3:33 AM I KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS AT LEAST I THINK I DO NOW IT’S 3:34 AM AT LEAST I THINK IT IS ANOTHER POEM ANOTHER CONFESSION ANOTHER PRIEST RAPING GOD WITH THEIR FROZEN EYES AND COLD HANDS LET’S AGREE ON ONE THING USING RELIGION AS A SHIELD IS BEYOND COWARDLY AND YOU WILL PAY SOONER THAN LATER FOR YOUR INDIFFERENCE AND BLINDSIDED IGNORANCE I KNOW WHAT I DID AT LEAST I THINK I DO NOW IT’S 3:40 AM AT LEAST THAT’S WHAT MY LAPTOP WHISPERED IN MY CAULIFLOWER EAR WHAT DO YOU TELL YOURSELF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN A COLD SWEAT? WHAT DO YOU TELL YOURSELF WHEN DRIVING AROUND IN YOUR CAR LISTENING TO JAMES BROWN AT TOP VOLUME DOES NOTHING TO QUIET YOUR RAGING, RACING JUDGMENTS? HOW DO YOU HANDLE YOURSELF WHEN HANDLING YOURSELF IS OUT OF THE QUESTION? WHEN IS IT OKAY TO CURL UP INTO THE FETAL POSITION AND FORGET ABOUT EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES FOR THE SILENCE TO FINALLY MAKE SOME HEADROOM IN YOUR OVERSTUFFED BRAIN? I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING AT LEAST I THINK I DO NOW IT’S 3:44 AM - NOW IT’S 3:45 AM AT LEAST THAT’S WHAT I KEEP TELLING MYSELF AS THE SECONDS TURN INTO MINUTES AND THE MINUTES TURN INTO HOURS AND THE HOURS TURN INTO DAYS AND THE DAYS TURN INTO LITTLE INVISIBLE GODS THAT WILL FOREVER FUCK WITH US UNTIL WE PUT A STOP TO EVERYTHING INCLUDING THE HANDS ON THE CLOCK’S UNREADABLE FACE Charles Cicirella 8/17/15

PB & J #2 I discovered Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter and everything has changed. I know you probably think I am making more out of this than I should, but I swear with Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter it’s not your grandfather’s PB & J or for that matter your father’s or even your second cousin’s twice removed. We break into the smallest pieces and parts when we least expect it. I heard about Amazon’s horrific working conditions in their warehouses and I wasn’t surprised because slave labor still exists in America the Beautiful just like rampant racism still exists and sexism and a whole bunch of other isms like populism and extremism. Oh who am I kidding? Populism really does not exist at least not in any relatable sense that could actually help the working poor become less disenfranchised. Senator Bernie Sanders is called a socialist like it is some horrid affliction when in fact socialism makes more sense than this wretched state of affairs we call capitalism that capitalizes on nothing but making the über-rich richer and the poor and the middle class no longer a part of the conversation. Trump is a wolf in wolves clothing. If you like your politicians an odd white-pink hue who go on and on about how they must be right because they’re really rich, then by all means vote for the Donald, but keep in mind you asked for it when the US ends up in receivership and we would do anything to get into Canada or Mexico as our own country breathes its last entitled, exceptional breath and dies a paupers’ death. I discovered Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter and all was right with the world for about forty five delicious seconds. And that goes double if you toast the bread and mix Smucker's Concord Grape Jelly and Smucker’s Strawberry Preserves together. We work in cubicles like Pavlovian rats as our "instinct for research" is rewarded with minuscule scraps of this and that. We hunger for more and more access before giving up the ghost, leaving nothing but a carbon footprint and a set of fingerprints that will land you in prison quicker than you can say habeas corpus. Slather on the Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter and let’s not forget nor forgive Iggy for breaking down our strongest walls with Raw Power and endless bouts of self-destruction and self-corrosion. I’ve recently decided I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton because though I recognize that all politicians are for the most part completely full of shit I have an even bigger problem with someone who is supposedly a dyed in the wool political animal and yet clearly does not understand that you’ll never come across as genuine when you’re anything but genuine and believe you are smarter than everyone else in the room. Charles Cicirella 8/17/15

