WILCO!

(For Dan Gallows)

Dan Klute

What a hoot

Gets it right down to his Blue Suede shoes

Dan Klute

What a hoot

He’s the cat’s pajamas of drivers and understands what it means to change lanes without restraint

Dan Klute

What a hoot

He brings earnestness to the word earnest in this twenty first century of divine decrepitude

Dan Klute

What a hoot

No one here gets out alive except for those chosen few who do not worry themselves over such things as death and the sins of deadly omission

Dan Klute

What a hoot

Let’s leave the leavers and get what has always been ours for the taking!

Charles Cicirella

11/25/2013

Music Box

(For Molly Andrews)

We begin wrestling in the mud like idiot savants and adolescent Gods. And nothing matters until the page is turned and the songbook is filled with stardust.

She introduced me to a Gospel Train when playing the autoharp for us on McMillen Ave. It was the year of who knows when and I am a better man for everything that was created and destroyed in those misplaced and unidentified times.

We end wrestling with the mythos of resurrection like wise old fools and hungry forsaken devils. And everything makes a difference when we focus on the breath of life existing inside of us.

Molly Andrews is a harmonic convergence whose birth keeps us all eternally young and infinitely foolish.

Charles Cicirella

8/7/2013

Nocturne

(For Veronica)

I am lost in her music.

I yearn to get lost in her hard rain.
I wished upon a star and her eyes appeared open and wanting.

I am found in her grace.

I am frozen in space, the Earth’s gravitational pull refuses to pay any attention to me.
I positioned myself as a Romeo and fell as flat as the Earth was once believed to be.

We must forge ahead.

We must adapt to changing conditions because evolution will not wait for us to catch up.
We must see through remnants of lost love and never forget that soul mates do exist even though they may not be all that usual in these unusual days and nights.

I desire to be in the same room with her the next time her heart dances upon the keys.

I long to hold her turbine body as she sets the wheels in motion, ultimately setting us both free.
I wished upon a star and she appeared before me peaceful and on fire like Joan of Arc.

Charles Cicirella

10/11/2013

This

(For Rick Polhamus)

This is a new beginning because I know you understand what is meant by a new beginning.

This is never ending because I know you understand what is meant by something that never ends.
And when everything began making sense is the precise moment the writing on the wall vanished.
And when nothing any longer makes a lick of sense, that is when we must get our hands dirty and completely eradicate the ghosts in our rolling stone hearts.

I was brave and not afraid to admit it until realizing my bravery was in fact cowardice sold to the highest blind and deaf bidder.

I was strong and not afraid to admit it until realizing my strength was weakness and I was getting nowhere fast walking around in chain metal.
I was bulletproof and not afraid to admit it until realizing I had been shot full of holes long before I had even been born, and dying is too often seen as no big deal when the life you are living is not really living.

New beginnings are sculpted from clay and honest to God possibility.

When meeting you for the first time and every time since I know I am meeting a true believer who understands to preach the word of God, one must first live in God.
There are never ending mysteries taking shape all around once we shatter the mirror images in our love sick eyes and again understand that our souls do indeed carry the weight.
When talking with you on the phone I always feel renewed inside and I think it has everything to do with the sound of your laughter and how it breaks free of convention and brings me back to the Garden.

Charles Eric Cicirella

9/15/2013

New Orleans: Sex & Death

(For Bob Dylan)

Break through the cold
Reject impermanence  
Rejoice!

We’re immortal

Embrace transience
Rebel!

Stranger in a strange land

Brushstrokes conjuring up ghosts
Reverberate!

His paintings vibrate

His paintings howl
His paintings soak up the blood on the killing floor.

Dance in the white flames

Resurrection a sanctified state of body and mind
Death is not the end.

 

Charles Eric Cicirella

2/6/2013

DISOBEDIENCE

(For Jim Volk)

Listen to the silence between the notes, to the rapture throughout his transmigrations.
His playing is ageless and has always been beyond the scope.

He breaks through the sham of domesticity.

Refuses to beat a dead horse because he knows a dead horse will always come back to mock you.
Replenishes his guitar epiphanies with a self confidence that stays focused on a pursuit of true happiness and not of stilted happenstance.

Listen to the sound above the notes, to the train track reservoirs of falling waters.

He does not believe in obedience for obedience sake because he is an old dog always willing to learn new behaviors.

Charles Eric Cicirella

5/18/2013

HOW DOES IT FEEL?

BRICK MORTAR

(For Tom Jones)

Super heroes do indeed exist.
They don’t wear capes or tights.
Some actually wear glasses and eat lots of fast food.

