The Ocean

This poem is about inspiration and not about the little or big fishes in the ocean.
This poem is about excavating creativity and not about skeletons in the closet or repressed memories.
This poem is about figuring shit out and not about shaking and baking yourself to the point that you’re pulling dead dogs out from behind the couch because you’re a psychopath and have been ever since you were a towhead child spending too much time alone in your room.

The ocean calls you up in the middle of the dark night. You are wearing ripped, pee stained underwear and drinking spilled milk from a faceless container.
I know you’re not Picasso, fuck you’re not even Warhol, but that hardly means anything as long as you believe in something more than rosary beads or having sex with crash test strangers.
I knew a guy who could play the guitar like the second coming. He was also pretty damn funny and never shirked away from the responsibility of being irresponsibly adept at crucifying the truth while up on stage.

This poem is about inspiring others to do their best work and not about beating someone over the head with their prosthetic leg and leaving them in the ditch with the tenured professors and forensic death merchants.
This poem is about seizing the day by fucking another dead language in the gluteus maximus and not once looking back because what happened to Lot’s wife could happen to anyone of us here and now in these metastasized modern times. 
This poem is about getting angry and staying angry until your chosen work is done and not about making excuses or pretending you do not possess the greatness you most assuredly do possess.

We do not have to be disenfranchised or dispossessed.
We do not have to stay on the sidelines keeping our opinions and ideas strictly to ourselves.
We do not have to wade so cautiously into the ocean especially when the waves are breaking all around us and begging for us to dive in.

Charles Cicirella
9/17/14

Operation Stupid

Keep it simple.
Don’t overextend yourself.
We don’t need another dumb war.

What makes for a smart war?
I think what we don’t need is another President too smart for their own good.
I think what we absolutely do not need is more pandering and politics merely for the sake of good optics.

It’s the economy stupid.
Well if that’s in fact true, how about we raise the minimum wage to an honest to goodness living wage and start listening to Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
If our country is so exceptional, then why is it that the only ones who seem to get elected are the ones who either keep everything too close to their vest or are so reckless and ignorant they might just blow everyone up with their John Wayne ways and ill equipped means?

Wall Street continues to bitch about how bad President Obama is for business as they continue to rake in record profits while our infrastructure falls down on one knee and pleads for blessed mercy.
I’m tired of business as usual and how we now seem to condone a concentration camp mentality where it’s acceptable to kill an entire race of people as long as you don’t beat your chest or rub our noses in your Dr. Strangelove misanthropy.
I was brought up to believe light would prevail over darkness and yet more and more these days it seems the lesson is might makes right and that if you question how things are going you’ll be silenced and thrown into a hole with everyone else who spoke their minds and believed their voices mattered.

Keep it simple.
Don’t make waves in such a large and polluted ocean.
We don’t need another Buddhist monk burning himself in the street, especially when persecution seems to be in fashion and no one really seems to be paying much attention to anything other than their smartphones.

Charles Cicirella
9/12/14

I'm Clean

I took a shower.
Was tired of smelling my unfavorable self.
I wiped the slate clean.
Was tired of the chalk getting on my fingers.

I know you’re not Thomas Jefferson or some other revolutionary thinker who couldn’t keep it in their pants. That’s no surprise though when starting a new country from scratch.
Soon I will listen to the new Leonard Cohen record. I really haven’t found myself moved since Ten New Songs, but I know that could change in an instant.
I know you’re not thinking about me like I’m thinking about you, but that’s probably because you don’t live inside of your mind twenty four hours a day, seven days a week with hardly a break even for good behavior.

I took a shower.
Was tired of smelling my uncomplimentary past.
I wiped the sweat from my eyes.
Was tired of the chalk outline on my letterhead.

It’s time to repave these timeworn streets with something more than just lingering memories.
It’s time I either pulled myself up by the bootstraps or laid down and died for the final time.
I’m not counting on reincarnation this time around because the elasticity of my religion only lasts as long as my boxers comfortably fit.
I swear to God I never kept any secrets from you except for the secrets I also kept from myself.

