We’re at a crossroads of cataclysmic proportions and even the Cowardly Lion can no longer protect us from ourselves.

If we’re not willing to face the absolute truth then what good are we as we continue to take God’s name in vain and become more and more comfortable with the yellow and blue flames?

Charles Cicirella

12/17/17

Am I Dead?

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-12-16T15_57_57-08_00

I know I shouldn’t have to ask, but sometimes that which is obvious eludes me like a hard spanking or soft kiss.

The poetry stuffed inside my gut like Little Debbie Snack Cakes and sometimes it makes sense while most of the time I’m left hanging by the most tenuous of threads.

It’s not a sign of death, but oftentimes avoiding your deepest, darkest feelings will only leave you in limbo or Passaic, New Jersey.

I’m calling out to you like a harpy.

Like a Bettie Page pin-up who allowed the leopard to lick her pussy because she liked how the leopard changed its spots for the holidays.

I’m calling out to you from underneath the coffee table because I’m afraid to face all the burgeoning questions resting atop another unread copy of Vanity Fair or within the folds of your James Brown “Mother Popcorn” skin.

The Democrats have finally proven beyond the shadow of any doubt just how spineless they are as the Mad Hatter sits in the White House eating his curds and whey, shitting out more self-congratulatory tweets and poisoning America with an unabashed ignorance we’ve not seen in a century or more on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Let’s go the way of the Dreamers who if congress have their way will be deported before you can blink an eye or flick a booger off your pointed and pugnacious finger.

I wanted to stay inside where it was warm, but I knew if I didn’t go out into the streets and start to march I’d find myself questioning why I still even exist in this land of defamation and ridicule.

Are we already dead?

Are we quite sure we’ll have the upper hand when push comes to shove and shove decides to sneak across the border and become Canadian?

You want the biggest slice of the pie? Okay fine, but just keep in mind the karmic chickens that will eventually come home to roost and all the repercussions that will whip you like a slave in orbit once a not so silent minority has their final say.

Charles Cicirella

12/16/17

Am I Alive?

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-12-15T21_20_12-08_00

I know I shouldn’t have to ask, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the living from the dead.

The poetry pours from me like blood, semen, piss and shit.

It’s not a sign of life, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

Let’s lose ourselves down the rabbit hole.

Alice called and wants her looking glass back.

Jack the Ripper called and said thanks for not putting up too much of a fight.

The Republicans have finally proven beyond the shadow of any doubt party before country no matter what, no matter who gets dead.

It’s the five year anniversary of Sandy Hook. We mustn’t celebrate our inability or ineffectiveness to make a difference.

This goes triple for you President Obama who proved just how dangerous hope can be when used as a dowsing rod to locate a nation’s sweet spot and then exploit it for their own political means.

Are we alive?

Does it matter if we’re only normalizing our horror until the spilling of blood becomes our national pastime like the trafficking of children and the privatization of our morality?

Proof of life is overrated especially when the air is unbreathable, the water is undrinkable and you’re a ghost walking around in someone else’s skin.

Charles Cicirella

12/15/17

Evolution

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-12-02T23_39_14-08_00

Ready to grow.

Moon pours through the trees.

Cat pounces on dead tortoise.

A slave to the art.

Justifications and rationales do not exist.

There is no glass. All therapists are full of shit.

Printing innards keeps me grounded and focused on what’s possible.

When she posts about assembling chapbooks my loins start to quiver and shake.

A means to an end doesn’t mean a damn thing if you’re not willing to commiserate.

Ready to get up and go.

Ready to go the distance no matter pratfalls or syrupy endings.

I desire to bring out the best in you by sharing only the best parts of myself.

Charles Eric Cicirella

12/2/17

Secret Alphabets

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-11-22T01_07_45-08_00

Writing again

I think

The kind of writing that will never get the attention of John Burroughs

Sometimes I wonder why that is. Most of the time I just accept the reality lying before us, perverse and swollen, bubbling with machismo and rapid fire flatulence

Christina M. Brooks is considering quitting poetry which really pisses me off because she has a real gift. Plus not sure how you give up something you’re born to do

Smoking pot

Listening to The Doors

Thinking about the young woman who sold me my bong. Her ass looked amazing inside those tight blue jeans. Made me rethink killing myself for the time being

Wanna get high?

