Roll Away the Stone

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-27T01_43_20-07_00

I cannot try any longer.

The stone is too heavy.

And Lazarus refuses to help.

We are stardust.

In the blink of an eye we are here.

In the blink of an eye we are gone.

I’m a poet.

Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

Doubting Thomas is my patron saint. I learned that when we were off the record.

The story is written in red ink.

The blood on our hands is just more yellow journalism.

And you cannot raise a politician whose heart is dead.

He is the Alpha.

And the Omega.

The First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.

Don’t worry yourself over the particulars.

Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

If you lose your soul that’s it you cannot get it back no matter how much you pay it forward.

I was a child of God.

I am still very much a child of God.

I don’t have to prove myself to you or to anyone.

Sisyphus proves how fatalistic a perpetual motion outlook can be.

Job got his proof and then some, but he still wasn’t convinced of much of anything.

Get down on your knees and pray and maybe, just maybe you’ll be blessed and none of your actual prayers will be answered.

Charles Cicirella

9/26/15

Daisy Chain Repertoire

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-20T22_50_15-07_00

Going to wear these words around my neck like an albatross.

Going to wear these words around my neck like “Tiny Bubbles” that even Don Ho could not get off the ground.

We suit up for battle even when there are no enemies in sight and the whites of their eyes are just another bedazzled memory like semi-precious gemstones or The Rolling Stones in their actual prime.

I’m not going to drown in a swimming pool or choke on my own vomit to attain some mythical status. I’m trying to come to terms with being just another talented unknown. It’s better than knowing virtually everything about networking, but not a single solitary thing about inspiration and the slings and arrows going along with being creatively driven and creatively spent.

These words are lodestones placed on the front of the refrigerator like a kid’s drawings because pride is a tricky thing when having to do with your offspring and believing in the next generation of honest to God human beings and not just another text message or Smartphone app.

I’ve become all too accustomed to shooting my semen like unholy ghosts into the folds of this or that security blanket and pretending I don’t need to cum and pretending that it’s just another fossilized memory I must distance myself from ASAP.

I’ve always responded to how you don’t pull any punches especially when it comes to your mind over matter politics and how you loved me when it was convenient and how you walked away when I’d become just more baggage. I never pretended to be anything but who I am and I refuse to apologize for all of the madness you were subjected to when we removed our masks and watched game shows all day long in nothing but our Earl Scheib birthday suits.

I have no clue what I’m driving at, but trust me when we arrive you’ll be the first to know why we’ve come so far and how I plan to pay you back for all of your paltry patience and sexual dalliances.

I’m not here to impress you. These days I feel lucky if I can just get up from the floor after I’ve slept for 16 to 18 hours like a koala bear. I stopped making excuses for myself about ten or twelve years back. I decided it was a waste of both my time and energy trying to explain who I am or want to be when I grow up and women stop asking if I need a booster seat when we sit down for dinner.

These words are not elastic nor are they much of a bungee cord so I wouldn’t suggest jumping off of a cliff with only these sentences to keep you from plunging to the ground. We must learn to respect the people who taught us to read and think for ourselves and that goes double for our kindergarten teachers. Her name was Mrs. Jones and she had a large red birthmark on her face. I felt safe when I was around her and I also will never forget all of the doors she opened up in my mind.

Charles Cicirella
9/20/15

Get Out of the Bag I’m in (For Fred & Howard)

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-20T22_31_18-07_00

Dust mites attack from all directions.
Blueprints no longer doing the trick.
I’m at a loss for words.
I’m at a loss for master strokes.

Being a visionary is not as easy or as effortless as it may appear to those who have never had an original thought.
To raise the roof you must first have burned down plenty of barns. And if you’re not barnstorming then what’s even the point of your existence?
Word gymnastics are blasé and only work in slam competitions. If you strive to work and write in the trenches and not simply type yourself out of another personal crisis then you must first learn to sacrifice like Christ and his 13 Apostles did. Yes I am including Mary Magdalene in that rather audacious and somewhat labor intensive comparison.
Let’s make something out of nothing. Once you’ve successfully done that don’t forget to make it your own with your sweat and blood poured into the grooves of your next number one record.

Uncloud your head.
Your soul must be fed.
Uncloud your heart.
Your psyche mustn’t go dark.

I’m as liberal as they come until someone argues with me about taking away their guns.
I may just have to point my typewriter at their open mouths and shoot some poison darts down their slip, slide and away gullets.
We trespass on perfect strangers without even giving it a second thought. This social networking is for the angry birds. I’m dumbfounded by your inability to recognize what I’m capable of.
Is it vanity or mere stupidity getting in the way of your understanding how far we could go if you’d only allow me in and stop pretending your kingdom is the only game in town?

