Coffee Tastes Good

Coffee good

Poetry gone

Another mass shooting, more empty words

 

Chaos washes over me like orange marmalade

When I was a kid I read Paddington because I too felt like an orphan

These days I do my best to keep my head down, I’m Jewish and have a target on my back

 

Persecution is never the game I play

Unless it has to do with nailing myself to a crossbow like Robin Hood  

Religion another loaded chamber filled with bullets and searing reprisals

 

After centuries of beachcombing the human condition finally became inhumane

Even poets have a red line or red lion depending on the zoo they frequently visit

Word on the street is he reeks of ketchup, BO and ass and I believe it.

 

Charles Cicirella

1/5/2024

I wrote this about the new Bob Dylan Bootleg Series Fragments - Time Out of Mind Sessions 1996-1997 The Bootleg Series Vol. 17.

“Well, my nerves are exploding and my body’s tense”

God is his shield as the blues rain down like Biblical prophecy.
 
  First time I heard this record was on a cassette as I lay on a couch on Maynard Ave. reading Philip K. Dick. As epiphanies go the songs washed over me like dirges as the Shroud of Turin made its presence known. Bob comes clean on these songs like he hasn’t before and on disc one with the sheen gone these songs become even more confessional and cantankerous. We’re witnessing the blue boy step from the wet, oily painting to shake hands with death and demand his comeuppance. I’ve never attempted to parse his words because what would be the bloody point when transgressions are revealed and the sun shines upon him like an unkempt prayer. This music is personal like a secret only revealed once you’ve knelt down and acknowledged that your creator is neither your best friend nor worst enemy.
    
  Imagine the tragedy to befall us as another lifeblood-refrain tears us to shreds. I’ve always heard “Cold Irons Bound” as a road song. A song Lincoln would have played as he freed the slaves and dealt with his own oppressive demons. The glass is shattered as Bob steps closer to the edge and questions his impermanence. I believe the record is more life affirming than people realize as Dylan wrestles with the muse that has him in a chokehold. One’s legendary status only gets in the way when you’re as hungry as a wolf and as treacherous as a quisling. Nothing makes any sense as these fragments are rubbed into our wounds like fire and brimstone.

Charles Cicirella

Poem 4

Drinking water

Half-naked

Limp

Charles Cicirella
8/21/2022

Poem 3 (Groceries)

coffee

creamer

garlic bread

coca cola

Charles Cicirella
8/21/2022

Poem 2

Lying on the mattress, cowboys and injuns making bedlam on my soul                                                                                                                                                                                      

                                                                     I cannot breathe this                                                                                                                                                                                                                

                                                                     polluted anxiety anymore

Charles Cicirella

8/21/2022 

Poem

The raging river sounds like a highway of tears repeat after me I will not drown in my subconscious I will not drown in my subconscious

Charles Cicirella

This is how I write.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2022-07-16T03_52_57-07_00

It’s how I’ve always written.
I’m in and out the door in ten to fifteen minutes.
The imagery lies in wait like a big cat on the prowl.

Streams of consciousness freely flowing like jagged puzzle pieces down an opaque river.
Poetry is in my blood like chunky alphabet soup served at the shelter for the culturally ill-defined.
This is how I write as I hardly break a sweat churning out the pulp like a versifier high on noir and sodden bread.

Reasonable doubt goes out the window as a jury of my peers stare blankly back at me from gothic mirrors leaving nothing, but the macabre to the convulsed imagination.
I believe I fell in love because her soul was just as polluted as mine and when she did the tango it was for keeps.
This is how I blindside you by not once coming up for air until all the inflatable poets are deflated and another beat writer rehearses for his overdue retirement.

This game of to have and have not never impressed me so I left community college and refused to look back.
The stage like the gallows is the only place I’ve ever let it all hang out as an audience of Titanic faces fights over the very last lifeboat.
Look up at the moon and tell me how little it has changed since first writing about it thirty nine years ago.

Charles Cicirella
7/12/2022

The Blood

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2022-07-12T09_11_38-07_00

  His voice uncovers the great mystery. Darkness lifts as the stone is pushed away and a new man walks free. Rob’s “A Voice from on High” is the song the Israelites heard as they escaped Egypt because Rob carries a great burden in his soul. All honest to God prophets must sacrifice everything before a burning bush is revealed to them. Blood covers his voice because it’s Blood carrying us through as we’re freed from bondage and enter the Promise Land dressed in sackcloth and fresh tears.  

Charles Cicirella
7/11/2022

Bursting Through Unconsciousness #3

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2022-07-04T13_18_42-07_00

No one’s paying attention
No one gives a shit
The cross the poet carries a cloak of invisibility in a hell-scape of attention seekers

Lying to oneself gets you five to ten on a long list of forget-me-nots who never learned smelling the flowers is crucial to one’s survival
Quickly lost interest in porn so I started paying attention to the plight of the worker ants and their day to day struggle to stay poor and angry
Our productivity mustn’t be the key to someone else’s happiness because our souls are ours alone to protect and serve

No one’s lifting a finger to change a damn thing
The Supreme Court continues to supremely fuck us as the Wild West comes back into vogue like ethnic cleansing
We must burst through unconsciousness and discover ourselves at the end of a long, dark tunnel where the light still favors a happy ending.

Charles Cicirella
6/23/2022

Bursting Through Unconsciousness #2

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2022-07-04T13_04_17-07_00

He’s gone
Another poet dead and buried
He shot pomp and circumstance in the head

He wasn’t full of shit and pathos like too many Cleveland poets
First time I saw him read I felt both unnerved and like I’d been hugged by the universe
His hunger never abated and his quest for knowledge was never satiated

He was the very first poet astronaut I’ve ever met. He introduced me to the cosmos when he laid down his words like a red carpet of blood and synapses
The news of his passing punched me in the gut and I swear I’ll never be the same again
One of the good ones who knew the jig was up and never judged the foxes too harshly for raiding the henhouse

He’s out of here
Another poet shot into space
He introduced each and every one of us to a kind heart and the beauty of an unabashed shooting star

I love and already terribly miss you Terry

Charles Cicirella
6/22/2022