Wanna break on through?

Then stop believing the endless barrage of bullshit being spilt like milk or a child’s blood

Charles Cicirella

11/19/17

Just The Tip

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-11-28T22_13_28-08_00

Burned the tip of my finger

Lighting the glass pipe

I guess it’s the price of being a stoner

Always wanted to believe irresponsibility was a virtue

Here’s my rub if fucking little boys in the butt

Isn’t a cardinal sin then pray tell what is?

Drank the two cans of Coke in the frig

Now I want more because it only takes one can

To become addicted to the Black Death that is Coca-Cola

And I wanted to drink lemonade with you beneath a shade tree,

But there’s only the lemons of my life and shade is non existent

In this Donnie Darko darkness

Maybe a sugar free grape Popsicle will do the trick

If I can get passed the flavor of artificial sweetener

I’m not a rat in a maze even though Pavlov is my God

I know the grass is running out

I’d be a liar if I said that wasn’t bringing me down

The genius of being a genius is catch and release

Charles Cicirella

10/24/17

I don’t know how to grieve.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-11-02T11_58_59-07_00

My mother died

Don’t have a clue what to do with this Intel

All my tears are conscientious objectors from another unobserved police action

I covered up her face with a white sheet

Then I uncovered her face so she could sing like a nightingale

I pray the check to the rabbi doesn’t bounce because I don’t feel like going to Hell today

I don’t know how to grieve

Properly or improperly

All my coping mechanisms have flown south for the winter

Tired of pretending I’m broken

Tired of wishing ill on others because I don’t know how to build my own happiness

Tired of being tired and want to wake up and walk away from all this sadness

My mother is dead

My father has been out of the picture for quite some time

Picture perfect families only exist on TV and in our most warped of nightmares

Grief and I have never quite seen eye to eye

When Hospice called I was inconsolable

Soon I stopped crying and a drought took hold like an absentee parent or vengeful God

Charles Cicirella

11/2/17

Baby Doll Mask (For Juliet)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-11-01T11_01_21-07_00

Sequined pain

Streaming blood pageantries

Rusted Midwest soliloquies

Art witch seductress Brainiac

Bathroom stalled Obsessive

Charles Cicirella

11/1/17

Aztec Ruins

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-10-31T19_17_49-07_00

Civilization born from myth

The look of mayhem in your desert island eyes always keeps me coming back for more

I’ll never understand why you don’t like your tits

I want a doughnut, but not one that the powdered sugar gets on my fingers

I want you on all fours, but not because I think you’re a doggy. In fact it has nothing to do with me wanting you to fetch my L.L. Bean slippers

It’s been pointed out to me that my poetry objectifies women and for that I am very sorry even though nothing could be further from the lactating truth

Civilization propped up on kickstand-banana-seat-lies and the inhumanity of another festering-ego-sore

Jack was right, “You can’t handle the truth,” so stop acting so high and mighty because when you fall the damage will be colossal

Nobody believed he would win and when he did all of the racist scampering cock and cunt roaches came out of the deplorable woodwork to stake their claim in the primordial mud

I want a cup of instant coffee that doesn’t taste like Juan Valdez pissed in it

I want you to stop pretending I meant nothing and for you to lower your draw bridge and welcome me back inside your Hello Kitty scandalous reprimands

It’s been brought to my attention I leak like a sieve and that’s probably true because I’ve always been full of shit and my holes have always been bigger than the Scotch tape covering them

How about we disappear into a jungle book of our own devising?

The kind of neighborhood where you ask no questions about the bloodstains on the carnivorous walls

Was there ever a time you gave me a second look or was that all fabricated because you were bored and sad from having just lost your dog?

