Sunday, August 02, 2015
Bad Cop, Bad Cop
Why do cops keep killing black people?
North Charleston Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager firing several times at Walter Lamer Scott’s back while he's running away after the officer already had hit him with a stun gun. To make matters even worse, after he falls down the officer slowly walks toward Scott, who appears to be unresponsive, and places him in handcuffs. Slager was charged with murder after a video surfaced contradicting his initial police report.
Or putting Eric Garner in a chokehold for about 15 to 19 seconds during an arrest even though he repeated at least eight times, “I can’t breathe.” The New York City Medical Examiner's Office attributed Garner's death to a combination of a chokehold, compression of his chest, and poor health.
Or the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, 28, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. On November 24, 2014, it was announced that the St. Louis County grand jury had decided not to indict Wilson. On March 4, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice cleared Wilson of civil rights violations in the shooting, finding that witnesses who corroborated his account were credible while those who incriminated him were not, and that according to the evidence, Wilson shot Michael Brown in self-defense.
Or the death of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer because the officer thought he was holding a gun when actually he was carrying a replica of a gun, a Colt pistol that shoots plastic pellets. There was even a caller to Cleveland’s 911 system that had reported that the gun Tamir was holding was “probably fake” but of course the officers did not know any of this at the time. On June 3, 2015, the County Sheriff's Office released a statement in which they declared their investigation to be completed and that they had turned their findings over to the county prosecutor, who will review the report and decide whether to present evidence to a grand jury. In the aftermath of the shooting, it was reported that officer Loehmann, in his previous job as a policeman in Independence, Ohio, had been deemed an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty.
I would say we need to put a stop to all of this killing, but it's becoming more and more apparent that black lives just do not matter as much as other lives and perhaps to the police they do not matter at all.
And now there’s the case of Sandra Bland who was found hanged in a jail cell in Texas three days after she was arrested during a traffic stop. The family is ordering an independent autopsy to find out what really happened to the 28-year-old. Authorities claim that Bland committed suicide in their custody, but family members are skeptical.
So if you’re black, must you just accept that you’re born with a target on your back? Is this how we’re going to allow things to regress without even raising an eyebrow, realizing that there is something happening here and what it is has become altogether too clear?
And the grand juries and all of those supposed special investigations are not doing a damn thing to get to the poisonous roots of racism that have been embedded in our society since long before Jim Crow.
And I am not even sure what can be done about any of this other than continuing to ask the question, "Why do cops keep killing black people?" until we get an answer that confronts this issue and doesn’t just bury it.
We need to realize and accept that we’re all a part of this problem and stop shielding our eyes and pretending that we’re not all black in some facet or other and need to stand together as a united front against all of these bad cops who are murdering people in cold blood. This should not only be a black issue but should be a people issue concerning each and every one of us and until that happens we’re all fucked.
Charles Cicirella
7/21/15
North Charleston Patrolman Michael Thomas Slager firing several times at Walter Lamer Scott’s back while he's running away after the officer already had hit him with a stun gun. To make matters even worse, after he falls down the officer slowly walks toward Scott, who appears to be unresponsive, and places him in handcuffs. Slager was charged with murder after a video surfaced contradicting his initial police report.
Or putting Eric Garner in a chokehold for about 15 to 19 seconds during an arrest even though he repeated at least eight times, “I can’t breathe.” The New York City Medical Examiner's Office attributed Garner's death to a combination of a chokehold, compression of his chest, and poor health.
Or the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was fatally shot by Darren Wilson, 28, a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. On November 24, 2014, it was announced that the St. Louis County grand jury had decided not to indict Wilson. On March 4, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice cleared Wilson of civil rights violations in the shooting, finding that witnesses who corroborated his account were credible while those who incriminated him were not, and that according to the evidence, Wilson shot Michael Brown in self-defense.
Or the death of Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy fatally shot by a Cleveland police officer because the officer thought he was holding a gun when actually he was carrying a replica of a gun, a Colt pistol that shoots plastic pellets. There was even a caller to Cleveland’s 911 system that had reported that the gun Tamir was holding was “probably fake” but of course the officers did not know any of this at the time. On June 3, 2015, the County Sheriff's Office released a statement in which they declared their investigation to be completed and that they had turned their findings over to the county prosecutor, who will review the report and decide whether to present evidence to a grand jury. In the aftermath of the shooting, it was reported that officer Loehmann, in his previous job as a policeman in Independence, Ohio, had been deemed an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty.
I would say we need to put a stop to all of this killing, but it's becoming more and more apparent that black lives just do not matter as much as other lives and perhaps to the police they do not matter at all.
And now there’s the case of Sandra Bland who was found hanged in a jail cell in Texas three days after she was arrested during a traffic stop. The family is ordering an independent autopsy to find out what really happened to the 28-year-old. Authorities claim that Bland committed suicide in their custody, but family members are skeptical.
So if you’re black, must you just accept that you’re born with a target on your back? Is this how we’re going to allow things to regress without even raising an eyebrow, realizing that there is something happening here and what it is has become altogether too clear?
And the grand juries and all of those supposed special investigations are not doing a damn thing to get to the poisonous roots of racism that have been embedded in our society since long before Jim Crow.
And I am not even sure what can be done about any of this other than continuing to ask the question, "Why do cops keep killing black people?" until we get an answer that confronts this issue and doesn’t just bury it.
We need to realize and accept that we’re all a part of this problem and stop shielding our eyes and pretending that we’re not all black in some facet or other and need to stand together as a united front against all of these bad cops who are murdering people in cold blood. This should not only be a black issue but should be a people issue concerning each and every one of us and until that happens we’re all fucked.
Charles Cicirella
7/21/15
Rice Krispies Parallel Universes
Took a shower.
Washed the stench off of me.
Washed the death off of me.
Thinking about micro penises.
Not mine just micro penises in general.
How because they’re micro they might just fit anywhere.
She asked me to keep the poems about her just between us.
Said she was worried about her reputation because she was new to the poetry scene and didn’t know how big this thing would get.
I am at a loss at how one poet can ask another poet to hide their light under a bushel.
Took a shower.
Washed the low expectations off of me.
Washed the crack of my ass and everything in between.
Thinking about her reading her poem about dog shit.
How she carried it off with such finesse and ample amounts of sonorous intensity.
She is one of a kind as I view her in my mind’s eye looking down at the micro casket.
She asked me and as she did so I could feel the inspiration dying on the vine.
She asked me as the pistol went off and one more self-effacing leading man died too young.
She asked me and it made me want to go out for Chinese food and forget about all of this bullshit that keeps us from connecting with our “Real Real Gone” selves.
Charles Cicirella
7/17/15
Washed the stench off of me.
Washed the death off of me.
Thinking about micro penises.
Not mine just micro penises in general.
How because they’re micro they might just fit anywhere.
She asked me to keep the poems about her just between us.
Said she was worried about her reputation because she was new to the poetry scene and didn’t know how big this thing would get.
I am at a loss at how one poet can ask another poet to hide their light under a bushel.
Took a shower.
Washed the low expectations off of me.
Washed the crack of my ass and everything in between.
Thinking about her reading her poem about dog shit.
How she carried it off with such finesse and ample amounts of sonorous intensity.
She is one of a kind as I view her in my mind’s eye looking down at the micro casket.
She asked me and as she did so I could feel the inspiration dying on the vine.
She asked me as the pistol went off and one more self-effacing leading man died too young.
She asked me and it made me want to go out for Chinese food and forget about all of this bullshit that keeps us from connecting with our “Real Real Gone” selves.
Charles Cicirella
7/17/15
Toast
I’ve always found it interesting how toast can make you feel better.
I’m not at all surprised how Trump makes us feel bad because I believe he was built to bring the very worst out in all of us.
Someone needs to tell him his combover is not fooling anyone and if he really has as much money as he claims to then what’s wrong with being bald or heck even if he was broke I still think he should get rid of whatever that thing is on his head.
I like toast. I don’t like Trump. It’s as simple as that.
I would vote for toast over Trump any day of the week and thrice on Sundays.
I also think toast (even dry toast) is more interesting than Trump and I don’t care if he bullies me and makes fun of me because I am short or because I don’t have a job or because I live with my mother.
He’s a mean, arrogant, self-imploding crater of a man that is not proving anything of any real worth to anyone with even half a brain except that even with extreme wealth that doesn’t make you any less of an asshole and in his case, I think, it has made him an even bigger one.
Toast trumps Donald that’s all I’m saying.
And once you sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on a piece of buttered toast not only doesn’t Trump have a chance in hell of winning the Republican nomination he also doesn’t have a chance of me breaking bread with him any time soon.
And if you put a piece of Swiss cheese on a piece of buttered rye toast that is also a slice of Heaven, as opposed to Trump who even with the cheese would just come off even more overblown and full of shit.
Charles Cicirella
7/21/15
I’m not at all surprised how Trump makes us feel bad because I believe he was built to bring the very worst out in all of us.
Someone needs to tell him his combover is not fooling anyone and if he really has as much money as he claims to then what’s wrong with being bald or heck even if he was broke I still think he should get rid of whatever that thing is on his head.
I like toast. I don’t like Trump. It’s as simple as that.
I would vote for toast over Trump any day of the week and thrice on Sundays.
I also think toast (even dry toast) is more interesting than Trump and I don’t care if he bullies me and makes fun of me because I am short or because I don’t have a job or because I live with my mother.
He’s a mean, arrogant, self-imploding crater of a man that is not proving anything of any real worth to anyone with even half a brain except that even with extreme wealth that doesn’t make you any less of an asshole and in his case, I think, it has made him an even bigger one.
Toast trumps Donald that’s all I’m saying.
And once you sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar on a piece of buttered toast not only doesn’t Trump have a chance in hell of winning the Republican nomination he also doesn’t have a chance of me breaking bread with him any time soon.
And if you put a piece of Swiss cheese on a piece of buttered rye toast that is also a slice of Heaven, as opposed to Trump who even with the cheese would just come off even more overblown and full of shit.
Charles Cicirella
7/21/15
Threading the Needle
The words come or they don’t.
The moods come or they won’t.
And I have never been much of a stickler for sticking points.
I may be a maverick or perhaps I’m a rogue.
I could be a hopeless romantic or maybe just a hapless fool.
I cannot remember the last time I fumbled around for the light switch, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that long ago.
My new bifocals help me to see things more clearly.
My new bifocals help me to discern the dirt from the debris and the collateral damage from the religious extremists.
I’m never going to strap a bomb to my chest no matter how many virgins I’m promised in Heaven.
The sun rises and it sets.
The moon shines and it frets.
And I have never been crazy about going crazy unless it involves kicking off my shoes and running into the sea.
If you feel like threading the needle I’ll be just around the corner catching a smoke or eating some ice-cream.
If you decide enough is enough and it’s time to throw in the towel please ring me before you attempt to call God collect.
I am so tired of people leaving the building prematurely. Didn’t you get the memo that we are here for a reason even when or especially when we have no clue what that reason might just be?
Charles Cicirella
7/21/15
The moods come or they won’t.
And I have never been much of a stickler for sticking points.
I may be a maverick or perhaps I’m a rogue.
I could be a hopeless romantic or maybe just a hapless fool.
I cannot remember the last time I fumbled around for the light switch, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t that long ago.
My new bifocals help me to see things more clearly.
My new bifocals help me to discern the dirt from the debris and the collateral damage from the religious extremists.
I’m never going to strap a bomb to my chest no matter how many virgins I’m promised in Heaven.
The sun rises and it sets.
The moon shines and it frets.
And I have never been crazy about going crazy unless it involves kicking off my shoes and running into the sea.
If you feel like threading the needle I’ll be just around the corner catching a smoke or eating some ice-cream.
If you decide enough is enough and it’s time to throw in the towel please ring me before you attempt to call God collect.
I am so tired of people leaving the building prematurely. Didn’t you get the memo that we are here for a reason even when or especially when we have no clue what that reason might just be?
Charles Cicirella
7/21/15
Gallagher, Wise and Cicirella
I don’t think it was lost on any one of us that we had turned onto a street with no outlet.
We’re men and we’re musicians and writers and artists and associate professors and librarians and some or none of the above.
And there were deer and barely legal women, depending on who you ask, and there was an overwhelming sense of finality to the goings-on that kept us walking and talking and thankfully kept us out of the deep, dark recesses of his bruised brain.
And I’m not a chain smoker and I’m not a chain anything, but if you would have ever bet me that Jim Pauley would one day buy a gun I would have lost that bet because I’m not a very good gambler and my poker face is right off of a Bozo the Clown most wanted poster.
And Gallagher cracked Wise and Wise cracked Gallagher and I stood by the side of the road watching the deer and the white billowing clouds in the blue hibernating sky and I didn’t want to turn around and I didn’t want to get in the car and I didn’t want to head home because I knew then I would have to accept he was never going to be seen or heard from again. And Wise squeezed my shoulders and we talked about ping pong or Donkey Kong and it didn’t even matter as long as we had gotten this far on our own two legs with a little help from our friends and we’re all going to die, but why did it have to be now and why did it have to be him and I know even Confucius would be stumped by these questions and I know I won’t like the answers because they’re steeped in black water that will never properly boil and a tea bag that just sits there giving you the most dispassionate look of utter resolve and unyielding determination.
I’m standing in a sculpture garden with sculptures all around. Some appear to possess great wisdom while others seem to not have a clue what’s going on. I cannot move. My legs feel like molten lead. You came up behind me and scared me half to death. You chuckled like you always did when you caught me off guard. And I just drank you in because it seemed like eons since the last time we talked and walked side by side down the long Hemingway Highway. You asked if I needed to sit down and catch my breath but I didn’t hear you because I had since turned into a sculpture and a couple of cardinals had built some fine nests in my sculpted ears. I’ll never forget when you breathed the breath of life into my weary and untethered bones and I will never be able to quite forgive you for leaving without saying one last prosaic and protracted goodbye.
Charles Cicirella
7/20/15
We’re men and we’re musicians and writers and artists and associate professors and librarians and some or none of the above.
And there were deer and barely legal women, depending on who you ask, and there was an overwhelming sense of finality to the goings-on that kept us walking and talking and thankfully kept us out of the deep, dark recesses of his bruised brain.
And I’m not a chain smoker and I’m not a chain anything, but if you would have ever bet me that Jim Pauley would one day buy a gun I would have lost that bet because I’m not a very good gambler and my poker face is right off of a Bozo the Clown most wanted poster.
And Gallagher cracked Wise and Wise cracked Gallagher and I stood by the side of the road watching the deer and the white billowing clouds in the blue hibernating sky and I didn’t want to turn around and I didn’t want to get in the car and I didn’t want to head home because I knew then I would have to accept he was never going to be seen or heard from again. And Wise squeezed my shoulders and we talked about ping pong or Donkey Kong and it didn’t even matter as long as we had gotten this far on our own two legs with a little help from our friends and we’re all going to die, but why did it have to be now and why did it have to be him and I know even Confucius would be stumped by these questions and I know I won’t like the answers because they’re steeped in black water that will never properly boil and a tea bag that just sits there giving you the most dispassionate look of utter resolve and unyielding determination.
I’m standing in a sculpture garden with sculptures all around. Some appear to possess great wisdom while others seem to not have a clue what’s going on. I cannot move. My legs feel like molten lead. You came up behind me and scared me half to death. You chuckled like you always did when you caught me off guard. And I just drank you in because it seemed like eons since the last time we talked and walked side by side down the long Hemingway Highway. You asked if I needed to sit down and catch my breath but I didn’t hear you because I had since turned into a sculpture and a couple of cardinals had built some fine nests in my sculpted ears. I’ll never forget when you breathed the breath of life into my weary and untethered bones and I will never be able to quite forgive you for leaving without saying one last prosaic and protracted goodbye.
Charles Cicirella
7/20/15
"Girl from the North Country"
Some connections are made in the stars before they ever touch down on Earth.
Some connections are a “Series of Dreams” and will outlast truth and a “Simple Twist of Fate” because that’s how God intends it to be and if you don’t believe, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” because omnipotence works in mysterious ways and star crossed lovers will always be star crossed just ask Vincent or Marilyn or Kurt Cobain if you don’t trust me.
I remember so much and I remember so little, but I definitely remember that night at Miggs when I was blasting Bob Dylan as I cleared the tables out front and you walked by. Everything stopped and I knew something was happening here even if I still don’t know what it is. The fabric of the universe was torn just a little bit apart as Bob offered communion and we accepted the round wafer as the music and the mayhem and his encouraging words washed over us and left us more whole than we had been before the song started.
