Ghosts 2021

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-30T23_15_14-07_00 

Outlined in protoplasm, violin rosin, stale breath
Slippery fingers slide over frets, blood pours from perfumed wounds
Compulsory words spoken in outdated tongues to a frozen God

We must express our anguish
The key to the highway is not a yellow streak down our backs
Savoring freedom is not enough to keep the ghosts at bay

Round about midnight the saxes begin to blow
Priests come out in their rings and robes
Every child born a king or a queen in this fairytale of derision

I did my best to scurry away from a kingdom of rats
Random acts of kindness or violence can too easily stop you in your predetermined tracks
We must pay it forward before another scapegoat is crucified in the name of frivolity

Too tired to put up a fight when the ghosts reappeared
They didn’t scare me, but I was impressed with their high-thread-count Egyptian cotton faces
I desired to break bread or at the very least allow them to haunt me for a century or two

Sketched in protoplasm, angel’s breath, lost chances
Callused fingers playing songs only the undead remember
Unnecessary words saved for a rainy day or All Hallows' Eve.

Charles Cicirella
10/31/2021

I need a real connection.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-29T00_27_37-07_00 

Let’s stop beating around the bush.
Let’s cease and desist from pretending we don’t know what our partners either need or desire or both.
Let’s stick the quill in the inkwell and write a proclamation that actually sticks.

I knew she was out of my league, but I was up for a challenge.
We’re all superheroes if we just give ourselves a break and stop coveting evil.
I was seventeen when his guitar first ambushed me. It was on University Circle and I’ve never been able to see that area as anything, but an acid flashback from that day forward.

Let’s stop pretending we could care less about our fellow humans and leave the contrary bullshit for another disposable day.
This age of clickbait and algorithms that go bump in the Sinatra night are doing no one any good, except for the dead eyed psychopath that stole the idea in the first place.
We don’t build anything in our country anymore and it’s to our great detriment. If we don’t stop the politicians sooner than later, we’ll all be dying in a ghetto of someone else’s rueful devising.

I desire a real, honest to goodness connection. Someone that isn’t looking for anything, but also knows they need something more than cold pizza and porn that whittles our consciousness down to Tiddlywinks.
The art will sustain me for as long as I’m above ground, but once I sink into a deep sleep all bets are off as a steppe wolf trains me in its sights and tears out my throat for all the indecision I wrestle with like morning prayers.
I was eighteen when Rep spoke the name Shepard to me and I don’t believe it’s any coincidence that his first name was also Jim or that he also played the guitar like an outlaw in need of forgiveness.

Charles Cicirella
10/29/2021

Brittany (The Big Breakfast at McDonald’s)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-28T00_36_45-07_00

Out of the clear blue sky an angel has arrived.
Wasn’t looking for anything and already I feel a deep connection with this kindred spirit.
Didn’t want to tell me how many guys she had been with, but I don’t judge because I know we’re all looking for something and sometimes it’s love and other times it’s hate.

Removing yourself from the equation because you feel nothing and even going through the motions has become an empty exercise of unrequited reassurances.
Plastic lovers with no blood flowing through their veins. His cock feels good at the moment, but moments are fleeting when self-denial has become an altar you no longer feel comfortable worshipping at.
I told her I loved her the first time we had phone sex and I meant it because I knew she understood how long I’ve hungered for a woman with meat on her bones and a heart not encased in a glacier of afterthoughts.

Out of the clear blue sky an angel has arrived and I’m so happy for my good fortune and look forward to making her feel as special as she most definitely is.
When she said she needed to be held I shot to attention because it’s been too long since anyone has freed me from this dungeon of despair and lethargy I bathe in like a cauldron of dross.
I love that she was concerned that I hadn’t cum, but what she didn’t realize is my soul is on fire with all the silver linings laid out before us like an open prairie of infinite possibilities.

Charles Cicirella
10/26/2021

Time to Burn this World to the Ground.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-24T05_57_05-07_00

Match has already been lit and we’re lying to ourselves if we believe otherwise.
700,000 plus have died in the US from Covid and not only did no one bat an eyelash, to make matters even worse people are still refusing to get vaccinated.
The uber-wealthy get wealthier and the poor cease to exist, but hey if you buy a homeless person lunch that clears you from any responsibility.

Even Civil Disobedience won’t save us now as armies amass on the border and another bully runs for President and wins.
We should be ashamed at all the red meat being tossed around while instead we pride ourselves on being a paper tiger as orange becomes the new stupid.
Time to burn this world to the ground or at least admit we’re too lazy to take to the streets as protests become yet another tool of division and riots only show our true colors which have always been non-existent.