I remember the first time I was pigeonholed and how it felt to have my feathers plucked out one by one from my pink, tender skin.
I didn’t like it one bit when you reminded me this was all my fault on account of not being able to hold my tongue and for striking back against my oppressors without a practical stratagem.
I was hiding out trying to regain focus when everything became blurred and I couldn’t remember my own name or who the President of the United States was.
I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned as I grow my fingernails and toenails as long as the Mississippi River and try to unburden myself from the deceitfulness of my flowing subconscious.

Charles Cicirella
9/12/15

Another poem no one will read.

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-20T01_11_04-07_00

Making a habit of writing into a vacuum.
There is a black hole and I’ve made it an ally by feeding it one poem after another.
I couldn’t tell you what quantum mechanics is. I also couldn’t tell you how I became an artist, but I know it just feels right and I wish Albert Einstein had been my friend.

Let’s not mince words. Some people have real talent while others have no business whatsoever walking onto a stage and attempting to make a rabbit disappear or sawing their pretty assistant in half.
I would say we need to become more comfortable calling a spade a spade, but I know I’d be called a racist because political correctness has completely quashed common sense as the Christian Right pulls rank on each and every one of us.
Someone needs to tell those bigots that Christ was born, died and rose again a Jew and that’s always the way the martyr crumbles when you dip him or her into a glass of white milk.

Another poem I will post onto FB because I like to torture myself. The writing keeps me grounded, but when it comes to hustling I haven’t a clue what that even means.
Scenes of Midnight Cowboy run through my head as I cross one more crowded intersection and learn to tolerate Jon Voight in Ray Donovan.
I need to lift myself out of the Cleveland poetry scene because it has become all too clear I am only doing myself more harm by running over and over again into the same old brick wall. I believe in my talent, but getting others to believe in it is easier said than done and I am starting to wonder if I am really fooling anyone as my intellect breeds tiny monsters and my eyes tear up from the very real loss of God.
I know I’m naïve and I know I’m too cynical for my own good, but taking all of these sleeping pills just sounds like such a bad idea and the thought of squirreling away some arsenic like my uncle did also makes no viable sense to me. When he finally blew his brains out with his father’s pistol near the RTA Rapid Transit tracks we had to call the city who arrived in Hazmat suits and gave everyone weird sideways glances like we were plotting the next 911.

Let’s not mince words. Let’s also not pretend we’re ever going to try again. Starting over is especially excruciating when your hands are tied behind someone else’s back and Cliff Huxtable turns out to be a serial rapist.
There is nothing more to do and no one left to rely upon. It’s not over until the fat lady bowls a perfect game and The Dude forgives us for all our transgressions by going completely silent and turning invisible in front of our Winnebago eyes.
Albert Einstein called me collect about thirty minutes ago. I knew it was him because of his thick German accent and the way he made everything sound so smart including the compliments he paid me as I began to blush and hung up on him by accident. Here’s another offering from my unsolicited brain. You don’t have to pay it any mind just please don’t ignore it so audaciously because these days I don’t feel like I have a friend in the world and even a complete stranger might actually come in handy when the going gets tough and the tough get brain cancer.

Charles Cicirella
9/20/15

Rubbing excrement all over my body like a crazed prophet.

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-18T18_46_28-07_00

I’ve never written poetry. Not really.
The words I write are not mere words.
There is prophecy in what I’m going after and if I could explain that better I would, but there’s no time left.

The first poem I ever wrote was about the moon. I’ve said that already in several poems.
Now I must go passed the moon and do my best to enter other spaces so when I reenter Earth’s atmosphere I’m not only a better man, but a better communicator.
Planetary travel versus the internal trappings of one’s universal mind and body electric. Pushing beyond the outer limits and accepting the twilight of one’s soul as key if we’re ever going to file down the totality of our sins.

I’ve never written poetry. No not really.
When I press down the keys or hold a pen or pencil in my hand I am holding onto the past, doing my best to move through the present and embarking upon a future written in super flues and pandemics.
Florence Nightingale was Jesus Christ and if you don’t understand that then there is very little that you will ever truly comprehend. There is no more messing about you’re either in or you’re out and if you are not a believer then you’re already dead.