I need to get these words down while I still can because I must try and reach you no matter how difficult that may prove to be. I have no idea what you’re feeling and I don’t envy what it is you’re facing. I know that you lost your best friend and that just stops me in my tracks because we should never lose our best friends no matter the circumstances. I am trying my best to write this poem because that’s what I do and I know you’re staring into the abyss and I know if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck, but with Jim that was never the case nor was it ever in fact true.
Jim was a troubadour of the highest degree. He was a wordsmith and a comedian and a sportscaster, but never an armchair quarterback. He brandished a letter opener instead of a sword and knew just when to twist the knife and when to pull back and allow the silences to make his points for him. He was a leading man and a character actor all rolled into one Norman Rockwell-Jackson Pollock painting. He made everyone around him feel smarter and want to be a better person and he left his mark but never bruised the orange or left teeth marks in inopportune places. He took clever to a whole other level, but was never a smart aleck and understood what it meant to leave well enough alone and to go your own way before you’ve either worn out your welcome or have too loudly blown your own horn. And I believe he knew more about love than all the songs he relished because he was full of heart and understood better than most what Dylan meant when he wrote and sang “How does it feel?”
Charles Cicirella
7/19/15
Some connections are a “Series of Dreams” and will outlast truth and a “Simple Twist of Fate” because that’s how God intends it to be and if you don’t believe, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” because omnipotence works in mysterious ways and star crossed lovers will always be star crossed just ask Vincent or Marilyn or Kurt Cobain if you don’t trust me.
I remember so much and I remember so little, but I definitely remember that night at Miggs when I was blasting Bob Dylan as I cleared the tables out front and you walked by. Everything stopped and I knew something was happening here even if I still don’t know what it is. The fabric of the universe was torn just a little bit apart as Bob offered communion and we accepted the round wafer as the music and the mayhem and his encouraging words washed over us and left us more whole than we had been before the song started.
I need to get these words down while I still can because I must try and reach you no matter how difficult that may prove to be. I have no idea what you’re feeling and I don’t envy what it is you’re facing. I know that you lost your best friend and that just stops me in my tracks because we should never lose our best friends no matter the circumstances. I am trying my best to write this poem because that’s what I do and I know you’re staring into the abyss and I know if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck, but with Jim that was never the case nor was it ever in fact true.
Jim was a troubadour of the highest degree. He was a wordsmith and a comedian and a sportscaster, but never an armchair quarterback. He brandished a letter opener instead of a sword and knew just when to twist the knife and when to pull back and allow the silences to make his points for him. He was a leading man and a character actor all rolled into one Norman Rockwell-Jackson Pollock painting. He made everyone around him feel smarter and want to be a better person and he left his mark but never bruised the orange or left teeth marks in inopportune places. He took clever to a whole other level, but was never a smart aleck and understood what it meant to leave well enough alone and to go your own way before you’ve either worn out your welcome or have too loudly blown your own horn. And I believe he knew more about love than all the songs he relished because he was full of heart and understood better than most what Dylan meant when he wrote and sang “How does it feel?”
Charles Cicirella
7/19/15
In the Garden with Jim Pauley
He had this irresistible wit that would have you laughing in the aisles while also waking you up to some painful truth.
I rarely look for another person’s acceptance and yet when it came to Jim I never wanted to disappoint him or feel like I had in some way let him down.
I’ve never been interested in sports, but for him I would do my very best to try and understand what was going on because it was something he was passionate about, and I wanted to share some of that passion with him.
Music was the bond we really had in common, and of course Bob Dylan was where he and I could meet and lose ourselves in hours of listening, savoring and getting it.
The first time I heard "Love And Theft" was with him and Jessica. I had been fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy, and there was no one I wanted to experience it with more.
I’ll never forget going into his bathroom and seeing the image of James Dean in jeans turned with his back to the camera and wondering what that was all about, but because it was in Jim’s bathroom, I went away thinking how cool that is.
I cannot believe that he is gone and that I am writing this poem.
It’s like a bad dream that I’ll never wake up from because who else would have listened to Tom Waits’ Mule Variations, commenting on how it’s an American classic and meaning it with such reverence and an understated regal charm.
I would say I’m at a loss for words, but I’ve said that before and no one would believe me anyhow, especially Jim. He always knew when I was bending the truth to cover the spread or when I had finally run out of gas and pulled over to the side of the road in order to catch my breath and find out what the score was.
You never judged me, and I am not going to sit in judgment of you now. First because it’s not my place and second because I had no clue about the hellhounds that were hot on your trail as the blues fell down like rain.
I just thank God we had those many nights at JR Miggs when nothing mattered other than Jeopardy and the next CD we listened to.
I will never forget hanging out with you and Rob afterhours and how for the first time in my life feeling like one of the guys as we sat around just shooting the breeze and not worrying about what tomorrow may bring.
I love you my friend and pray you’ve found some well-earned and well-deserved peace.
Charles Cicirella
7/16/15
I rarely look for another person’s acceptance and yet when it came to Jim I never wanted to disappoint him or feel like I had in some way let him down.
I’ve never been interested in sports, but for him I would do my very best to try and understand what was going on because it was something he was passionate about, and I wanted to share some of that passion with him.
Music was the bond we really had in common, and of course Bob Dylan was where he and I could meet and lose ourselves in hours of listening, savoring and getting it.
The first time I heard "Love And Theft" was with him and Jessica. I had been fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy, and there was no one I wanted to experience it with more.
I’ll never forget going into his bathroom and seeing the image of James Dean in jeans turned with his back to the camera and wondering what that was all about, but because it was in Jim’s bathroom, I went away thinking how cool that is.
I cannot believe that he is gone and that I am writing this poem.
It’s like a bad dream that I’ll never wake up from because who else would have listened to Tom Waits’ Mule Variations, commenting on how it’s an American classic and meaning it with such reverence and an understated regal charm.
I would say I’m at a loss for words, but I’ve said that before and no one would believe me anyhow, especially Jim. He always knew when I was bending the truth to cover the spread or when I had finally run out of gas and pulled over to the side of the road in order to catch my breath and find out what the score was.
You never judged me, and I am not going to sit in judgment of you now. First because it’s not my place and second because I had no clue about the hellhounds that were hot on your trail as the blues fell down like rain.
I just thank God we had those many nights at JR Miggs when nothing mattered other than Jeopardy and the next CD we listened to.
I will never forget hanging out with you and Rob afterhours and how for the first time in my life feeling like one of the guys as we sat around just shooting the breeze and not worrying about what tomorrow may bring.
I love you my friend and pray you’ve found some well-earned and well-deserved peace.
Charles Cicirella
7/16/15
Ghosts
I’ve written this poem before, but I thought I’d give it another go.
It’s not because the first one wasn’t any good, but when you hit upon something I figure why not keep hitting it until its dead.
Plus I don’t feel like writing another love poem right now and having someone comment that I need to get a girlfriend.
Why are people afraid of honesty?
Why are people made so uncomfortable from anything that touches them or awakens something inside that maybe they have not experienced in this lifetime?
Ghosts are people to and I think it’s high time we gave them the right to vote seeing how the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people and Republicans are doing their darndest to make it as difficult as possible for black people to exercise their right to vote.
I know some people will not be comfortable with that last line and I really could care less because this is my poem and I’ll make anybody uncomfortable that I choose to.
I once fell in love with a ghost. She was one heck of a looker but when it came to commitment she was terrible at sticking around and believed that she had the right to haunt anybody she pleased at any time.
We must come together before it’s too late and strike down all this hatred and ignorance and I am not just talking about taking down a flag, but really digging down into the trenches and asking ourselves the really tough questions like why we despise people that don’t look like us or pray like us or love like us.
I’ve written this poem at least a dozen times before and I’ll probably write it a thousand more and I’ll still not get it right because right and might, light or dark are so beside the point.
I am through with all of these lightweight people who haven’t got a clue what a blessing it is to be here among the thistles and the thorns.
It’s not like I am giving up hope or that I ever believed that hope equates fear, but at some point we all must give up the ghost and few of us will be able to control when we turn out the lights and never wake up again.
Charles Cicirella
7/15/15
It’s not because the first one wasn’t any good, but when you hit upon something I figure why not keep hitting it until its dead.
Plus I don’t feel like writing another love poem right now and having someone comment that I need to get a girlfriend.
Why are people afraid of honesty?
Why are people made so uncomfortable from anything that touches them or awakens something inside that maybe they have not experienced in this lifetime?
Ghosts are people to and I think it’s high time we gave them the right to vote seeing how the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people and Republicans are doing their darndest to make it as difficult as possible for black people to exercise their right to vote.
I know some people will not be comfortable with that last line and I really could care less because this is my poem and I’ll make anybody uncomfortable that I choose to.
I once fell in love with a ghost. She was one heck of a looker but when it came to commitment she was terrible at sticking around and believed that she had the right to haunt anybody she pleased at any time.
We must come together before it’s too late and strike down all this hatred and ignorance and I am not just talking about taking down a flag, but really digging down into the trenches and asking ourselves the really tough questions like why we despise people that don’t look like us or pray like us or love like us.
I’ve written this poem at least a dozen times before and I’ll probably write it a thousand more and I’ll still not get it right because right and might, light or dark are so beside the point.
I am through with all of these lightweight people who haven’t got a clue what a blessing it is to be here among the thistles and the thorns.
It’s not like I am giving up hope or that I ever believed that hope equates fear, but at some point we all must give up the ghost and few of us will be able to control when we turn out the lights and never wake up again.
Charles Cicirella
7/15/15
What if greatness eludes me?
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-13T13_53_35-07_00
I know I possess greatness but what if it’s in my other pants?
The words are coming so fast what if I don’t get them all down or I put them down in the wrong order?
There's something happening here what it is ain't exactly clear and you don’t have to point out to me that that line is not original because I already know and I don’t care.
I fear no repercussions except for the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.
I have no expectations except for the low expectations I wake up next to each and every afternoon.
Last couple of days I have been twitchy and I am not even sure why that is. Maybe it’s because I recently stopped smoking marijuana after smoking it every day for two or three month’s straight. Or maybe the plaque build-up in my brain is starting to cause more than just memory lapses as I become more and more aware of how important it is to get my thoughts down before thinking is no longer possible and drooling is the only task I’m capable of.
I know about destiny and fate and that luck as perverse as it may sound also plays its part before it’s too late.
I’ve also been told that hustling is important if you ever want to make it out of the gate.
What if greatness eludes me simply because I am too afraid to go without and that means leaving Cleveland, Ohio and going it completely alone with no safety net or close relations or friends to save me from the bitter taste of defeat and anonymity?
Charles Cicirella
7/13/15
I know I possess greatness but what if it’s in my other pants?
The words are coming so fast what if I don’t get them all down or I put them down in the wrong order?
There's something happening here what it is ain't exactly clear and you don’t have to point out to me that that line is not original because I already know and I don’t care.
I fear no repercussions except for the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.
I have no expectations except for the low expectations I wake up next to each and every afternoon.
Last couple of days I have been twitchy and I am not even sure why that is. Maybe it’s because I recently stopped smoking marijuana after smoking it every day for two or three month’s straight. Or maybe the plaque build-up in my brain is starting to cause more than just memory lapses as I become more and more aware of how important it is to get my thoughts down before thinking is no longer possible and drooling is the only task I’m capable of.
I know about destiny and fate and that luck as perverse as it may sound also plays its part before it’s too late.
I’ve also been told that hustling is important if you ever want to make it out of the gate.
What if greatness eludes me simply because I am too afraid to go without and that means leaving Cleveland, Ohio and going it completely alone with no safety net or close relations or friends to save me from the bitter taste of defeat and anonymity?
Charles Cicirella
7/13/15
Weather Report
Words fall out
Down
All around
Words shoeless
Crush snow
Crash stained glass
Child
Adult
Bones
Child
Adult
Ashes
Words drip
Drop
Ricochet
Words convey
Converge
Convert
Grave
Borderless
Open horizons
Grave
Fluctuating
Central cocoon
Charles Cicirella
7/13/15
Down
All around
Words shoeless
Crush snow
Crash stained glass
Child
Adult
Bones
Child
Adult
Ashes
Words drip
Drop
Ricochet
Words convey
Converge
Convert
Grave
Borderless
Open horizons
Grave
Fluctuating
Central cocoon
Charles Cicirella
7/13/15
Possession is nine-tenths of the law.
You possess the words. They don’t possess you.
You possess something inexcusably tangible with every breath inhaled and exhaled.
Your writing didn’t just sneak up on me. No your writing gave me a swift kick in the butt and continues to do just that as I read it and consume it and devour it like carrion and tubers.
The talent does not possess you. You possess the talent.
The talent does not reap the rewards you do.
And if you’re doing it just right the rewards will be forgotten rather quickly because there are more poems to be written and fights against windmills to be waged.
You’re a super nova.
And you are the glory.
And I’m an asshole for questioning you in the first, second and third place.
You possess the power. The power does not possess you.
You possess a knockout punch and do it every time you press down the keys with your wiggly digits, knuckles and thumbs.
Your writing has sparked a revolution in our heads. It’s your poetic imagery that keeps us guessing and coming back for me. It’s the way you possess ghosts that scares every one of us to death because we know you’re onto something and are going to leave us in the Louisiana dust before it’s too late and the jury comes back with a non-guilty verdict.
Charles Cicirella
7/13/15
You possess something inexcusably tangible with every breath inhaled and exhaled.
Your writing didn’t just sneak up on me. No your writing gave me a swift kick in the butt and continues to do just that as I read it and consume it and devour it like carrion and tubers.
The talent does not possess you. You possess the talent.
The talent does not reap the rewards you do.
And if you’re doing it just right the rewards will be forgotten rather quickly because there are more poems to be written and fights against windmills to be waged.
You’re a super nova.
And you are the glory.
And I’m an asshole for questioning you in the first, second and third place.
You possess the power. The power does not possess you.
You possess a knockout punch and do it every time you press down the keys with your wiggly digits, knuckles and thumbs.
Your writing has sparked a revolution in our heads. It’s your poetic imagery that keeps us guessing and coming back for me. It’s the way you possess ghosts that scares every one of us to death because we know you’re onto something and are going to leave us in the Louisiana dust before it’s too late and the jury comes back with a non-guilty verdict.
Charles Cicirella
7/13/15
Skittles
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-15T15_10_29-07_00
Laying down
Listening to the thunder
Thinking of you covering me with umbrella kisses
Standing up
Hanging onto your every whim and Whac-A-Mole diversionary tactic
Discerning just how real you are amid all the Mr. Fantasy politicking
We begin as milkshakes and if we’re lucky end up as root beer floats
I am jobless, nearly homeless and when it comes to self-preservation haven’t a clue how to keep myself from ending up living in a van down by the river
I desire to stick my circus straw in your funhouse of mirrors and rodeo mystique
I will never forgive Skittles for replacing lime with green apple
Skittles was never my go to candy and yet still on occasion I enjoy them and find myself missing lime like I miss consistency over profit margin
I will never forgive God for sacrificing his only son
Charles Cicirella
7/14/15
Laying down
Listening to the thunder
Thinking of you covering me with umbrella kisses
Standing up
Hanging onto your every whim and Whac-A-Mole diversionary tactic
Discerning just how real you are amid all the Mr. Fantasy politicking
We begin as milkshakes and if we’re lucky end up as root beer floats
I am jobless, nearly homeless and when it comes to self-preservation haven’t a clue how to keep myself from ending up living in a van down by the river
I desire to stick my circus straw in your funhouse of mirrors and rodeo mystique
I will never forgive Skittles for replacing lime with green apple
Skittles was never my go to candy and yet still on occasion I enjoy them and find myself missing lime like I miss consistency over profit margin
I will never forgive God for sacrificing his only son
Charles Cicirella
7/14/15
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Animal Crackers
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-11T12_12_13-07_00
I know you’re hungry. I’m hungry too.
The way you get my words.
The way you make music from words and words into crystal latticed semiconductors of hypnotic flow is a sight to behold. And I refuse to surrender to your resolve because my own resolve is plenty good enough and has gotten me this far.
These are not love letters. I’m not even semi-hard as I type this.
These are not Letters to Milena so don’t go getting your panties all in a bunch.
I need to experience Sabbath with you one on one. Like a live television broadcast there will be commercial breaks and we’ll get to know one another in the green room.
When I mentioned that writing was for me like taking down dictation straight from my brainstem and you responded it was the same for you, that’s when I started to believe you were a believer just like me.
Streams of consciousness shoot through our battle fatigues and we mustn’t worry about the cost we’ll ultimately pay because our deliverance has always been contingent on absolute and abject otherness and the belief that free will is only half of the picture.