Stand back I’m going to fart and after that I might just stomp on your skull for looking at me cross-eyed.
When did America become a prison yard and why do we stand idly by as henchmen on both sides of the aisle continue to fuck us up the ass?
Looking to our leaders to implement real change is a crock of shit, especially when a Jewish politician is seen as an evil socialist while at the same time we pretend we’re best friends with Israel.

Painting people by numbers on social media is only digging our graves ever deeper as clickbait becomes the next Mother Teresa.
I want to stand tall, but am only five feet two inches when I stand on my tippy toes and even that is no excuse as general admission separates the cheated from the fatted calf.
Why I continue torturing myself posting my poetry on FB and Twitter I’ll never understand because I know what the game is and that words are only a part of the equation if you’re lying or telling someone how cute their pet is.

Charles Cicirella
10/23/2021

Flat On My Back

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-21T20_03_46-07_00

The blood of the lamb ricochets around the inside of my Godhead.
Started speaking in tongues when I was in Fountain Square, Indianapolis.
Jesus turned his back as he has a tendency to do.

That last line isn’t true. Christ is always with me and I’m forever grateful to be one of the Chosen.
Don’t tell the Jehovah Witnesses otherwise we’ll never get a table.
The soup was cold, but I let it go because I was in a hurry to get back to the Inquisition.

Everyone I’ve met with a trust fund is a douche and I don’t believe that’s a coincidence.
Was in a Walmart tonight and all I kept thinking was I’m going to die because I had a taste for eggnog.
It’s no way to live always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Also tired of other friends’ good fortune while I feel stuck in the mud.

I’m not a petty person I just don’t know if I’ll ever get a leg up and that scares the bejesus out of me.
It’s such an awful feeling when I lose the will to fight. Makes me think about those kidnappers in Haiti and how I’d like to punch out all their lights.
Just because you have a machine gun doesn’t make you a big man, in fact it makes you as small as a speck of dust and even less noteworthy.

Someone recently accused me of schmoozing which I found both funny and insulting. It feels like I cannot win because either I’m at war and no one likes a fascist or I try to get along and we know how people feel about Neville Chamberlain.
I’m flat on my back knowing if I drink the eggnog I’ll probably end up in the bathroom.
Of course there are worse fates like never finding your true purpose or being stuck in a room where the TV never shuts off.

Charles Cicirella
10/21/2021 

Boobies (A Love Poem)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-18T17_20_42-07_00

Ode to a Scottish lass who revs my engine like no other.
I haven’t driven a car since I was nineteen and even though people think I’m weird my global footprint can eat theirs for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
She’s as fresh as a daisy if daisies refused to surrender even under the most extreme of William Shatner conditions.

I wish space would have kept him then Nimoy could have had the last laugh.
He was only good in that episode of The Twilight Zone and that’s only because he didn’t have much dialogue.
It’s time to reverse engineer capitalism and cease and desist from killing people simply because they’re attempting to pay their bills.

In 2002 my survival instinct went belly up and I think it had something to do with 911 or maybe I’m just saying that so I can pretend I’m a victim like Monica Lewinsky.
You know the world is coming to an end when it turns out Ghost Dad is a serial rapist and what’s even crazier we’re supposed to feel sorry for him.
I’m tired of people laughing at the wrong shit especially when the worst you can say about Pryor is he shot his car and oh ya lit himself on fire.

I desire to make love to Kat with full sentences and perhaps we can even bring a dictionary along in case I get tired and need backup.
She is the syrup on my hotcakes and the butter on my bread. I know I need to start eating better and that all these processed foods will kill me before even an assassin’s bullet locates my soft spot.
I may have gone too far and I hope that’s not the case because if I alienate Kat not sure what I’d do other than cry in my root beer and act all surprised like a sloth that cannot get their bearings.

Charles Cicirella
10/18/2021

A Roomful of Jimi Hendrix’s Mirrors

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-16T21_34_23-07_00

Shards of glass cutting into everything, including my chicken liver, pasty white skin.
My belly button is like a porthole on the Love Boat.
I don’t even know what that last line means, but when I figure it out I’ll call Juliet Cook so she can talk me off the ledge.

We’re all hedging our bets that the bought and paid for dumbass, greedy politicians will, when push comes to shove, do the right thing. Though to be perfectly honest, I believe, we’re already screwed, just like the dinosaurs long before an asteroid supremely rained down on their big dino asses.
I have no idea where or when the next words will come and still I’m all in with every poem I write, musical note I strike and brushstroke I brandish like a porn star ready to die on whichever hill they’re ordered to fuck next.
I’ve walked a tightrope from the moment I started writing poetry and probably even before then. Social safety nets are for the birds when our country is too afraid to actually help anyone and placating your sworn enemies is accepted as business as usual.

