Just Breathe (For Sinéad)

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-11-30T00_29_48-08_00

Woke up and read the news and it hurt me deep down inside.

Then I read that you felt music had destroyed your life and I cannot believe you really feel that way because what else could you be but a musician and a healer of the faith.

I cannot even imagine how broken up inside you are as you cry for help over and over and over again and no one seems to be listening to what you have to say.

We met in Chicago for a few brief seconds.

You were the rock star boss and I was just another fan. I passed you a vinyl rip of “Street Legal” and a CD of my poetry because I believed making a connection with you would be beneficial to us both.

Just breathe Sinéad and try and believe that as forsaken as you feel right now there’s always a light at the end of this dark night of your soul even if you refuse help and won’t allow the sunlight of your music back inside of your wounded eaglet soul.

Charles Cicirella

11/30/2015

"The horror! The horror!"

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-11-29T16_06_18-08_00

Porn has gotten a hold of me and it won’t let go.

I pray I come out of this black hole in one piece.

Things used to be simpler. I could see a pair of tits and it was enough. Now I need the whole enchilada with all of the toppings including sour cream and hot sauce!

We begin as children sneaking a peek at our father’s Playboys and hoping no one is the wiser.

It’s like there’s something wrong with how we’re suddenly feeling and the shame drives us into a deep, dark emptiness that some of us never quite escape from again.

I remember trying to find the word vagina in the dictionary and coming across Virginia and becoming quite perplexed.

The last week or so I’ve again found myself on a model cam sight. I tend to watch the models from other countries. Kazakhstan has become a new favorite and of course the Japanese, Korean and Chinese models never fail to leave me wanting more.

We trade in the shreds of our dignity for a shot at the fuzzy peach because we believe one look and we’ll be set free from our daily labors and night terrors.

Nothing could be further from the truth as I discover myself feeling even more lonely and depressed as I slither from a room at six or seven in the morning wondering if the baggage I’m carrying will ever become lighter and less damning.

Porn has got me in a stranglehold and I cannot break free.

I’d get down on my knees if I believed there was someone actually listening who could wave a magic wand and make me a less obsessive compulsive horndog who wasn’t always so concerned about his next conjugal visit with his right hand and the release that may or may not come when everything is said and done.

Things used to be simpler. You’d turn on Cinemax after everybody had gone to bed and you’d watch people sort of having “sex” and just the thought of you doing this naughty deed while your family slept upstairs was enough to get you off. Now everything has changed and antiseptic porn just won’t do the trick and you need harder core and more illicit images to push you over the edge.

Charles Cicirella

11/28/15

Bottom of the Well

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-11-27T21_33_30-08_00

I don’t know how we got here, but here we are all the same.

It’s chilly and dark and all hope has been vanquished.

Poetry is not a whore or a manservant. It’s another tool, another form of expression like insurance fraud but far more lucrative.

Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m taking about because I know you speak the language of love and hate and all of the other squishy emotions existing between the South and North Poles.

I remember when we met in that diner on the outskirts of the city. I wanted to order chocolate cake, but you said it wasn’t American so I ordered apple pie ala mode instead and choked it down like all good Christians choke on Jesus’s communion wafer.

I’m not intending to be blasphemous that’s just how it comes out when there’s a gun to my head and terrorism has become the new patriotism.

I’ll never forget when we fell down the rabbit hole, but because your name was Alice you were treated differently as the Queen of Hearts repeated over and over again "Off with their heads!" as I did nothing more than simply ask for a glass of H₂O.

I’ll never forget staring death in the hollows of its erroneous face and how emotionless and unforgiving I felt as I went mad from unsuccessfully trying to feed my head.

I don’t know what it is about the bottom of this well, but something’s telling me I’ve been here before.

The déjà vu washes over me like reruns of unaired Honeymooners episodes as you sit there in the corner of the room like some ventriloquist’s dummy that’s been left in the desert for forty days and forty nights.

There’s something to be said for changing the conversation by simply changing the color of one’s stripes, but for some of us it’s not that easy or advisable when the terms dictated are the very same principles you abandoned so long ago.

Charles Cicirella

11/23/15

I Don't Want To Be Happy

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-11-27T21_13_35-08_00

I don’t want to be happy.

There I said it. The cat is out of the bag or the box or wherever it was hiding.

It’s no great mystery. I always feel like the other shoe is waiting to drop and happiness is just putting off the inevitable. So I’ll sit here and write and vent and eat and write some more and try and do my best to not wonder why no one ever calls or asks how I’m doing.

I don’t want to be happy it’s just a burden. And maybe I don’t really mean that, but I am tired of putting in the work with little to no real payoff. So this time I’m going to stick to my guns and if you don’t like it well you can be one more person I’ve let down.

I’m forty six years old and I like to joke that I’m an irascible Care Bear and perhaps it’s true or maybe I’m just an arrested adolescent who refuses to get their shit together because responsibility is such a drag and survival of the fittest proves nothing except that tortoises live for a really long time and the early bird gets the worm and the morning newspaper.

I’m the curmudgeon living under the bridge that all of the children’s books warn you about, but I try to always be an honest broker even when I’m lying to myself and the Queen of Denial has become my best and only trustworthy friend.

Let’s not mince words or put anchovies on our pizza because they’re too damn salty and minced words are only good for haikus and telling someone to fuck off.

People will tell you only the strong survive and that may be true, but I see lots and lots of weak people doing the daily grind and they seem to be doing just fine.

I don’t trust that any of us are really safe. Home invasions scare the crap out of me and so does intimacy with another creative being because people who are good at expressing themselves always seem like they’re the first ones to crack.

Charles Cicirella

11/22/15

Sketch Comedy

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-11-27T19_59_24-08_00

Touch my penis.

And I will rub your vagina.

We’ll either enjoy it or we won’t.

That’s how the cookie often crumbles when your mouth is filled with milk and despair.

We were going nowhere fast so I put on the breaks just to see what would happen.

I’ll never forget watching as you went through the windshield and the sickly pangs of joy I felt as the delicate creature you once were became indelicate and indisposed.   

When I got out of the car I couldn’t believe how sexy you still were and how the whole mangled and mashed thing worked for you.

Stroke my issues of low self-esteem.

And I will somehow reach your candy center before you become sour and muted.

You always had this off-kilter way of making me feel brand new when my thrift store body and second hand intellect had had enough and there was no point going on, especially when our love had taken a detour and I was tired of all those three ways you were becoming enmeshed in.

That’s how the femme fatale breaks when her eyes are bigger than her stomach and her legs will only bend so far back before they snap like insubordinate twigs or sugar free candy canes.

I used to believe we would make it through no matter the harsh conditions swirling around us like Frosty the Snowman with a crystal meth problem or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with a nose so bright that the PoPo knows exactly where to look when rounding up the usual suspects.

Some people cannot get enough cowbell while I’ve learned less is most definitely more, especially when it’s next to impossible training your significant other to play all of the parts in your next sketch comedy.

You cannot make someone do something just because you demand it of them unless you’re a dictator and what fun is there in that if you always know what the outcome will be and genocide becomes just another over played hand you’ll most likely get tired of once everyone has gone up in smoke.

Charles Cicirella

11/23/15