Our pasts are past due and the reason we’re so comfortable with these futuristic cave drawings is because we were present when they first came into bloody being. Just like when a baby cuts their first tooth and a little whiskey helps kill the pain.
Grouch Marx is our benefactor. Harpo Marx his silent partner in the lost art of slapstick slaughter.
What happens when all of our Christ figurines have come down with a case of the flu? What happens if we don’t figure some way to withstand our own desperate pleas?
I need for us to meet with no distractions, including all of that needless expediency that gets us to the good part that much faster and yet proves to be just more buzzkill.
I like my animal crackers straight from the zoo.
I like my honey straight from the honeybee.
I like my poetry straight from the spicket. At first I thought you were a mirage then it became all too apparent that you are flesh, blood and words and burn hotter than rocket fuel.
Charles Cicirella
7/8/2015
I know you’re hungry. I’m hungry too.
The way you get my words.
The way you make music from words and words into crystal latticed semiconductors of hypnotic flow is a sight to behold. And I refuse to surrender to your resolve because my own resolve is plenty good enough and has gotten me this far.
These are not love letters. I’m not even semi-hard as I type this.
These are not Letters to Milena so don’t go getting your panties all in a bunch.
I need to experience Sabbath with you one on one. Like a live television broadcast there will be commercial breaks and we’ll get to know one another in the green room.
When I mentioned that writing was for me like taking down dictation straight from my brainstem and you responded it was the same for you, that’s when I started to believe you were a believer just like me.
Streams of consciousness shoot through our battle fatigues and we mustn’t worry about the cost we’ll ultimately pay because our deliverance has always been contingent on absolute and abject otherness and the belief that free will is only half of the picture.
Our pasts are past due and the reason we’re so comfortable with these futuristic cave drawings is because we were present when they first came into bloody being. Just like when a baby cuts their first tooth and a little whiskey helps kill the pain.
Grouch Marx is our benefactor. Harpo Marx his silent partner in the lost art of slapstick slaughter.
What happens when all of our Christ figurines have come down with a case of the flu? What happens if we don’t figure some way to withstand our own desperate pleas?
I need for us to meet with no distractions, including all of that needless expediency that gets us to the good part that much faster and yet proves to be just more buzzkill.
I like my animal crackers straight from the zoo.
I like my honey straight from the honeybee.
I like my poetry straight from the spicket. At first I thought you were a mirage then it became all too apparent that you are flesh, blood and words and burn hotter than rocket fuel.
Charles Cicirella
7/8/2015
Monday, July 06, 2015
Thin Ice
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-05T21_02_23-07_00
Just hit the pipe.
It’s just some pot.
Nothing heavy like heroin, cocaine or alcohol.
Haven’t written in a few days, but the writing is an old friend so odds are it will forgive me.
I know we’re on thin ice ever since I confessed to feeling love and you’re still trying to keep it casual in your head even though the rest of your body is warm for my form.
There’s no denying I’m an instigator even when I’m saying nothing, eyes closed, hands unclenched.
They say Bernie Sanders is a socialist like that’s a mark against him.
Conservative media, liberal media they’re all eating and drinking from the same trough. The only one who is telling the truth other than Bernie is Elizabeth Warren, but she’s not running and Bernie doesn’t have a chance in hell of even winning the nomination.
This poem is all over the map because I cannot afford GPS. In fact I still have a flip phone and it’s plenty smart enough for me.
Going to reload the pipe.
Then I am going to imagine you naked and spewing poetry and other juices from your most trusted of orifices.
We’re chatting on FB and I just asked you if you were shaved. I know you will either say no comment or stonewall me as you have a habit of doing. Trust me I understand how awful it is wrestling with guilt. I also know we’re skating on thin ice and that global warming should be scaring us into real action.
Charles Cicirella
7/2/2016
Just hit the pipe.
It’s just some pot.
Nothing heavy like heroin, cocaine or alcohol.
Haven’t written in a few days, but the writing is an old friend so odds are it will forgive me.
I know we’re on thin ice ever since I confessed to feeling love and you’re still trying to keep it casual in your head even though the rest of your body is warm for my form.
There’s no denying I’m an instigator even when I’m saying nothing, eyes closed, hands unclenched.
They say Bernie Sanders is a socialist like that’s a mark against him.
Conservative media, liberal media they’re all eating and drinking from the same trough. The only one who is telling the truth other than Bernie is Elizabeth Warren, but she’s not running and Bernie doesn’t have a chance in hell of even winning the nomination.
This poem is all over the map because I cannot afford GPS. In fact I still have a flip phone and it’s plenty smart enough for me.
Going to reload the pipe.
Then I am going to imagine you naked and spewing poetry and other juices from your most trusted of orifices.
We’re chatting on FB and I just asked you if you were shaved. I know you will either say no comment or stonewall me as you have a habit of doing. Trust me I understand how awful it is wrestling with guilt. I also know we’re skating on thin ice and that global warming should be scaring us into real action.
Charles Cicirella
7/2/2016
Sunday, July 05, 2015
This struggle seems almost harder.
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-05T13_19_39-07_00
The Madonna hears her son’s cries.
To live the way we choose.
To die the way we choose.
A privilege yes, but sadly not a right.
Preston is the real athlete.
The rest of us are bystanders if we’re lucky.
I don’t want to hear what part God’s supposedly playing.
I’m not sure what I believe and if pressed on the matter I may just acquiesce.
The struggle is definitely harder.
Even the aftermath fails in stature.
Serving a life sentence and all he did was forget to put his seatbelt back on.
The Madonna tends to her son’s wounded chakras.
Preston is the miracle.
There are no saints or sinners just survivors and evil do-gooders.
I’m not interested in any explanation Our Father may wish to proffer.
I’m starting to believe The Big Bang happened the second God’s back was turned.
Charles Cicirella
7/5/15
The Madonna hears her son’s cries.
To live the way we choose.
To die the way we choose.
A privilege yes, but sadly not a right.
Preston is the real athlete.
The rest of us are bystanders if we’re lucky.
I don’t want to hear what part God’s supposedly playing.
I’m not sure what I believe and if pressed on the matter I may just acquiesce.
The struggle is definitely harder.
Even the aftermath fails in stature.
Serving a life sentence and all he did was forget to put his seatbelt back on.
The Madonna tends to her son’s wounded chakras.
Preston is the miracle.
There are no saints or sinners just survivors and evil do-gooders.
I’m not interested in any explanation Our Father may wish to proffer.
I’m starting to believe The Big Bang happened the second God’s back was turned.
Charles Cicirella
7/5/15
Saturday, July 04, 2015
Madonna and Child, Eternal Spring and Eve
If I tell you I love you it’s because I can hardly contain myself. If I tell you I want you it’s because the words formed on my lips and I don’t know what else to do with them. If I write poems for you it’s because you inspire me like no other and I cannot shake your brain power or your sculpted sexuality. My middle name is sweet chaos so please don’t go worrying yourself over the many speedbumps we’re sure to encounter. You are the Logan Sapphire cut from a crystal mined in Sri Lanka. And I am a rare 'pigeon-blood' ruby mined from fairy tale and unguarded promises. Poetry is our bond and our cornerstone, my love.
Charles Cicirella
7/3/15
Charles Cicirella
7/3/15
Friday, July 03, 2015
Poetry is My Protection
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-07-03T13_11_24-07_00
Her words not mine.
She reminded me that I know how to write in both blood and stardust.
My words not hers.
I’m a pushy son of a bitch.
I’m hard to love.
I don’t trust love. Not one bit.
You appeared out of the clear blue sky.
I find myself smiling more than I’ve ever smiled before.
Poetry is how and where I lower my guard.
Poetry is my protection. Her words not mine.
You bring me around to other ways of thinking and spinning. My words not hers.
The mold was broken when I was born. “On the day that you were born the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true.”*
Charles Cicirella
6/27/15
* "(They Long to Be) Close to You" is a popular song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
Her words not mine.
She reminded me that I know how to write in both blood and stardust.
My words not hers.
I’m a pushy son of a bitch.
I’m hard to love.
I don’t trust love. Not one bit.
You appeared out of the clear blue sky.
I find myself smiling more than I’ve ever smiled before.
Poetry is how and where I lower my guard.
Poetry is my protection. Her words not mine.
You bring me around to other ways of thinking and spinning. My words not hers.
The mold was broken when I was born. “On the day that you were born the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true.”*
Charles Cicirella
6/27/15
* "(They Long to Be) Close to You" is a popular song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.
Sunday, June 28, 2015
None of the Pieces Seem to Fit
(For Darin Bulai)
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-28T20_12_42-07_00
I don’t know how to make sense of anything.
Every day things slip away.
I don’t even know what those things are and why I cared about them in the first place.
I reach out and it doesn’t do much good.
I come off angry, broken and resentful of everyone and everything.
Sometimes I wish I still drove so I could drive a car through the car wash.
I remember coming through the other side and everything being clean and feeling new.
I wonder if when we die if it will feel like that when we come through the other side. Like all of the grime, guilt and rage has been washed away and we’re transformed with a fresh sense of purpose.
Sometimes I wish I could drive off the edge of the world. Never looking back at all of the damage I have caused and all of the love I never could quite get a handle on.
I don’t know how to make sense of any of it. Including the fucking trees and all of the shadowy indifference we settle for like spinach on our plate to go along with the crow.
Every night things are just out of reach.
I don’t even know if it matters anymore and why I spend any time at all wishing we were closer and had had some discussions making us better and more tolerant people.
I do not see the sense in buying a firearm and hunting animals for sport.
I cannot seem to get any of these pieces to fit. As poets go I’m a so-so handyman and a terrific pain in the ass.
Charles Cicirella
6/28/15
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-28T20_12_42-07_00
I don’t know how to make sense of anything.
Every day things slip away.
I don’t even know what those things are and why I cared about them in the first place.
I reach out and it doesn’t do much good.
I come off angry, broken and resentful of everyone and everything.
Sometimes I wish I still drove so I could drive a car through the car wash.
I remember coming through the other side and everything being clean and feeling new.
I wonder if when we die if it will feel like that when we come through the other side. Like all of the grime, guilt and rage has been washed away and we’re transformed with a fresh sense of purpose.
Sometimes I wish I could drive off the edge of the world. Never looking back at all of the damage I have caused and all of the love I never could quite get a handle on.
I don’t know how to make sense of any of it. Including the fucking trees and all of the shadowy indifference we settle for like spinach on our plate to go along with the crow.
Every night things are just out of reach.
I don’t even know if it matters anymore and why I spend any time at all wishing we were closer and had had some discussions making us better and more tolerant people.
I do not see the sense in buying a firearm and hunting animals for sport.
I cannot seem to get any of these pieces to fit. As poets go I’m a so-so handyman and a terrific pain in the ass.
Charles Cicirella
6/28/15
When will the poetry come?
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-27T23_11_53-07_00
Part 1.
Unlike flash paper.
We are not writing illusion.
Your poetic imagery is universal.
A shiver of sharks.
They smell blood.
You are impervious to their lasting impressions.
We began as strangers.
Poetry helped us to become familiar.
Pinup girl wordsmith.
I am a jackal.
And I still give myself too much credit.
My zeppelin is ego-driven.
Part 2.
Like the National Debt.
I’m over my head.
Your poetic countenance is irresistible.
A splatter of paint.
The painter bleeds.
I am indisposed to antique antiquities.
Start your engines.
Poetry gushes from your every pore.
Somethings are worth waiting for.
Part 3.
Like Cleopatra.
You are turning heads.
Your horse drawn carriage will lift off at any moment.
Charles Cicirella
6/28/15
Part 1.
Unlike flash paper.
We are not writing illusion.
Your poetic imagery is universal.
A shiver of sharks.
They smell blood.
You are impervious to their lasting impressions.
We began as strangers.
Poetry helped us to become familiar.
Pinup girl wordsmith.
I am a jackal.
And I still give myself too much credit.
My zeppelin is ego-driven.
Part 2.
Like the National Debt.
I’m over my head.
Your poetic countenance is irresistible.
A splatter of paint.
The painter bleeds.
I am indisposed to antique antiquities.
Start your engines.
Poetry gushes from your every pore.
Somethings are worth waiting for.
Part 3.
Like Cleopatra.
You are turning heads.
Your horse drawn carriage will lift off at any moment.
Charles Cicirella
6/28/15
Friday, June 26, 2015
You make me blush and you'd better use haiku kisses in a poem.
I hit the pipe.
I slapped your ass.
I covered you with haiku kisses.
We begin as absolute beginners.
No sin to slow us down.
Nothing but wide open spaces and you in a fever dream furiously scribbling down your poetic litanies celebrating Christ the Redeemer. As I wrestle with my martyr complexes and drown myself in fits of spastic self-indulgent joy.
We must swallow our feelings because we’re not free. We are also not victims. We are still here. We’ve always existed. We survive as you decay.
Honey trickles from your almond sockets and I have never been this rock hard before.
I wrapped the pipe in aluminum foil before stashing away.
I slipped out of bed so I could watch you sleep as a solitary being.
There is nothing sexier than you embarking on your next Silk Road voyage.
You covered me with exclamation points and each one hit its mark.
Charles Cicirella
6/26/15
I slapped your ass.
I covered you with haiku kisses.
We begin as absolute beginners.
No sin to slow us down.
Nothing but wide open spaces and you in a fever dream furiously scribbling down your poetic litanies celebrating Christ the Redeemer. As I wrestle with my martyr complexes and drown myself in fits of spastic self-indulgent joy.
We must swallow our feelings because we’re not free. We are also not victims. We are still here. We’ve always existed. We survive as you decay.
Honey trickles from your almond sockets and I have never been this rock hard before.
I wrapped the pipe in aluminum foil before stashing away.
I slipped out of bed so I could watch you sleep as a solitary being.
There is nothing sexier than you embarking on your next Silk Road voyage.
You covered me with exclamation points and each one hit its mark.
Charles Cicirella
6/26/15
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Prime Real Estate
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-24T12_19_46-07_00
I can’t stop thinking about your 38c’s. I know that’s bad of me, but I’m a naughty boy who must repent.
You wrap me around your littlest finger like a piece of blue string and I’m feeling patriotic and I feel like going to the library and reading about Camp David.
Something about your firebrand DNA that resisted all chemical reactions until we happened to meet and created something more lethal than gunpowder and more prolific than Jack Kerouac on a tear.
Prime real estate and curb appeal are two very different things. Keep this in mind the next time you’re reading to a bunch of dog paddlers who fear for their very souls when challenged by the real thing and I’m not talking about Coca-Cola.
Your poetry rocks my world and I know how cliché that sounds, but I swear when experiencing your voice ebbing and flowing like the waves on the cause and effect sea it’s like I’ve never been born and am 10,000 years old simultaneously.
You are rock and roll and I just wanted to tell you how much I admire the way you create the most inescapable and supple of cloud-tattoos with your operatic word symphonies.
I can’t stop thinking about your universal mind. I know that’s awfully high minded of me, but I am an intellectually curious human being who never stops to think about the consequences.
Something about, everything about you. “As I walk, let me walk close to Thee.”
Charles Cicirella
6/24/15
I can’t stop thinking about your 38c’s. I know that’s bad of me, but I’m a naughty boy who must repent.
You wrap me around your littlest finger like a piece of blue string and I’m feeling patriotic and I feel like going to the library and reading about Camp David.
Something about your firebrand DNA that resisted all chemical reactions until we happened to meet and created something more lethal than gunpowder and more prolific than Jack Kerouac on a tear.
Prime real estate and curb appeal are two very different things. Keep this in mind the next time you’re reading to a bunch of dog paddlers who fear for their very souls when challenged by the real thing and I’m not talking about Coca-Cola.
Your poetry rocks my world and I know how cliché that sounds, but I swear when experiencing your voice ebbing and flowing like the waves on the cause and effect sea it’s like I’ve never been born and am 10,000 years old simultaneously.
You are rock and roll and I just wanted to tell you how much I admire the way you create the most inescapable and supple of cloud-tattoos with your operatic word symphonies.
I can’t stop thinking about your universal mind. I know that’s awfully high minded of me, but I am an intellectually curious human being who never stops to think about the consequences.
Something about, everything about you. “As I walk, let me walk close to Thee.”
Charles Cicirella
6/24/15
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
I drove a friend of mine away today.
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-23T14_53_16-07_00
I drove a friend of mine away today.
This isn’t the first time and sadly it will probably not be the last.
Sometimes I will not let go of things and I pick apart every word written and every gesture made.
