Edge Cutting

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-11-10T12_29_20-08_00

Is this what it sounded like when Jacob wrestled the angel?

Is this how it felt when Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium?

Is this what Picasso was up to when he mixed up the medicine and warned humanity against the suffering and devastation of war?

I fear Heaven and Hell.

I won’t survive the persnickety way you strum the guitar strings into a hornet’s nest of everlasting dissonance. It forces me onto my haunches and pushes me back on my heels before leaving me in a heap of ashes and dust on the parquet flooring.

I hunger for nicotine as you get rid of the ashtrays. The creative zeitgeist scoops out your monkey brains as a fire in your belly becomes a fire in the sun that still howls today.

Is this what it sounded like when the hellhounds on Robert Johnson’s trail finally caught up with him?

Is this how it feels to have your cake and eat it too?

Is this what it was like when Eleanor launched an experimental community at Arthurdale, West Virginia, for the families of unemployed miners?

You take my breath away with every breath you blow into the harmonica’s black hole.

It’s hard to take this music standing up as I discover myself flying around the room, full of all the whimsy, mystery and indeterminate poetry you pitch at our heads like politically incorrect blood diamonds the size of baseballs.

The Transmigration of Bob Dylan by some cool cat whose name I didn’t quite catch. I’m starting to see why you wear a mask and how lonely it must be having no one to bounce ideas off of when everything is quiet and the cutting edge calls you out for being The Invisible Man.

Charles Cicirella

11/10/15

Remember

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-11-07T23_41_12-08_00

Remember the way things used to be.

No.

Remember first impressions and don’t allow them to lock you into a mindset that grinds everything and everyone into the pieces and parts of a larger and more ineffective machine.

Yes.

I’m not here to tell you anything you don’t already know.

I’m not a life coach or some masturbatory guru who gets off on watching his or her followers consume each other on a molecular level.

We had plenty of that when we were all living in a yellow submarine and I’d like to think we’ve moved past that kind of prehistoric belief system.

I don’t need nor want for you to think of me as a poet but instead as a parser of words because statistics don’t mean a damn thing if you don’t have enough will power to get up and go when an evil doer enters the room and tries to coop your soul.

Remember what it felt like to hold a pen or pencil in your hand and how liking something was a personal triumph and not just another public expression of your selfie love for a society that went bust long before the gold rush was the new kid in town.

Yes I want you to get off my lawn and while you’re at it get off my planet until you admit what the white man did to the Native Americans is an unforgivable act. Period, end of story, game over you have no more pinballs left and I’m tired of your revolving door politics.

Some people make history while others rely upon histrionic excuses to get them through the next five hundred years or more with hardly a scratch to their Taj Mahal souls.

Let’s try again to go the distance and while we are at it I promise not to remind you of all the times I did not kill you for being such an incredible asshole.

Yes.

Charles Cicirella

11/7/15

I Hear the Wind Chimes

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-11-05T20_03_52-08_00

Darin I burned my thumb lighting the pipe.

Darin I bit the inside of my cheek while watching the third Republican debate.

Darin I thought of you while eating a piece of Marie Callender's Razzleberry Pie with a couple of scoops of Breyers® Coffee Ice Cream. “Now even bolder with 100% Dark Colombian Coffee.”

Poetry is my gateway drug.

Not heroin, Christina Ricci or bath salts.

I like to snort a couple lines of blank verse and then get all cozy in front of the old white 32 inch Panasonic television watching TCM. I’ve discovered the commercials only put off the inevitable and I need all the crushing finality one lonely, overtly sensitive Jewish poet can handle. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t mind Christina Ricci on all fours looking back at me mouthing the words “ride me like your little pony”, but at this point I’d settle for a couple primo Quincy episodes and maybe a Cagney and Lacey to cut the testosterone levels.

I remember the time I heard my half Japanese girlfriend break wind. She was in the bathroom and even with the door closed I heard a little trumpet sound and knew somewhere an angel had just gotten their wings.

Darin I just took a swig of Coca-Cola and I would apologize for all this shameless product placement, but I’m thinking making I can get an endorsement deal and not have to wake up and make the doughnuts or bagels ever again.

I’m sure it takes all kinds of athleticism to hit a little white ball into a hole or shoot a B-ball into a hoop or take a pigskin and throw it down the field while a defensive line attempts to blitz you out of existence, but please try and understand it’s no walk in the park sitting in front of a blank screen, waiting for what seems like a miracle to come. I’ve never thought much of athletes and I believe that’s because they receive so much attention while writers and really all artists are treated if they’re lucky like second class citizens and if they’re not so lucky simply ignored because who has the time, patience or attention span to stop and read your poem or listen to your latest song or come by the gallery after work to check out your latest art installation.

Thanks for listening and for giving a shit even if you’re only pretending.

I’m going to take another hit and this time I’ll try and do a better job when it comes to crashing and burning.

Darin I know neither one of us is helpless and yet still sometimes this feeling of paralysis is too much to cope with and I find myself holding my breath a little longer than I should.

Charles Cicirella

10/30/15

My Fingers Reek of Reefer (For Juliet & Klute)

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-10-31T14_17_29-07_00

Tear it all down.

In this poem I promise not to objectify a soul living or dead.

In this poem I’ll do my best to stay on topic once I figure out what that topic is.

Leave your ego and edible panties at the door.

I remember when you didn’t need me anymore.

Truth be told no one ever needs another person and nothing could be truer when it came to our sickly relationship. If it could even be called a relationship.

The body lay on the cold, unforgiving concrete waiting for a lover or stranger to recognize who it once pretended to be.

I remember when I knocked on your door and you answered with teeth bared.

My fingers reek of reefer, ass, and the inability to forge ahead with a plan that doesn’t resemble the skeletal bones of another wasted life cowering beneath the suicide tree.

I am a parser of words and it’s not because I am a writer or a poet or because I play a movie director in my free time. I am a parser of words because sometimes the only option we have left is to pick up the gauntlet and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters before it’s too fucking late.

My pigeon fingers want to trace the contours of your sleeping body underneath the quilt your grandma knitted for you during her chemo treatments.

Tear it all down and replace it with something that won’t spit in your eye when you say I love you.

Charles Cicirella

10/31/15