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