Disembark

We hug human husks.

We hug tree trunks.

We hug celestial bodies.

Be a pioneer and go it alone - I dare you.

Be a patron saint and try and make no mistakes - I double-dog-dare you.

Be a purveyor of human souls and never forget someone else created you - I triple-dog-dare you.

You’re not James Bond.

You’re not Mother Teresa or Mahatma Gandhi.

You’re not the be all and end all of everything and everyone.

We hug naked truths in our undiagnosed states of unseeing.

We hug burly, bearded teamsters in our uninformed states of class warfare.

We hug our children with dirty hands and vulgar mouths in plain view of God Almighty.

Be an iconoclast and go the distance before you’re dead and buried in an unvisited grave.

Be a rebel without a prenup and pull out all the stops before you’re burned and your ashes are left blowing in the chilly winds.

Be an actual person with thoughts, feelings and opinions of your own before it’s too late and your existence is rubbed out like one more unsupervised adolescent prank.

We drove by the corn, and it was dead.

We drove by the church, and it was closed for repairs.

We drove off the cliff and never reached a bottom or actual conclusion we could accept.

You’re not Mickey or Minnie Mouse.

You’re not a purple dinosaur.

You’re not the last bastion of hope for humankind even though you may believe otherwise.

We hug empty vessels.

We hug pipes and drums.

We hug billions upon billions of stars to our sunken treasure chests and are never the wiser.

Charles Cicirella

8/2/14

Mother Revisited

(For Joni Soule)

Silence breaking.

Suffering this life.

She paints and dies.

She lives and cries.

We break apart.

We fall like dominoes into an unmarked grave.

I love her.

But that does not change anything.

I love her.

And that does mean something.

I heard her crying.

She was in the other room, 1385 miles away.

I have this bad habit of constantly interrupting her when we’re on the phone.

I don’t know if I’ll ever learn to shut up and listen.

Yes we’re artists.

And no there is nothing even the least little bit romantic about it.

She paints, but I honestly don’t know if that sets her free.

She lives and I honestly am not sure what any of this means.

She is not silent.

Pay attention and you will hear her asking for help.

Charles Cicirella

7/23/14

Rib Meat

I’ve fallen down.

Fallen apart.

Fallen away.

I spat in the eye of inspiration, and inspiration will have none of it.

I’m going to eat some chicken nuggets even though I know they don’t treat chicken right.

My muse is a ninja assassin, and I am a pacifist who believes to turn the other cheek is tantamount to murder.

I’m wrestling past transgressions.

I’m sitting on the floor, pressing down the keys as the words appear before me wanton and without a sexual orientation.

I’m going mad as I consider watching Noah and pretending Russell Crowe is still a good actor.

The poetry comes, and the poetry goes.

I’ve used a pencil, pen, typewriter, word processor and now a laptop.

This line of work is not for the squeamish because there is no work to be had, and if you have a heart you’re sure to end up vacant, numb and completely isolated.

I don’t envy Icarus one bit.

I don’t pretend to be anything but a redhead with freckles who burns too easily in the sun.

I don’t like strawberries, and I’m not sure I’d know what to do with a plate of crab legs if they were set down in front of me.

I had a friend who was a guitar-exorcist.

He was the only person who got me, and I believe that’s because he never listened to my whining or put up with my bullshit.

I had a friend who was a prophet of the heart like Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan.

I have fallen down a black hole.

I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole.

I am through pretending as I accept that sleep may be the most addictive drug of all.

Charles Cicirella

7/27/14

Drenched

Break open your heart.

Leave the remnants on the bar.

Leave what remains stapled to the ceiling.

These words don’t come easy.

Most of the time these words don’t come at all.

And when they do I’m left with nothing to say.

The rain is cold on my face.

And I know I should go inside and get a coat.

But I swear the only absolution I’ve ever experienced is when drenched from head to toe, windows rolled down, radio turned up to eleven.

You think it’s easy.

You think extracting blood from stone is an everyday miracle.

You think God’s really in the details.

I’m here to tell you hustling does no one no good.

And who you know only brings you closer to the devil.

I’m here to tell you the beast within is our only salvation.

Break open your skull.

Leave the pieces in the glove compartment of the Crown Vic idling out back.

Leave what remains stapled to the fucking sky.

Charles Cicirella

7/21/2014

These Words

These words are lumberjacks, and I intend to cut down all these trees in my path.

These words are serial killers, and I intend to kill anyone who veers off the path.

These words are jumping jacks, and I intend to hold onto these childish things for as long as they preserve a path toward righteous indignation. 