I drank the grape juice and pretended it was grape juice.
I poked myself in the eye and pretended it was just like old times.
I chased you around the apartment because you wouldn’t give me my way. I’ll never forget when you ran into the street and left me completely behind.

Charles Cicirella
9/15/14

Heavyweight Champion Of The World

(For Bob Dylan)

Down for the count, but not dead yet.
Just remember death is not the end.
Swallowing fire and spitting out prophecy.
All along the watchtower, our enemies burn like friendless torches.

If this poetry does not define me, I’m not sure anything will.
The words wash over me like rhythm and blues.
I hear his voice, and my fears fall down like a savior’s tears.
Late last night you came a-rollin’ across my mind.

It was 1988 and nothing was happening.
I was working the graveyard shift at a gas station.
At the time this record didn’t do anything for me.
Now when I play it, even my close Dylan friends think I’ve lost my mind.

Down for the count but I’m still alive, and that must count for something.
I can tell you fancy, I can tell you plain. You give something up for everything you gain.
The tears of a clown won’t save us, but hasn’t it always been the thought that counts?
I know you’re in darkness, but trust me there is always a light at the end of the tunnel.

I was in the desert looking for a sign.
I looked up when a stop sign appeared and a voice asked if I needed a ride.
The driver gave me the twenty one dollars that he had.
I swear to God you can get relief if you just open your heart and mind to the miracles existing all around you.

Charles Cicirella
9/13/14

Diet

I am digesting remnants.
It’s 5:38 AM and I am eating a slice of pepperoni pizza.
My childhood needed salt as many childhoods do.

You can forget about the coming attractions.
My fingers are greasy as I press down the keys.
Someone’s coughing in the other room.

My diet consists of consonants, but not enough vowels.
We’d watch Wheel of Fortune as she recovered from surgery.
Earlier today I heard some news I still do not wish to accept.

I am digesting fragments.
It’s 5:43 AM and I am eating the crust of a slice of pepperoni pizza.
My adulthood needs reexamining as many adulthoods do.

The first poem I wrote was about the moon.
At first I did not even know it was a poem. That’s when my life truthfully began.
Some pills are harder to swallow than others and that’s why God gave us water to drink.

Charles Cicirella
9/7/14

Lashing Out

Flogging myself with negative thoughts.
Have you ever awoken from a deep sleep and come to the conclusion you’re not treating yourself with enough respect?
Sometimes when I was a kid and played doctor I’d pray I was the receptionist and didn’t have to perform any of the heavy breathing.

Lagging behind because I will not permit the pit crew to change my tires or perform any of the other routine maintenance my racecar may require.
When it comes to fools, I’m the biggest fool of them all, and I don’t need a tape measure to make good on this claim.
All you have to do is look into my eyes to soon realize nobody is home and that there hasn’t been for decades.

I listen back to my poetry and believe that it’s good, but where exactly does that get me. Is it possible to trade in some of these words for a ham sandwich and nice refreshing lemonade?
I understand when you’re an artist, worrying about material things is beyond ridiculous, but I’m starting to think I may have reached a point where taking care of me is more important than the next art installation.
I don’t doubt for a second that hard work, dedication and sacrifice are essential factors when doing your best to make something happen, but what if nothing is happening and all you seem to be doing is trying the patience of those who also happen to be supporting you.

Standing on the side of the highway trying to flag down a ride.
It’s pitch dark, and I know my chances of getting picked up are slim to none.
It may be time to take off the kid gloves and experience some hard knocks before I am folded up and put back into a trunk like some ventriloquist’s dummy.

Charles Cicirella
9/10/14

Child's Fort

I remember trying to fall asleep when I was a child.
I built a fort inside of my mind and nothing, not even death could reach me.
The only watch I've ever owned was a Timex Snoopy Watch. I believe that’s the only time when the concept of time was not so wishy-washy or completely foreign to me.

