Vertigo ONWARD-FORWARD-INFINITE

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2019-08-05T00_05_56-07_00

Third poem I’m writing for you since I heard the news

Still trying to hit the tenor that was Vertigo and I’m failing miserably

You were just plain weird and I mean that in the best possible weird light that can possibly be summoned in these dark days where people play with shit and pretend its Play-Doh

Third poem and maybe it’ll do the trick like a third leg or a third wife or a third secret bank account that your third significant other doesn’t know exists

The Boys from Brazil can go fuck themselves because even Babs knows cloning your dog or a Führer is a slippery slope

You were benevolent in the strictest sense of the word because you understood giving only gets you more and as you shuffled off this mortal coil I bet your karma was at an all-time high

It’s no accident that the first time I was published in decades was by Poet’s Haven because you’re the only person in Cleveland who understood it’s about the work and not the celebrity or ego that silences productivity and shuns the true artists

I wanted you to accept me because I’m funny that way and I knew when it came to you there were no cliques and that everyone was invited into the tent, politics be damned

I don’t know what happened and why your light was turned off so prematurely, but what I do know is as creative beings go you never shirked away from the responsibility of putting your shoulder to the wheel and actually making a discernible difference when it came to anything and everything art related beneath the hotspot sun.

Charles Cicirella

8/4/19

Doldrums (For Vertigo and Kat)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2019-08-01T15_02_50-07_00

This rootbeer saved my life

I’m not embellishing in the least little bit

It’s Virgil’s because sometimes the cheap shit just won’t do

Still thinking about you and that you’re dead

We weren’t close, but we’re both creative spirits and like me, you always had a way of taming the shrews with such aplomb and guerilla like finesse

If there was an Olympic sport for publishing poetry you’d be the Michael Phelps of the poetry galaxy

This rootbeer saved my life because it cut no corners when getting to my taste buds

Sometimes apathy sodomizes you so hard you forget what it’s like not being a beast of someone else’s burden

I want to slow dance with you under the Glasgow stars as we sweat out our vindictive vendettas and abandoned love ransomware into the wet streets

The death of a friend, even someone you only knew in the publishing sense of the word can and will hit you like a ton of Gideon Bibles

I enjoyed our conversations on the way back from North Royalton as he told me tales of what it’s like to be him in this unvetted rain forest of scrambled romantics and hopeful artists

I’m going to take another swig, and another toke and try my damndest to live inside this miserable news by playing all the many Poet’s Haven hits back in my head,

just to mention (but) a few:

“Ether Bisque” by Steven Smith, Julie Ursem Marchand, Joni Soule and Charles Cicirella

“Another Set of Ripped-Out Bloody Pigtails” by Juliet Cook

"Andropomorphic" by Summer Kurtz

"Fragments from the Book of the After-Dead" by Herb Kauderer

"From Frost to Phoenix" by Crystal Clark

"Origami Lilies" by Joshua Gage

"Reckoning with Essential Bliss" by Marc Mannheimer

"Poemaholic" by Azriel Johnson

"Stanley Stanley's Investigative Services and Other Mysteries" by Kristina England

"Corpus Lingua" by Dianne Borsenik

"It Takes More Than Chance to Make Change" by John Burroughs

"Inside the Walls of a Blackened Book" by A.J. Huffman

"Her Haunted Hazel Eyes Contradict Her Smile" by Lynne Albert

"Imaginary Conversations" by Jen Pezzo

"Anywhere Else But Here" by Carla Thompson

"I Wish" by Skylark Bruce

"A Thousand Voices: A City Shaman's Notebook" by C.M. Brooks

"Getting There" by Jacob King

Charles Cicirella

8/1/19

Vertigo

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2019-08-01T11_15_29-07_00

What the fuck happened?