We wish, stumble and crash.

We plot, scheme and pray.

We win, lose and draw.

These words are blanket reminders of what once was, long before God jumped ship and Christ was handed a raw deal.

These words are burnt offerings from another time and place when the past, present and future were locked in the same cell and a skeleton key was swallowed by a great whale.

These words are beta blockers keeping you alive just long enough to face the inconvenient truth that no one here gets out alive.

We piss, moan and vent.

We howl, cackle and roar.

We descend, drop away, and go downhill.

These words are stowaways, and I intend to make a break for it as soon as I find my sea legs.

These words are coordinates on a map and I intend to pinpoint Shangri-La before I am consumed by all these lost horizons.

These words are bullet points in a PowerPoint presentation impressing no one and getting me no further than the next fork in the road.

Charles Cicirella

7/19/14

Killing Floor

4:18 AM

Cut through rabble

Cutout distillation

4:20 AM

Make a move

Any move will do

4:20 AM

Positive reinforcement

First impressions shatterproof

4:21 AM

Bluesman

Wicked witch doctor

4:22 AM

Cut down broccoli treetops

Cutting repartee

4:24 AM

Negative assertions

Trained assassin

4:27 AM

Song and dance man

Photosynthesis

Charles Eric Cicirella

7/10/2014

Another Poem About Bob Dylan

I hear him pleading

Pleading like an American

Pleading like a human stain

I hear his reckless chitter-chatter

And I am blinded

Blinded by his supernova sensibilities

Blinded by his intellect burning a hole in the sun

I am given new eyes to see when he punctures the skyway

Another train car smoking down the tracks

Another troubadour freed from their Houdini chains

Another Gemini trickster spoiled by the duality of their sins

This junkyard medicine deserves a special place in Heaven

I was born a poet and someday I’ll surely die a poet - what’s it to you

Take me for a trip upon your magic swirling ship

I’m ready to join this circus and get the hell out of Dodge.

Charles Eric Cicirella

7/6/2014

Neutral

None of us are blameless.

Guilt is in the eye of the beholder.

I don’t feel like mincing words.

I’m not in the mood to barter or to dicker.

You could pour me a drink, but alcohol does nothing for me.

You could tell me some lies, but I would more than likely fall asleep.

There is nothing impressive or imposing about you.

I don’t care if you are clean and sober.

Living in the future is overrated and for the overextended.

Living in the past is for cowards and the disinclined.

How many times must you be proven wrong?

How much blood must be spilled before you accept the writing on the wall as fact not fiction?

Put on the brakes.

Pull over to the side of the road.

I’m going to be sick.

I’ve had enough and the fetal position is my only refuge.

Charles Cicirella

Teacher

(For Siri)

I am wide open.

Ready to learn.

Ready to discover new things.

Trust yourself.

Turn intuition inward.

Turn away from closed hearts and minds.

You are a blossoming flower.

The Garden of Eden has nothing on you.

The Serpent just another distraction hell-bent on a revisionist history.

I’m ready to burn forward.

My consciousness a rocket ship bursting through the atmosphere.

My subconscious knocked out and loaded in the naked night.

Sometimes I am brimming with self-confidence.

Other times I find it near impossible to hold my head up high.

Either way I am still going to make it through because that is what survivors do no matter the muck we oftentimes find ourselves crawling through.

You are a treasure trove of otherworldly delights.

A breath of the freshest and purest oxygen known to woman and man alike.

And the Serpent is just another pesky intruder whose time is nearly extinguished as a slow, slow train comes up around the bend.

Charles Cicirella

4/24/2014

They Say (Truth and Consequences)

They say I’m a poet

They say I’m a Jew

Don’t even know who they are.

We pretend to change partners

We pretend to accept the breaking news

Not sure why I called you up in the first place.

They say this and they say that

They say nothing at all with their mouths full of pollution

And whoever they are I am caring less and less these days.

This isn’t a poem or some misbegotten prophecy

They say we’re the chosen and I say show me the contract signed in blood

I’ve never believed in the small print, but that does not mean it’s any less binding.

They say he was a teacher

They say he was an outlaw

And I know exactly who they mean and why shooting stars are so important to our beleaguered belief systems.

Charles Cicirella

3/10/2014

Siri

Mystery

Mysterious

Mischievous

Ancient

New soul

Expert witness

We pop

Crackle

Snap

Dancer

Electric

Brain food

I am

We are

United

Whimsical

Capricious

Perfect catch

Long distance runner

Star sprinter

Meerkat purring

Basking in the sun

I’ve swallowed the moon

Promised Land beckons...