Word Oxygen (For Darin Bulai) I need to get it out. Each word another breath. Each poem another chess move away from death. Or am I like one of the tragic figures I so covet heading toward my own demise? If I crash and if I burn before I write one great sentence will that make it more likely I’ll end up anonymous or even worse another popular slogan like Let It Be or Let It Bleed? So many great expectations and grand illusions around every bow in the blacktop. I’m more out of sorts these days than I am out of the rain. I am a shut-in really waiting for my next big break or actually my first big break. I remember when I was fourteen years old working at the local McDonald's wondering if this was all there was and thirty two years later I’m still wondering the same fucking thing. I don’t think I’m better than anyone else. Or more special or more deserving than anyone else. I just know I have greatness inside of me and if I could just cut away all of the malaise and nausea there would be no stopping or slowing me down. I need to set the record straight before all of the oxygen in the room is used up. Each word another footstep. Each poem another breath of life as I whittle away the exhaustion with sheer willpower and an inexhaustible belief that this cannot be all that there is. Charles Cicirella 8/18/15

Dust, Oil and Gunpowder I want to write about a tree. Not any tree. This is a particular tree. I want to remove the gloves and say how I really feel. Somehow capture when I was a kid on a Saturday afternoon and wanted to hang out with my dad, but my dad never seemed to have any time for me. There’s dust, oil and gunpowder on these keys, but that is only because of all the killing these poems have a tendency of doing when the voices in my head get their way. I want to write about a tree. A tree whose war paint is not necessary because I know underneath it their inner child is naked and dancing in the sun. This is a particular tree whose poetic branches exist in the past, present and future simultaneously. Charles Cicirella 8/19/15

Speaking Truth to Power (For U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders) This is what revolutions are made of. This is what dreams are spun from. Think Willy Wonka with a predilection for politics and loosening the stranglehold around our blue collar necks. The press doesn’t seem to know what to make of Bernie because he has no hidden agenda or ulterior motives. The press continues to underestimate Bernie because God forbid an honest to God grass roots movement takes hold and hope wasn’t just another commodity sold to the masses like heroin and Big Macs. We the people like to pretend we’re for the little guy when actually the little guy was put out to pasture around the time that political correctness took us all hostage and former President Bill Clinton proved once and for all that lying to the American people was just another day on Pennsylvania Avenue. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders shows us you don’t have to be a political animal to go into politics. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders shines a light on the simple truth that each and every one of us experiences each and every day that we’re not getting even a smidgen of the pie that is supposedly our constitutional right. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is making it crystal clear that doing the right thing is still possible even in these ultra-violent days and nights where corporations are people and the people have had enough. This is how it begins. A new day. A new deal. A new reckoning. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is not your daddy’s or your grandfather’s politician. Charles Cicirella 8/21/15

Friend or Foe? (For James Michael Shepard) Blank page friend or foe? Typewriter keys friend or foe? Intellect friend or foe? “I'm nothing but a stranger in this world.” I watched him perform “Astral Weeks.” I watched him turn heavy feelings into brave clouds. Ego friend or foe? Principles friend or foe? Intellectual property friend or foe? I’ll never forget those railroad tracks on Maynard Avenue. How at first they kept me up all night. Then after a couple of days I couldn’t fall asleep without the clicking and clacking. Inspiration friend or foe? Creativity friend or foe? Desire friend or foe? He lived like a defrocked monk or damaged soldier. He picked through the wreckage with a diddley-bow-sonic-screwdriver. He identified with the Passion Play because he had nailed himself to his own “American Face” long before Forced Exposure shined a lightbulb on his swollen appetite. Time friend or foe? Madness friend or foe? Life and death a necessary evil or just another guiltless pleasure? Charles Cicirella 8/22/15