I refuse to give an inch and systematically push, shove and kick the person until the only thing they can do is flee.
I am not proud of this behavior.
I know I must find some way to free myself from this den of vipers that feeds on my insecurities and strikes the second I let my guard down.
I have only myself to blame and will not make excuses for these deplorable traits.
Oddly this has become more of a confession than a poem.
I drove a friend of mine away today.
I hope I have not done too much damage because her fire glow is something I will miss like I miss riding my bicycle to the library as a kid.
I had just gotten back from Columbus and I remember getting onto FB and there she was.
Charles Cicirella
6/23/15
I drove a friend of mine away today.
This isn’t the first time and sadly it will probably not be the last.
Sometimes I will not let go of things and I pick apart every word written and every gesture made.
I refuse to give an inch and systematically push, shove and kick the person until the only thing they can do is flee.
I am not proud of this behavior.
I know I must find some way to free myself from this den of vipers that feeds on my insecurities and strikes the second I let my guard down.
I have only myself to blame and will not make excuses for these deplorable traits.
Oddly this has become more of a confession than a poem.
I drove a friend of mine away today.
I hope I have not done too much damage because her fire glow is something I will miss like I miss riding my bicycle to the library as a kid.
I had just gotten back from Columbus and I remember getting onto FB and there she was.
Charles Cicirella
6/23/15
Sunday, June 21, 2015
With All of Your Freckled Being
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-21T20_47_29-07_00
I will stop kissing your thighs for one moment so I can type this first line.
I love how you taste like an orange creamsicle.
They don’t taste the same as they did when we were kids and isn’t that true about too many things.
I will stop biting down hard on your nipples for a second so I can gather my thoughts and then dispense with them like three coins in a fountain.
I love how you remind me of black licorice.
I wish candy and ice-cream were still being created for adults. I miss pints of Ben and Jerry’s White Russian ice-cream and Powerhouse candy bars that even gave Snickers a run for their money.
I love when you told me your freckles were everywhere. It left nothing to my imagination while opening up endless possibilities for places my tongue can endlessly wander to and fro.
We bring the best parts of ourselves front and center and that can never be a bad thing no matter your marital status or my inability to make nice with someone for any extended period of time.
Your come hither looks drive me right over the White Cliffs of Dover and I’d prefer it if while making up your mind you continued to speak to me through your unremitting poetry that always keeps me coming back for more.
Charles Eric Cicirella
6/21/15
I will stop kissing your thighs for one moment so I can type this first line.
I love how you taste like an orange creamsicle.
They don’t taste the same as they did when we were kids and isn’t that true about too many things.
I will stop biting down hard on your nipples for a second so I can gather my thoughts and then dispense with them like three coins in a fountain.
I love how you remind me of black licorice.
I wish candy and ice-cream were still being created for adults. I miss pints of Ben and Jerry’s White Russian ice-cream and Powerhouse candy bars that even gave Snickers a run for their money.
I love when you told me your freckles were everywhere. It left nothing to my imagination while opening up endless possibilities for places my tongue can endlessly wander to and fro.
We bring the best parts of ourselves front and center and that can never be a bad thing no matter your marital status or my inability to make nice with someone for any extended period of time.
Your come hither looks drive me right over the White Cliffs of Dover and I’d prefer it if while making up your mind you continued to speak to me through your unremitting poetry that always keeps me coming back for more.
Charles Eric Cicirella
6/21/15
I spoke to Darin Bulai on the phone.
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-21T19_14_06-07_00
I spoke to Darin Bulai on the phone and it’s the first time in a long time that I found someone finishing my sentences and it filled me with hope that creative collisions can still very much exist in this land of the enslaved and home of the cowardly.
I spoke to Darin Bulai on the phone and there were a number of times we interrupted each another, but it was okay because I knew we were both just so overjoyed to be holding a conversation that actually got our juices flowing and didn’t have us feeling like it was time to swallow the barrel of a gun and splatter our brains on the eggshell colored walls.
I spoke to Darin Bulai on the phone and discovered that it’s true if you build it they will come and they’ll bring good ideas and food and drink so no one goes hungry or is thirsty as the sustenance from our minds' eye leaks out and we drown in each other’s creative highs and lows.
I do not have a clue if either one of us can indeed write, but I do not believe that is the point.
He spoke of affectation and I immediately understood where he was coming from and that he is the most unaffected human being I’ve ever come into contact with.
And so what if neither one of us is working and what’s it to you if we’re both living with a parent and doing our best to stay hidden in plain view because the alternatives are less sexy and filled to the brim with unwarranted social convention and recovery scenarios that do not fit the bill.
I found the blueprints in my back pocket along with my cell phone that is probably giving me rectal cancer and some lint left over from 1972.
I found you on FB of all places amid so much endless chatter and inane postings I could give a shit less about. Your writing stung me like a yellow jacket as I rushed myself to the ER and confessed to anyone who would listen that I’m allergic to the beautiful people and all of their egregious trappings and trapdoor ridicule.
The sound of the creaking weathervane woke me up from a relatively sound forty winks as I sit here on the floor, bent over the keys knowing we’ll find our place in the stars once we stop looking for our breaks and accept we’ve already arrived.
Charles Eric Cicirella
6/21/15
I spoke to Darin Bulai on the phone and it’s the first time in a long time that I found someone finishing my sentences and it filled me with hope that creative collisions can still very much exist in this land of the enslaved and home of the cowardly.
I spoke to Darin Bulai on the phone and there were a number of times we interrupted each another, but it was okay because I knew we were both just so overjoyed to be holding a conversation that actually got our juices flowing and didn’t have us feeling like it was time to swallow the barrel of a gun and splatter our brains on the eggshell colored walls.
I spoke to Darin Bulai on the phone and discovered that it’s true if you build it they will come and they’ll bring good ideas and food and drink so no one goes hungry or is thirsty as the sustenance from our minds' eye leaks out and we drown in each other’s creative highs and lows.
I do not have a clue if either one of us can indeed write, but I do not believe that is the point.
He spoke of affectation and I immediately understood where he was coming from and that he is the most unaffected human being I’ve ever come into contact with.
And so what if neither one of us is working and what’s it to you if we’re both living with a parent and doing our best to stay hidden in plain view because the alternatives are less sexy and filled to the brim with unwarranted social convention and recovery scenarios that do not fit the bill.
I found the blueprints in my back pocket along with my cell phone that is probably giving me rectal cancer and some lint left over from 1972.
I found you on FB of all places amid so much endless chatter and inane postings I could give a shit less about. Your writing stung me like a yellow jacket as I rushed myself to the ER and confessed to anyone who would listen that I’m allergic to the beautiful people and all of their egregious trappings and trapdoor ridicule.
The sound of the creaking weathervane woke me up from a relatively sound forty winks as I sit here on the floor, bent over the keys knowing we’ll find our place in the stars once we stop looking for our breaks and accept we’ve already arrived.
Charles Eric Cicirella
6/21/15
I believe it’s time we saw each other naked.
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-21T13_49_45-07_00
Come here.
I need to lower my guard and leave it down for a really long time.
I want to feel your body pressed against mine as Brautigan’s words slide down the bannister into our hungry and unshielded hearts.
Come here.
My mind is made up it’s time I hightailed it to Maryland and met you outside in the tall grass where we can hide from everyone except each other as it should be.
When I think of you new lines of poetry come into my head and I know it’s the same for you.
I just grabbed my nose and it reminded me of when I was a child and my grandfather would grab my nose and make quarters come out of it.
We’re all magicians in our own way making the things in our lives that we cannot comprehend disappear.
Denial has become a trusted ally as I do my very best to accept the isolation as an opportunity to actually do something with my life and this creativity as a hammer smashing through all the white noise.
Come here.
It’s time we grabbed hold of each other and stopped pretending we don’t feel injured when things don’t go our way and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I need to feel more than just your intellectual prowess as your mouth opens upon mine and our inner children share the same swing and we walk naked through Death Valley with the hot sun beating down on our poetic flesh.
Charles Cicirella
6/20/15
Come here.
I need to lower my guard and leave it down for a really long time.
I want to feel your body pressed against mine as Brautigan’s words slide down the bannister into our hungry and unshielded hearts.
Come here.
My mind is made up it’s time I hightailed it to Maryland and met you outside in the tall grass where we can hide from everyone except each other as it should be.
When I think of you new lines of poetry come into my head and I know it’s the same for you.
I just grabbed my nose and it reminded me of when I was a child and my grandfather would grab my nose and make quarters come out of it.
We’re all magicians in our own way making the things in our lives that we cannot comprehend disappear.
Denial has become a trusted ally as I do my very best to accept the isolation as an opportunity to actually do something with my life and this creativity as a hammer smashing through all the white noise.
Come here.
It’s time we grabbed hold of each other and stopped pretending we don’t feel injured when things don’t go our way and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I need to feel more than just your intellectual prowess as your mouth opens upon mine and our inner children share the same swing and we walk naked through Death Valley with the hot sun beating down on our poetic flesh.
Charles Cicirella
6/20/15
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Heavy Lifting
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-20T12_49_36-07_00
Pick up your heart from the floor.
It’s time you learned to read the writing on the wall.
It’s time we started to heal our insatiable wounds.
Nine lives were lost in that church.
Nine lives that will never breathe another breath.
It’s not enough to express our sympathy. It’s not hardly enough saying we’re sorry for your loss.
When did we stop doing the heavy lifting?
When did we give the people with no brains in their head a free pass to blow up our world with their fear and their hatred and their ignorance?
America the beautiful must again find its place in the sun and stop accepting mediocre as a job well done.
Pick up your brains from the stone cold floor.
Some people don’t get a second chance and fairy tales only tell half the story.
Politics as usual is no longer an acceptable defense. We know damn well what the right thing is to do and we better start asking ourselves immediately why we’re not doing it.
Charles Cicirella
6/20/15
Pick up your heart from the floor.
It’s time you learned to read the writing on the wall.
It’s time we started to heal our insatiable wounds.
Nine lives were lost in that church.
Nine lives that will never breathe another breath.
It’s not enough to express our sympathy. It’s not hardly enough saying we’re sorry for your loss.
When did we stop doing the heavy lifting?
When did we give the people with no brains in their head a free pass to blow up our world with their fear and their hatred and their ignorance?
America the beautiful must again find its place in the sun and stop accepting mediocre as a job well done.
Pick up your brains from the stone cold floor.
Some people don’t get a second chance and fairy tales only tell half the story.
Politics as usual is no longer an acceptable defense. We know damn well what the right thing is to do and we better start asking ourselves immediately why we’re not doing it.
Charles Cicirella
6/20/15
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Creaky Bones
Choking on a fingernail for the past couple of hours.
As I stirred sugar into my coffee this morning I started to think about my creaky bones.
I’m tired of how some people bring God into everything. Like it or not though God is right there with us every step of the way and thankfully there is nothing that can be done about that.
Lou Donaldson’s “Autumn Nocturne” is playing and even though it’s only June this music perfectly fits my mood and carries me through the Chariots of Fire thunderstorms I’m currently experiencing.
Ian and Sylvia is up next and that’s sure to put me in an entirely different frame of mind.
My creaky bones are ready to cut a rug even though I have next to no rhythm and look more like the gopher from Caddyshack than Fred Astaire when I "Shake a Tail Feather.”
I would like to continue where we left off, but have this uncomfortable feeling that you were never really all that into me and would prefer to cut your losses before our relationship becomes a knife fight that no one walks away from.
Domestic abuse is never sexy especially when the police get involved and someone gets led away in handcuffs
At any moment my creaky bones might just stage an uprising and before you know it I’ll vanish like some aging puff of smoke that had no business being here in the first place.
Charles Cicirella
6/18/15
As I stirred sugar into my coffee this morning I started to think about my creaky bones.
I’m tired of how some people bring God into everything. Like it or not though God is right there with us every step of the way and thankfully there is nothing that can be done about that.
Lou Donaldson’s “Autumn Nocturne” is playing and even though it’s only June this music perfectly fits my mood and carries me through the Chariots of Fire thunderstorms I’m currently experiencing.
Ian and Sylvia is up next and that’s sure to put me in an entirely different frame of mind.
My creaky bones are ready to cut a rug even though I have next to no rhythm and look more like the gopher from Caddyshack than Fred Astaire when I "Shake a Tail Feather.”
I would like to continue where we left off, but have this uncomfortable feeling that you were never really all that into me and would prefer to cut your losses before our relationship becomes a knife fight that no one walks away from.
Domestic abuse is never sexy especially when the police get involved and someone gets led away in handcuffs
At any moment my creaky bones might just stage an uprising and before you know it I’ll vanish like some aging puff of smoke that had no business being here in the first place.
Charles Cicirella
6/18/15
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Frame of Mood
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-16T20_50_28-07_00
I’m not writing this poem out of desperation.
I’m not writing this poem out of loneliness or contempt.
I cannot believe we found each other.
I’m at a loss for words as my frame of mood is unframed by your passionate whispered longings.
Move over I want to sit next to you on the park bench.
Move over I want to feel your warmth as we feed the pigeons and forget we’ve not eaten since before Christ was a Prophet never a pretender.
I believe it’s time we give these shallow celebrity poets a run for their blue money by delivering unto them the unleavened creativity of a people chosen to do the work because the work was worn-out from being left half done and half baked.
Move over I want to stand with you alongside the burning bush leaving nothing any longer to chance as we break the speed of sound by simply opening our eyes to the next new sunrise.
I’m not writing this poem because I have anything to say.
I’m not writing this poem out of a sense of duty or a feeling that someone needs to break open the silences with profound insights or riveting reveals.
I’m just tired of everyone, including myself, skirting the issues and understand there is much more work to be done before a reckoning can arrive and a people are delivered to the Promise Land
You were walking your dog when you called. As we talked I imagined your hands all over my body making me feel like I wasn’t a filthy, smelly human being, but was instead a blossoming flower with so much promise and so much still to look forward to.
Charles Cicirella
6/16/15
I’m not writing this poem out of desperation.
I’m not writing this poem out of loneliness or contempt.
I cannot believe we found each other.
I’m at a loss for words as my frame of mood is unframed by your passionate whispered longings.
Move over I want to sit next to you on the park bench.
Move over I want to feel your warmth as we feed the pigeons and forget we’ve not eaten since before Christ was a Prophet never a pretender.
I believe it’s time we give these shallow celebrity poets a run for their blue money by delivering unto them the unleavened creativity of a people chosen to do the work because the work was worn-out from being left half done and half baked.
Move over I want to stand with you alongside the burning bush leaving nothing any longer to chance as we break the speed of sound by simply opening our eyes to the next new sunrise.
I’m not writing this poem because I have anything to say.
I’m not writing this poem out of a sense of duty or a feeling that someone needs to break open the silences with profound insights or riveting reveals.
I’m just tired of everyone, including myself, skirting the issues and understand there is much more work to be done before a reckoning can arrive and a people are delivered to the Promise Land
You were walking your dog when you called. As we talked I imagined your hands all over my body making me feel like I wasn’t a filthy, smelly human being, but was instead a blossoming flower with so much promise and so much still to look forward to.
Charles Cicirella
6/16/15
Friday, June 12, 2015
Our Craven Inability to Believe In Ourselves
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-12T14_26_52-07_00
She has no reason to worry because I’m not going anyplace.
I still want her in big and small ways. Nothing has changed. I just sometimes need a break from staring at the computer’s frozen face.
And it’s incredible how we both jump to the same troubling conclusions because we’re not used to anyone really being into us and going the extra mile for us.
I want to put my arms around her like the sun and quiet her worries that I’ve found someone else to smear my words all over like sunscreen or whipped cream.
The words pour from me like a fire hydrant in Brooklyn in the 1970’s. This was when the prostitute was New York's state bird and you could pick up any drug on any corner for a relatively low price.
This was way before political correctness bit us in the ass and the Christian right took us hostage with their narrow minded views on everything and anything under the sun. I want to live my life on my own terms and not have to always worry about the next shoe to drop especially when I’ve been going barefoot since before the serpent penetrated Eve for the final time.
Make way I’m coming and I’m bringing buttery popcorn and ice-cream and chocolate and all of those things you love to nosh on but can’t because of your diet.
She doesn’t have to worry about me leaving the building because I’ve been a shut-in since before I can even remember. Solitary confinement means nothing to me not since discovering how vast a kingdom my mind is.
And it’s truly amazing how we both suffer from low self-esteem. It makes sense though when physical intimacy is something neither one of us has experienced in more than a coon’s age. And we’re both getting older. And we’re both getting wiser. And we’re both getting lonelier.