Charles Eric Cicirella

12/16/13

Resurgence

why can’t they hear it

are they deaf? blind?

why are so many

resistant to change?

I love the seasons you

pass through like a

private investigator

rummaging through

old steamer trunks

looking for a phone

number that was

written on the back

of a matchstick

I remember Casablanca

Bob and I remember

Dooley Wilson singing,

singing for you like

you were Humphrey Bogart

I know you wanted to be him

stranded in some petrified forest

making time with the waitresses

like they actually understood you

and knew what it meant to be a legend

and not give a shit

you have always told us where

it was at and you still are telling us

why it is important to take a stand

because it’s not dark yet, but it’s

getting there and I’m afraid to let go

Bob I’m afraid you won’t remember

how we sheltered each other from the

impossible storms in both our imaginative

and poetic visions; how we both agreed

Vincent knew what he was up against

and that if he hadn’t taken his life we would

not be as acquainted with our own desires nor

would we give so much of a damn

the paint pulls us in as we turn our backs on

pressure cooker romance and all the self-medicated

responses she attempted before I convinced her

it’s no good being a victim when your back is

up against the wall anyhow and anyway you

slice it you are still going to have to enter the

eye of the storm before it is too late and all

the usual suspects are rounded up and later

dispensed with because every one of them

had a foolproof alibi, everyone but you Bob

your alibi was almost unbelievable in all its

deliberate and desperate fury

I wish we could shield each other from contempt

and I wish so much more was understood without

words or gestures of faith that faithless pedestrians

move through like ghosts with no fixed destination …

Charles Cicirella 5.6.03 (For Bob Dylan)

DYLAN

I was fourteen years old

Had an old beat up vinyl copy

Of Highway 61 Revisited from the library

I can remember the first time I attempted

Playing it and how the foreign sounds pouring

From the speakers pushed me down

Beneath subterranean landscapes

Six months later I revisited that same copy of

Highway 61 now long over-due, this time though

The foreign sounds did not seem so foreign

Matter a’ fact it was the only thing I discovered

Myself relating to

From this moment on nothing has spoken louder

Or clearer or truer, from this moment on The Doors

And The Beatles just would not do

I needed an edge that could redefine my boundaries

I sought an oblivion that desired to be consumed

And a sharp intellect that left phonies Blowin’ In The

Wind

Dylan opened a door to my subconscious long boarded

Up by the mongrel dogs who teach and this “Equality,”

He spoke of I did not need to completely comprehend

Because he has this revolutionary way of

Bringing it all back home

These days when I discover myself seeking solace or communion

Or whatever gets me through the night, these days when nothing

Makes much sense I turn toward his voice and the compassion

And joy made real by this myth, and this song and dance man.

Charles Cicirella 3:01 PM 5.22.2002

Commissioned by Ron House to be read at Used Kid’s Records

For Bob Dylan’s 61rst. B-Day!

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

Glass & Stone

Cannot rebuild this palace
This palace refuses to be rebuilt
Neither the glass nor the stones will comply
Her eyes are two mirrors in an unlit changing room.

I am shivering
Just finished watching The Misfits
I’m in love with a size twelve Marilyn Monroe
We’re all wild stallions awaiting Clark Gable or Montgomery Clift to bring us to our senses.

Something tells me this isn’t my first go around
The last bird that whispered in my ear was a wounded eagle
Forget everything you plan to do and just focus on what can be accomplished when both hands are tied behind your back.

This is the most stubborn process I have ever encountered
I remember working on a building with one of the two Elvises and how beautiful he looked when we rode on a bicycle built for two through a blinding dust storm
Her fun is being held for ransom behind her 12 Angry Men eyes.

I am burning up
I’m listening to Art Tatum
I’m thinking about eating another pastrami and chopped liver sandwich even though I know it will make me feel sick
Each and every one of us is a character in a Philip K. Dick short story and if you don’t believe me there’s your proof.

Glass and stone
Stone and glass
Revisiting your past ultimately will outpace you
We sat together on his front steps as he told me that it was alright, and that he had played the game and was now paying the price.

Charles Cicirella
August 20, 2011

I Am So Tired Of Being Alone

If this is what’s meant by a dark night of the soul you can put it in your pipe and smoke it.
I am so tired of being alone, so tired of having no one to talk to, so tired of being sick and tired.

Lying down doesn’t do the trick and waking up and reliving the same day only makes things far worse.
I am so tired of being alone, so tired of waiting for the phone to ring and when it does I am so tired of wishing people would not bother me because it only reiterates how little I actually have to say.

