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