I want her to put both her arms around me like I am the moon and this nursery rhyme will come to fruition once we let go of all those pesky voices in our butterfly hearts and cement block heads.
Charles Cicirella
6/12/15
She has no reason to worry because I’m not going anyplace.
I still want her in big and small ways. Nothing has changed. I just sometimes need a break from staring at the computer’s frozen face.
And it’s incredible how we both jump to the same troubling conclusions because we’re not used to anyone really being into us and going the extra mile for us.
I want to put my arms around her like the sun and quiet her worries that I’ve found someone else to smear my words all over like sunscreen or whipped cream.
The words pour from me like a fire hydrant in Brooklyn in the 1970’s. This was when the prostitute was New York's state bird and you could pick up any drug on any corner for a relatively low price.
This was way before political correctness bit us in the ass and the Christian right took us hostage with their narrow minded views on everything and anything under the sun. I want to live my life on my own terms and not have to always worry about the next shoe to drop especially when I’ve been going barefoot since before the serpent penetrated Eve for the final time.
Make way I’m coming and I’m bringing buttery popcorn and ice-cream and chocolate and all of those things you love to nosh on but can’t because of your diet.
She doesn’t have to worry about me leaving the building because I’ve been a shut-in since before I can even remember. Solitary confinement means nothing to me not since discovering how vast a kingdom my mind is.
And it’s truly amazing how we both suffer from low self-esteem. It makes sense though when physical intimacy is something neither one of us has experienced in more than a coon’s age. And we’re both getting older. And we’re both getting wiser. And we’re both getting lonelier.
I want her to put both her arms around me like I am the moon and this nursery rhyme will come to fruition once we let go of all those pesky voices in our butterfly hearts and cement block heads.
Charles Cicirella
6/12/15
Niagara Falls
(For Dan Klute)
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-12T13_27_24-07_00
I drink so very little water I’m pissing caffeine.
I promised in another recent poem I’d cease and desist from writing about my bodily functions and yet here I go again.
My friend Dan understands and that is why I’m dedicating this poem to him.
Water and I do not get along which is totally crazy when the average adult human body is 50-65% water.
Here’s another bizzaro fact. I am a water sign and yet do not know how to swim. In fact to be perfectly honest I’m afraid of water especially the deep end.
Sometimes when we’re hanging out I think it would be easier climbing into a barrel and getting pushed over Niagara Falls. Neither one of us is a walk in the park and that’s putting it mildly, but it’s also a key component to why, I believe, it is we both keep coming back for more.
I drink so very little water the sweat pouring from my glands is comprised of mostly Coca-Cola.
I understand California is experiencing an epic drought to which I can completely relate to. Their golf courses though are still green because recreation always seems to take precedent over salvation no matter how poorly you slice the ball into the burning woods.
My friend Dan gets what I’m saying and drinks a glass of water every chance he gets. He’s as smart as a whip and delivers the genuine goods without batting an eye. Me I’m still as dry as a bone and wish somebody I loved would hold me under the water just for the sake of getting wet and saving myself from dry rot.
Charles Cicirella
6/11/15
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-12T13_27_24-07_00
I drink so very little water I’m pissing caffeine.
I promised in another recent poem I’d cease and desist from writing about my bodily functions and yet here I go again.
My friend Dan understands and that is why I’m dedicating this poem to him.
Water and I do not get along which is totally crazy when the average adult human body is 50-65% water.
Here’s another bizzaro fact. I am a water sign and yet do not know how to swim. In fact to be perfectly honest I’m afraid of water especially the deep end.
Sometimes when we’re hanging out I think it would be easier climbing into a barrel and getting pushed over Niagara Falls. Neither one of us is a walk in the park and that’s putting it mildly, but it’s also a key component to why, I believe, it is we both keep coming back for more.
I drink so very little water the sweat pouring from my glands is comprised of mostly Coca-Cola.
I understand California is experiencing an epic drought to which I can completely relate to. Their golf courses though are still green because recreation always seems to take precedent over salvation no matter how poorly you slice the ball into the burning woods.
My friend Dan gets what I’m saying and drinks a glass of water every chance he gets. He’s as smart as a whip and delivers the genuine goods without batting an eye. Me I’m still as dry as a bone and wish somebody I loved would hold me under the water just for the sake of getting wet and saving myself from dry rot.
Charles Cicirella
6/11/15
Poetessa II
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-10T22_23_15-07_00
You make my intellect hard with your wind chime wordage and passionate declarations of unwavering interdependence.
I was frozen in space when you appeared out of the motel-vacancy-cold. I discover myself thawing out and open to new trains of unregulated thought and being.
My loins ache for you as I consume your poetry from the inside out and the outside in. I’m a better person for it. And I’m a better poet for it too.
I am a feral poet. No fan of academia and never very adept at fitting in. I find my words in the roadkill at the side of the road. I’m not afraid of picking up a dead animal with my bare hands and turning it into something beautiful with my stark-naked brain.
Jim Murray sprang the word intellect on me when I was just a pup. I’m still running away from his left handed compliments and doing my best to make some sense out of his blood on the tracks heroic paranoia.
I cannot wait till you allow your freak flag to fly. Cannot wait till you realize just how much talent you possess and stop making excuses for everyone else’s shortcomings.
Oftentimes breaking bad is the only direction left to head. I believe you must soon get in touch with the superhero existing deep inside of you.
You make things easier with every message I receive from you.
I am so sick and tired of not living up to my full potential, but when talking to you I know anything is possible and that we’re all bound for glory!
There is nothing sexier than talking about books and I absolutely love how you understand that and keep playing off my most obvious and obnoxious of flirtations.
I want for us to read to each other in a well lit room where no one and nothing will disturb us. I cannot wait to spread my cadence onto a cracker and feed it to you like a baby bird.
Charles Cicirella
6/10/15
You make my intellect hard with your wind chime wordage and passionate declarations of unwavering interdependence.
I was frozen in space when you appeared out of the motel-vacancy-cold. I discover myself thawing out and open to new trains of unregulated thought and being.
My loins ache for you as I consume your poetry from the inside out and the outside in. I’m a better person for it. And I’m a better poet for it too.
I am a feral poet. No fan of academia and never very adept at fitting in. I find my words in the roadkill at the side of the road. I’m not afraid of picking up a dead animal with my bare hands and turning it into something beautiful with my stark-naked brain.
Jim Murray sprang the word intellect on me when I was just a pup. I’m still running away from his left handed compliments and doing my best to make some sense out of his blood on the tracks heroic paranoia.
I cannot wait till you allow your freak flag to fly. Cannot wait till you realize just how much talent you possess and stop making excuses for everyone else’s shortcomings.
Oftentimes breaking bad is the only direction left to head. I believe you must soon get in touch with the superhero existing deep inside of you.
You make things easier with every message I receive from you.
I am so sick and tired of not living up to my full potential, but when talking to you I know anything is possible and that we’re all bound for glory!
There is nothing sexier than talking about books and I absolutely love how you understand that and keep playing off my most obvious and obnoxious of flirtations.
I want for us to read to each other in a well lit room where no one and nothing will disturb us. I cannot wait to spread my cadence onto a cracker and feed it to you like a baby bird.
Charles Cicirella
6/10/15
THAT
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-09T10_14_46-07_00
Her poetry.
Brings me. Through.
A heatwave.
On my intellect’s inner nature.
From across the universe.
The temerity of her words.
A sonic boom.
A Savior’s healing wounds.
Isolated dead weight.
On the borders of hungry love.
For you.
Charles Eric Cicirella
6/9/15
Her poetry.
Brings me. Through.
A heatwave.
On my intellect’s inner nature.
From across the universe.
The temerity of her words.
A sonic boom.
A Savior’s healing wounds.
Isolated dead weight.
On the borders of hungry love.
For you.
Charles Eric Cicirella
6/9/15
Monday, June 08, 2015
Despondent
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-08T11_12_30-07_00
I don’t want to write another poem about going to the bathroom.
Someone said to me the other day when talking about poets in Cleveland, Ohio that we’re all pretty much at the same level of writing ability. I could not believe my ears and I could not disagree with this person more. They also said none of us were the next Kerouac to which I thought there already was one Jack Kerouac why does there need to be another.
I’m despondent.
Despondent to my lethargy
Despondent to this inoperable tumor I’m being led to believe is my human spirit.
I’m despondent to the thought of writing the next great American novel like Stanford or Brautigan did and then being forgotten or worse yet misplaced in the annals of popular culture.
Forget we ever had this conversation. I’m going to go suck on an exhaust pipe and pray to God it kills me or at the very least takes me temporarily out of commission.
I’m through writing about my bodily functions and how they do or do not agree with me.
I thought sharing was caring until realizing no one cares and that I was basically sharing with a bunch of imaginary people I had made up in both my heart and head.
I thought we cared about each other until you started acting all haughty about money I supposedly owed you and then took three hundred dollars out of my bank account.
I don’t feel like writing a poem about someone, anyone taking me to the cleaners.
I’m despondent.
When asked what my next move will be I do my best to say very little and never look my assailant in the eye.
Oftentimes you are being raked over the coals even when you don’t realize it’s happening. All of a sudden your bum is sore and everyone is pointing at you like you’re on fire.
I’m desperately unhappy.
Forget you ever made the effort to read this poem and I’ll forgive you for your trespasses the next time you are on your knees putting someone, anyone into your mouth just to pass the time and make you feel even the least little bit alive.
Charles Cicirella
6/7/15
I don’t want to write another poem about going to the bathroom.
Someone said to me the other day when talking about poets in Cleveland, Ohio that we’re all pretty much at the same level of writing ability. I could not believe my ears and I could not disagree with this person more. They also said none of us were the next Kerouac to which I thought there already was one Jack Kerouac why does there need to be another.
I’m despondent.
Despondent to my lethargy
Despondent to this inoperable tumor I’m being led to believe is my human spirit.
I’m despondent to the thought of writing the next great American novel like Stanford or Brautigan did and then being forgotten or worse yet misplaced in the annals of popular culture.
Forget we ever had this conversation. I’m going to go suck on an exhaust pipe and pray to God it kills me or at the very least takes me temporarily out of commission.
I’m through writing about my bodily functions and how they do or do not agree with me.
I thought sharing was caring until realizing no one cares and that I was basically sharing with a bunch of imaginary people I had made up in both my heart and head.
I thought we cared about each other until you started acting all haughty about money I supposedly owed you and then took three hundred dollars out of my bank account.
I don’t feel like writing a poem about someone, anyone taking me to the cleaners.
I’m despondent.
When asked what my next move will be I do my best to say very little and never look my assailant in the eye.
Oftentimes you are being raked over the coals even when you don’t realize it’s happening. All of a sudden your bum is sore and everyone is pointing at you like you’re on fire.
I’m desperately unhappy.
Forget you ever made the effort to read this poem and I’ll forgive you for your trespasses the next time you are on your knees putting someone, anyone into your mouth just to pass the time and make you feel even the least little bit alive.
Charles Cicirella
6/7/15
Monday, June 01, 2015
Poetessa
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-01T21_04_04-07_00
I wonder if she was tempted in the least little bit to call after I gave her my cell number?
We could talk about nothing and just listen to the other one breathe.
We could talk about everything including the love like some raven at our window with a broken wing.
I stole part of that last line, but I’m sure he’ll understand and not be too miffed with my poetic theft.
Repurposing is all the rage in these days of bird flu and designer ice-cream that will kill you if you give it just half a chance.
It’s a slippery slope believing in your heart of hearts that you’re an artist when in your everyday life you refuse to allow anything to take seed and grow like the tallest tree or shortest poet.
I wonder where she came out of all of a sudden.
I swear she appeared when my back was turned and like an orphan with his gun I stood there crying like a fire in the sun.
I’ve done it again. Repurposed one of the traveling troubadour’s great lines. Of course who knows where he may have picked it up at because isn’t creating just like a game of Pick-up Sticks? The sticks in this case are red hot pokers and we’re all looking to leave our brand on someone else’s unsuspecting cattle.
I was at a loss for words then I cleared my throat and accepted a s'more from a man who never fails to make me smile and feel good about myself.
I thought the s’more would be sickening sweet but because he used bittersweet chocolate I found myself wanting another but too shy to ask for a second one.
I am reading her poem as I hold my breath and discover myself feeling like Henry Limpet with all his daydreams of being a fish locked in so tightly into my craven heart.
We must tear ourselves down to the very foundation before we can rebuild in the image of something completely profane or sacred depending on both our outlook on things and the Kool-Aid we’ve been drinking.
I’ve noticed how closely she holds her cards to her chest. Something I can thoroughly relate to because this world can’t stand long and while we’re hanging around it’s best we’re comfortable with those we choose to hang out with and get to know intimately or otherwise.
She just told me she loves black licorice which I can completely concur with and has me now thinking about Black Jack chewing gum and how sad it is that such complexity is lost in our flavorless and thread barren modern times.
I wonder if she was tempted in the least little bit to call and how at ease I would be talking to a stranger who is quickly becoming a muse and a friend.
Charles Cicirella
6/1/15
I wonder if she was tempted in the least little bit to call after I gave her my cell number?
We could talk about nothing and just listen to the other one breathe.
We could talk about everything including the love like some raven at our window with a broken wing.
I stole part of that last line, but I’m sure he’ll understand and not be too miffed with my poetic theft.
Repurposing is all the rage in these days of bird flu and designer ice-cream that will kill you if you give it just half a chance.
It’s a slippery slope believing in your heart of hearts that you’re an artist when in your everyday life you refuse to allow anything to take seed and grow like the tallest tree or shortest poet.
I wonder where she came out of all of a sudden.
I swear she appeared when my back was turned and like an orphan with his gun I stood there crying like a fire in the sun.
I’ve done it again. Repurposed one of the traveling troubadour’s great lines. Of course who knows where he may have picked it up at because isn’t creating just like a game of Pick-up Sticks? The sticks in this case are red hot pokers and we’re all looking to leave our brand on someone else’s unsuspecting cattle.
I was at a loss for words then I cleared my throat and accepted a s'more from a man who never fails to make me smile and feel good about myself.
I thought the s’more would be sickening sweet but because he used bittersweet chocolate I found myself wanting another but too shy to ask for a second one.
I am reading her poem as I hold my breath and discover myself feeling like Henry Limpet with all his daydreams of being a fish locked in so tightly into my craven heart.
We must tear ourselves down to the very foundation before we can rebuild in the image of something completely profane or sacred depending on both our outlook on things and the Kool-Aid we’ve been drinking.
I’ve noticed how closely she holds her cards to her chest. Something I can thoroughly relate to because this world can’t stand long and while we’re hanging around it’s best we’re comfortable with those we choose to hang out with and get to know intimately or otherwise.
She just told me she loves black licorice which I can completely concur with and has me now thinking about Black Jack chewing gum and how sad it is that such complexity is lost in our flavorless and thread barren modern times.
I wonder if she was tempted in the least little bit to call and how at ease I would be talking to a stranger who is quickly becoming a muse and a friend.
Charles Cicirella
6/1/15
Deceit & Treachery
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-06-03T21_57_53-07_00
I started lying to myself.
I can’t tell you exactly when this practice began.
It was either that or trying to communicate more, but to be perfectly honest I’m sick and tired of getting lost in translation.
I like you because you’re easy to understand.
Plus you’re not totally automated which is a huge bonus for a man like me who prefers the do it yourself approach over the wait around until someone else does it for you approach.
If these words prove to be ineffective I’ll go hide in the corner praying everyone forgets I was here or was ever even born.
My parents tell me I was planned which I find rather surprising considering my life up till now has had no blueprint and for escape hatches I’m afraid even those have long been wallpapered over.
Thinking about calling it a day.
Thinking about eating a cherry cheese Danish and drinking a glass of Coca-Cola.
I’ll settle for the latter and wish I’d done the former when all is said and done and the laundry is brought in from the clothesline.
I like her freckles and her emoticons.
I was going to give her my cell number and tell her to call the next time she couldn’t fall asleep but didn’t want to give her the wrong impression or maybe I did.
I’ve never stopped telling myself exactly how it is.
I can tell you the precise moment the light started to shine and a dark night of the soul was placed on permanent hold.
Writing is not an exercise for me nor is it a hobby or something I take lightly like riding the Silver Beach Carousel or swimming in the great white shark infested Atlantic Ocean.
When realizing deceit and treachery were her idea of foreplay that is when I should have run for the hills and never looked back.
Charles Cicirella
5/31/15
I started lying to myself.
I can’t tell you exactly when this practice began.
It was either that or trying to communicate more, but to be perfectly honest I’m sick and tired of getting lost in translation.