Cries of silence permeating every molecule of our chemical makeup.
Your soulmate a petri dish. Now the question is are we willing and able to look through the microscope to see the truth laid out before us like a reading of tarot cards? The tarot readers are scientists and your best bet is to stop believing so doggedly in any God.
I stood in the town square and rubbed excrement all over my body. I didn’t do it to prove a point. In fact I’ve never felt the need to prove anything to anyone and that includes this very second, when we’re on the precipice of monumental calamities and the crushing deathblow of humankind being forced to its knees.

Charles Cicirella
9/2/15

Untitled

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-10T16_28_26-07_00

Lit the smokeless bowl and watched the Waning Crescent Moon.
Ate some French toast before that so I am feeling pretty full and stoned.
Watching episode six of 12 Monkeys. A friend recommended the show to me and when I discovered Emily Hampshire was in it I was immediately hooked.

These black moths keep flying around. Now they’re attacking my nose and open mouth. There’s a part of me that is not sure they’re real, but another larger chunk of my brain knows that they do in fact exist.
Keep clapping my hands to try and kill them, but even when it appears I’ve eliminated one another soon appears or is it the same one?
Now I have to pee which is really annoying because only dribs and drabs are coming down the pike. I’m drinking lots of water so not really sure what the problem is.

The bowl didn’t work and I think I’m now just smoking paper.
The moon though was sure pretty to look at and I needed to get back into writing mode.
I’m in a racecar going 200 MPH. The car in front of me explodes into flames and for a split second I no longer exist and even the period at the end of this sentence will not be able to contain my unalleviated energies.

Charles Cicirella
9/6/15

Red Leaves

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-10T13_15_22-07_00

“It’s time to go.”
Let’s not pretend we know any better.
Let’s not pretend.

We talked on the phone.
I went on and on about sacrifice.
Her breathing never fails to challenge and reawaken me.

The last time we met there was whiskey on your breath.
I know you were not an alcoholic and even if you were who gives a shit.
I remember every single one of our recording sessions. How you’d lumber around the room like a giant sequoia in need of sunlight and more time.

“It’s time to go.”
Or it’s time to stay.
It’s our choice and whatever we choose to do or not do won’t make any actual difference when the weights and measures finally erase us for good.

I want to spend an eternity with you in afterschool detention.
I want to hang out with Mr. Soble in some undisclosed location even though I know he was not as cool and in control as he may have once seemed to my teenage addled brain.
In fact I believe he was bordering on disintegrating at virtually any moment and that is why I paid attention in his class and allowed myself to be taught by someone who was clearly not the brightest bulb in the box.

When I call and you answer it’s like a conjugal visit stripped free and clear of sex, but chocked full of red glitter and clandestine absorption.
Neither one of us has a smartphone which I actually think makes us that much cooler in the drawn-out and rather clumsy order of things.
I was screaming like a baby bird in need of nourishment when you stuck your fingers down my throat and fed me whatever was within reach. A few rusty nails, a worm or two and your unremitting sickly sweet reassurances that neither one of us would die today even though we’d wish we had.

Charles Cicirella
9/10/15

Word-Ghosts in the Ether

 http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-09T12_31_46-07_00

The words are here.
Right here.
Then they’re gone.
Just like that.

I could feel them
Taste them.
See them and reflect upon them in my mind’s eye.
Now they won’t even look at me and refuse to respond to the simplest of requests.

You wouldn’t understand.
You are not a wordsmith.
Just another hired gun.
Just another word-whore whose only purpose is to win blue ribbons like some prized cow at the county fair.

I thought we were the same.
I thought we were in it to do the work and make an honest to God lasting impression.
I never quite understood that not everyone is inspired and that too many people are just in it to polish the chrome of their absurd egos.
I had a friend who was an action-painting-super-hero who did his art like he only had six months to live. He got it as he bled for his chamber-music-requiems and for all of the braveclouds that will never have their very own silver lining because of budget cuts and because the beautiful people have sucked all of the oxygen out of the room.

The words are somewhere over there.
I tried to pick through the wreckage, but became stuck in the thickets and the awkward silences.
Now I’m gone.
Just like that I’m gone and there are no more songs. And everything is in the rearview like the distant memories of your first junior high dance and first real kiss. 

Charles Cicirella
9/1/15

Unconditional Heartache (For Juliet)

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-09T12_04_20-07_00

I reach out to her.
She reaches inside of me.
Last time I saw her she was wearing gold pants. Somehow she pulled them off like only she can pull off the unconventional and unfashionable heartbreaks of man.

