More Blood

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-09-25T20_44_15-07_00

Cutting through the malaise with a machete

Dylan vanquishes fear by opening the door to hope

Here’s the process laid out like a Sears Roebuck catalog or map to the stars

Lays the paint on thick like Vincent

There’s no room for pie, not when there’s all this introspection to digest

I’m stunned and then stunned some more as I listen and am catapulted through the trees and the golden spikes dripping with more blood

Stands in front of the canvas or sits down at the piano

Shapes iron into gates of graceful wonder

And does it without asking anyone for a single, solitary thing

His blood symphonies cover me with goosebumps as my heart becomes a shadow of its former self and the winds of idiocy remind us he’s just a man doing the best that he can

Star artist-astronaut-roving gambler

He exists between the silences and keeps on keepin’ on because what other choice does he have?

Charles Cicirella

9/20/18

What's wrong with me?

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-09-18T19_49_55-07_00

Virtual shut-in

Don’t bathe like I should

Laundry weighs me down like an obese albatross

The paralysis I feel each and every day continually breaks my heart as I distract myself as best I can like Cleopatra or Rip Torn

Tropic of Cancer another place I’ll never visit though I get where Miller was coming from

People say pull yourself up by your bootstraps to which I reply what bootstraps and how can I pull when I feel so pushed beneath the loam

Dan’s right this depression is making my writing red hot as my existence simmers on the back burner and I want to get lit or burned up like a treasure seeker whose lost their bounty and their will to roam

The path I’ve carved out of pumpkin rind and old dreams isn’t doing much for my self-esteem as the holidays like a death knell march toward me

Yes, I have always placed creativity over survival and lately I’m starting to think that particular skill-set has left the station and a roll of the dice no longer favors the fearless

I’m all out of steam, ramen and whatever else keeps a good man keepin’ on

There was a time when I was full of piss and vinegar and believed my art would save me or at the very least catapult me out of these doldrums

Now I understand how much of a long-shot that is and I’ll sooner than later get beaten down like Shepard and my other close friends who burned hotter than the sun and were put out like a grease fire

Charles Cicirella

9/18/18

I’m running out of dreams. (For Kat)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-09-18T19_35_19-07_00

Hearing her voice rocked me to my scrawny core

I believe for the first time in forty nine years I heard the voice of a soul that not only gets me, but is interested in who I am and why I am that person

Kat’s voice rang truer than the Liberty Bell and she didn’t crack or waver when saying hello

We stand to lose everything when we do nothing

A large part of the problem is that apathy has become our nation’s coat of arms and like a hammer and sickle it only knows how to pound us out of existence

You can take your austerity and shove it straight up your patriotic ass because it’s never worked and never will

Katie’s voice gave me hope which is something I’ve not felt nor experienced in too many unkind years

It proved to me there’s still a candle within yearning to be lit and burn for an eternity of tomorrows

The hallowed ground of your love and support breaks me up into stardust as my radical self becomes the butterfly it’s always desired to be

Charles Cicirella

9/17/18

Kat

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-09-16T01_09_16-07_00

I can write about you until I am blue in the face

It comes so naturally it scares me like monsters under the bed or undrunk beers, left on the counter to get warm and pithy

There you were. Nearly levitating off the ground like a magician’s assistant or a guru who knows their shit and refuses to push it down someone’s throat like a big orange carrot or an unbaked religious canon that never quite forgives anyone

Do I stay or do I go?

Do I continue to plumb the depths of my mind and pray streams of consciousness shoot from my fingers like magic boogers or lightning bolts that Zeus himself would be jealous of?

It’s 2:25 AM. I’m about to watch the last episode of You Me Her. Third season and if you’ve never watched it its quite good and never fails to put a smile on my face, when I cannot seem to pick myself off of the floor and my heart just won’t stop beating like Ringo’s bass drum

Grand gestures and rom-coms have never done much for me and yet they still make me grab for the box of tissues that’s just out of reach and unwilling to commit to a good, hard blow

I’ve fought against convention all my life and that goes thrice when it comes to whatever gainful employment is and a significant other that you discover is not quite the right fit at the most inopportune moment

I know I’m walking a fine line and I best never use my art as an excuse to duck out of making the difficult choices

Till death do we part or impart the wisdom we wouldn’t wish upon our worst enemy and yet is the only thing that makes any actual sense

You see me for who I am and see through the opaque me that shows up when everything has become too abstract to properly digest or plow through like a John Deere with ADHD

Katie Boyd you possess the wisdom and the moxie to know when to dance beneath the moon and when the wolves are on the hunt. You stun me like a Taser that never runs out of juice and keeps me both alive and dead and for some strange reason that works for me like gangbusters

Charles Cicirella

9/16/18

Sweating Bullets (For Rusty)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2018-09-15T21_46_20-07_00

I don’t write poems to be noticed and I need to start reminding myself of that more

I don’t write poems for Hank’s approval or any dickwad who gets so drunk they piss themselves and then throw you out of their apartment because you remind them of when they were still hungry and mad as a hatter

I didn’t even take that much Oxy and I’m still sweating and restless and sick to my stomach like an addict or Judy Garland wannabe

Sometimes I write poems to try and calm down, other times I write poems because it’s the only form of communication that doesn’t breakdown

I honestly wouldn’t know which hole to stick my dick in any longer and for honest to goodness physical contact with a real human that no longer computes and hasn’t for decades

Sure there are issues of trust, but it’s more than that as I find myself living in an armored tank where no one gets lets in for long and the few that do wish they hadn’t

She mentioned wanting to see The Stanley Hotel and I’m down with that

I also want to visit a pot lot and just for good measure pick up a Velvet Elvis

Going west at this point is my only option because I know if I stay in Cleveland, I will die in Cleveland and quite likely by my own hand

I don’t believe in cries for help and I’ve never seen my poetry as an outlet

I was built to write poetry, created for the sole purpose of creation and that is the only Gospel that’s ever made any sense to me

Recently on the phone Rusty asked if I was afraid of death which I found funny because he already knows the answer

Charles Cicirella

9/16/18