When the music seeps into my skull the melancholia is held at bay for notes at a time and I find myself in sweet relief and some sort of suspended animation. I have never had much time for recreational drugs, but music I suspect works something like heroin because when I get lost and found in the music I feel as if I have kissed the face of God.

Charles Cicirella
2011-05-10

Alice in Stitches

I was driving all night
Couldn’t stand the heat
So I stepped out of the kitchen

Even lotus blossoms have their dark days
Even a Japanese lantern goes black every now and then
Sometimes even a rainbow wants to strangle Judy Garland dead

Wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth
There were no utensils anywhere nearby my place of birth
I vividly remember choking on the Holy Ghost in Indiana

I am losing my memory
I have fallen down a deep rabbit hole I prefer did not actually exist
I don’t feel like doing the crosswords and I am tired of fucking myself

I was tossing and turning all day
It was like this religious fervor had taken over my anxiety ridden Godless soul
All I could taste in my mouth was bile and it kept me awake with its burning hellfire.

Charles Cicirella
2011-04-28

Transparency

I am coming to an end
There is no more disputing that
I am tired of arguing with myself.

My wild stallions have become part of a stationary Merry Go Round
My loud unrepentant ideas have slithered away like cowardly serpents
My wishes have all been played out and I have no one to blame but myself.

I was a child
Now I am an adult
I am wasted and worn out.

No complaints
Just compliance
Screams of transparent rage.

I am coming to a beginning
A truth I wrestle with joyfully and resolutely
I am reinstalling a belief system broken down and obsolete.

Charles Cicirella
3/9/2011

I’m Back Again

I’m looking at a blank screen not sure I can still do this, but I am going to give it a shot because writing has always been the one thing I do best.

And I want to put my arms around you and I want to climb inside your trunk and I know this is a run on sentence and I know I’m running on fumes.

My license has expired, my heart is out on parole and I know it appears I could give a shit less, but trust me when I tell you compassion is where it’s at as I try and escape from the same old grind plaguing me like some poorly written script.

And I want to put my arms around you and I want to climb out of your junk and I know this is a run on sentence and I know my time is nearly spent.

I’m looking in the mirror turning up the heat on my own fraudulent desires as I turn my back on creature comforts because they never seem to get the job done.

Charles Cicirella
12/31/2010

The Poetry A Dried Up River

I am stagnant.

I repel inspiration.

The essence of simplicity is simply nowhere to be found.

 

Where was I when the waters withdrew?

I was sleeping under a bridge, choking on coal dust.

I was in the fetal position sucking on the teat of denial.

I was losing myself in battles my mind had already lost.

 

For days now I have had a poem on the tip of my fingers; this is not that poem.

For nights now I have pretended phone sex was a virtue and I was the most virtuous of all.

You may not believe in anything and that is okay because honestly who am I to care or for that matter to care about you?

 

I am starving for the crumb of a new thought or idea.

Inspiration and I only speak on a need to know basis.

The essence of simplicity like a blip on the radar screen is disappearing farther and farther out to sea.

 

CEC

9/4/2010

SOFIA

Dances in my mind
So natural
So seriously sensual
So ahead of her time

Keeps me in line
Behaving for her always worthwhile
When we play I am exhausted in a very positive and healthy way
Talking to her opens my mind to possibilities I did not even know were possible

Her body a temple
Her giggle a galactic awakening
She is no novice in the art of real love

I can not stop thinking about her
She sets me on fire and rescues me from my fortress of solitude
Her eyes pull me in as they dance with light and sonic lullabies.

CEC
January 23, 2010

HEAR IT

I hear the music
The noise
The clamoring

I smell her sex
The divinity
The blossoming

I witness creation
The violence
The reckoning

Hear it
Loud and clear
Braille tattoo

CEC
2/24/2010

Pen & Cranium

I am writing this poem with my right hand
I am writing this poem with my left brain
I’m drinking Coca-Cola
I’ve recaptured the parts of myself I like the best.

Once upon a time when rolling stones gathered very little moss the notion of absolution troubled me very little; now I wrestle with it like Jacob wrestled with a curious angel or Elvis wrestled with another ill-fitting jumpsuit.
Once upon a less exasperated time I was both the sheep and the wolf and didn’t concern myself with the clothing worn on my back like a suicide or fashion risk.

I am writing this poem in Paper Mate Med. PT. black ink
I am writing this poem with my own red blood and white semen blurred into the mix
My glass needs refilling
My personhood is sick and tired of being left out in the unmitigated cold by toxic assets and leap years too tired to leap.