We non-exist like a child bride waiting for a stranger to buy her for twelve dollars and treat her worse than a piece of property.
If you’re ever in doubt that humanity is in short supply, just turn on the news and remember that the road to hell is paved with both the bones of the guilty and of the innocent.
Every silver lining has a cloud and for every glass half full, there are shards of broken glass carpet bombing the unswept desert like bloody rose petals.

I remember not being able to fall asleep when I was a child.
My mother told me to imagine a blackboard and to erase all of the thoughts inside my head.
For some reason I remember thinking about JFK and all kinds of other things that no child would ever be thinking about. It did not help me to fall asleep any faster, but I did finally grow tired thinking about how messed up I was for such a little kid.

Bobby and Donald had a tree house and my mother forbade me to go up inside so I stayed down below all by myself.
For some reason I believed if I went up into that tree house my mother would find out, and that scared me to death.
I built a child’s fort inside my psyche and to this day I am still ripping away the two by fours trying desperately to find the inner child I sealed away so many years ago.

Charles Cicirella
9/15/14

Ramen Noodles

I just finished a bowl of Ramen Noodles.
They were nothing to write home about, but I enjoyed them all the same.
I have another dollar and look forward to buying a candy bar tomorrow.

I’m living day to day, poem to poem, daybreak to daybreak.
I’ve always known sacrifice would be the key. I just did not comprehend how difficult finding the door would be.
I’m sitting here waiting for the words to advance. There’s nothing to be gained by rushing through the procedure because the patient living or dying is not up to you.

Creativity is my sworn enemy and I will wrestle with it until the day I am finally released from this self-imposed cellular degeneration.
The words fall to the ground like flakes of skin from a leper or flayed victim.
I have always played for keeps even before understanding how counter-intuitive the Grand Inquisitor’s denunciation of Jesus would ultimately turn out to be.

I just finished a bowl of awkward silences.
They were nothing much to write home about, but I deplored them all the same.
I have another dollar and look forward to bribing you when we meet up again in the streets like beggars or electric sheep.

Charles Cicirella
9/9/14

Carthage Domain

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152767444817774&l=8494170439470865898

"The Almighty Has Terrified Me"

I will suspend disbelief for a little while and believe this chocolate bar is God.
My father lives in Florida, but sometimes you have to take what you get and accept handouts are not always handed out for free.
I wish that this chocolate bar had almonds, but beggars cannot be choosers, especially when it has to do with serotonin levels and adjusting your expectations to maximum resplendency.

The Almighty has terrified me, but that’s alright because I’ve always known being one of the 144,000 chosen would not be a walk in the park, especially when competition is so stiff and everyone seems to have forgotten Jesus Christ was born, died and raised again a Jew.
Genocide is such an overplayed hand, and the fear mongers and the brown shirts best stop pushing such a hateful and ignorant agenda because sooner or later the people will finally have had enough and will rise up against their oppressors, leaving no stone or cheek unturned.
The Almighty has terrified me into believing more in myself because the calm before the storm has been placed into receivership, and no ark is going to be large enough to save everyone and that includes all of the animals and coveted humans this time around.
  
I will suspend disbelief for the time being and believe this chocolate bar is calling me.
My real father is up in Heaven even though I am finding that increasingly more difficult to believe. I am not programmed to look forward to much of anything, not even having a real life beyond this splendid isolation.
I wish I was going to more than just one Bob Dylan concert this tour. He is the only thing I’ve found that more than exceeds my expectations, but beggars cannot be choosers, especially when heading for another joint before the distance swallows you whole and spits you out in little, insignificant pieces and parts.

Charles Cicirella
9/8/14

My Self-Esteem Is In The Shitter

Just realized I have not a single person in my life to tell me they love me.
Wonder if I’ll ever be able to lift myself from this morass I’ve created.
My self-esteem is in the shitter, and it’s no surprise when there is no one there to talk to and I spend all of my time completely isolated from another human being.