I like you because you’re easy to understand.
Plus you’re not totally automated which is a huge bonus for a man like me who prefers the do it yourself approach over the wait around until someone else does it for you approach.
If these words prove to be ineffective I’ll go hide in the corner praying everyone forgets I was here or was ever even born.
My parents tell me I was planned which I find rather surprising considering my life up till now has had no blueprint and for escape hatches I’m afraid even those have long been wallpapered over.
Thinking about calling it a day.
Thinking about eating a cherry cheese Danish and drinking a glass of Coca-Cola.
I’ll settle for the latter and wish I’d done the former when all is said and done and the laundry is brought in from the clothesline.
I like her freckles and her emoticons.
I was going to give her my cell number and tell her to call the next time she couldn’t fall asleep but didn’t want to give her the wrong impression or maybe I did.
I’ve never stopped telling myself exactly how it is.
I can tell you the precise moment the light started to shine and a dark night of the soul was placed on permanent hold.
Writing is not an exercise for me nor is it a hobby or something I take lightly like riding the Silver Beach Carousel or swimming in the great white shark infested Atlantic Ocean.
When realizing deceit and treachery were her idea of foreplay that is when I should have run for the hills and never looked back.
Charles Cicirella
5/31/15
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Sugar and Caffeine
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-29T14_51_56-07_00
Standing there mixing dry creamer into my instant coffee.
It’s become a ritual when I wake up and crawl back into the world.
I just took a sip of the delicious brew and actually felt it wake me up and pat me on the head.
I hated when I was a kid having to mow the lawn. It just seemed like the ultimate waste of time. I mean seriously why can’t the lawn just grow? What’s wrong with living in the jungle in the middle of suburbia like a drug lord or exiled dictator?
To this day I am still angry with myself for not taking my dog Bogie out for more walks. He was like my very hairy younger brother and he deserved better than he got.
It wasn’t easy writing that last line as the pangs of regret line up and take turns kicking me squarely in the gut. I was fourteen years old and to be perfectly honest it was only Bogie that really even wanted to hang out with me and always seemed to love me unconditionally.
At forty five years old I have no pets except for my ego which I also keep in the garage, but I walk it more frequently because I have learned my lesson and my ego deserves no less than to be treated like the king it surely is.
Someone recently told me they felt I came across with a sense of entitlement. It’s true that I do feel entitled in some small or large degree depending on the situation, but what this person fails to understand is that we’re all preexisting in glass houses of self-entitlement and privilege and that there is nothing wrong with that as long as we don’t become too full of ourselves and end up catching fire and crashing like the Hindenburg.
I’m not whining in the least little bit. I am only telling it like I believe it is and that is all any of us can do as we survive, thrive and ultimately come to an end on this merry-go-round of grind and labor.
The coffee is now cold, but that’s okay I’ll drink it anyway because it’s the caffeine and sugar I crave not the flavor or ridiculous social convention.
I know all of this sugar in my body is not a good thing and maybe it’s true that I am a sugar junkie, but at least I stay away from the harder drugs like alcohol, heroin and being a Republican.
Charles Cicirella
3/29/15
Standing there mixing dry creamer into my instant coffee.
It’s become a ritual when I wake up and crawl back into the world.
I just took a sip of the delicious brew and actually felt it wake me up and pat me on the head.
I hated when I was a kid having to mow the lawn. It just seemed like the ultimate waste of time. I mean seriously why can’t the lawn just grow? What’s wrong with living in the jungle in the middle of suburbia like a drug lord or exiled dictator?
To this day I am still angry with myself for not taking my dog Bogie out for more walks. He was like my very hairy younger brother and he deserved better than he got.
It wasn’t easy writing that last line as the pangs of regret line up and take turns kicking me squarely in the gut. I was fourteen years old and to be perfectly honest it was only Bogie that really even wanted to hang out with me and always seemed to love me unconditionally.
At forty five years old I have no pets except for my ego which I also keep in the garage, but I walk it more frequently because I have learned my lesson and my ego deserves no less than to be treated like the king it surely is.
Someone recently told me they felt I came across with a sense of entitlement. It’s true that I do feel entitled in some small or large degree depending on the situation, but what this person fails to understand is that we’re all preexisting in glass houses of self-entitlement and privilege and that there is nothing wrong with that as long as we don’t become too full of ourselves and end up catching fire and crashing like the Hindenburg.
I’m not whining in the least little bit. I am only telling it like I believe it is and that is all any of us can do as we survive, thrive and ultimately come to an end on this merry-go-round of grind and labor.
The coffee is now cold, but that’s okay I’ll drink it anyway because it’s the caffeine and sugar I crave not the flavor or ridiculous social convention.
I know all of this sugar in my body is not a good thing and maybe it’s true that I am a sugar junkie, but at least I stay away from the harder drugs like alcohol, heroin and being a Republican.
Charles Cicirella
3/29/15
PB & J
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-29T04_11_27-07_00
I want to eat you up like a pb & j.
Slather on the grape jelly like I was your favorite Little Rascal.
Leave what I do with the peanut butter to your most fertile of imaginings.
We begin as Children of Paradise and if we’re lucky we’re not sold off to the highest bidder, strapped with a bomb around our chest and delivered to a town square where unsuspecting people are going to die for no other reason than God has left this part of the world a long, long time ago.
It’s time to eat a pb & j and do my very best to forget my troubles and woes.
My sister brought me groceries today along with a large pepperoni pizza and allergy medicine. We have not connected much the past few years. In fact we’ve never really connected all that much to begin with, but we’re still family and when we hugged and said our I love you’s I felt a sense of family that I have not felt in many years.
We must learn to cease and desist from taking ourselves for granted.
It’s 3:53 AM and I swear my inner child is somewhere amid all of this clutter I like to pretend is my life when in truth my life is free range and cannot be domesticated.
I believe it’s high time I served myself with a search warrant and discovered once and for all where all of the bodies and freeze dried tears have been buried.
I’m going to go into the kitchen in a few minutes and make myself a sandwich and pour myself another glass of Coca Cola.
My favorite Little Rascal was probably Alfalfa even though both Spanky and Mickey rank up there at the very top of my list.
I remember episodes of this show better than I remember episodes from my own childhood. Life is funny that way continually keeping you guessing and wanting more until you end up drunk, banging on someone’s door, demanding fifty bucks for a hunting dog you’d loaned out and never been compensated for.
Charles Cicirella
3/29/15
I want to eat you up like a pb & j.
Slather on the grape jelly like I was your favorite Little Rascal.
Leave what I do with the peanut butter to your most fertile of imaginings.
We begin as Children of Paradise and if we’re lucky we’re not sold off to the highest bidder, strapped with a bomb around our chest and delivered to a town square where unsuspecting people are going to die for no other reason than God has left this part of the world a long, long time ago.
It’s time to eat a pb & j and do my very best to forget my troubles and woes.
My sister brought me groceries today along with a large pepperoni pizza and allergy medicine. We have not connected much the past few years. In fact we’ve never really connected all that much to begin with, but we’re still family and when we hugged and said our I love you’s I felt a sense of family that I have not felt in many years.
We must learn to cease and desist from taking ourselves for granted.
It’s 3:53 AM and I swear my inner child is somewhere amid all of this clutter I like to pretend is my life when in truth my life is free range and cannot be domesticated.
I believe it’s high time I served myself with a search warrant and discovered once and for all where all of the bodies and freeze dried tears have been buried.
I’m going to go into the kitchen in a few minutes and make myself a sandwich and pour myself another glass of Coca Cola.
My favorite Little Rascal was probably Alfalfa even though both Spanky and Mickey rank up there at the very top of my list.
I remember episodes of this show better than I remember episodes from my own childhood. Life is funny that way continually keeping you guessing and wanting more until you end up drunk, banging on someone’s door, demanding fifty bucks for a hunting dog you’d loaned out and never been compensated for.
Charles Cicirella
3/29/15
Saturday, March 28, 2015
Wordage
(For Leah Mueller, Russ Van Rooy, Juliet Cook, Joni Soule, Christina M. Brooks,
Erica Jayne Johnson, Darin Bulai, Steven Smith & Daniel Kennedy)
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-28T13_52_18-07_00
There’s a blizzard of words in my head.
No two snowflakes are alike and it’s the same with words and people and even prayers once you put them under the microscope.
There’s a blizzard of you in my head and it’s bound to kill me dead. It’s okay though because I have always wanted to overdose on someone else’s wordage. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy like being white and walking through the south side of Chicago at night.
We met on FB a funny place to hookup I will admit, but it seems like more and more people are doing this social networking thing which I believe has ushered in a new age of anti-social behavior.
Close knit societies are no longer all the rage and quilting bees seem to have worn out their warm, cozy welcome.
When it comes to poetry slams I’d rather slam my head against a cement wall than enter my blood poetry into a blood sport where a bunch of professional alcoholics skewer me like a roast pig.
There’s a tempest in a teapot of poetry in my head.
No two poems are alike and the same goes with a good cup of English tea once you stop being a snob and accept Afternoon tea as an inevitability.
There’s a populace of poets raging in my head. It’s alright though because I rather like all of these creative peoples ransacking my chamber of commerce brain and leaving me completely spent and whittled down in size. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy like eating only ghosts morning, noon and night and going to bed haunted and full of someone else’s memories and regrets.
Charles Cicirella
3/28/15
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-28T13_52_18-07_00
There’s a blizzard of words in my head.
No two snowflakes are alike and it’s the same with words and people and even prayers once you put them under the microscope.
There’s a blizzard of you in my head and it’s bound to kill me dead. It’s okay though because I have always wanted to overdose on someone else’s wordage. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy like being white and walking through the south side of Chicago at night.
We met on FB a funny place to hookup I will admit, but it seems like more and more people are doing this social networking thing which I believe has ushered in a new age of anti-social behavior.
Close knit societies are no longer all the rage and quilting bees seem to have worn out their warm, cozy welcome.
When it comes to poetry slams I’d rather slam my head against a cement wall than enter my blood poetry into a blood sport where a bunch of professional alcoholics skewer me like a roast pig.
There’s a tempest in a teapot of poetry in my head.
No two poems are alike and the same goes with a good cup of English tea once you stop being a snob and accept Afternoon tea as an inevitability.
There’s a populace of poets raging in my head. It’s alright though because I rather like all of these creative peoples ransacking my chamber of commerce brain and leaving me completely spent and whittled down in size. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy like eating only ghosts morning, noon and night and going to bed haunted and full of someone else’s memories and regrets.
Charles Cicirella
3/28/15
Naked Poets
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-28T01_10_06-07_00
I like to think we’re all naked poets, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Too many supposed poets taking the easy way out and only writing about what they do not know instead of what they have experienced in this life or a past life or even a future life on another planet or deep underground.
Too many writers filtering their slaughterhouse words because they’re afraid they will be rounded up and brought to a death camp to be experimented on for all of their ineffectiveness.
It’s just my opinion of course and maybe being a clothed poet makes more sense in these days of lost irony where one’s poetic license has been traded in for a Starbucks gift card.
I’ve even been told clothed poets make better lovers which I think is total bunk because no lovemaking is worth its weight in gold fillings if your intellect is not writhing in ecstasy when your partner checks your oil and replaces your brake pads.
Naked poets have more of a tendency to go the extra mile long after the wheels have fallen off and we’re cooped up in some nondescript truck stop in some nondescript rest area where all of the nondescript people grunt like sows and are led around by a nondescript Christian God they believe they’re on a first name basis with.
Maybe I am not even a naked poet and am just another loser writing the losing end while the ghost of Nathanael West reaches out to me from beyond the grave and The Day of the Locust mocks me like all alienated and desperate works of unparalleled genius have a tendency to do.
Perhaps I’m just another Dylan wannabe who thinks they’re breaking all of the rules when no rules in fact exist and Dylan was right on target when he said “I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.”
Put on your windbreaker, get on your bicycle and ride around the promenade like any other legend who knows how it feels gathering no moss while standing in front of the crowd completely naked and bereft of any second or third nincompoop notions.
I wish I could take off my clothes and write this poem in the buff but my mother is in the dining room reading the newspaper and I know she wouldn’t get it.
It’s odd how poetry seems to more often than not divide us rather than bringing us together and to a more enlightened jumping-off place.
Too many writers tamping down their black powder verse for a more reserved and less confrontational tone. I believe it’s time we throw caution to the freewheelin’ wind and write about what’s going on. Pulling no punches while pushing the river and celebrating those who dare to break ranks with their counterintuitive claptrap prose while spilling their precious bodily fluids down on the killin' floor.
Charles Cicirella
3/27/15
I like to think we’re all naked poets, but nothing could be further from the truth.
Too many supposed poets taking the easy way out and only writing about what they do not know instead of what they have experienced in this life or a past life or even a future life on another planet or deep underground.
Too many writers filtering their slaughterhouse words because they’re afraid they will be rounded up and brought to a death camp to be experimented on for all of their ineffectiveness.
It’s just my opinion of course and maybe being a clothed poet makes more sense in these days of lost irony where one’s poetic license has been traded in for a Starbucks gift card.
I’ve even been told clothed poets make better lovers which I think is total bunk because no lovemaking is worth its weight in gold fillings if your intellect is not writhing in ecstasy when your partner checks your oil and replaces your brake pads.
Naked poets have more of a tendency to go the extra mile long after the wheels have fallen off and we’re cooped up in some nondescript truck stop in some nondescript rest area where all of the nondescript people grunt like sows and are led around by a nondescript Christian God they believe they’re on a first name basis with.
Maybe I am not even a naked poet and am just another loser writing the losing end while the ghost of Nathanael West reaches out to me from beyond the grave and The Day of the Locust mocks me like all alienated and desperate works of unparalleled genius have a tendency to do.
Perhaps I’m just another Dylan wannabe who thinks they’re breaking all of the rules when no rules in fact exist and Dylan was right on target when he said “I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.”
Put on your windbreaker, get on your bicycle and ride around the promenade like any other legend who knows how it feels gathering no moss while standing in front of the crowd completely naked and bereft of any second or third nincompoop notions.
I wish I could take off my clothes and write this poem in the buff but my mother is in the dining room reading the newspaper and I know she wouldn’t get it.
It’s odd how poetry seems to more often than not divide us rather than bringing us together and to a more enlightened jumping-off place.
Too many writers tamping down their black powder verse for a more reserved and less confrontational tone. I believe it’s time we throw caution to the freewheelin’ wind and write about what’s going on. Pulling no punches while pushing the river and celebrating those who dare to break ranks with their counterintuitive claptrap prose while spilling their precious bodily fluids down on the killin' floor.
Charles Cicirella
3/27/15
Wednesday, March 25, 2015
Penitent
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-25T14_20_31-07_00
These words are not meant as an escape, stained glass window or glass half full.
They’re just words. Something to lean on or rely upon for the time being.
And I know I hurt you. And I know I hurt myself, but that’s oftentimes the way it is when responsibility is a fleeting notion and hanging out only leads to a bad hangover the next morning.
The priest asked if I was penitent and all I could think was how did I end up in this small box copping to shit I never had any intention of confessing to in the first place.
I wish you would talk to me instead of instantly shutting down at the first sign of an emotion you’re not comfortable making eye contact with.
Drink the coffee like its arsenic. Wear the old lace like it’s a bulletproof vest and never forget I loved you when you were broken and I will love you if and when you are fixed.
I’ve never been repentant. Maybe it’s all the guilt I’ve had to process from the very beginning when I was a pudgy, freckled, red haired momma’s boy to the present day when I’m becoming a curmudgeon of a man staring down my mortality and praying to God all these prophecies are not self-fulfilling.
We begin with Genesis and end with the Book of Revelation and in the middle there’s plenty of bloodletting and bloodlust and more excuses to spill blood than you can shake a stick at.
According to Hollywood Jesus either looks like Jeffrey Hunter or Willem Dafoe, but either way I will never accept that Judas Iscariot looked anything like Harvey Keitel.
These words are not meant as a way in or for that matter a way out. I started writing when the words appeared in my brainpan and I figured it best that I do something with them.
It was never my intention to deliver some heavy handed crusade or bring about some kind of movement with all of these consonants and vowels twisted and shaped into soft pretzels of illogic and misappropriated mustard seeds of Count Chocula faith.
I am so sick and tired of trust fund babies telling me to get my life together when it has been clear from the outset one person’s answers are another person’s problems and never shall the twain meet. I was looking for a drinking buddy not a life coach when we hooked up so either pick up the bottle and take a drink or don’t let the door hit you on the way out. I’m not sorry in the least little bit and I’ve hardly gotten started expressing to you how disappointed I am with your Teflon Stonehenge comportment. I cannot get over how you kept bogarting the joint when it was passed to you and I’ll never forgive you for actually believing I needed help. Fuck you and the white horse you rode in on. Fuck you and the smack you OD’d on. Just fuck you.
