I could tell you.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-12-31T13_04_44-08_00

I could tell you what record was on his turntable when they found him hanging, but it’s none of your business

Always have a purpose when picking through the wreckage with a stick, even and especially when the sun is shining in the heavy feelings sky

I could tell you what kind of things he took out of the library, but what would be the bloody point?

John Petric called and said unless the details are salacious we don’t have any inches we can commit to

I called him a snake and hung up the phone

Jim always suspected John Petric had it out for him and he was right.

Jim was a piranha in a kiddy pool of guppies and young turks

He was the soldier throwing silverware in "Forever Lowman"

Shadows are cast when a legend refuses to climb back into their own skin.

Charles Cicirella

12/31/18 

It's About Time

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-12-26T14_13_50-08_00

Stop the madness

Inroads frozen

Christ bud

Guns snuggler

Brisk walker

Aero dynamic kama sutra

It’s about time

Wasted or not

We take the hill

They called him Buddha in high school

They call him Buddha now

I am always late to the party

Promises scraping against the windowpane

I was a king pin and then I was a gutter ball

Take another hit and forget the friend you lost yesterday

Attention spans like a gypsy’s curse not even worth their fate in fool’s gold

Stop the madness of getting inside the clown car, pretending you have a sense of humor

None of this is funny including the part when you pulled down my pants and sprayed me with a fifty foot fire hose

Start your comeback tour

Before you know it everyone will have forgotten the company you once kept with no regard of stagecoaches exploding

Your daydreams are yours alone, but please don’t ask me to partake in the nightmares of your lies

Charles Cicirella

12/26/18

Vapors (For Kat)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-12-23T12_38_30-08_00

Woke up heaving like a Belgian sailor with a waffle stuck in their crow’s hatch

My Sicilian grandfather would smoke any cigarette he had coupons for

Never forget walking into my grandparents’ living room on Liberty seeing him smoking a Virginia Slims Luxury Light 120 in his favorite recliner

My poetry doesn’t need to make sense when you’re my muse steering me toward distant shores and refurbished lunch counters

I desire to kiss all of your tattoos in the order you got them or in alphabetical order if that’s more to your irresistible liking

We settle for brunch when breakfast was too difficult a task to master in the middle of another underground war

I imagine your second in command is a Siamese cat that speaks in haiku and your most trusted of confidantes is a red-tailed hawk that loves discussing string theory after a break of heron and wood rats

The lively discourse of Alice was never challenged because Lewis Carroll was a master at keeping things well hid including if his "little heroine" was actually based on any real child

Libraries are the only friend I’ve ever trusted without any reservations or lingering doubts

Woke up and when the heaving abated I made myself a cup of instant coffee and remedied my vertigo by sitting down at the computer and writing this poem for you

I imagine us going to the park or some old time theater where the films are still shown on an actual movie projector and when the lights go down no one talks or munches their popcorn too loudly

We mustn’t resist the temptation to live the life we choose to live because even love can grow prickly if left on the vine too long

Charles Cicirella

12/22/18

Vampire Boy (The Reanimation of the Undead)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-12-23T12_31_45-08_00

Rich Stadler sucks.

Lenny and Timmy are in the corner shooting up over the collective gains of their universal mothers.

Rusty always tells it like it is.

Broken promises cannot be repaired when tears remain unwept and the dust of age settles in like cold oatmeal.

Hanging out in his big ass studio with our big ass ideas.

It all comes back to me in a flood of hand wringing distress.

I believed I was fearless until you appeared in my out of focus camera lens with your femme fatale girlfriend.

Suicide has cut us into new forms that no longer praise Jesus because what difference would it make when madness chips away at our plaster psyches like a sculptor whose hands shake from Parkinson’s.

Too many of us are frozen out from the scales of blind justice for the sole reason a jury of our peers is next to impossible to discover in a suburban landscape of stoic whore mongers and unfunny clowns.

Our phone calls remind me of another time when the day to day seemed easier to grasp and less obnoxious to maneuver through.

When Rich mentioned how I used to scratch my nuts and smell my fingers I knew he was a pathological piece of dispassionate shit that deserved to rot in his own passive aggressive tendencies toward community theater mediocrity.

Living in an artist colony is overrated when there are no creative sparks to speak of and the Milo Coffeehouse was the only honest to God sanctuary in a den of conniving Christian fundamentalists.

Charles Cicirella

12/22/18

Painted Wreckage (For Julia Haw)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-12-16T11_49_18-08_00

Gonna stop writing and just make toast for a living

Burnt toast, cinnamon toast, all kinds of toast

I am afraid the writing is slipping away or at the very least my self- confidence has gone on holiday and scary movies no longer scare me like they once did

I like your ass

Imagine you holding onto the paintbrush like a sexy bird that gets color like they get despair and the deforestation of an artist’s bankrupted soul

Tired of waiting for hope and the fear it elicits like Siamese Twins hell-bent on finding a robe that fits them like sunshine fills a child’s cereal bowl

Want to make love to you on a mountain of newspapers because I still believe in newsprint and how it gets on your fingers like the ashes of our misbegotten, but never forgotten Ancestry ancestors

King of the hill was always too lofty a goal for my small mind so I settled instead for blowing up the world with my words and when that failed I took a knee and prayed the next wedgie I received was from Christ Almighty

The painted wreckage impressed neither one of us so we called it a day and committed suicide by binge watching Amazon Prime on phones the size of our most depressing of outsourced daydreams

I love your ass

Wish you’d paint a portrait of my remedial nightmares and the short bus I took when trying to get to you

Desire to be spread before you like a bald eagle whose best laid plans often go awry because the mice they hunt won’t give them the time of day

Charles Cicirella

12/16/18