Klecko, Finley and the Infinite Some people get it. Others don’t. This dynamic duo gets it in spades. They bring the snap back to the chat. The pork back to the pork pie hat. The insanity back to the madness of creative otherness. When they blew through Cleveland they offered an inflatable raft of good vibes to everyone in attendance. There was nothing arid, dank or polluted to the delivering of their punchlines and poetry. What if poets were just people and didn’t concern themselves with the cult of personality? That’s what I experienced as I watched, studied and drank in this Martin and Lewis comedy team and was reminded that the best poetry is always bare-knuckled and derives straight from the blood and guts of humankind. Some people get it. Others think they do and fail miserably as they slink along like a cheap knockoff of the Lizard King. Nothing Klecko and Finley did was half baked and I believe that’s because their intentions were pure and their ingredients came directly from the creative zeitgeist and not from their peckers. I feel very fortunate to have been present when they blew up Cleveland, Ohio. There was nothing sinister, self-serving or politically motivated to the way they presented their fire and brimstone cantos to the rock and roll capital of the world. What if poets were just people and when they stepped onto the stage they shared themselves with the audience and left the gimmicks and the hyperbole at home? That’s what I witnessed when this tent revival from St. Paul, Minnesota blessed us with their goodness and True Grit swagger. They brought the sublime back to the ridiculous. The mystery back to the Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. The regal glow back to the faded love of yesterday’s gone by. Charles Cicirella 8/23/15

It’s a Paisha Thing Need to climb inside of her rhythm and blues. Want to experience her “Soul Kitchen” as I climb up the side of a building like Spiderman and not once look down at the falling ground. She’s black and I’m white and our babies would be cream colored and that fills me with such joy and resounding yawps of happy synergy. One night we spoke on the phone and it was like a symphony of pleasure and passionate readiness. Tonight we talked on the phone and it was an unholy mess of noise and unfulfilled promise. I have a pretty good idea how clueless I oftentimes can be, but when we pulled up with her Ethiopian takeout order and I saw her standing there I knew I wasn’t crazy believing that we could connect on new levels of wonder having everything to do with our universal minds and the spirits of our persecuted ancestors. I was up all night drinking tap water straight from the nozzle and jonesing on the thought of us just hanging out, playing Uno, neither one of us caring who won as long as the weed didn’t run out and the Olympic fires kept burning. I wish to witness Paisha as relaxed as she possibly could ever be. When the weights and measures of the world are not demanding all of her formulated time and energy and the muses are reigning down upon her like Martin Luther King Jr.’s most prophetic of dreams. I sat in the audience and watched as she recited one of her poems from memory. I tried conveying to her afterwards just what this performance meant to me, but I could tell I was not getting across how moved and emotionally charged I became when she poured herself onto the killing floor as a newborn being freed from the folds of an ancient rebellion. It’s a Paisha thing and I think we must get tee-shirts made and then maybe people will start to comprehend that not only is she a soul singer carried by the wind, but that she delivers the facts and just the facts of why we all need to better get along before diving from the idyllic cliffs to be either killed or born again. Charles Cicirella 8/23/15

Moon over Miami or “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord” Sometimes I like to walk around the house squeezing one butt cheek and making popping sounds with my mouth. Sometimes I like to think about sneaking up on you and surprising you by being someone completely different than the asshole you’re always expecting. Sometimes I think about shaving my entire body and being the very first Jewish-Sicilian seal to crawl across this broken and defiled planet of ours. We best go to Cuba right now before the spoils of capitalism reign down upon that small country like thunder and lightning from a very drunk and greedy God. We best pull ourselves up by our bootstraps before the conservatives shower us with Judas kisses and betray all of our best intentions by being the assholes they always are. We best not stop believing that the people can and will ready a militia and take down the sick fucks in power who think it’s completely acceptable to disenfranchise anyone who does not look like them or love like them or have the same color money as them. Sometimes I like to parade around the house like some floozy from a bygone era when big hair was all the rage and being enraged did not land you in such hot water. Sometimes I like to believe we’re all cut from the same dishcloth until I open my eyes to all of the pain and suffering too many are experiencing because too many people claim to be Christians, but act more like heathens. Sometimes I think about moving to Denmark so I can once and for all let my guard down and be the freak I’ve always aspired to be. We best get our ducks in a row because before you know it even Daffy and Donald are going to be sent to concentration camps. Their feathers singed from the gas as another Peking duck lands on the table of another unsuspecting American family. We best do away with turning the other cheek and figure out some way to be stern without coming across like another schoolyard bully or dictator in waiting. We best not give up our ghosts before we leave our own personal and indelible impressions upon this land of a thousand lakes and hills. I am Jack to your Jill or better yet I am Shirley to your Laverne and I have always understood you even when both of our chips were down and even a red hot poker would not completely awaken us from this hell on Earth. Charles Cicirella 8/24/15