Charles Cicirella

10/30/17

For Michael Grover

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-10-27T17_03_45-07_00

Reading his words

Had to take a break

Make some instant coffee

Coffee too hot to drink

Cooling next to me

I intend no disrespect

His poetry slaps me in the face

Like cold water

Like cool death

My mother’s hands were cold when I touched them

Her friends wanted to pull the sheet over her face

Hospice worker came in and said we don’t like to hide death and I agree with her

Covering my mother’s face wasn’t out of respect, but instead was a way, I guess, for her friends to try and pretend she wasn’t gone

I pulled the white sheet back down and looked at my mom in all her beauty and grace

She was like a chain link fence feeling the sun on her autumnal cheeks for the first time

Studying Michael’s words

Looked up Cherie Bullock

Read and very much enjoyed her poem “Carbon Dated”

Michael Grover I desire to sit in a tiny room with you, both of us writing what we believe is the next great American novel

Fuck I’m not a novelist and I’m guessing neither are you

The space heater lashes out at us with forked tongue and Grimm eyebrows

Charles Cicirella

10/27/17

Choking One Out

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-10-24T17_29_39-07_00

Feel like making a connection

A real connection, nothing diet or circumspect about it

As connections go I’m long overdue for a doozy

Stop the presses

All this yellow journalism has to go

Propping up an orange menace with an endless barrage of nude coverage does no one no good and dumbs us down more than you’ll ever realize in your blissed out ignorance

Splatter my brains all over the place

Like JFK’s except mine will be less noteworthy because I’ll never be President and I’ve never been much of a ladies man

Stand there standing the test of time while I turn blue from holding my stale breath

Feel like making a connection

A genuine connection, nothing duplicitous or guarded about it

As patience goes mine has been wearing thin like an old mobster that’s afraid to get plugs and instead combs it over like every other schmuck on this disconnected planet

Charles Cicirella

10/23/17

BAD NEWS CARE BEARS

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-10-21T12_23_10-07_00

Received the kind of news no one wants to receive.

My mother said she was in the end of days and she wasn’t kidding in the least little bit.

She told me that my sense of humor during this time was strange and all I could think was without my sense of humor I’m already gone.

Nothing can be reversed or returned at this latency stage.

You wore it down now you own it no matter the poor health you find your body in.

Tearing out patches of your flesh and pretending you’re one of the undead when nothing could be further from the diluted and distilled, bittersweet truth.

Just dropped my mother off at hospice. I told my friend Ted and he said “Oh, Charles, that's so heavy” and he’s right it is heavy. In fact it’s heavier than my own mother is at this debilitating time.

We can only do what we can do while people’s expectations of us must be left in a ditch because there’s no point in sapping all of our energies doing our darndest to make you feel better about yourselves.

Let’s just cut to the chase and forgive and forget circumstantial evidence and the end always justifying the means. Instead let’s act like humans and accept each other for exactly who we are and not for what we want or expect each other to be.

Charles Cicirella

10/17/17

Deconstructed (For Ted Kane)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-10-07T10_23_52-07_00

deconstructs from a to z

leaving nothing in between

rosary beads diddley bow

mining for a heart of gold

blood diamond cadavers

rotting in the disillusioned sun

it’s high time we stopped pussy footing around

you wanted a pussy grabber and chief

well you got it now whatcha gonna do?

deconstruction devalued in the eye of a narcissistic god killer

able bodies only get you to the grave beyond that it’s all a jump ball

i’m so down and out when looking up all I see is my proctologist in the rearview

he deconstructs because there’s nothing better to do with his hands

he deconstructs because peeling the onion with his guitar time of the assassins tool is the only effective method of pulling the band-aid from the scab

he deconstructs because all of our lives depend on it including his own

Charles Cicirella

9/5/17

Having a Nervous Breakdown

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-10-07T10_06_36-07_00

This is not a false alarm

It’s all happening

My brains are starting to pull apart

Too much stress

Not enough turning of the pressure valve

Common occurrence among nihilists and scourges of the Earth

Touching myself doesn’t always get the job done

I cannot get enough of young black women fucking

It’s always consensual and among consenting adults

My heart is beating out of my chest

If I had a hammer I’d be more than Pete Seeger, I’d be Pete’s Dragon

Let’s call it a day and cut our loses before the baby gets more than just cut in half