Tom Jones is not a menace.
Tom Jones is your friendly neighbor who always waves and says hello.
Tom Jones plays the drums and guitar like he’s been doing it since before Rome burned.

As friends go you couldn’t ask for anyone nicer or more generous.
When you’re down and out he may invite you out to Harrisburg for a steak or maybe he’ll hand you a jelly doughnut because he knows how much they make you smile.
There are still a few genuine people left in this world and Tom Jones is definitely one of them.

I think the real rock stars have yet to really have their day in the sun.
I think the real rock stars are quite often working some non-descript job pushing papers and somehow making it work for them.
I think the real rock stars are focused primarily on honing their craft and don’t bother themselves with the trappings of fame or mediocrity.

Charles Cicirella 1/29/2013

Cut the Sail

(For Andrea)

I am sick and tired of flying without my wings properly attached.

Sick and tired of the dirty looks and dirty whispering behind my back.
It’s rarely ego and when it comes to paranoia I’m quite certain many are against me, but that comes with experience and burning too many bridges with gleeful abandon.

When I suggested you write a poem as a companion piece to one of mine I thought you might find it fun and not for one second was I looking for praise or to be preened like some champion show poodle.

When I dance I look like I am having some kind of fit and when I sing it sounds more like an exorcism, but when I sit down and focus on the words anything can and will happen as the page catches fire and the screen melts before my opaque eyes.
When I try the art of small talk, language becomes my enemy and I no longer feel comfortable in my own skin, but when I get up and read my poetry I know there’s no calling it quits.
 

I felt really relaxed around you and I will not apologize for that.

I am quite confused how we straightened out whatever weirdness there was between us, only to now have more strangeness existing like a moat of hungry, snapping crocodiles.
I was so excited to have made, what I believed to be, a real intellectual connection and am quite disappointed that it now appears to be over.

Charles Cicirella 12/2/12

A Place of Apprehension

(For Andrea)

She speaks of the uncertainty of her words

But when reading her writing I sense nothing but a quality of determination.

She admits that sometimes she wrestles with insecurities

But I sense nothing but a warrior princess who understands the intricacies of peace.

A place of apprehension can too easily stop you in your tracks

And a place of apprehension can leave you wide open to unnecessary attacks.

Lowering your guard is not always the smart move especially when you are not entirely sure who to trust.

I was on a rocket ship heading toward the moon before I finally came to grips with the caterpillar astronaut inside and why gazing at the stars is not always the healthiest of pastimes.

When she speaks I listen because her truth is impossible to disavow in these days of red herrings and smoking cellphones.

If she told me to go underground I would buy a shovel and start digging because that’s how much I trust her instincts and know she’d never lead me astray.

There is a higher truth that is very much feminine not masculine and don’t let anyone tell you different.

A place of apprehension can be overcome if you only muster up the courage to swim against the rising tide and always pay attention to your innermost spark.

Charles Cicirella 11/26/12

Poetry Reading 7/18/2012

Poetry Reading 7/13/2012

Sediment (For Michelle)

William's Blake's image of Albion from his

A Large Book Of Designs

Sediment

(For Michelle)

I am channeling her river of sadness.

I heard her voice and knew I was home.

We break the speed of sound when allowing another person inside our Fortress of Solitude.

Standing by the river’s edge; sediment creeping between my toes.

I am lost in Mother Nature’s embrace, knowing full well civilization over stepped a long time ago.

I know she is a healer and that the cakes she bakes are edible poetry.

I cannot recall the last time I went the distance.

It has been too long since I shared my innermost secrets with an intimate stranger.

Falling in love with happenstance a fool’s errand and I’m tired of running that marathon solo.

I am channeling the sweltering heat of her beloved country.

I heard her animal symphony and knew I was heading in a positive direction.

We must break on through to the other side if we ever wish to share actual love in these strange times.

Her river of sadness is not about misfortune or placing blame.

Her river of darkness has nothing to do with justifying anything or locating an escape hatch.

Her river of light shines brighter than the Sun and understands just what is meant by a Glad Day.

Charles Cicirella 6/24/12

I Was Dreaming When I Wrote This

(For Mridara)

I was dreaming when I wrote this.
When I wrote this I was under the influence of only you.
Sometimes dreams sneak up on you, other times they come at you like a cyclone.

I was believing when I wrote this.
When I wrote this I was under the influence of a goddess.
Sometimes belief falls from the sky like hard rain, other times it wakes you in the morning with breakfast in bed and a big smile on its angelic face.