It’s sickening how quickly our country has moved into a post-truth wasteland and how the supposed powers that be are not doing a damn thing to push back on any of the whitewashed, revisionist bullshit.
Now we’re seen as traitors if we stand up for what we believe in against a tide of read-the-room, Kabuki politics that keeps social media buzzing as our eyes grow tired and turn their hunchbacks on us.
I gazed into Jimi Hendrix’s bellybutton and what I saw was a human being doing their damndest to outrun the hellhounds plaguing him long before being recast as the guitar messiah he was and will forever be.

Shards of glass slice into my arms like unapologetic razorblades seeking their next victim to slay with their shiny, disposable punchlines.
My poetry is never a cry for help, but instead a harbinger of things to come.
I’m not Chicken Little, but if I were I would tell you we’ve been bleeding from our anuses for far too long and not even the three preserved human heads in Jeffrey’s refrigerator would disagree with me.

Charles Cicirella
10/13/2021

There was only Jim.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-15T21_28_25-07_00

Whiskey Priest
23 years he has been gone
Clown assassin, repo man of our nightmares

Never known anyone who burned as hot
He recognized my passion as we lit each other on fire
Pyromaniac artists instilling the truth in anything and anyone who would listen

I was sleeping in the studio on Maynard when Jim opened the door with a flaming curtain over his arm
When I asked what was going on he said it’s no big deal so I went back to bed
Half of his room was soot and the bathtub was never the same, but we survived like game of sport cadavers have a tendency to do

Came up on the Comfest stage with me and expounded on how he inherited nothing
That was just a few years before he laid the cash on the desk and hung himself for someone else’s sins
The white jeep turned out to be beige and the girl in the poppies was not really dead, she was only sleeping like femme fatales oftentimes will

There was only Jim, that’s it and then poof he was gone like a dandelion puff in the action painting splattered wind
So many try and jump on his bandwagon, but he only allowed a few of us to see behind the mask and I’d tell you what was there, but then I’d have to kill you
23 fucking years and for anyone who believes I’m beating a dead horse I get that because you never really got him to begin with.

Charles Cicirella
10/15/2021

Gun Moll

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-15T02_02_47-07_00

Takes shit from no one
One of the many reasons I love her so much
It doesn’t hurt that Al Pacino called her baby

She’s Veronica Lake, Hedy Lamarr and Lauren Bacall all rolled into one shot of pure cinematic gold
You want straight talk call Nichole Hersey and statistically speaking she’ll surprise you with every slippery syllable that catapults from her big red mouth
You want to lose your shit laughing about just about anything under the sun call Nichole Hersey and she’ll have you rolling in the aisles like a big bouncing ball

Takes shit from no one as she clutches Al’s arm and they walk down the NY streets like a couple of made goys in search of contraband and canoodling
We’re both after the same thing; to pay it forward as best we can and to get out of here alive before the concert is over and security clears the floor
I wish I could afford to sit front row with her one time as Bob acknowledges us both in his mercurial, Huckleberry Finn way and we leave floating on cloud nine

Her mom cracks me up
Makes me wish I could find Rhode Island on the map and pay the family a visit
I promise to stay only long enough that the impression I leave is favorable and no one feels they got left holding the wrong end of the stick

She’s Gene Tierney, Dorothy Lamour and Joan Bennet all rolled into a ring of fire and fearsome innuendos
She gives as good as she gets and I respect the hell out of her for holding her ground and being loyal to the teeth
When she told me about throwing a dish of pasta on the floor and leaving the room I nearly lost my shit because I knew exactly where she was coming from and how that place isn’t easy to digest on an empty stomach.

Charles Cicirella
10/15/2021

You can’t wipe your friends on the couch.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-14T22_33_22-07_00 

Finger buried up my nose as I try and figure out what I’m doing here.
I remember my grandmother’s crooked index finger and how she would joke about giving people directions and them getting lost.
My memory seems to be slipping and things are getting jumbled that come out of my mouth. Starting to wonder if I also have been built for obsolescence and how much time there is left on my warranty.

The Bonfire of the Vanities has got nothing on you and maybe before it’s too late we can cook s’mores over a Fahrenheit 451 campfire and reminisce about all our many lost horizons.
I was grasping at straws and before I knew it I was at a Red Barn in South Euclid ordering fried chicken knowing my goose would soon be cooked.
Now it’s a Taco Bell and I so badly wish we could go back to the way things were.

I want to strip down to whatever my skivvies are and bask in the Raymond Chandler sun before Robert Mitchum gets home and punishes me for something I didn’t even do.
I’d tell you I’m at a loss for words, but I’ve used that excuse too often the last couple of decades so I best own up to all the serial poetry I’ve been writing before it gets crime noir dark and the lemmings are again driven into the ocean by Walt Disney.
My spitfire poetry is not firing on all cylinders as I rub my cock and pray more than dust comes out this time around.