This is not a false alarm

I’ve never seen much point in alarmists

Just like extremists oftentimes their bark is far worse than their bite

Charles Cicirella

9/24/17

Glass Pipe (For Rick and Colleen McDonald)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-10-06T14_15_12-07_00

Always liked her father

Because he never not once looked down on me

Even though he towered over me like The Friendly Giant or a skyscraper

Always secretly liked her

Because she takes shit from no one

And according to her father she’s a genius when it comes to music

They watched Django Unchained while I went upstairs and did my own thing because I’ve never been a fan of Quentin Tarantino except for Reservoir Dogs and Natural Born Killers

They seemed to enjoy it and we still got stoned as I ignored the overt racism and Quentin’s annoying way of belaboring the obvious while pretending he’s out of the ordinary

Never forget when Colleen jumped off that cliff. It appeared she was jumping into nothingness, but she said she’d done it before so I trusted I would see her again

I didn’t go into the deep end even though her cajoling was tempting and maybe drowning wouldn’t have been half bad

We sat on their front steps as he told me in his ‘take no prisoners’ method that he had played the game and lost

My heart will be forever broken

Charles Cicirella

10/4/17

Writing her poetry always makes me feel better. (For Katie Boyd)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-10-03T18_38_24-07_00

She turns me on and I’ve never even met her face to face

I wonder if I turn her on and if she likes my face

My consonants and vowels desire to climb inside and take up permanent residence

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves

Let’s not fall in love with the first cute office worker with a Glasgow accent we meet

Let’s not declare ourselves incompetent until our competency is tested thoroughly

Breaking beneath the pressure of her afternoon matinee smiles

Walking along the breakwater with nothing, but our wits to protect us

Katie somehow keeps me calm by doing nothing as everything comes our way

I wonder if intellect impresses her more than athletic prowess

Does she feel more comfortable left to her own devices or welcoming the occasional nudge or wink from the Eye of Horus?

Is a library or coffeehouse more to her liking or does she prefer being put through her paces in the middle of the night as her music plays and cities burn all around her?

Shutting down is oftentimes the only way to uncover the missing pieces of our autumnal minds

When I saw her standing there with nothing on but her Wheel of Fortune jammies I knew I was in for the ride of my red wheelbarrow life

She’s every season wrapped up in a magnificent hillock of “sugar and spice and all things nice.”

Charles Cicirella

10/3/17

Starling (For Katie Boyd)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-28T11_46_48-07_00

Bright colors

Work to her advantage

Aluminum foil starlings

Intellect weaponized

Hand holding intoxicants

Flame broiled sadness

Phoenix capsized Titanic

Batten down your hatches!

Abandoned theaters

Mute stranger’s chemical imbalance

Resistant to changing partners

Entropy squirrels gnaw at our crinkly consciences

I want to go the distance

I swear to God I do

“I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry”

I think I’m telling the truth or maybe I’m not. I don’t fucking know.

Charles Cicirella

9/27/17

Pick Your Poison (For Mark Gunderson)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-22T03_40_00-07_00

Cat Stevens running through my head

Music made before he was an extremist

Or maybe he was always an extremist

I don’t fucking know

Going to eat some banana pudding

Cannot stomach chocolate pudding

Ever since it was brought to my attention that Bill Cosby is a serial rapist

I say is because sexual predators never change their roofie spots

I’ve known Mark for so long it’s like he’s always been there and maybe he was

Never forget the Comfest when I started to scream “White Jeep” and Lyceum 23 came running into the tent like an exorcism was taking hold and maybe it was

I believe that was my last stab at fame because not long after I settled for infamy because the press junkets were more fun and groupies don’t expect as much from you

Kimmie told me “White Jeep” was played on a radio station in Czechoslovakia and that made me feel good for about eight or nine minutes