My self-esteem has called it quits as I lie here on this killing floor wondering how things have gotten so out of control and why the part I always seem to play is either of the loner or lone gunman.
I have assassinated my own good will by going up into the clock tower and focusing only on my targets, never once just enjoying the view.
I’m in the bathroom of my mind, and there’s not enough toilet paper to wipe away how poorly I’m feeling.

We had Chinese food last night, but someone stole my fortune cookie.
Wondering how long I’ll be able to go on like this before the bubble bursts or worse I discover myself trapped inside of the bubble like John Travolta in that awful made-for-TV movie.
My self-esteem is in the shitter as I consider changing my name to Lazarus and praying for a savior to raise me from the dead.

Charles Cicirella
9/11/14

Abe Lincoln

Go ahead and strip me down to my bare essentials.
When it’s come to slavery, I’ve always been a willing participant as long as when my emancipation arrives, I’m given a good book to read and a seat by the window.
I’m tired of all your speechifying because when push comes to shove, your pragmatism hardly shoves enough.

Abraham Lincoln was a really good leader. At least that’s what history tells us as we put down the current issue of Time and allow the past to speak to us through facts, not non-fiction.
I don’t need a litmus test to know I’m a liberal and proud to be one just like I don’t need a weatherman to show me how intolerant too many people are when it comes to our very first black President of the United States.
Right there in the title is the word united, and yet it’s depressing how many people have forgotten what this word means or that it ever existed in the first place.

Go ahead and lay me bare in front of all my most fervent of detractors because I’ve never had anything to hide and believe the truth will set every one of us free once we can agree upon one truth indivisible for all.
You cannot write a document and say all men are created equal when the only men you actually meant were rich white men.
Looks like we’re being goaded to again go to war because the neocons are never happy unless we’re occupying someone. I understand some boogeymen are very real and must be dealt with. What I am having a difficult time understanding is why it is always America that must take the fight to these assholes.

Charles Cicirella
9/10/14

Ruminations

Punched in the gut again by events I cannot control.
It’s the way of the world when nothing seems to be going your way.
Listen to the voice on the radio and know soon you’ll be submerged beneath the waves.

Cogitations like partially digested food. Like ponderings of transient thoughts going nowhere.
I was attracted to her distress and how she spent hours in the bathroom picking at her skin.
I was attracted to how she never appeared to wrinkle even when a stitch in time was bearing down on her and she was lost in the ruminations of her own restless legs syndrome.

Bukowski was a pugilist as much as he was a poet and a loner and a madman.
I wish I could have driven around Hollywood with him in that BMW he bought with movie money.
I’ll never forget watching a documentary about him and how disgusted I was when watching him become more and more enraged as he kicked his wife off of the couch.

Punched in the gut by hunger pangs and the inane banality of it all.
It’s the way of the world especially when you’re as dull as paste and even the paste is more interesting.
Listen to the voices in your head just long enough to know they’re full of shit and that soon you’ll be ruminating on another blue Sunday.

Charles Cicirella
9/6/14

Third Eye Revolution Charles Cicirella - poetry and voice 9/5/14

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152744799527774&l=3246317829082326076

Charles Cicirella reading at the open mic. at Writing Knights - Monday, August 25, 2014, Hosted by Azriel Johnson. - at Cultured Coffee Co. Canton, OH.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152744741172774&l=1224166601110567021

My review of Juliet Cook's NEW poetry chapbook - RED DEMOLITION -

Glitter Witch Repellant

Crack open this plethora of poems before they spoil. Before these rancid meat popsicles mutate into something even less salvageable and more worthy of contempt. You don’t read Juliet’s poems; no instead you shoot them into your temporal lobe and pray you don’t hemorrhage or worse yet survive this bloodletting. These poems speak to you with their twisted, sworn to secrecy mouths and soulless pinprick eyes. There is so much being dredged up that letting yourself off the hook is no longer an option as you turn another swollen page and die a little more inside. Snap open this murder of poems before you’re all red and swollen like a pimple or prick ready to pop or crackle like sugary cereal with an axe to grind. If you’ve ever wondered what collateral damage looks like up close and personal go and get yourself a copy of Red Demolition and remember you were warned. And remember when you were burned at the stake.