Charles Cicirella
3/25/15
These words are not meant as an escape, stained glass window or glass half full.
They’re just words. Something to lean on or rely upon for the time being.
And I know I hurt you. And I know I hurt myself, but that’s oftentimes the way it is when responsibility is a fleeting notion and hanging out only leads to a bad hangover the next morning.
The priest asked if I was penitent and all I could think was how did I end up in this small box copping to shit I never had any intention of confessing to in the first place.
I wish you would talk to me instead of instantly shutting down at the first sign of an emotion you’re not comfortable making eye contact with.
Drink the coffee like its arsenic. Wear the old lace like it’s a bulletproof vest and never forget I loved you when you were broken and I will love you if and when you are fixed.
I’ve never been repentant. Maybe it’s all the guilt I’ve had to process from the very beginning when I was a pudgy, freckled, red haired momma’s boy to the present day when I’m becoming a curmudgeon of a man staring down my mortality and praying to God all these prophecies are not self-fulfilling.
We begin with Genesis and end with the Book of Revelation and in the middle there’s plenty of bloodletting and bloodlust and more excuses to spill blood than you can shake a stick at.
According to Hollywood Jesus either looks like Jeffrey Hunter or Willem Dafoe, but either way I will never accept that Judas Iscariot looked anything like Harvey Keitel.
These words are not meant as a way in or for that matter a way out. I started writing when the words appeared in my brainpan and I figured it best that I do something with them.
It was never my intention to deliver some heavy handed crusade or bring about some kind of movement with all of these consonants and vowels twisted and shaped into soft pretzels of illogic and misappropriated mustard seeds of Count Chocula faith.
I am so sick and tired of trust fund babies telling me to get my life together when it has been clear from the outset one person’s answers are another person’s problems and never shall the twain meet. I was looking for a drinking buddy not a life coach when we hooked up so either pick up the bottle and take a drink or don’t let the door hit you on the way out. I’m not sorry in the least little bit and I’ve hardly gotten started expressing to you how disappointed I am with your Teflon Stonehenge comportment. I cannot get over how you kept bogarting the joint when it was passed to you and I’ll never forgive you for actually believing I needed help. Fuck you and the white horse you rode in on. Fuck you and the smack you OD’d on. Just fuck you.
Charles Cicirella
3/25/15
Monday, March 23, 2015
Another poem. Another poetry disc started.
These poetry coordinates don’t make any sense.
I cannot tell a lie. I desire to see you naked.
Naked of clothes, naked of thought.
Completely naked and withholding nothing.
I would like to begin this seminar with some deep knee bends.
I would like to begin by no longer pretending we believe in love and accept how helpless and hopeless our romantic status has become.
I am so inclined to stop believing in that new car smell because the last time I smelled it my father had bought a shiny new black and red Z28 as he grabbed hold of his midlife crisis like any sad man with prostate cancer grabs hold of their penis and awaits a more positive outcome.
I’m not Paul Simon. Heck I’m not even Anne Frank because the attics I hid in were in the suburbs of America and the only holocaust I ever experienced was in my Fisher-Price mind.
My brain chemistry is fractured and that is the way I prefer it. I took steroids one time for Bell’s palsy and felt honest to God even for the first time in my life, but after a while I missed the dramatic ups and downs of an artistic sensibility where everyday a new obstacle presents itself and waits to be vanquished.
“Behind the toilet is black” my mother screams from the bathroom and all I can think is what did either one of us do to deserve such similar death sentence fates?
In the year of 2015 all you have to do is take a pill to feel better and if that one pill does not work another pill will be prescribed to take along with the first pill. Doesn’t anyone else see how messed up that is? It gets me thinking that the war on drugs is still going on and it has everything to do with legal drugs prescribed by statisticians and nothing whatsoever to do with the person standing on the corner.
These poetry coordinates are just leading me around in dizzying circles.
My friend Joni posts her poetry and I once again find myself jealous of her artistic free will but understand she suffers for every brushstroke of the paintbrush, pen or finger she wields onto a canvas screen of nausea and snow blindness.
I cannot tell a lie. I desire to go bowling with you, but let’s forget about the uncomfortable and stinky rented bowling shoes and instead wear our own slippers and flannel PJs.
For the first time in our lives let’s shed all of our emotional baggage and do our very best to leave our persecution complexes at home with our rescue dogs and our Titanic inferiority complexes.
For the first time in our lives let’s act like children completely devoid of guilt and free of the sins of our parents.
Charles Cicirella
3/23/15
Friday, March 20, 2015
Cherry Cheese Hello
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-20T11_08_01-07_00
drinking instant coffee
eating a cherry cheese danish
watching the jinx
thinking what a scumbag robert durst is
sad little rich boy
entitled freakish little man
who believes the world is his ashtray
i don’t feel sorry for you in the least little bit as i watch you being interviewed
and i try to decode your facial ticks like they were some kind of morse code
peeling off your mask in clammy clumps of plaster a paris
sounds like your father drove your mother to jump from that roof and that money covers up the sins of the father like it’s now covering up the crimes of the son and everyone does what they are told to do because money doesn’t talk it bleats and god forbid someone finally stands up and calls you on your bullshit and pulls you down from your garbage encrusted pedestal that you teeter upon like some shit eating monster that gets off on pulling one over on everyone because you seem to think money makes you untouchable in your bubble world with your bubble emotions and your cherry cheese gravelly hellos and your desperate pleas for attention or retention or whatever gets you by and ultimately gives you away in some public bathroom because even the sick and depraved can be dragged down by guilt and loneliness and remorse and whatever passes for sorrow in these days of gods and monsters and slap happy guttural screams for help
Charles Cicirella
3/20/15
drinking instant coffee
eating a cherry cheese danish
watching the jinx
thinking what a scumbag robert durst is
sad little rich boy
entitled freakish little man
who believes the world is his ashtray
i don’t feel sorry for you in the least little bit as i watch you being interviewed
and i try to decode your facial ticks like they were some kind of morse code
peeling off your mask in clammy clumps of plaster a paris
sounds like your father drove your mother to jump from that roof and that money covers up the sins of the father like it’s now covering up the crimes of the son and everyone does what they are told to do because money doesn’t talk it bleats and god forbid someone finally stands up and calls you on your bullshit and pulls you down from your garbage encrusted pedestal that you teeter upon like some shit eating monster that gets off on pulling one over on everyone because you seem to think money makes you untouchable in your bubble world with your bubble emotions and your cherry cheese gravelly hellos and your desperate pleas for attention or retention or whatever gets you by and ultimately gives you away in some public bathroom because even the sick and depraved can be dragged down by guilt and loneliness and remorse and whatever passes for sorrow in these days of gods and monsters and slap happy guttural screams for help
Charles Cicirella
3/20/15
Thursday, March 19, 2015
God Squad Squawk Box
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-18T22_43_03-07_00
I am here
Here I am
Come and get me
Job was not a victim
Job didn’t have it coming to him
Job was just in the wrong place at the wrong time
I am trying my best to be open to inspiration
I am praying I don’t just become more collateral damage
I am well aware that resisting change is completely futile
Moses was not an Amway Distributor
Moses held no stock in pyramid schemes
Moses like Edward Scissorhands was a gentle spirit with a kind heart
I am tired of being by myself
Loneliness has got me on the run
I wish someone would ask me to dance
John the Baptist had it going on
John the Baptist was the first rebel without a cause
John the Baptist made it look easy because he did not require any backup band when crying in the wilderness
Charles Cicirella
3/18/15
I am here
Here I am
Come and get me
Job was not a victim
Job didn’t have it coming to him
Job was just in the wrong place at the wrong time
I am trying my best to be open to inspiration
I am praying I don’t just become more collateral damage
I am well aware that resisting change is completely futile
Moses was not an Amway Distributor
Moses held no stock in pyramid schemes
Moses like Edward Scissorhands was a gentle spirit with a kind heart
I am tired of being by myself
Loneliness has got me on the run
I wish someone would ask me to dance
John the Baptist had it going on
John the Baptist was the first rebel without a cause
John the Baptist made it look easy because he did not require any backup band when crying in the wilderness
Charles Cicirella
3/18/15
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Another Poem for Bob Dylan #5
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-15T14_02_39-07_00
Singing “Dirge”
He’s a Jewish Cantor
He’s everything and nothing encapsulated into nothing and everything
“Like a slave in orbit”
Like a meteor from space
Superman was Clark Kent’s worst nightmare
Thinking about eating a couple of hotdogs with sauerkraut and French’s Yellow Mustard
It’s a beginning
It’s Exodus without the cries in the wilderness or the unleavened bread
My Passover could beat up your Easter
I know it’s not a contest but if it were my unforgiving God would beat the tar out of your turn the other cheek Son of Man
Let’s start with heavy petting and if that doesn’t get us anywhere then you can have your way with me once the roofie kicks in and Fat Albert promises to leave the room
There is just something about the way he sings that transports me to another level of consciousness
I love how he leaves no rolling stone unturned while inventing a new language that beats the crap out of however we used to communicate before he appeared on the scene like a vengeful spirit or circus oddity
He makes being a freak cool as he takes every one of us hostage with his Dog Day Afternoon declarations of independence and inconsolable heartache
Emoting “Dirge”
He’s a Christian Minstrel
He’s breaking bad while making it perfectly clear there never was anything to return home to
Charles Cicirella
3/15/15
Singing “Dirge”
He’s a Jewish Cantor
He’s everything and nothing encapsulated into nothing and everything
“Like a slave in orbit”
Like a meteor from space
Superman was Clark Kent’s worst nightmare
Thinking about eating a couple of hotdogs with sauerkraut and French’s Yellow Mustard
It’s a beginning
It’s Exodus without the cries in the wilderness or the unleavened bread
My Passover could beat up your Easter
I know it’s not a contest but if it were my unforgiving God would beat the tar out of your turn the other cheek Son of Man
Let’s start with heavy petting and if that doesn’t get us anywhere then you can have your way with me once the roofie kicks in and Fat Albert promises to leave the room
There is just something about the way he sings that transports me to another level of consciousness
I love how he leaves no rolling stone unturned while inventing a new language that beats the crap out of however we used to communicate before he appeared on the scene like a vengeful spirit or circus oddity
He makes being a freak cool as he takes every one of us hostage with his Dog Day Afternoon declarations of independence and inconsolable heartache
Emoting “Dirge”
He’s a Christian Minstrel
He’s breaking bad while making it perfectly clear there never was anything to return home to
Charles Cicirella
3/15/15
Friday, March 13, 2015
Our Secret Language (For Christina M. Brooks)
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-13T18_00_20-07_00
Want to write a poem for you.
I believe this is that poem.
Watched you at Snoetry.
Still think about what you
Taught us and how you did it
Free of academia.
Think about you sitting against
The wall in Canton. How friendly
You were and how it made me
Feel like returning to the poetry
Scene was a good decision and
One I would not regret.
I very much want you to know
That you are not alone and that
I for one recognize and appreciate
Your generous and kind spirit.
I am also a very sensitive person
And no matter what anyone says
Having an open heart is a positive
And not a negative characteristic.
We bask in the sunlight of another
Dappled and delicious morning.
In our minds we are smelling the
Flowers and thanking some deity
For feeling so alive. You are a
Poet and there is no disputing that.
Poetry is a state of mind as much
As it is a state of true unbridled being.
Charles Cicirella
3/13/15
Want to write a poem for you.
I believe this is that poem.
Watched you at Snoetry.
Still think about what you
Taught us and how you did it
Free of academia.
Think about you sitting against
The wall in Canton. How friendly
You were and how it made me
Feel like returning to the poetry
Scene was a good decision and
One I would not regret.
I very much want you to know
That you are not alone and that
I for one recognize and appreciate
Your generous and kind spirit.
I am also a very sensitive person
And no matter what anyone says
Having an open heart is a positive
And not a negative characteristic.
We bask in the sunlight of another
Dappled and delicious morning.
In our minds we are smelling the
Flowers and thanking some deity
For feeling so alive. You are a
Poet and there is no disputing that.
Poetry is a state of mind as much
As it is a state of true unbridled being.
Charles Cicirella
3/13/15
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
Words Untoward
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-10T01_42_53-07_00
Seems like everyone is writing poetry these days.
It’s not such a hard job. Just string together some pearls and get out of the way.
I’ve never really thought of myself as a poet. That’s an eminent title and I’m more of a shoe polisher than a Poet, Pope or Virgin Mother.
Believe in a reversal of misfortune it’s about all you have to do.
Just grab hold of the Technicolor rainbow and don’t look back unless you want to turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife did so many years ago.
I remember hanging out with Nero as Rome burned and how disappointed he was when trying to bum a cigarette and I told him I don’t smoke.
Seems like everyone wants to be radicalized these days.
First there was a war on drugs then there was a war on terror and neither one of them really seemed to do much good. In fact I believe in both cases the allotted targets only grew bigger and more out of control.
You want to change the world? Forget about it because the world is one hard headed mofo and the blood and grease on our hands is only going to get thicker because when push comes to shove we’re all Catholic priests with an altar boy or two in our closets.
These words are untoward. These words are broken, scarred and disassembled.
I’m no Mary Poppins and even if I was I would prefer you kept Lady Gaga and her duplicitous tributes to yourself.
The very first poem I ever wrote was about the moon. Before I die I hope to write a poem about shooting the moon. Groucho Marx was a poet. Karl Marx not so much, but I believe both men were dyed in the wool romantics.
Seems like everyone is writing their very own obituary these days.
They start with all of these verbose adjectives that leave you wondering who they’re even talking about and before you know it they’re out of breath and wishing they’d been put out to pasture long before the stars were torn down.
I want to die, but not because I am a fatalist but simply because I believe death will give me more of an edge. Please understand I am in no hurry to spiral off this mortal coil, but when it does happen I will lean into it like all good poets do.
Charles Cicirella
2/27/15
Seems like everyone is writing poetry these days.
It’s not such a hard job. Just string together some pearls and get out of the way.
I’ve never really thought of myself as a poet. That’s an eminent title and I’m more of a shoe polisher than a Poet, Pope or Virgin Mother.
Believe in a reversal of misfortune it’s about all you have to do.
Just grab hold of the Technicolor rainbow and don’t look back unless you want to turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife did so many years ago.
I remember hanging out with Nero as Rome burned and how disappointed he was when trying to bum a cigarette and I told him I don’t smoke.
Seems like everyone wants to be radicalized these days.
First there was a war on drugs then there was a war on terror and neither one of them really seemed to do much good. In fact I believe in both cases the allotted targets only grew bigger and more out of control.
You want to change the world? Forget about it because the world is one hard headed mofo and the blood and grease on our hands is only going to get thicker because when push comes to shove we’re all Catholic priests with an altar boy or two in our closets.
These words are untoward. These words are broken, scarred and disassembled.
I’m no Mary Poppins and even if I was I would prefer you kept Lady Gaga and her duplicitous tributes to yourself.
The very first poem I ever wrote was about the moon. Before I die I hope to write a poem about shooting the moon. Groucho Marx was a poet. Karl Marx not so much, but I believe both men were dyed in the wool romantics.
Seems like everyone is writing their very own obituary these days.
They start with all of these verbose adjectives that leave you wondering who they’re even talking about and before you know it they’re out of breath and wishing they’d been put out to pasture long before the stars were torn down.
I want to die, but not because I am a fatalist but simply because I believe death will give me more of an edge. Please understand I am in no hurry to spiral off this mortal coil, but when it does happen I will lean into it like all good poets do.
Charles Cicirella
2/27/15
“Compartments that’s how we survive in this world.”
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-08T13_56_53-07_00
Let’s make music like crickets.
I’m running out of good ideas.
The day the music died more
than just music breathed its last
breath.
We resemble our least favorable selves
when our backs are up against the wall.
She told me things about myself I could
hardly believe were true.
I’m running on empty and no top off
is going to save me.
We will not even come close to
breaking even if we insist on gambling
with our doppelgangers.
I sat next to her at a poetry reading
and everything sort of made sense
for the first time in decades.
The way I write is simple. I wait for the
words to advance and if they don’t I do
my best to stall before spilling the bloody
truth on the white shag rug. Believe what
you must. I still believe I am Christ the
Redeemer even though martyr complexes
are rarely worth the marble they are
chiseled from.