Pick your poison go ahead I’ll wait

My latest poison was a young woman who it turned out really couldn’t stand me even though she did a very good job playing pretend and making me feel almost human again

Turned out to be just another graphic novel I never should have checked out

Never forget when we sat in the kiddy section of that library in Middleburg Heights and you had me questioning my very existence as you sat there stone face like an Easter Island statue and I begged you to reconsider

“The First Cut Is The Deepest” is the Cat song playing in an endless loop in my head

I wonder if he still does that one with his freak fag flying in the wind and his beard not slowing him down in the least little bit

It’s probably unfair to call him an extremist and I’m not sure if zealot is any closer to the Buried Child truth

When I looked down and saw it was Mark Gunderson calling I felt like it was the Pope on the line and if I didn’t answer quickly absolution would forever be out of reach

Charles Cicirella

9/21/17

Don’t Step Outside the Bounds of Reality (For Roky Erickson)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-19T22_17_36-07_00

He just wanted his ham sandwich

Nothing is ever written in stone

Not even the Ten Commandments

The Bible will not save you

Look how, in the sequel, it treated Christ

Jews continue to get a raw deal

There is no master race

Though what’s so ironic

Is how those who spew that toxic garbage are the most ignorant animals on the planet

No one concentrated in the Concentration Camps

People just waited around to die

One more example of how might never makes right especially when you’re dead wrong on every single issue

I’m not convinced the Summer of Love was about anything other than getting high

Step outside the bounds of reality and you’re lucky if you don’t get punched in the face

Break through the Doors of Perception and be prepared to be rewarded with more riches than you could ever imagine

Charles Cicirella

9/16/17

"Life isn't measured by clocks."

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-19T10_48_35-07_00

My heart’s beating like a grandfather clock missing its grandmother clock

Time sits on my face like a Jewish ghetto in Warsaw in Europe during World War II

Nothing going right as our possessions are stripped from us as storefront windows are smashed in and if we’re blessed attics become our only safe refuge

Caste systems are fucking bullshit as is anyone acting superior because of their supposedly pure blood

Go ahead and burn a cross on my front lawn because I can no longer be associated with white people and all of the wrong that they perpetuate in the name of God

We ran the Native Americans off their land because we wanted it for ourselves and wiped out the buffalo for sport and none of it even today makes a lick of sense as we celebrate a rainbow coalition and go on and on about what we’re thankful for

Trading punches with the champ or trading punches with another loser that pretends they’re undefeated when actually the fights they’re fighting are like taking candy from a big, disgruntled baby

Learning more and more that giving up control is the only way out of this place as abandonment issues rear their ugly head and disassociation zaps you like a bolt

I wanted to love you or at the very least like you for who you are until realizing you’re not even close to what you seemed as a Biblical flood wreaks havoc on our tick-tock lives

My heart’s beating like a hammer right out of my Playboy centerfold chest as I attempt to dial back my rage and stop dressing you down for your unwillingness to change

Time repeatedly sticks its fingers up my ass like a proctologist with ADHD and I’m none the wiser because I’m always up for a challenge especially when it comes from the backend

Nothing going right as I listen to the Geppetto wind and wish I was more than just a wooden puppet who wishes he were a real boy

Charles Cicirella

9/18/17

Scottish Gypsy (For Katie Boyd)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-15T19_59_49-07_00

I want to taste you

It’s never about the punctuation because who really desires to stop?

My words are intended to shake your timbers and leave you unmasked and naked in a puddle on the floor

It’s time to shoot the moon and kill another white racist President

It’s time to bring down the world by ceasing and desisting from the red, white and blue hypocritical politics of a country that never actually cared about taking care of its own

I’m not a fucking patriot so you don’t have to waste those empty words on me. I refuse to waste this one life on anything like dying for my country because my country gave up on me when I still had red hair and freckles covered my body like a red sheet

I need to freeze out all these destructive voices in my head and focus only on the rainbows between my webbed toes

I desire for her to suffocate me with all of her non-weight and her eyes that drill holes so deep into my skull bank you’d think we’d hit China before too long

