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

Breathing In Debris, Breathing Out Calamity

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-10T13_57_46-07_00

A cartoon safe fell on my head

It hurt like an imaginary Hell

I had it coming of course

Nothing like karma scorned

Wonder if John Lennon being such a fucking prick

Had anything to do with his undeniable genius

I’m guessing not and he was just another one of those

Entitled son of a bitches who believes the world owes them something

Weird how too often those spraying out so much sunshine

Are raging inside like a monster machine wiping out the little guy

By continually taking snide, cruel swipes at their Walter Mitty souls

Look I don’t care if you wrote “Imagine” there’s still no excuse for terrorizing everyone around you with such formidable calculation like another Svengali serial killer

It’s time to call it quits or maybe it’s not I don’t really know

Just about when I was ready to throw in the towel life reminded me I might actually have a few good years left

I allow depression to cripple me like Tiny Tim in “A Christmas Carol”, but what I keep forgetting is he made the best out of what he was given until pushed into the stove at the end of the novella and used for "God bless us, every one!" kindling

The Acme Corporation called and they want all of their foolproof products back

Of course nothing in those cartoons quite came off like it should have or did it?

Perhaps the inevitable failure of another Wile E. Coyote scheme is all any of us have to look forward to as we breathe in duplicitous debris and breathe out clouds of Calamity Jane calamity

Charles Cicirella

9/10/17

Mother (For Joni)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-10T12_58_38-07_00

Two peas in a pod

Joni and me

Cast out of a warm womb

Into an insufferable tomb

We’re not Egyptians

But you wouldn’t know it

From our covered up mummies

Slathering their children in shame

I cherish the times Joni and me talk

Because of our shared Jewish heritage

We understand each other’s plight of misery

Allowing us to say so much with so few words

Two peas in a pod

Our mothers clearly suffer from a personality disorder

As children and now as adults toxicity disrupts our psyches

We fear inheriting their plague of nastiness as we run into the sun

Our negativity is inborn and that’s not an excuse

The only way we know how to process anything is by complaining

I’m quite sure people around me wish I’d give it a rest, but my best friends always afford me the room to come out the other side whole and shimmering like a bedazzled jewel

Joni continues to make it through by staring her hellhound’s right in their shining red eyes and never hanging out for too long at the crossroads by herself

Charles Cicirella

9/10/17

Guilt (For Soule)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-09T15_24_51-07_00

It's in our DNA

Gentiles don’t understand

They repress everything

Guilt’s our flagship

Gets us from point a to point b

Keeps kicking us in the teeth

The Rabbi won’t help

He deals in guilt like an arms dealer deals in heavy weaponry

I blew my mind attempting to use religion as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding

Making mashed potatoes for my mom and listening to “Pain In My Heart” sung by Helene Smith

It touches parts of my soul reserved for restoration and retaliation

Just made a cup of instant coffee as my morning constitutional calls out to me like a constipated rooster

Joni I have loved you since we met at that Greyhound station in Indianapolis, Indiana

We’re waifs fighting against the strains of this miserable world because we’re fully aware taking one’s life is not an option when we’re guardians of light and positive synergy

Been feeling half dead for weeks and I know you understand what I’m moving through. I also know sometimes you consider drinking the turpentine instead of mixing it with your oil paints. Guilt checks us at the door and sends us out into the world oftentimes wearing the wrong overcoat. Time to take a shit and unload some of these bad feelings.

Charles Cicirella
9/9/17

The Theft of Identity #3

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-08T17_43_56-07_00

Nearly had a heart attack today

It was real, not imagined

Scared the hell out of me like real demons have a tendency doing

If one more “medical professional” tells me my mother is high functioning, I may just lose it or commit murder, suicide, or commit my mother or myself to some shiny facility on the hill

We cannot take ourselves for granted no matter how deep the shit gets we’re wading through

She came through like gangbusters then she just stopped cumming and it nearly broke my heart

The poetry pours out of me like I’m Winnie the Pooh hopped up on bennies and Tigger

If you don’t find some way to make friends with yourself you’re gonna be mighty lonesome when the drought comes and all your Facebook friends make other plans

Poets here in Cleveland pay me no mind and that’s just fine because I’ve never been much for scenes or the politics of redundancy

Today I enraged my mother because I just couldn’t take being whipped anymore

Like a slave in orbit, I was beaten ‘til I was tamed and the Planet Waves started to make discernible sense to me

I’m always feeling like my feelings don’t matter to others and I’m probably correct because when it comes to feelings most people would rather overdose than face the facts and do some actual heavy lifting

Put a fork in your eye and tell me how much it hurts and then bend over and allow yourself to be sodomized just for the appearance of normalcy and the aggregation of supply and demand

Charles Cicirella

9/6/17

Genesis (For Joni)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-06T12_41_27-07_00

Let’s start at the start when fig leaves were not yet in fashion and modesty was but a twinkle in the Creator’s third eye

Why aren’t more people writing and painting with blood these days?

I believe it’s been true from the beginning of recorded history that those in the trenches inhaling the mustard gas will always be the first ones silenced and the last ones through the cowboy-swinging-doors

I can hear her hacking in the other room and it makes me think of Van’s “TB Sheets” and all he must have gone through just to get her a glass of water

These words are my blessed savior and these words always find a way to get me through when another canary in the coalmine is muzzled for its bright colors and its immutable voice
You want things to change? Well who doesn’t, but with change comes sacrifice and sacrifice has always been a slippery slope when facing down another biblical storm

I was standing by the Wurlitzer carefully selecting the tunes I wanted to hear when she sashayed into the room like a twenties flapper or terror suspect with only allegiance on her mastodon mind

We danced like Beautiful Losers have a tendency doing when we knew the end of the world was at hand and we didn’t feel like fitting ourselves into a bathroom stall and fucking like two container ships lost out at sea

I held onto her hips for dear life as she swung me around the claustrophobic room and left nothing to the imagination including the birthday suit she was wearing underneath

Genesis wasn’t just a band it was a way of life as balls got rolling and Sisyphus sat down and had a smoke

We pulled up to the door so she could drop off a check and all we could talk about was the sad state of affairs of another employee dropping their cigarette butt in the mulch

I wanted to get out of the car and bitch slap the person, but figured what good would it do when all over the world people are hurting each other with the choices they make and don’t make in the blink of yet another closed and uncaring eye

Charles Cicirella

9/4/17

Dementia

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2017-09-06T08_44_05-07_00

When I place my ear against my mother’s skull

And listen like she’s a seashell at the seashore

I can hear the wind howling through her bones

I’ve been entrusted this gift and I’m going to use it now

Sit still as a stiletto stabbing a topographic map

And drain the pus from my Atlas Shrugged brain stem

Maybe I’ll strike it rich while panning for goblets of gold and empathy

Or maybe I’ll end up at the Las Vegas Rescue Mission again

The strip laid out before me like a Beatty treatise for another stalled movie project

Let’s keep this dementia between us because not all Manchurian Candidates are ill-informed and not every garden party has Mr. Hughes hiding in Dylan's shoes wearing his disguise

I’ve stepped on bigger toes than yours and though there’s no doubt you could buy and sell me what’s the bloody point when everyone ends up buried beneath mounds of paperwork and shovelfuls of dirt

I can hear the train imploring my mother to either make up her mind or stop being kind and to simply call it a day

Dementia must be taken seriously no matter how difficult it is to face

Matters of the heart are hard enough, but when it comes to the brain too many people consciously or unconsciously check out

My mother is the toughest person I’ve encountered in this life and even she is helpless at the hands of this silent killer

Charles Cicirella

9/2/17