Put yourself in a compartment you will be
comfortable in for at least a millennium or
more. The help we seek quite often does
not come when expected so it’s best to be
cozy in one’s self-imposed isolation.
As we drove through the streets of Erie I
kept wondering why the plug hadn’t been
pulled years before.
Charles Cicirella
3/8/15
Let’s make music like crickets.
I’m running out of good ideas.
The day the music died more
than just music breathed its last
breath.
We resemble our least favorable selves
when our backs are up against the wall.
She told me things about myself I could
hardly believe were true.
I’m running on empty and no top off
is going to save me.
We will not even come close to
breaking even if we insist on gambling
with our doppelgangers.
I sat next to her at a poetry reading
and everything sort of made sense
for the first time in decades.
The way I write is simple. I wait for the
words to advance and if they don’t I do
my best to stall before spilling the bloody
truth on the white shag rug. Believe what
you must. I still believe I am Christ the
Redeemer even though martyr complexes
are rarely worth the marble they are
chiseled from.
Put yourself in a compartment you will be
comfortable in for at least a millennium or
more. The help we seek quite often does
not come when expected so it’s best to be
cozy in one’s self-imposed isolation.
As we drove through the streets of Erie I
kept wondering why the plug hadn’t been
pulled years before.
Charles Cicirella
3/8/15
Thursday, March 05, 2015
Noir
put the gun
in your mouth
pretend the
bullets are
cheese
and you
are a rat
swallow the barrel
you rat
pull the trigger
you rat
put the noose
around your neck
pretend
the rope
is
a Chicago neck-tie
and you are
being
interviewed
by
death
step up
you coward
step off
you coward
film noir
can get you
5 to 20
if you
don’t cover
your tracks
i know
you said
you’re a
film buff
but it’s
getting harder
and harder
to believe
a word
you say
these days
you
son
of
a
bitch
Charles Cicirella
3/5/15
in your mouth
pretend the
bullets are
cheese
and you
are a rat
swallow the barrel
you rat
pull the trigger
you rat
put the noose
around your neck
pretend
the rope
is
a Chicago neck-tie
and you are
being
interviewed
by
death
step up
you coward
step off
you coward
film noir
can get you
5 to 20
if you
don’t cover
your tracks
i know
you said
you’re a
film buff
but it’s
getting harder
and harder
to believe
a word
you say
these days
you
son
of
a
bitch
Charles Cicirella
3/5/15
Tuesday, March 03, 2015
Lose Your Footing
(For Darin Bulai)
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-02T23_26_13-08_00
Basking in the American Graffiti moonlight.
A freeloading carpet bagging spirit-guide entrepreneur.
Slicing the uninherited wind into pieces and parts with a Cuisinart tongue mind-set
He commences soon after the werewolves have turned back into men and the vampires have retired to their subterranean motor-home coffins.
Broken and there is not enough Scotch Tape to repair these forsaken stigmata Romanesque ruinous wounds.
When staring up into the sky all that was there to fixate upon were clouds and more billowing clouds of thunder and thorn in the side Kabuki theatre political missteps.
Tired and listless like Sonny Liston after Cassius Clay beat the holy hell out of him in Miami Beach.
We’re all just miners mining for a heart of gold and a stampede of gold nugget words to ease us into our own desperate attempts for greatness or something resembling our better and less beleaguered Babe Ruth selves.
She wanted to sell my Star Wars collectibles because she believed she was owed a payday after putting up with all of my clinging and clawing behaviors. I warned her I possessed the claws of a sloth on sabbatical and was ready and willing to bring her down if it meant three square meals a day and a blow job on Presidents’ Day.
She was Pavlov and I was the dog salivating whenever she entered the room because I believed she was bringing me salvation or at the very least sustenance and a chew toy.
We were your typical broken record and I am sick and tired of how easy it is to now make a playlist, put it on shuffle and play it anywhere you like including the shower when you are drowning your sorrows in fifty shades of your own filth.
I believe in another life I was Sally Hemings and preferred it when Thomas Jefferson, Father of Democracy would give it to me from behind so I wouldn’t have to watch as his face scrunched up like a Red Delicious apple right before he climaxed inside like any free man has a tendency to do when sodomizing a slave they foolishly believe they own.
Kilroy was here or at least I think he was here. It is hard to keep track of his comings and goings when he is still so popular and every wall desires a piece of him.
He writes like the unseen wind and I cannot wait till I can put on a cloak of invisibility and lose myself in a lion’s share of his word puzzle requiems for a persona non grata quest for the Holy truncated Grail.
Charles Cicirella
2/28/15
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-03-02T23_26_13-08_00
Basking in the American Graffiti moonlight.
A freeloading carpet bagging spirit-guide entrepreneur.
Slicing the uninherited wind into pieces and parts with a Cuisinart tongue mind-set
He commences soon after the werewolves have turned back into men and the vampires have retired to their subterranean motor-home coffins.
Broken and there is not enough Scotch Tape to repair these forsaken stigmata Romanesque ruinous wounds.
When staring up into the sky all that was there to fixate upon were clouds and more billowing clouds of thunder and thorn in the side Kabuki theatre political missteps.
Tired and listless like Sonny Liston after Cassius Clay beat the holy hell out of him in Miami Beach.
We’re all just miners mining for a heart of gold and a stampede of gold nugget words to ease us into our own desperate attempts for greatness or something resembling our better and less beleaguered Babe Ruth selves.
She wanted to sell my Star Wars collectibles because she believed she was owed a payday after putting up with all of my clinging and clawing behaviors. I warned her I possessed the claws of a sloth on sabbatical and was ready and willing to bring her down if it meant three square meals a day and a blow job on Presidents’ Day.
She was Pavlov and I was the dog salivating whenever she entered the room because I believed she was bringing me salvation or at the very least sustenance and a chew toy.
We were your typical broken record and I am sick and tired of how easy it is to now make a playlist, put it on shuffle and play it anywhere you like including the shower when you are drowning your sorrows in fifty shades of your own filth.
I believe in another life I was Sally Hemings and preferred it when Thomas Jefferson, Father of Democracy would give it to me from behind so I wouldn’t have to watch as his face scrunched up like a Red Delicious apple right before he climaxed inside like any free man has a tendency to do when sodomizing a slave they foolishly believe they own.
Kilroy was here or at least I think he was here. It is hard to keep track of his comings and goings when he is still so popular and every wall desires a piece of him.
He writes like the unseen wind and I cannot wait till I can put on a cloak of invisibility and lose myself in a lion’s share of his word puzzle requiems for a persona non grata quest for the Holy truncated Grail.
Charles Cicirella
2/28/15
Friday, February 27, 2015
"the creaking and weathervane sound of it"
going to watch “The Walking Dead”/ eat a Baby Ruth / makes me happy and somewhat grounded / can’t keep up with the jones / they’re either too fast, too slippery or both / the status quo can go to hell / i’m okay with whatever this nothingness misrepresents / trying to write freer like my friend Joni / of course if i’m trying then I have already failed / was in Minnesota at a post office and i remember Jayne only being able to write with a certain color pen / made me feel closer to her knowing she had quirks just like i have quirks and whatever was verboten in the next room would have probably made us both uncomfortable and wishing we had not touched the remote control / “The Walking Dead” is over and i am at a loss for words / the Baby Ruth was okay, but probably should have gotten a Snickers instead / tired of filling myself up with sugar and having no clue when the next pizza will be delivered / have to somehow find a way back into the elephant cage before everything is left of center / heard the creaking of the rusted and god forsaken weathervane / it sounded like a crow being murdered and not in a good way / fuck everybody who doesn’t believe in god and fuck everybody who believes that they are god and that a martyr syndrome is somehow a means to an end
Charles Cicirella
2/24/15
Charles Cicirella
2/24/15
Saturday, February 21, 2015
Bargaining
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-02-21T01_22_30-08_00
Full of bluster.
Full of terror.
Full of crap.
This might be another poem.
This might be a cry for kindness.
This is not a suicide note.
Tired of beginnings.
Tired of endings.
Tired of being caught in the middle.
Full of whimsy.
Full of lust.
Full of spinach.
This may be overwrought.
This may be undercooked.
This is not made up in the least little bit.
Full of questions.
Full of wonder.
Full of light.
Charles Cicirella
2/21/15
Full of bluster.
Full of terror.
Full of crap.
This might be another poem.
This might be a cry for kindness.
This is not a suicide note.
Tired of beginnings.
Tired of endings.
Tired of being caught in the middle.
Full of whimsy.
Full of lust.
Full of spinach.
This may be overwrought.
This may be undercooked.
This is not made up in the least little bit.
Full of questions.
Full of wonder.
Full of light.
Charles Cicirella
2/21/15
Friday, February 20, 2015
Soule
http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-02-20T13_09_22-08_00
You write your soul, but still no one seems to get you.
They make fun of you or ignore you completely.
It’s like high school all over again and no one wants to sit with you at lunch.
Most of the time I don’t have a clue what I am talking about and for great intellects I’d much rather put a sock in it than try and make sense out of the equation my brain is sorting out.
I like doughnuts with chocolate frosting and white crème and no that’s not a euphemism.
If I’ve been a good boy I don’t see why I can’t have my cake and eat it too because we all deserve to live a little even if we’re without a job and living on someone else’s dime.
You paint your own tyranny of the empty room, but no one seems to be paying any attention.
They go on and on about the next big thing when the next big thing is you and that has been true from the moment you were created and started painting with your fingers.
We’re not celebrity artists. We’re in it for the long haul. No matter how many beguiling martyrs are forsaken and charming cult leaders go up in smoke?
Most of the time I am flat broke and flat on my back trying to find someone to converse with while watching one miserable television show after another because I find a short attention span more interesting than a long vacation abroad.
I have a taste for Chicken McNuggets even though when going to McDonald’s today I instead ordered two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. I thought about ordering a McFlurry with OREO® Cookies when leaving but it was so cold outside I decided against it.
Junk food maintains me like phone sex sustains me because to be perfectly honest I am finding it far easier to turn the next phrase than to learn a new magic trick.
I am sorry for continually interrupting you when we’re on the phone. There’s no excuse for my being so rude it’s just knowing you is better than any drug I have ever ingested.
You feed my soul Joni Lynn Soule and like Oliver Twist “"Please, sir, I want some more."
Your fairy heart shines a light on my warlock soul. Reminding me why I’m still pressing down these keys and singing completely off key.
Charles Cicirella
2/20/15
You write your soul, but still no one seems to get you.
They make fun of you or ignore you completely.
It’s like high school all over again and no one wants to sit with you at lunch.
Most of the time I don’t have a clue what I am talking about and for great intellects I’d much rather put a sock in it than try and make sense out of the equation my brain is sorting out.
I like doughnuts with chocolate frosting and white crème and no that’s not a euphemism.
If I’ve been a good boy I don’t see why I can’t have my cake and eat it too because we all deserve to live a little even if we’re without a job and living on someone else’s dime.
You paint your own tyranny of the empty room, but no one seems to be paying any attention.
They go on and on about the next big thing when the next big thing is you and that has been true from the moment you were created and started painting with your fingers.
We’re not celebrity artists. We’re in it for the long haul. No matter how many beguiling martyrs are forsaken and charming cult leaders go up in smoke?
Most of the time I am flat broke and flat on my back trying to find someone to converse with while watching one miserable television show after another because I find a short attention span more interesting than a long vacation abroad.
I have a taste for Chicken McNuggets even though when going to McDonald’s today I instead ordered two Filet-O-Fish sandwiches. I thought about ordering a McFlurry with OREO® Cookies when leaving but it was so cold outside I decided against it.
Junk food maintains me like phone sex sustains me because to be perfectly honest I am finding it far easier to turn the next phrase than to learn a new magic trick.
I am sorry for continually interrupting you when we’re on the phone. There’s no excuse for my being so rude it’s just knowing you is better than any drug I have ever ingested.
You feed my soul Joni Lynn Soule and like Oliver Twist “"Please, sir, I want some more."
Your fairy heart shines a light on my warlock soul. Reminding me why I’m still pressing down these keys and singing completely off key.
Charles Cicirella
2/20/15
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Souls
We are naked.
We are sunsets.
We are seers.
I held this poem underwater.
It yapped like a pedigree beagle.
Water torture is not for patriots, mavericks or pussies.
We are burning.
We are Haley’s Comet.
We are storytellers.
I held this poem up to the light.
It shined brighter than any super nova.
Rainbows are for leprechauns, munchkins and torch singers.
We are livewires.
We are lightning in a bottle.
We are stigmata.
Charles Cicirella
2/19/15
We are sunsets.
We are seers.
I held this poem underwater.
It yapped like a pedigree beagle.
Water torture is not for patriots, mavericks or pussies.
We are burning.
We are Haley’s Comet.
We are storytellers.
I held this poem up to the light.
It shined brighter than any super nova.
Rainbows are for leprechauns, munchkins and torch singers.
We are livewires.
We are lightning in a bottle.
We are stigmata.
Charles Cicirella
2/19/15
Monday, February 16, 2015
Brick and Mortar
I’m feeling like shit. It
just happened or maybe it’s always just happening.
And there are no words.
Except for these words and these words are not proving to be of much comfort.
I’m not a carpenter. I am
just a person. A person who is feeling equal amounts shame and disgust for
whatever it is they’re unbecoming. Its Kafkaesque this metamorphosis from
person to bug to something I cannot even recognize or reconcile lying next to
any longer.
You were brilliant and you
were going to save me. Until I realized I needed to do my own saving and
Lifesavers are only worth sucking when they’re cherry flavored or maybe coconut
if you’re in that kind of mood.
Do you remember Hubba
Bubba Bubble Gum? I still can recall the Friendly Drugstore on Mayfield Road in
South Euclid. This was before CVS and Walgreens bled the life out of what a
family drugstore actually was. A place you felt comfortable going to when you
needed a quick pick me up and to see a familiar face.
I miss Powerhouse candy
bars. I miss asking you what time it is and you giving me some made up answer
because you always knew I could care less what time it really was.
I’m feeling like complete
crap. I am tired of being called out on the carpet for dreams that have turned
into dried flowers pressed in a book like the Bible but far less bloody or
compelling.
One word will hopefully
lead to the next and then to the next and before you know it you’ve crossed a bridge
and a poem is nearly completed.
I’m not a patriot. I am
just a person who would go live in another country if I had the money and the
wherewithal to pick myself up and get the heck out of Dodge. America the
Beautiful keeps going on and on about its special brand of exceptionalism when
all I see are a bunch of translucent hipsters cozying up to whatever is
convenient at that particular moment as mediocrity rains down upon them like
Froyo and fifty shades of vomit.
Charles Cicirella
2/16/15
Saturday, February 14, 2015
Lincoln Logs
I’ve built a fortress around me with words and whatnot.
My first memory is being inside a house. Everything is low-spirited.
I feel sad because no one ever seemed to want to hang out with me.
I told her to use her words not emoticons or silly ass stickers.
When she sings the Pony Express gallops from her throat as messages are delivered.
I’ll never forget how we nearly died from inhaling oil paint and turpentine fumes.
I’m not in control. In fact I’m out of control.
My mother asked me why I’m sleeping so much. I started thinking perhaps it’s because I’m depressed or maybe I’m just tired from doing nothing but waiting for the miracle to come.
The Lincoln Logs felt good in my hands. They reminded me how things fit together especially when unfit and in need of love and Elmer’s Glue.
Many people believe they are artists, but few burn hot enough to create anything actually transformative.
We are phoenixes and we rise from the ashes unguarded and empty of any deceit.
I’m not proud of how many bridges I have burned. I’m not proud of much these days except what I have pulled together from words and whatnot.
Charles Cicirella
2/14/15
My first memory is being inside a house. Everything is low-spirited.
I feel sad because no one ever seemed to want to hang out with me.
I told her to use her words not emoticons or silly ass stickers.
When she sings the Pony Express gallops from her throat as messages are delivered.
I’ll never forget how we nearly died from inhaling oil paint and turpentine fumes.
I’m not in control. In fact I’m out of control.
My mother asked me why I’m sleeping so much. I started thinking perhaps it’s because I’m depressed or maybe I’m just tired from doing nothing but waiting for the miracle to come.
The Lincoln Logs felt good in my hands. They reminded me how things fit together especially when unfit and in need of love and Elmer’s Glue.
Many people believe they are artists, but few burn hot enough to create anything actually transformative.
We are phoenixes and we rise from the ashes unguarded and empty of any deceit.
I’m not proud of how many bridges I have burned. I’m not proud of much these days except what I have pulled together from words and whatnot.
Charles Cicirella
2/14/15
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