Outside the Realm of Possibility (For Terry Provost) I missed the mark. I could not find the g-spot of this poem. I looked and looked. I looked high and low. This poem is androgynous. This poem claims no sexual orientation. This poem is a Barbie or Ken doll. This poem will whip you for stepping over the line. This poem is a chalk outline of its former self. This poem is chivalrous and believes in holding the revolving door open for everybody. This poem will do no harm. This poems eradicates evil by simply coloring outside the lines. I missed the point. I could not find the strength to save myself so I named names and became a pariah. I wished and wished. I wished on a shooting star and a tortilla chip that resembled our savior. This poem is apolitical. This poem resists the notion of holding any type of office whatsoever. This poem is a tall drink of water and a cheap shot to the ribs. This poem will give you a standing ovation for standing up to the ghosts in the machine. This poem is a loaded gun and a not so surprising admission of guilt. This poem is argumentative and will filibuster if and when the fan blades begin to spin. This poem will beat you down for looking at it when it bites into a sandwich. This poem is truth serum injected into your milk-blood when you’re on the losing end. Charles Cicirella 10/12/15

Nico Here this is. I think it will turn into a poem. I didn’t know if you liked flowers and chocolate so I thought I’d give this a go. Nothing you did or said or didn’t do or say disappointed me in the least little bit. In fact I found myself hanging onto your silence like a child holds onto a balloon. You kept me guessing which is something I need to do more of not less. We drink or don’t drink to excess. We fuck or don’t fuck to excess. We pretend or don’t pretend we’re something we’ve never even considered being and maybe that will come in handy or maybe it won’t depending on extenuating bullshit. Perhaps you were expecting poetry that rhymed or had more of a classic feel to it. Perhaps you were expecting nothing and could care less what I may pull off. I will not tell a lie, as I listened to you sleep I thought about you in that dorky RESIST tee-shirt and it made me smile and sigh like Woodstock from the Peanuts. I really do hope you’ll call again because I would like to get to know you better. I didn’t mind when you fell asleep nor did I find it at all rude or insensitive. I promise not to say your full name because I don’t want you to feel any distress, but I do hope you’ll say mine again because it made me feel alive for the first time in donkey's years. Charles Cicirella 10/18/15

Fever Dream My last fever dream was a real doozy. I can hardly remember it and yet still I’m reeling. It was in Rome and I was doing like all the other Romans were doing until I wasn’t and the shit started running down my legs like an uncomfortable plot twist. You can pretend we don’t get along. You can continue to say you don’t do emotional attachments. And yet your actions speak louder than your quiet words when the phone rings and it says private or unknown number. It was pitch dark and I was listening to Darin Bulai’s soundtrack in my head. His vinyl poetry and sonic-screaming-soapbox-sermons keep my Pope-On-a-Rope Soap bobbing and weaving and that’s a very good thing when bending over might just get me an unwelcomed poking in the nether regions of my subterranean undercard. Let’s start back at the beginning when babies had that new car smell and your car couldn’t drive you back and forth to the medical marijuana dispensary because you discovered it was the only way to take the edge off this thing called survival of the wickedest. My last fever dream nearly landed me in the pokey. Not even sure what I was thinking, but before I knew it I was dressed up like a ninja and my stealth moves would have impressed both Fred and Ginger. It was in Paris, Texas and I was doing like all the other Marlboro cowboys taking a drag off my cigarette and pretending I wasn’t afraid of dying of lung cancer or some worse malady, when all of a sudden you appeared before me like Glinda the Good Witch of the South and everything seemed like it might just work out as I had planned when I was young and free will didn’t feel like such a left handed compliment. Charles Cicirella 10/23/15

Emerald Isle I’m a complete fucking idiot. No really it’s true. I’d show you all of the facts and figures to explain this hypothesis, but what’s the point when first impressions have already been made and I played so fast and loose with the truth. Your sweetness is what pulled me in and then when seeing your body that was the nail in my rather small, but homey coffin. You do me in with every utterance you make and every breath you take and if this were a Police song and I was Sting this is when I’d add a hook and do my very best to reel you in. Some people wear their heart on their sleeve while others wear their entire soul map right there on their head protruding out like a unicorn horn or shooting star. Let’s talk turkey. I am so thankful you’re not one of those skinny girls who have no clue how to be real and are always lying with their eyes and easily opened thighs. I knew from the very first second we talked that you’d tell it exactly like it is and never mask your feelings by pretending you are someone you’re not. I’m a complete fucking idiot because instead of telling you the truth I told you what I believed you wanted to hear and now I’ve lost you. Oh who am I kidding you were always too good for me anyhow. Charles Cicirella 10/24/15