Charles Cicirella

9/5/14

published by Shirt Pocket Press and available for a mere six bucks here -  

http://shirtpocketpress.wordpress.com/catalog/

Third Eye Desolation

(For Dan Klute)

There's blood in the streets; it's up to my ankles.
Blood in the streets; it's up to my knee.
And I do not care what anyone says because The Doors are not just some band you listen to during your adolescence. In fact I still listen to them because they speak the truth through the blues, reds, and sonic booms.

I am waiting for the phone to ring.
I am awaiting another muse, another queen of the highway, another third, fourth, or fifth second coming to arrive and move these chess pieces around the board.
I had money, yeah, and I had none, but I was never so broke that I couldn’t buy a ticket to your show.

We’re led to believe good things come to those who wait, and if you believe that, I have a timeshare to sell you that is on the dark side of the moon.
Third eye desolation is a plague, and if you don’t get what I’m saying, don’t sweat it because you’ll soon be dead or filthy rich and living on an island with someone who you love to despise.
The cars hiss by my window like the waves down on the beach. We’re all being led to slaughter with every single Facebook message we post and smartphone app we download.

Blood in the streets runs a river of sadness.
Blood in the streets is up to my thigh.
And I do not care what anyone says because James Douglas Morrison was an American poet who slithered through the LA streets like a lizard in need of alcohol and a shaman who would listen to his moonlight driven prayers for a sacred kind of sweet desolation.

Charles Cicirella
9/3/14

No More Laughter

(For Robin Williams)

He hung himself.

Sat in a chair with a pocket knife and made some superficial cuts to the inside of his left wrist.

Was he out of punchlines?

While making so many others happy, on the inside was he screaming for help?

In the Dairy Queen picture he looked so gaunt and frail.

Were all the many voices in his head overcrowding and overwhelming any hope for inner peace?

Improvising on stage without a net is hard enough.

Improvising in life without a net is a whole other tin cylinder of napalm.

He stood up there on stage conducting a symphony of jokes with his unstoppable energy.

He stood in front of us showing just how beautiful and human a court jester can be.

I have a feeling he was tired of making promises to himself he knew he would not keep.

I have a feeling he was sick and tired of feeling so dead inside while there was so much life all around him that he could not afford to let in.

He hung himself.

In a room all by himself he made a choice that ended his life and I pray also ended his pain.

Charles Cicirella

8/17/14

I Like To Watch

(For Robin Williams)

I am watching porn, but I’m not paying attention.

I cannot believe he’s gone, but there are a lot of things I cannot believe that I still somehow must learn to accept.

I’m thinking of another period when an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth actually meant more than just beating yourself up and tearing yourself down.

I pretend I’m happy.

I know it’s a dangerous pastime, but I’ve always lived on the edge, especially when denial is the only drug that makes any honest to God sense.

Go ahead tell me I’m full of shit. I am used to your disapproval and unhappiness.

There’s a bridge to nowhere and a bridge to somewhere, and someday maybe I’ll discover what exists in-between.

I was naïve enough to believe poetry would save me, but at forty five I am starting to understand nothing will save any one of us and all we’re doing is putting off the inevitable.

I like to stand back and watch.

I like to take a leap of faith every decade or so.

I wouldn’t even mind falling in love if it lasted longer than the time it takes to clean up the mess.

Stop telling me I’ll never change.

I already have enough white noise in my head, and you’re not helping with all your status quo bullshit and bad energy.

I am finding it hard to accept he decided to go, but who can really blame him when the laughter and the applause were no longer doing the trick and all he was left with was the silence.

Charles Cicirella

8/13/2014

Number Twelve

I’m not awake.

I’m sleeping.

I’m not alive.

I’m dying.

I remember walking down the wood paneled hallway.

I remember feeling like I was drunk.

I remember the ghosts crowding me.

We’re not present.

We’re past.

We’re not star artists.

We’re stand-ins.

I remember you walking toward me.

I remember feeling like I was happy.