Last I heard you were taking over the world

Now you’re dead and another poet goes unsung

You weren’t just above the petty politics of the Cleveland poetry scene you were beyond it like some galactic space invader who knew their place and was ready to blow it up if necessary

First time I entered your orbit was at Snoetry when you bought Little Caesars for everyone

When someone needed a ride you’d go out of your way to bring that person to the light and you even did that for me on a number of clandestine occasions

The news of your passing continues to hit me as hard as Lou’s Berlin

Poets shouldn’t die they should turn into stardust which I believe is what’s happened to you

Never forget your disgruntled beast of an automobile pulling up and the neighbors acting like Gort had just landed and no one quite knowing how to receive this visitor from another planet

What the fuck happened?

I’m at a loss as I search the dictionary for words to cover my sadness and not leave me such a wreck

You had the entire poetry scene in a chokehold and did it with such gentleness no one ever felt short changed or insulted when you came down the chimney and ate the cookies and drank the milk intended for Santa.

Charles Cicirella

8/1/19

This is not a memory.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2019-07-31T00_46_59-07_00

Sometimes I’m afraid of nothing and it’s reflected in everything I don’t say.

We have all these totems and myths to signify what’s most meaningful when in reality they’re not worth the stone they’re carved into.

The Egyptians took everything with them when they shuffled off this mortal coil and so would you if Elizabeth Taylor had portrayed you in a movie.

I must decide if getting up to take a shit is worth the effort or if I should just stay blocked and rue the day I ate that pastrami and chopped liver sandwich on challah.

Feel like we were taken advantage of because we took our eyes off the ball and allowed sentiment to lull us into a false sense of surety.

Just because the world judges us don’t mean they’re on the right side of history or that the golden rule adds up to anything more than sticks and stones grinding the bones of another poor bastard into dust.

My mother went after my brother with a wooden spoon and my brother turned the tables and took the spoon away from her.

She was, of course, surprised and fearful Stephen had finally snapped, but I believe there was a small part of her that was relieved she no longer had to carry that load.

I’ll never forget when we went to see The Champ and my brother pretended he wasn’t crying as my mother handed him a box of tissue on the sly and he played it off like there was something in his eye.

Sometimes I dread everything and it’s mirrored in every made-up memory I commit to.

We have all these mascots and saints to prop up our dwindling spirits when hope has been vanquished and even the great patriots have stopped saluting the flag.

No matter if you slice the rye bread or not the Jews are the Chosen people and there’s no disputing that, no matter how many pairs of magic underwear you wear or collection plates you pass around in the name of God.

Charles Cicirella

7/28/19

Cuddle Universe (For Kat)

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/charlespoet/episodes/2019-07-30T09_44_20-07_00

Every Beatles song was written with her in mind

Even the ones you can’t kill to

There was a blueberry hill and that’s where I lost my thrill

Pat Gunn has built my last two desktops

He’s always proven to be smarter than the AI he’s studying

He takes direction like he was born in the theater

I have a headache, but it’s my own damn fault

Some pot goes down easy while other strains make you choke and take generic Advil

I’m gonna wait before I jump to the conclusion this pot needs to be returned to sender

Shady deals in some rural outpost where inflatable swans float by like marshmallow clouds. I can’t stop choking, might be time to call the paramedics or a reformed Rabbi

I desire to slide into her like a bookmark or the pointed tip of a tailor’s very sharp needle

Milton Berle had a horse cock and used to fuck Marilyn Monroe like a bowl of red borsht at The Russian Tearoom around noon and after eight o’clock

I don’t know why I’m mentioning that other than I’ve been trying to fit his horse cock into a poem for what seems like decades now

Back to Kat Boyd and her astronomic wavelength, transmitting only to the rain dogs who believe in universal healthcare for all animal, vegetable and plant life

I slipped on a banana peel and instead of laughing we made pudding from our tears

I was too lazy to pick my own blueberries so instead I ordered a short stack of blueberry pancakes and pretended I was once a captain of industry

Charles Cicirella 
7/29/19