A Sense of Urgency I feel it. Do you? Does it wash over you like blood and fury? Let’s quit cold turkey. Let’s do something different. Let’s flip off the status quo and let our freak flags fly like big hairy kites in the cornflower blue skies. I found it? Did you? Did it sneak up behind you and make your heart skip a beat? I so badly wanted to stick my finger or penis inside of her but she said we didn’t know each other well enough and that it probably wouldn’t be a very good idea. I asked her if she felt the same sense of urgency that I felt and she responded by looking deeply into my fistful of dollar eyes as she switched back on Turner Classic Movies. We watched Mean Streets, Taxi Driver and Sunset Boulevard then we made love like two ravenous sharks in desperate need of a dolphin or sea lion. I decided against it. Either the world isn’t ready for me or I’m not ready for the world so I decided to call it a day and crawl back into my hermit crab shell. Let’s exist beyond our meager means because I’m tired of eating only vanilla ice-cream and riding on Merry-Go-Rounds that do nothing except go around in circles. Charles Cicirella 10/24/15

Dissipation Words pop into my head and I know it’s time to make the doughnuts. Some people punch a timeclock. I coldcock death with a typewriter ribbon and bad attitude. I can’t hold it any longer. It’s like when you were a little kid and your mom would drag you clothes shopping. While she’s in the changing room I’m trying hard not to pee my pants or worse yet shit my brown corduroy Toughskins. When I lose my train of thought I do my very best to empty my mind of anything and everything attempting to invade my purple mountain majesties. You’d be surprised at how many people, places and things want to usurp a poet or worse upset the applecart and turn Eve into just another flat chested junkie whore. I won’t hear of it. Either you turn up the instruments or fire the band because it makes no sense whatsoever that the man who brought it all back home would get swallowed up by the darkness and allow the sycophant shadows to have their way with him. Sometimes in the middle of my Midwestern war I feel like sending Darin Bulai a smoke signal because I know he would pick up on my cancer and answer back with the proper and most haunting of prescriptions. While in line at the shelter to get my doughnut I heard some guys who the night before had slept by the railroad tracks had gotten their heads beaten in with an iron pipe. That could have just as easily been me if I hadn’t stayed at the bus stop across from the cemetery with some stranger who thought he was showing me the ropes when really I was the one protecting him from things that go bump in the night. Words snap, crackle and pop inside my skullbank and before you know it I’m wondering why all the poetry gigs are going to the same couple of people. I remember a different time when Cleveland liked to shake it up and the dragons it bred were the same dragons it later did away with. Shit’s dissipating and maybe that’s just the way it goes. Or maybe I need to figure out which end of the bull is up and make it to Damascus before the sun sets and all the good conversions have taken hold. Please don’t turn me from your door. I’m a lonely, hungry pilgrim who has a hole in his heart the size of Christina Ricci’s eye sockets. Words pop into my head and before you know it I’m jumping into a nonexistent telephone booth, putting on my lame superhero costume and fighting crime like all the rest of the working stiffs. Charles Cicirella 10/25/15

I Hear the Wind Chimes Darin I burned my thumb lighting the pipe. Darin I bit the inside of my cheek while watching the third Republican debate. Darin I thought of you while eating a piece of Marie Callender's Razzleberry Pie with a couple of scoops of Breyers® Coffee Ice Cream. “Now even bolder with 100% Dark Colombian Coffee.” Poetry is my gateway drug. Not heroin, Christina Ricci or bath salts. I like to snort a couple lines of blank verse and then get all cozy in front of the old white 32 inch Panasonic television watching TCM. I’ve discovered the commercials only put off the inevitable and I need all the crushing finality one lonely, overtly sensitive Jewish poet can handle. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t mind Christina Ricci on all fours looking back at me mouthing the words “ride me like your little pony”, but at this point I’d settle for a couple primo Quincy episodes and maybe a Cagney and Lacey to cut the testosterone levels. I remember the time I heard my half Japanese girlfriend break wind. She was in the bathroom and even with the door closed I heard a little trumpet sound and knew somewhere an angel had just gotten their wings. Darin I just took a swig of Coca-Cola and I would apologize for all this shameless product placement, but I’m thinking making I can get an endorsement deal and not have to wake up and make the doughnuts or bagels ever again. I’m sure it takes all kinds of athleticism to hit a little white ball into a hole or shoot a B-ball into a hoop or take a pigskin and throw it down the field while a defensive line attempts to blitz you out of existence, but please try and understand it’s no walk in the park sitting in front of a blank screen, waiting for what seems like a miracle to come. I’ve never thought much of athletes and I believe that’s because they receive so much attention while writers and really all artists are treated if they’re lucky like second class citizens and if they’re not so lucky simply ignored because who has the time, patience or attention span to stop and read your poem or listen to your latest song or come by the gallery after work to check out your latest art installation. Thanks for listening and for giving a shit even if you’re only pretending. I’m going to take another hit and this time I’ll try and do a better job when it comes to crashing and burning. Darin I know neither one of us is helpless and yet still sometimes this feeling of paralysis is too much to cope with and I find myself holding my breath a little longer than I should. Charles Cicirella 10/30/15