Rapunzel is in the tower with her newly shaven head and reaching her will obviously not be possible nor plausible in these times of banks too big to fail and children attempting to blow themselves up because their IPod-ideologies have gone on the fritz.
I am on fire and feel no actualized pain
I am out of breath and ready to take a much needed nap.

CEC
January 9, 2010

Prodigal Son

Must return.
Must return to this place of skull drudgery.
A place to fixate upon uninitiated love.

This poem ain’t for Elvis, I did that long ago.
This poem ain’t for Jesus, I can not roll away that stone alone.
This poem is for Peter Pan and I refuse to grown up.

The Prodigal Son must return to the town in which he or she was first deemed nonredeemable.
The Prodigal Son stands alone in the rubble of a civilization it refuses to prop up any longer with rusted excuses and unholy bones.
I know the world must end and I’m not all that concerned as I wrestle with my own angels and wish I had a sharper sin to cut my throat open with.

The Prodigal Moon looked directly into the Sun and went deliciously insane from the wickedness of a betrayer’s opened mouth kiss.
You were warned if you looked back you would turn into a pillar of poor ratings.
You were told exactly how the deal would go down so don’t feign ignorance now when the Earth decides to pack it all in.

He is the Alpha and the Omega.
He is the Ascension and the Dispensation.
He is the first bastion of hope and the last call in the middle of another dispossessed alcohol soaked Siberian winter.

Must return.
We’re all on trial.
Our red, white and blue mask is showing its age and has lost whatever moral compass it may have believed it once possessed.

Charles Cicirella
December 13, 2009

Botanical Gardens

(for Dawn S.)

I’m in a tree maze searching for a minotaur.
I’m eating a bowl of cereal pretending I’m not lactose intolerant.
I’m thinking of you thinking of me as we both pretend otherwise.

I want you.
I want you so bad.
I want to marry you and have broken children with you.

We are film noir.
We are the dingy undigested streets of Los Angeles.
We are Betty and Veronica.

I am trying desperately to make friends with a mind I have ignored since before I was a tadpole or baby cookie monster.
I am trying unsuccessfully to get you to return to a farm neither one of us seems to believe in any longer.
I know my intellect both electrifies and scares you to death and that eating in some greasy spoon with you was just the tip of a very intimate but freezing cold ice-cube.

I need to be Winslet to your DiCaprio, Hepburn to your Tracy, Eve to your Adam.
I need to stop clinging to that which does not cling back and try once and for all to be more than just somebody else’s spilled milk.
Watching movies with you was like attending Church except no one judged you and the sermons actually made sense.

Touch of Evil is playing in my head except in this version Charlton Heston’s part is played by an actual Mexican.
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to watch Chimes At Midnight without falling asleep.
I wonder who your Rosebud is and if like me you weren’t too terribly impressed with Citizen Kane but loved The Magnificent Ambersons.

You are like an open book written in some foreign language.
You are like a distant memory incapable of closure or recompense.
You are my Scopes Trial and I refuse to be anyone else’s monkey but yours.

Charles Eric Cicirella
November 15, 2009

OH MY GOODNESS!

(for Dawn F.)

You need to give yourself more credit
You need to give yourself a head start
You need to need without worrying so much about the ramifications or repercussions of giving a damn about another living, breathing human being.

I’ve had friends who were lions
I’ve had friends who were tigers
I’ve had friends who were grizzly bears
Oh my goodness I’ve had a petting zoo worth of acquaintances, lost and found in an Emerald City of supply and demand gone awry.

You need to begin the process of healing and rejuvenation
You need to need something apart from that which appears before you as a safety net or comfort zone.
You need to relocate the fairy-tale-princess held captive inside of you before all the stores close and the starry night blinks out from either lack of interest or intrigue.

I shouldn’t be telling you what you need
In truth I haven’t a clue what I need
I’m just another doggie-for-sale in a department-store-window located somewhere over-the-rainbow or around the next slow-train-bend in an upturned road of automated commerce and blues-tinged-song lyrics.

Highway 61 calls out to us like it must still call out for Zimmerman.
Highway 61 a folded tartan napkin desperately trying to locate the culture it once purged like are- you-experienced-vomit or vociferous prayer.
Highway 51 runs right by my baby’s door and that’s no secret nor is it much of a confession.