Absorption & Abstraction Listening to “Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)” and not giving a shit. Jerry is singing and Bob is blowing the harp. It’s cutting through me like an old murder ballad. James Brown is now singing “That’s Life” and it makes me smile from ear to ear. I feel like the Joker minus courtside seats. Talked on the phone earlier with a friend. He was trying to tell me his philosophy on all things coming from the light, but I wouldn’t listen because "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I will not allow the hate to consume me, but I will also not pretend everything is hunky dory when nothing could be further from the truth. If there is a God then there is a Satan, it’s just the way it is because if anything is ever going to work out it must first be polished and then polarized by all forces both great and small. I pulled myself over earlier for drunk driving and the crazy thing is I haven’t even driven a car in over twenty five years. I refused the breathalyzer and am now sitting in jail waiting for someone to post my bail. It’s really not all that bad except that I’m not at all comfortable taking showers with so many other men who may or may not actually be guilty of something. I know I must just keep saying to myself when in Rome, do as the Romans do as I grimace and take it up the ass. Listening to “It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World” now and thinking about when James Brown fled from the cops high on PCP. Of course none of what I just wrote went down the way it was reported and the real facts are Brown was the one being harassed by the cops. This being one more example of not being able to believe anything that you read in the newspaper or see on TV. I’m alone, but not lonely. I’m scared, but not afraid. I’m a coward, but not yellow-bellied. I tried reaching out to you, but you wouldn’t give me the time of day or for that matter the benefit of the doubt and I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. My voice continues to cry in the wilderness because even though I was once baptized I’m not sure how well it took or if the Holy Ghost and I ever really saw eye to eye on any of the truly important issues like absorbing and dispelling your enemies’ hate and loving free of abstraction. Charles Cicirella 8/25/15

Fresco 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

Percolating (For Joni Soule) Words haunt me like a reverie. Words hunt me down like a Siberian tiger. Words hurled at me like a handful of bad medicine. Opened the can of ginger ale praying it would take care of my upset stomach. Lowered my guard believing we would get on like the best of friends during the worst and most inopportune of times. I have this bad habit of expecting people to deliver on the promises they haven’t even promised me. I’m funny that way like Judy Garland in her prime or Groucho Marx during his last appearance on The Dick Cavett Show. Words bring out the very best and all the rest in me. Words channel their wild-thing-energies as the mask slips from my Easter Island face. Words give more of a shit than most people I know who are disingenuous at best and completely beyond reproach when their backs are nailed to the unaffected wall. So tired of attempting share my work with other writers and never hearing anything back because their either too busy wrestling with their own angels or haven’t the good sense to allow outside voices inside their Wallace and Gromit heads. Sick of fighting myself at every turn as I call everyone else out for the skeletons in their closets while refusing to open my own Pandora’s Box of transgressions and wrongdoings. Ready and willing to go the distance once I’ve changed my shoes and made a real effort to destroy my bad attitudes once and for all. Words like a trail of breadcrumbs lead me through a forest primeval of grim self- realizations. Words exacting a toll that I find more and more perilous to wrap my creativity around as I sacrifice another precious memory to the great God Pan. Words thrown out with both the baby and the bathwater as the next poem percolates and another cup of coffee grows taciturn. Charles Cicirella 8/27/15