Remember Remember the way things used to be. No. Remember first impressions and don’t allow them to lock you into a mindset that grinds everything and everyone into the pieces and parts of a larger and more ineffective machine. Yes. I’m not here to tell you anything you don’t already know. I’m not a life coach or some masturbatory guru who gets off on watching his or her followers consume each other on a molecular level. We had plenty of that when we were all living in a yellow submarine and I’d like to think we’ve moved past that kind of prehistoric belief system. I don’t need nor want for you to think of me as a poet but instead as a parser of words because statistics don’t mean a damn thing if you don’t have enough will power to get up and go when an evil doer enters the room and tries to coop your soul. Remember what it felt like to hold a pen or pencil in your hand and how liking something was a personal triumph and not just another public expression of your selfie love for a society that went bust long before the gold rush was the new kid in town. Yes I want you to get off my lawn and while you’re at it get off my planet until you admit what the white man did to the Native Americans is an unforgivable act. Period, end of story, game over you have no more pinballs left and I’m tired of your revolving door politics. Some people make history while others rely upon histrionic excuses to get them through the next five hundred years or more with hardly a scratch to their Taj Mahal souls. Let’s try again to go the distance and while we are at it I promise not to remind you of all the times I did not kill you for being such an incredible asshole. Yes. Charles Cicirella 11/7/15

Because Because making a difference actually does mean something even if explaining it is easier said than done. Because we can do more than just coexist. We can prosper and the greed and the gluttony and the outsourcing can end with a smile instead of a glower. She said I was being snarky, passive aggressive, cranky and manipulative when nothing could have been further from the truth. When she texted I really was on the toilet with the squirts from something I’d eaten the night before and I’m still feeling crappy today. Because we make better lovers than fighters and if you need proof just look in the mirror and be careful not to fall in love with your reflection like Narcissus did once upon a time. Proving that believing in your own press can be more than fatal, it can be both infectious and insatiable like Salted Caramel Bourbon BonBons. I’d make an example of myself, but what good would that do when I fall through every crack laid out before me like a child’s chalk drawn hopscotch course or the entrails from your favorite flattened roadkill. Because sometimes just mouthing the words I love you is plenty good enough while other times even a Cheshire grin will not get you through the mirror. I know I don’t belong and I don’t pride myself on that outsider status, but I’ve also started to understand sweating the small stuff will only you get you five to ten in the house of detention or if you’re even more unlucky nearly fifteen years of feeling stuck with no clue of how to break free and raise yourself from the dead. I write these words and then if I’m really lucky Mr. Kane will ride in on his bay horse and lay down a riff that will fuse my words together and make this watch tick. Because going it alone doesn’t make a lick of sense when you have a second pair of hands willing to pitch in and make the trains run on time. Because “I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” Because truth is stranger than fiction and once you have accepted that we can move on and find some peace in the arms of another Manchurian Candidate. Charles Cicirella 11/8/15

Dopedom (For Tommy Jay) The Dude quakes in Tommy’s most excellent Harrisburg shadow. He takes rock ‘n’ roll down to the basement where it’s always thrived. You never have to worry about standing on ceremony with Mr. Jones because pomp and circumstance is not programmed into his primordial code. He understands that to get from point A to point C you have to slog through point B and in this particular case B is for Bitch and Bastard. I woke up in the midsts of a fever dream. I was in Key West seated at a round table covered in green felt. On my right was Peter Lorre. Next to Peter was Ernest Hemingway and next to Ernest was Tommy Jay. Papa’s eyes were already bloodshot and Tommy’s were not far behind. No one pulls off a jogging suit like Mr. Jones, except maybe Elvis. There’s something to be said for a person who gets the true significance of being built for comfort, not speed. I like knowing Tommy’s the one behind the drum set when I’m on stage because he knows precisely how to smash through my glass walls, dragging me onto that stage, kicking and screaming like an infant who doesn’t like hearing the word no. Charles Cicirella 11/9/15