I remember you laughing at my jokes.

This may be a success or it may be a failure.

Inspiration comes in drips and drabs.

Sometimes we’re hell-bent on a recovery, other times we just want to pass the test.

Charles Cicirella

8/8/14

Number Eleven

I desire to write another poem.

I can feel it on the tip of my fingers and tongue.

I hope it’s not a false alarm.

It’s five in the morning.

My cell phone hasn’t rung in decades.

No one ever calls because they know I’ll just end up cutting them off.

This is number eleven.

I thought I might possibly be on a roll.

Thing is I may have jumped the gun or worse yet swallowed the barrel and pulled the trigger.

I wonder if I’ll ever experience physical intimacy again.

I don’t even mean sex or whatever the equivalent of sex is in the twenty-first century.

I’d settle for holding hands and maybe sliding into first by the end of the date.

Soon I will lie down on a sleeping bag on my mother’s floor and close my eyes.

When I wake up it will be around three in the afternoon and I’ll have accomplished nothing.

Truth is I don’t like guns and even if I owned one I wouldn’t be able to afford the bullets.

Charles Cicirella

8/8/14

Number Ten

Out live

Out last

Out do

Wear down fate by looking fear squarely in the eye.

Replenish happiness with mystical assurances from a benevolent creator.

Replenish hope with blessed charity.

Insource

Inroads

Insanity

Clearly your pact made all the difference with the talent you’ve been crowned with.

Clearly the crossroads means more to you than just a place to sell your soul.

Clearly when daylight comes you’re already heading for the next staging ground.

We’re going up around the bend.

We’re going to make amends before another innocent bystander is found guiltless and executed for someone else’s goodness.

We’re going to break the speed of sound by playing fucking loud and never once allowing Judas to do our dirty work for us.

Charles Cicirella

8/6/14

Enigma

Trust the words will come.

Sometimes like a crossword puzzle.

Other times like a threat or left handed compliment.

Do you really eat apples like they’re going out of style?

Do you know when you try and hide you stick out like a sore thumb?

Do you still yearn to burn some of your fans alive?

Trust the desire has not dried up.

Sometimes like a wishing well in need of coins or proper repair.

Other times like a camel passing through the eye of a needle.

Do you believe in magic and the synchronicity oftentimes conquering it?

Do you live in a roomful of mirrors and understand why Jimi just had to go?

Do you still think about John being shot and how some things are not predetermined?

Trust the silence will ferry you across the water.

Trust the noise will bring you closer to God and farther away from another changing of the guards.

Trust that this circus you’ve encased yourself inside will shelter you from the storm as long as you’re willing to walk the line.

Enigmas are a dime a dozen in this world we are passing through.

Enigmas have their very own covenant once they’ve made their prayers known and let up on the gas.

Enigmas are a story unto themselves never playing catch up or make believe in this world that can’t stand long once the flames have been snuffed out.

Charles Cicirella

8/6/2014

Embark

Rip off the skin, not only the scab.

Remove the person, not only the mask.

Recover from life, not only the addiction.

A grand piano needs to be climbed inside not just tinkered with.

Playing for time oftentimes only unwinds the clock.

Play your greatest misses, not just the hits.

We pray for a miracle when everyday happenstance is a blessing all its own.

We wish for shit until our hands are covered in it, and then we bitch about our dire circumstances.

We travel many a mile believing there is dignity in distancing ourselves from the mother ship when all we’re really doing is running in place, out of step and out of time.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.

Hell, I’m not even a writer. Just read my rejection slips, keeping in mind we’re all born with a crossroads to ultimately face and then do away with.

The writing was on the wall and then it was tattooed onto her back and still she was uninteresting and lacked any honest to God subtext.

Break apart not only attempting hold everything together, but making an effort to become realized and not just preconceived or predisposed.

Break down not only through the premise of this play on articulated words and whatnot.

Break from conventional wisdom, finally understanding that the winds that tore you to shreds in Chicago are the very same winds that someday will put you back together again.

Charles Cicirella

8/4/14

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