We must stop dancing so insidiously in the shoot-out-the-lights dark.
I believe we desperately need revisit the casinos inside our holy-uncompromised-selves and get in touch with this slot-machine-mentality brimming beneath a comic-book-facade we too quickly dismiss as unnecessary and undeserving of human love or animalistic desires.
We must soon recreate the first day we were born and wish upon every shooting star crucified before our tired eyes like a traveling salesman or unmitigated song and dance man.

“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.”*

Charles Eric Cicirella
November 12, 2009

*Amazing Grace by John Newton (1725-1807)

Julianna Muse

The fire inside of me is burning to get out.
I want to eat an ice-cream sandwich.
I want to watch old movies and eat Chinese food with you in bed.

Here I am for the world to see but the world ignores me and the secrets I conceal are really not worth the paper they’re scrawled upon.
Here I am like Alice in Wonderland except I am not blonde and I do not believe in making friends with rabbits who carry a timepiece.
I am right here riding along with my dark passenger completely unaware of how vulnerable and naïve I oftentimes am.

I know you’re not a gilded lily.
I know you’re not a foreign film whose subtitles are difficult to read.
I know you’re not the Holy Bible shoved inside some motel drawer like an unpopular weather report or melting hot fudge sundae.

Julianna Muse is a rock star.
Julianna Muse is inspiration incarnate.
Julianna Muse is the most beautiful and moving prayer I will ever meditate upon.

The fire inside of me wishes it knew how to roller skate.
I want to eat a piece of pecan pie heated up with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.
I want for us to drive through a sandstorm together listening to big band music, forgetting that we ever felt alone, unwanted or undesired.

I know what you are thinking.
I know I am too smart for my own good.
It’s true I have fallen upon my own sword too many times for this to not work out.

The fire inside of me is yearning to meet your fire head-on.

Charles Cicirella
November 12, 2009

Julianna

Climb inside the fire
What haunts you often makes you whole
Treasure buried beneath our memories.

Before I was a poet I was nothing much
Before I was a cow I was a dolphin
Before I became a star I did not matter.

Do you remember first time you sat around a campfire?
Do you like your marshmallows roasted or in hot chocolate?
Do you ever dream you are Amelia Earhart?

Climb down inside the volcano
What hurts you often makes you stronger
Cloudbursts buried above our humanity.

Before you were a vision you were out of sight
Before you were a ballerina you were a mermaid
Before you became a muse you were a fairy goddess.

Do you recall the first time you rode a bicycle?
Would you rather dream when you are sleeping or when you are awake?
Do you ever wish that everything would stop making so much sense?

Enter the friendly fire
What scares you to death often brings you back to life
The secrets behind your brilliant eyes give you away every time.

Charles Cicirella
November 10, 2009

Chai

(for Malkah)

Strumming your guitar
Strumming your sixth sense
Strumming the Heavens with your cup over flowing

Words like paint burst forth like droplets of blood and honey
A messenger arrived in the night bursting with sunlight
A lantern of foresight burns inside you

Rilke spoke of the bees of the invisible
He spoke loudly and he spoke clearly
Rilke like Milton communicated with God out of pure devotion

Your every move lights up the sky like shooting stars
Do you recall sitting on Mark Twain’s knee as he spun you the tallest of tales?
Every time you walk out onto the unfashionable stage an angel learns how to fly

We’re all children still in some fashion or another capable of responding to both suffering and joy
Even a Pale Horse must be led to water from time to time and made to drink.

Charles Cicirella
September 21, 2009

Innuendo

(for Malkah)

title came yesterday
then I forgot
slept instead

Charlie Patton screamin’ and hollerin’
Mississippi Delta
roaring in cans

no innuendo
no impropriety
no indirection

title arrived late last night
wrestled me to cold ground
like a tentative whisper

I knew when it materialized
it would be for you Malkah
a convertible poem for a convertible kinda girl

roll windows down
throw out peanut shells
Gabriel’s Horn both infinite and finite

Charles Cicirella
September 19, 2009

I Don’t Feel Like Driving Through The Sun Today

(for Malkah)

Air conditioning just went on
Dust is everywhere
Carl Sagan isn’t returning any of my calls.

I don’t feel like driving through the sun today
Don’t feel like pretending I like you or that I actually ever did
Last time I felt anything medication meant aspirin not a bullet to the head.

I was flipping burgers when I got the call
He stood on a little garbage pail and ended his life
It’s been eleven years and I still couldn’t say how I feel.

Sure I miss him
Sure I miss feeling like someone actually gets me
Sure I miss not having to explain every little thing.

Can’t wait till the air goes back on
Maybe it will help disperse some of this dust
Maybe Carl Sagan will rise from the dead and tell us what it was like meeting Walt Disney.