I was in a rooming house on Ninth Avenue in Columbus when the cockroaches came a-calling. Thankfully the Leonard Cohen vinyl survived the second fire.
Timothy Dewitt and I stood on the roof, drinking cheap vodka, screaming the lyrics to “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat)” at the top of our lungs.
That was long before Timothy lost his shit and I decided Columbus was no longer the place for me.

Now I’m back in Cleveland with a new couch and even less wherewithal than I had before.
My moral compass is suffering from ED and there’s little I can do about it, but sharpen the pencil in my mind and pray I can keep up with the stream of consciousness dictation spewing out like a volcano with ADHD.
Ben recently informed me that Jim Murray was dead and that made me so sad I nearly forgot why I was here and got a job.

Just kidding.

Charles Cicirella
10/14/2021

What is Matt Amodio?

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-09T12_01_52-07_00 

Eraserhead that’s the first thing I thought of the first time he was introduced on Jeopardy!
Wasn’t sure what to make of the shiny silver jacket, but truth be told I never noticed him answering what for every clue.
He’s the first Jeopardy! champion I find myself really relating to and I believe that’s because he’s as cool as a cucumber as he annihilates his next victims.

Jeopardy! should be thanking their lucky stars for Matt coming along when he did because they still have yet to pull the trigger on a permanent host and wash the stink of Mike Richards off of them.
I love watching him because I still find myself being able to play along.
For those people who feel he is making the game less fun they need to keep in mind Matt Amodio is not there for them.

His unbridled enthusiasm speaks volumes as does his facial expressions when he surprises himself at how much money he has so far won.
You can clearly tell it means something to him when he figures out a clue even he wasn’t sure he knew.
Maybe he’ll unseat the G.O.A.T and make everyone realize anything is possible in these days of prefabricated bliss and PHD students that go bump in the night.

He’s so pleasant and that’s so long overdue as snark becomes our national pastime and tweets replace the “Gettysburg Address” for brevity.
He makes sure everyone gets their Matt time on social media because he clearly understands how much it means to others to be recognized by a Jeopardy! champion.
He’s the very first champion I have seen be so open and available and that leaves me speechless as I look forward to tuning in again.

Charles Cicirella
10/9/2021

Hands

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-09T04_07_46-07_00

When I look at my hands they look like someone else’s hands and when I touch myself it feels like there’s no one there.
A stranger with a low self-esteem bordering on insanity as these strange encounters only push me deeper towards the big sleep.
We’re fools, complete idiots if we believe the chiming bell is not chiming for us.

These hands, these ikons, these relics from a bygone era violently trespass through the fog of my memory and confessions mislaid.
I desire to break inside of myself, but I know there is no one home and that even Fort Knox has to take a break every now and then.
Resistance is futile when the oppressors you’re going against already know your credit score and that beating you is only smart if they’re the village idiot.

My fingers are too fat to hit the proper keys so the poetry is gibberish and that’s nothing new, just ask the hacks that proofread this shit.
I pick up the phone and ask for help and as I await an answer I’m convinced my innocence will someday no longer be up for debate.
Being an artist is a calling like being a priest or serial killer. The hours are long and the lines at the confessional never abate.

Feeling sick to my stomach and nothing I do makes me feel any better.
Starting to believe normalcy is overrated and the cautionary tale that is my life impresses no one, including my invisible therapist.
When I look at my hands I imagine them around my neck, but even that offers no comfort as I try sitting still while the grim reaper cuts my hair and shaves off this Moses beard.

Charles Cicirella
10/6/2021

Holly the Magnificent Storyteller

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2021-10-09T03_46_46-07_00

When Joe becomes annoyed I’m so disheartened.
The way Holly spins a tail never fails to leave me wanting more.
Think Aesop if he was hell bent for leather and smoked like a beatific chimney.

Storytime with the Cohen's is a very special time and one I never take for granted.
You know you’re part of the pack when Holly tucks you in with her words of wisdom and whatnot.
I’m leaving on the midnight train to Georgia and before I go I just wanted to say your tangents repeatedly put me under your spell.

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered is where I’m at.
It’s all on account of this woman who weaves together words like no one else I know and leaves me in a transformative state where I’m set free from the day’s murdersome agenda of piss poor shenanigans.
Time to take a break and stop believing so fervently in the fairy tales the Brothers Grimm poured into us like antifreeze.

When Joe interrupts Holly I almost want to stand up and dance a jig because maybe that will distract from the uncomfortable energy entering the room like Elijah on a three day bender.
She’s rhapsodic in her delivery and it helps to heal me and feel less beleaguered.
I know there’s no going back when Holly the Magnificent Storyteller comes to your town and packs them in with her capstone knowledge and knitting needle asides.

Charles Cicirella
10/9/2021