I’m My Own Worst Enemy I don’t own a pair of blue suede shoes but if I did, I’d prefer you didn’t step on them. We risk giving ourselves away when we hide in the shadows believing that is our only recourse when the bastards keep attempting to bring us down and all we want to do is create and not sweat so many of the small, insignificant details. I was lost and then I was found and then I was lost again and it had nothing whatsoever to do with twelve steps or pretending I was anonymous and standing in front of a bunch of strangers admitting to things I’m not even entirely convinced I ever actually did. I’m my own worst enemy like Bea Arthur was her own worst critic or Sammy Davis, Jr. was his own worst so and so when The Rat Pack made jokes at his expense and he just laughed it off as he carried their luggage and their nicotine-stained-egos around like it was nothing but another day at the plantation or Las Vegas casino. I’m my own worst enemy and I know it and I still haven’t done anything to change it because what’s the point when one’s truth is completely relative and one person’s self-hatred is another person’s self-discovery. I’m my own worst enemy when the shit is just about to hit the fan and instead of stepping out of the way of the whirling blades I get right in there and look forward to turning brown and smelling even worse than I already do. We must learn to take the knocks to our ego and to our noggins before it’s too late and another legend goes under the knife for some undisclosed illness and another rolling stone packs it in and succumbs to the bitter cold under a bridge in some unnamed city. I drank a hot toddy once in my life and it wasn’t in a ski lodge or some fortress with a bunch of SS soldiers. They say the Nazis were the salt of the Earth, and while what I say may not make any difference, I will tell you I think they had it all backwards as their evil deeds not only killed millions and millions of innocents, but also poisoned their country as a whole and has me questioning Germans to this very day. We cannot redact the past but that does not mean we should forget about it either because once our memories fail us we are bound to repeat too many atrocities and that won’t be good for anyone including our worst enemies. I have not been to Graceland yet, but I so look forward to going. Maybe the next time Bob Dylan is in Memphis my friend Dan and I can take a trip down south and also hit some Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives while we’re at it. We risk imploding if we keep everything bottled up inside and trust no one with our most private thoughts and “Over the Rainbow” secretive lives. I was standing out on the veranda the first time I spied you walk into a room. You did it with such an air of inscrutability that left me both shaking and endlessly curious about who you were and where you would be going next. Charles Cicirella 8/27/15

The square root of Klecko is more Klecko. I want to write a good poem. Possibly even a great poem. A happy poem and not a sad poem. I want to write a poem about giving and getting head. Not good head, but spectacular head. The kind of head you get on a true pint of Guinness. It has been brought to my attention my poetry is not getting off the ground which I find surprising because I am always careful to attach tiny wings to each and every poem I write. Perhaps the wings are too tiny or maybe I just need to write shorter and more succinct poetry. It has also been mentioned that my style has a kind of syrupy despair which cements my character. Now the crazy thing about this particular insight is I believe it was meant as an actual compliment which I find rather troubling and in fact fills me with some of that same syrupy despair. It has also been brought to my attention that “the universe is the same place at the end of your pronouncement as it was at the beginning” and that “great poets would not let that happen.” To this line of criticism I have to say when I sit down to write (and when I am fully inspired and all or most of my sparkplugs are sparking) I give up control and let the writing and the words and the creative zeitgeist take me where it will. And this is not meant as an excuse, but instead as a lantern to be shined on one’s dark night of the soul. I want to give it all I got and leave those Confederate Generals from Big Sur in the unassailable dust. I have no problem with criticism when it is constructive and actually even when it is destructive as long as it’s in good taste. When someone though is only trying to bring me down a notch or two because they’re incapable of dealing with their own failing will when then I have a problem and will take issue with the “critique” spewed at me like vomit or ego stew. Now some people will read this and think I am talking about Klecko when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. In our lives we’re lucky, actually blessed if we find one possibly two people who unconditionally have our backs and are good on their word and are an actual human being and not just some facsimile of what is passed off as a human being in these days and nights of The Walking Dead. None of us are perfect and those of us who think that they are better do a damn better job of convincing me and the rest of the world before they offer their two cents which is not even worth a plumb nickel in these days of The Last of the Mohicans. Charles Cicirella 8/28/15

Unconditional Heartache (For Juliet) 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

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

Word-Ghosts in the Ether 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

Tarot Cards and Dissonance 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