I like her friend Darryl quite a bit.
Even though I don’t think he knows what to make of me. Especially with the history that he knows exists between me and Juliet.
Darryl doesn’t have to worry though because I’m no one’s Romeo especially when it comes to high balconies and suffering vertigo or even worse the fate of another blow to my stained glass ego.

There was a time when I was seeking an accomplice to join me on my insane exploits and weak attempts at Gonzo Journalism, but I have learned by now my soulmate is either long dead or doing their best to stay hidden because they know I would consume them with my overtaxed personality and bad habit of always needing to be heard over the din of love and the clamoring of an insufferable mob of idiot savants inside my head.
I haven’t a clue if Juliet ever really got me, but I do know that at one time she dug my Root Cellar growl and the way I had of appearing ten feet tall on a stage when I’m only 5’2 or maybe 5’3 on a really excellent day.
We sped up each other’s hearts for a while until I became way too clingy for anyone’s mental health and started pulling out my hair and giving myself black eyes because I didn’t believe she was listening to what I had to say.

I would tell you it’s my artistic temperament that gets the best of me, but I know that would be a lie and would not be fair to those artists who don’t possess the tools to stay on the straight and narrow and are instead swallowed by the darkness like another slab of ruined meat.
I have the most difficult time listening to another person’s point of view especially when I am dead set on making a connection before it is too late and I am once again alone with my cruel thoughts and unsmiling nature.
I think I have suffered abandonment issues since long before I took public transportation out of the womb and landed smack dab in front of a typewriter or word processor trying to set the record straight. I’m not actually a wounded animal even though I play one on TV. I’m also not exactly a tragic figure even though I gravitate toward this way of non-living because I have always struggled with taking responsibility and making good on the promise that I would help change the world before I was shot down or shot full of everlasting grief.

Charles Cicirella
8/28/15

BM

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-06T20_22_08-07_00

I just pooped.
I like to call it my morning constitutional even though it’s 4:29 in the afternoon.
I stole that from somewhere. I don’t remember where and I don’t really care because it doesn’t really matter. In the greater or lesser scheme of things everyone gets their dues and their don’ts.

I told her to try and approach the song as an old European murder ballad. She’ll more than likely not listen and I guess that’s to be expected.
She did cover “Sad-Eyed Lady of the Lowlands” at my urging though and look how that turned out.
The way she sneaks up on a song and makes it her own scares me into an early grave. She was seventeen when I first heard her sing and it changed everything for me. Everything.

There are some things I just will not write about no matter how much you offer to pay me or wink at me out of your one good eye.
There are some things that I guess you’d call sacred or sacrosanct and I will not mess with the powers that be or not to be simply to get a rise out of a coliseum of hungry sheep.
The Poet Klecko moved into the Gatsby Mansion and I wonder how the green light is treating him and if he’s yet been awakened in the middle of the night by Zelda’s crazy little ballerina mouth around his fast 'n' bulbous member.

I couldn’t find the keys. Skeleton or otherwise.
I also couldn’t figure out which direction was up and which direction was down and it may possibly be because you have turned me inside out and upside down with your plays on morality and constant rejection of the status-sucking-quo.
I watched him read a poem about Charlton Heston and it reminded me that in some sense or another we’re all Roman gladiators seeking infamy or at the very least a spirited pat on our Lazy Boy tushies.

I just pooped.
Thankfully today the itching in my anus does not seem as pronounced. I was starting to wonder if I had hemorrhoids or if the big C was finally knocking on my backdoor like an unwelcomed houseguest or overzealous and not so discreet lover.
I don’t believe that last line was stolen from anywhere although there’s always the possibility that I am dead wrong. My morning constitutional has set me free from the trials and tribulations of another bullet in the chamber day.

Charles Cicirella
9/6/15

Standup Comedian

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-05T16_41_47-07_00

Today is not about making you laugh.
Today is not about pissing your pants.
Today is a day for reflection and readjusting our oftentimes perverted outlooks.

I could run through a bunch of killer one liners.
Make you feel like you were back in the Borscht Belt with the Jews and resort hotels.
Sometimes though it’s more important to take a good look at ourselves and not be so keen to go for the cheap applause or settle for the obvious punchline to another joke about your wife’s awful cooking.

Today we stand up and piss down on the standup comedian and all of their smugness and smirking anecdotes.
Today we lighten our loads by excusing nothing, including all of those passive aggressive wisecracks made at our expense over a thousand plus years.
Today we resist the stereotypes and stereotypical bows and arrows reigning down upon us like white ash from the ovens not so carefully hidden in the wide open expanse.