I was flying when I wrote this.
When I wrote this I was under the influence of high-level clouds and heavenly bodies.
Sometimes flying takes you away from the ones you love, other times flying brings you back to those who you’ve discovered you cannot live without.

You are a dream come true.
The living embodiment of what occurs when passion and intellect collide head-on.
I’ve always believed one day my dreams would take flight and I’d finally discover another soul who gets what it feels like to have a volcano raging inside and how the only calm you ever truly experience is when you’re scaling unbelievable heights in your mind’s eye.

Charles Cicirella
3/26/2012

Perfect Storm

(For Mridara)

She’s a perfect storm of Spiritus Mundi and existential angst.
She’s the primal fire that burns hotter than the yellow sun.
She’s Vincent’s “The Starry Night” and Frida’s “Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird”.
She’s the one you wish would call when night presses down on you like bullets from a jealous gun.

I was alone.
I was quaking in my own ill equipped self-confidence.
I was rationalizing everything by living in the moment with denial as my co-conspirator.
I wasn’t and that was not much fun.

Break open the Earth with your hands and mouth.
Break down who you are by questioning everything and allow chaos to become your North Star.
Break through constancy with the passion of an invincible Saint and refuse any and all limits especially when they have been introduced through self-doubt and self-recrimination.

Our feelings are never counterfeit when we are an honest broker with the God that lives inside us.
Our feelings are never circumspect or circumstantial as long as we forestall addictive remedies by crashing through empty promises and empty declarations of love.
Our feelings will never let us down as long as we face them head on and stare straight into the dragon’s warring eyes.

I desire her.
She’s a perfect storm of questions questioned and answers left by the church’s door.
I am inspired by the word-poems she creates and how these structures float so freely in oceans of space.
She’s a perfect storm of new dawns and ancient autumns turning around and around like a cosmic pinwheel on a perpetual quest for self-knowledge.
I desire to hold her when the April rains arrive and our blue raincoats serve as no more protection than our blue moods.

Charles Cicirella
3/25/2012

Record Cabinet

(For Tamara)

Immersed in the passivity of blood
Not you, oh no never you
Do you recall when we were children and rode on dinosaurs?
I believe in evolution
I believe Bubbles finally forgave Michael Jackson.

We were at a party listening to heaven-sent records
One of those records Highway 61 Revisited and I believe it was the vinyl’s scratchiness that brought us closer together
I’ve never been very good at small talk and yet when talking with you I discovered it easier to be interesting and to actually carry on a conversation without feeling like the village idiot.

Immersed in a passion play of epic proportions
And when the blood is spilled it is spilled for no good reason
And when the blood is consumed a fairy tale of conditioning and condemnation takes hold forevermore
I look into your Indiana eyes and spy the warrior Joan of Arc
I look into your Midwestern soul and am introduced to a jigsaw puzzle of great lakes and greater proposals.

I believe in revolution
I believe we must unearth the politics of man and design new tools to rebuild a fractured humanity
I believe that even a cleansing of fire will not awaken us from our comatose states
I believe the record cabinet an ark of civil disobedience riding atop the hypnotic waves of an opaque oblivion.

Charles
9/12/11

A Poem for Rhamah

We drive through hell with nothing on our backs and I do mean nothing
Collateral damage mustn’t get in the way of your true feelings and letting go is for the dinosaurs.

We were whispers before we were screams
We were primal even before fire had been created and sold to the lowest of indigenous creatures
We mustn’t rely on religion when even God has moved to higher ground
We must push through our limitless dream-states before we can remove original sin from our limited mindsets.

I want to go to the zoo and pet a panda bear
I need to forget how disingenuous the circus can be
I believe in hard work and all the calluses that go along with it
I'm impressed at how quickly you saw through me.


Charles
9/7/2011

A Second Poem for Rhamah

I hide inside my body
I fool myself into believing my body a fortress
I fool myself into believing my belief system bulletproof.

Truth is an alley none of us care to get caught in after dark
Truth can be difficult to swallow if all you have to drink is gasoline
The truth will set you free or at least that’s the word on the street.

I try my best to not hide myself behind my writing
Writing is the one place I strive in keeping it real
A Breakfast of Champions is nothing but a bowl of stones.

Charles
9/9/2011

Model Sound

(For Tamara)

Turn your pages
With my fingers

God didn’t write the Bible
Jesus rarely went to the library
The Holy Ghost loves a good ghost story

I want to look into your dark cherry eyes, whisper sweet nothings in your cotton candy ears and hold your skeletal frame while we ruminate on Harry Smith.

Charles Cicirella
9/7/11