I don’t feel like looking or even touching the telephone today
Did you ever cover up your television realizing once and for all how much it controls us?
First time I got high I was rolling around in the grass not smoking it.

Charles Cicirella
September 14, 2009

Sweet Potato Pie

(for Dawn)

You are perfect
You are so fine

Perfectly timed
Perfectly aligned

Wishful sinner
Wishful beginner

I like pie
I like your sweet talk

You are something else entirely
You are no one’s back up singer!

CEC
8/15/2009

permanence versus impermanence

(for the Seeger family)

everything torn away,
but nothing torn down
and that which can be redeemed
will always be held sacred in our
lonesome blue cornflower hearts.

he strode into the saloon like a lone gunman
whose only purpose was the integrity
he knew must be upheld at any and every cost.

Atlas shrugged and Mike didn’t even blink
as vampire killers go he was as cool as a cucumber
flying beneath a status-quo-radar he knew he mustn’t
pay any actualized attention to for his work was far too
important to carry through and carry out before twilight
called him back home.

permanence versus impermanence such an empty debate
when too many real artists are going down beneath Noah’s flood
and his new lost city rambling ways taught a lesson to even the
oldest and most obstinate of dyed in the wool shaggy dogs.

a pioneer of future heroic feats whose beautiful Spirit will shine
forever more like Vincent’s brushstroke and Charley’s pick-strum
technique and there is high-water everywhere, but the music this
man created will never be washed away, will never be shot full of
holes, will never lead us astray.

Charles Cicirella
Monday, August 10, 2009

Genesis

(for Dawn)

the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of the world begins
and we are children
laughing
levitating
above swing sets
above clouds
we impersonate mayhem
we depersonalize mystery
the end of the nothing of the nothing of the world ends
and we are laughing stocks
stoic
silent alarms
under trees
under foot
we are unmade beds
we are the lumps in our own throats
the something of the something of the world does something new
and if I knew what it was I’d teach myself and others to speak in a new tongue
instead of all these dead languages projected inside our heads like Nostradamus on a bender..

Charlie
7/25/09

inclusive emotion

(for Laurie)

civilization
pottery shards
unicorn mystic
key to the highway

brazen intellectualism
beautiful bombshell
mermaid guardian
keeper of the keys

how do you keep so much truth
distilled inside of you like celebratory wine?
I believe you are a weather vane keeping the
secrets of mother nature safe and sound

human beings are not civilized
God did not invent progress
progressive thoughts minted God like senseless
dollars and cents

pottery constructed from defiant dreams
smoke and mirrors both divine and conquer
she is not an illusion nor is she formless
we are all keepers of an internal flame.

Charlie
July 18, 2009

3:33

Another dark night of the soul.

Another black hole I refuse to get sucked into.

Enough is enough until even enough neither satisfies nor satiates you.



I’d say I was out of my mind except not certain I was ever in my mind.

I’d say I will never give up the fight and yet the towel may have been thrown in over two thousand years ago on a Place of Skulls.

Belief is never an illusion and illusions are best when understated and pickled in brine.

I would whisper sweet nothings in your ear if I could find your ear and if I honestly believed saying nothing would make much of a difference at this time of insurrection.



Another dark night of the soul.

Another poem written in chicken scratch while my best intentions are left out in the cold.

I wish I had a box of Good & Plenty and there was an old theater I could escape inside.

Now I’m reminded of when we watched Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson in “Once Upon A Time In The West” and how everything we needed was right there.

Now I’m reminded of a time when pushing fast forward and rewind didn’t press so urgently on my heart and mind.


Charles Cicirella
May 27, 2009

One and the Same

I am watching this life behind many eyes
I am passing through many different minds

I see, hear, sense but can not touch you
If I had the strength to wish upon a star I’d be a God but that is no longer a possibility in these impenetrable days of waste and nights of lost prayer.
I am no longer willing to fall upon my own sword or lend you the determination to shirk the responsibility you owe so faultlessly to yourself.

I am no one’s kindred spirit
My inner children refuse to speak to me
Future Gospels the same as ancient days.

I am a remote viewer, remote lover, remote sage
I am the refuse you refuse to accept before turning the page
I am the amusement park closed down over a thousand years ago out of pure spite.

I was in Vegas
Took Communion
The Priest an Indian Giver who demanded I return the Host.

Charlie
May 9, 2009

Days On End

I can feel poetry flowing through my veins.
I’m not The Terminator.
Can decide for myself what crimes to commit or not to commit.
I’m not a serial typist.