Charles Cicirella
9/5/15

Tarot Cards and Dissonance

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-01T20_33_51-07_00

I think about you.
I’m not going to lie.
I’m also not going to beg or pretend I’m something I’ve never even remotely been.

We trade punches with the great unknown.
We trade punches with the incorrigible and incongruent wind.
We lie down with the lions and haven’t a clue how truly precious the lambs are.

I am not a prize poet.
One time I won a prize for counting how many M&M’s there were in a glass jar.
When it comes to writing I can go twelve rounds and I seldom come off punch drunk.

I think about you all of the time.
I’m not going to lie and tell you that I don’t wish things weren’t somehow different.
This is the way things have played out though and all of the tarot cards and feelings of conflict in the world are not going to change that.

Charles Cicirella
9/1/15

“Just for points, not for blood.”

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-09-02T12_00_04-07_00

Listen to these words.
I mean really listen to them.
Consume them like you’ve not quite consumed anything before.

And when you’re done and your face is wiped and your hands are washed call me and we will compare notes and maybe even take a stroll down memory lane.
And when we’re through and our clothes are comingling on the floor like two ex-fighters passed their prime and passed their bedtimes I will remember you and I will shed tears of happiness and resistance.
And there is nothing like the first time or the second time or the third, fourth and fifth times you flirt with danger and come out the victor or at the very least unspoiled and unapologetic.

Listen to these words.
I mean really take the time to hear them and feel them throughout your entire organism.
Memories cannot sustain you nor will hope ever see you entirely through. Not when an unkindness of ravens is tapping, tapping at your chamber door.

Charles Cicirella
9/2/2015

Fresco

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-08-30T22_19_59-07_00

page is wet
words are the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the paper
artists cannot hear you they’re busy pushing the limits of their life to the breaking point
they’re busy pushing and pulling themselves in and out of the lion’s den

I know you’re feeling around for cracks and crevices
to you the blemishes scream imperfection while to me the imperfections prove this is not only a work of art, but a work of death defying sacrifices as the acrobats demonstrate there are many Christs and a crucified God does not automatically make a religion tenable or worthy of a Sunday matinee

I’m on a writing jag, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I have anything meaningful to say or that the words I’m spilling onto the soaking wet page don’t need a touch up or some better GPS coordinates to get them to that secret jumping off place
for me it’s not about control or completely extinguishing every wildfire that jumps the freeway because I know my passions will ultimately consume everything in their path
when I heard a friend recently say if he had been such a good friend then why didn’t he see the signs before Jimbo took his own life and all I could think was obviously you were not paying close enough attention because all of the signs were right there in plain view

page is wet with sweat and swearwords
and with the setting of the sun, the painting becomes an integral part of the landscape
I listen to my lion with every fiber of my being and sometimes I feel I almost get it right while other times I know I’ve failed miserably, but once you’re pushed and prodded from the womb there are no more do overs

I know you’re feeling around for a light switch in the blemishes of our maker’s face
on the seventh day the Lord rested and had someone fetch them a Frappuccino from the Starbucks on the corner
this is not only a work of dire consequences, but a work that defies logic and leaves you wishing for more than exists in your grandmother’s favorite candy dish
there are many saviors and a crucified Christ does not always mean you’ll get what you’ve earned once the stone is rolled away
the fresco will never completely dry nor will the grease stains on our hands ever be entirely pounded away

Charles Cicirella
8/26/15

"cigarettes, gin, dog food." (For Billie)

http://charlespoet.podomatic.com/entry/2015-08-30T13_37_53-07_00

I miss you so fucking much.
I haven’t a clue if we would have gotten along or if Mister would have liked me, but I would have loved to have hung out with you both.
We could have played records and because I don’t drink I could have driven you around wherever you wanted to go. I would have even slept on the floor by the foot of your bed in case you needed something, anything in the middle of the night or day.

I miss you so fucking much.
Your voices speaks to me in every color of the rainbow.
Your voice takes me down to the river and washes all of my most contrived and convoluted sins away.

I miss you so fucking much.
I want to sit in a dark room with your voice pouring from the speaker as the vinyl record goes around and around and no one knows where it will land or if it will crash and burn.
I have never understood those who say your voice was failing in the later years.
How can they not hear the anguish and the longing and a life long experienced and the death existing in every syllable your tongue teased and delivered with such passion and ecstatic layers of both satin and silk?

I miss you so fucking much.
I want to pet Mister and if he and you would allow it kiss you on your unholy mouth.
I will pick up your groceries and bring them to you at night. I’ll knock three times on your door and wait until you answer.

Charles Cicirella
8/30/15