I know tasting her is out of the question and yet I still cannot stop thinking about the sweetness of her sweat and the tang of her Electric Kool-Aid pulsating personality

My reputation has always proceeded me. That’s just the way it goes when you’re Jewish Sicilian which means you kill people and then later feel guilty about it

There’s no bones about it threading a needle with a camel that looks like Salvador Dali is even harder than it may sound, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and try again before giving up and fetching a liquid refreshment

I was buked and I was scorned like every torch-singer-poet-troubadour before me and still I did my best to cross the desert because I knew manna from Heaven was not always a certainty or for that matter a foregone conclusion in these days of boxed wine and plastic roses

I must get back up on the pony and ride into Jerusalem before it’s too late and there are no more rooms at the inn

Joseph and Mary gave up on me in part because I don’t look like either one of them and also because they knew this savior business was a sticky wicket to get enmeshed in

From the very start I wasn’t looking forward to being crucified because there’s not enough sunscreen to cover my sins and when it comes to my father forsaking me I truly expected no less from a dad who was absentee right from the very beginning

Charles Cicirella

9/15/17

Karmic Payback (For Magda Davitt)

I hope these words reach you

Whatever state you find yourself in

It’s important to do the work and not give so much of a shit

I was the guy who handed you a poetry CD and a vinyl transfer of Dylan’s Street Legal after a show in Chicago

I thought it was important to have some good tunes to listen to while on the road and I believe my poetry will reach into places not visited since Ireland

Karmic payback is such a bitch especially when your mother was your tormentor and even after forgiving her she still haunts you like a broken and displaced saint

Let’s unfold the map of our psyches before we get into our favorite mode of transport and head toward the desert or seashore

Let’s resist brandishing a large stick and learn instead to stop internalizing our fear

Broken bones come and go, but you must find a way to allow your heart to heal before important parts are lost and your soul revisits anymore changing partners

I was the guy sitting up front listening with my eyes closed as you also shut your eyes and transmigrated through the buzzing crowd like a Philip K. Dick crop duster

Our wings are sometimes attached with only spit and prayer, but that doesn’t mean we cannot get healed

Made my mom a cup of coffee and now I’m going to watch the evening news. You’re never alone Magda no matter how dark the night may get, the day will find you and shelter you in place

Charles Cicirella

9/12/17

Cream of Wheat

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-12T09_53_05-07_00

Thinking about you

How we never fucked

Because for you it was all a ruse

Truly reprehensible how some people will take others for a ride and all because

they’re bored or frustrated or maybe they’re just hateful human beings who like to make others as miserable as they are

She stood in the center of town proclaiming she was not a witch when nothing could have been further from the elongated and tenuous truth and when push finally came to shove and she was burned she lit up like a roman candle until there was nothing left

Stop ignoring me because it won’t do any good. Actions must have consequences and in your case thinking you can just throw me under the bus and walk away with your ex boyfriend’s dick back in your mouth is both disgusting and truly sad on your part

She admitted he broke her and she admitted it would be the biggest mistake to get back with him and then that’s exactly what she did because failure and demolition is all she has ever known and even puppies sometimes have an awful time learning new tricks

I was in Chicago when it all began to unravel of course it had been unravelling right from the start and I knew it, but refused to face the truth because I enjoyed the distraction and liked when she would get naked and pleasure herself on camera for me

My life is a peepshow without any quarters to have and to hold. I was in San Francisco trying to get my bearings when I disappeared into the shadows and finally learned how the other half doesn’t live so easily

Thinking about you

Even though you’re now ignoring me because I guess that’s easier than facing the fact that maybe you finally found someone who really does love you and isn’t looking to break or rake you over the red hot coals

Coming up out of yourself isn’t a bad thing and I hope someday you’ll realize that being challenged or having your buttons pushed can be a wonderful experience if you’re only willing to break free from the same old same old and are ready to accept change and nuance into your Cream of Wheat outlook

Charles Cicirella

9/12/17