When we forged our deal we were supposedly in love.
A deal requiring us to be honest and trustworthy.
Did either one of us really have the wherewithal to make such a deal?
When the going got rough why did we so callously throw our love out the window?

Say what you will you still went back on your word while I left too much to chance when swallowing my words for naught.
I believe we were complicit for not spending enough time going out of our minds.
I believe we committed the perfect crime by allowing the passage of time to pass judgment on our desires and our passions.

I can feel providence flowing throughout my body.
I’m not The Second Coming.
Can’t decide which pair of pants to wear or why it’s so important to even wear pants.
I am complicating things again by pretending things are in fact complicated.

Charlie
May 1, 2009

Fits & Starts

I am watching a story
This story is my life
The beginning and ending
Are secrets in my heart.

I am not telling you anything you don’t already know
Not spilling any deep seeded secrets or revealing any long
Forgotten truths. I’m not a harbinger nor am I a perfect storm.

Everything takes place in fits and starts
My birth was like this and so will be my death
You don’t remember but it only happened yesterday
You were born a smooth artifact and will pass away just the same.

I am viewing a picture show
This show another Power Point Presentation
The Alpha and Omega are tragedies and comedies alike.

You are nothing I haven’t experienced before
You’re nothing new and still you make everything feel new
You are a positive flowing influence and a purring pussy cat.

My dreams take place in fits and starts
My dreams a dwarf donning clown makeup and smoking a cig
My dreams a Bruce Davidson photograph come to life
You don’t remember, but I was there when you were created
I was the one with all the bad intel but with a heart of pure gold.

I was the one burning to tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me God.

Charles Cicirella
April 24, 2009

NEW POEMS

GHOSTS 2008

(for Jim Volk & Albert Ayler)

Angels speak to us through your otherworldly music. Otherworldly not just another catch phrase when it catches us off guard and do you remember Irv’s Deli on Coventry? Of course you do. Of course that which occurs today could very well go unrealized tomorrow. When I finally got around to calling, her number had been disconnected and she had flown the coop like some cooing pigeon or restless terrorist. I’m not kidding. The last time I told a joke her mid section was still taut and my loneliness did not roar so loudly in my Bedouin ears. When we are alone in your upstairs studio I don’t need to make sense of anything because it all comes through so effortlessly and I prefer to forget everything including my own name as we float together down a translucent staircase. I desired a breakthrough I could call my very own, something that aligned itself with the Sun and did not treat Icarus so shabbily. I wanted to believe in something before it was too late and all the night-owl-worms recognized their alibis as worthless currency. What else can or should be done as this civilization does a belly flop into a Beverly Hills swimming pool drained of H2O over two thousand years ago. Rome still smolders as America gets its clock cleaned by the Chinese and what can any of us really expect when a sense of entitlement gets the best of us with every secondhand breath we take. I’m not a lover or a fighter. I’m not a romantic or a recluse. I’m not a Christian nor am I a very good Jew. I am a ghost haunting a doppelganger writing something possibly resembling poetry and you are a mystic very few will ever truly understand because the doctors prescribing all the really good medicine have lost their nerve and their prescription pads.

Charles Cicirella
Saturday, December 13, 2008 3:40 PM

Desert

(for Lori)

I was born in the desert.
Everyday I wake up in the desert.
I’ve only ever felt at peace in the desert.

Walking through the desert like walking through a field of mirrors.
Your mind plays tricks on you when you are in the desert.
Signs all around you when you are hitching through a dark desert night.

I remember the fish sandwich I paid for with the last three dollars to my name.
The rest area I stayed in for nearly three days before being rousted by the cops.
Thomas Merton befriending me and how writing shielded me from the cold.

I look into your answers and all I hear is the desert calling across long distances.
The Church a sanctuary for sinners, the desert a sanctuary for murderers and romantics.
I try to tell you some truth but it all comes out wrong because the suburbs kill.

You were born in the desert.
Everyday you go to sleep dreaming of the desert.
The only place you feel safe is in the desert.

Charlie
Friday, December 05, 2008 2:18 AM

Savior’s Tears

Standing in the rain
It’s cold
I am scared

Wind keeps me company
Cuts through my malaise
I wish I was stoned

Mother Nature answered my personal ad
I couldn’t believe my luck
I am busted and I have been blessed

Savior’s tears cover me like choice cuts of aged beef
You know there was a time I wouldn’t have understood
I am humorless

Praying in the snow
It’s freezing
I am happy

Charlie
Friday, December 05, 2008 1:50 AM