I’m Listening I’m pretty sure I’ve written this poem before. In fact I think I have written it several times, in different guises with lots of Vaseline around the blowhole. And let’s not forget the candy you used to entice her out of a dead marriage. Some poets deserve to die many deaths before they’re finally put to bed with milk, cookies and a dog eared copy of War and Peace lying next to them like an inflatable sex doll or another excuse to torture themselves before falling asleep like an exhausted child. I’m listening with all of my faculties’ razor sharp and ready to rip into this motor-driven, redolent feast like a poet who knows they’re about to be rejected so they best get as much paint out of the tube as they can before the buzzer goes off and Tom Wilson annoys you for simply doing his job. I’m listening because you leave me no other choice as the jackals turn into sidemen right before your weathered Moby Dick eyes and even Gregory Peck wouldn’t be able to save you from this destiny you so doggedly pursued like Jack the Ripper on a tear. You’re tired, I’m tired, I bet even those emptying the ashtrays are tired but you still have a sheaf of papers that must be explored and delivered into a microphone that has no idea what’s to come and how music and history and personal relationships and the garment district we’ll never be quite the same again. I’m writing to you with no hope of these words actually reaching you because the times most certainly have changed and the guards at the gate are even keener on keeping the unwashed masses from your door. Please understand I have no hidden agenda nor are my motives very sharp. I just find myself connecting with everything you’re laying down and it makes me wish we could go see a movie or hang out in a bookstore or just eat some pie in a non-descript diner somewhere in America or maybe we could hang out in your castle watching The Third Man. I bet your take on Harry Lime, Orson Welles and Graham Greene would shiver my timbers and leave me in a mess on the stone cold floor as you giggled just like you did in ’65 when the world was laid out before you like cinéma vérité and you made it your own because what other choice did you have? I’m pretty sure I’ve written these words before, but that’s alright because you get the point and understand that which is pointless is oftentimes the nightingale’s code as the world crumbles around your designer Italian boots and you make the most out of the words and the melodies and the fire and ice breaking down your walls and leaving you completely spent like a ghost whose ticking time bomb intellect refuses to back down or find someone less deserving to haunt. Charles Cicirella 11/11/15

Fuck Stigma (For Mikal) I know it’s easier said than done. I know having to be reminded of memories you’d rather keep locked up in a vault is beyond excruciating and non-essential in these hard pressed and hard worn times. I know you’re not a martyr, but try and keep in mind the stigmas Christ wrestled with when he was up there on that cross. “Time passes slowly when you're lost in a dream.” Just ask Zimmerman. Just ask Jiminy Cricket when he was doing his best to convince Pinocchio he was a real boy. We all have a part to play. At least that’s what I like to believe when denial has worn out its welcome and the darkness no longer comforts me like it once did. We’re writers and I guess that’s a badge of honor if you’re into that sort of thing, but we both know that’s a waste of time and that being an Eagle Scout isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You wield the pen like a scalpel as you take the tiger by its tail and show William Blake whose boss and why a "Glad Day" isn’t just for the fallen any longer. Sometimes dreams really do come true and you know exactly what I mean as you become enveloped in her silver lining and forget all about the gossipy clouds. I’m channeling my inner orangutan as I sit here on the floor writing these words in Cleveland, Ohio and send them to you in Woodland Hills, California. When the world breaks apart it also heals in pieces and parts. The way you hear music and internalize music is no small feat and this blessing will continue to bless you no matter the weather breaking outside your window or inside your gaunt frame. I know it’s easier said than done, but you’ve never been a pushover, no matter how difficult the memories are to face. Charles Cicirella 11/15/15

Inspiration Sucks the Very Life Out Of Me and I Like It (It’s Only Poetry and I like It) (This one’s for all the poets out there who have an actual clue. You know who you are. Hold your applause, but by all means pat yourselves on your back when it’s all said and done and I’ve disappeared out the backdoor.) I’m inspired. I’m not. I have no idea where the inspiration goes, but I cannot even begin to tell you how ecstatic I am when it returns and chooses to play with me again. I was a thief, but I wasn’t anybody’s savior so you can stuff your paltry impressions of me inside your Sherlock pipe and suck it at your own discretion. Ya I’m on food stamps, but who isn’t that’s actually worth a damn and is willing to run at the wall with all the gumption they’ve got before they cannot even recognize their best friend or their best friend’s dog and they’re sitting on a bench drooling, feeding the pigeons silences. I’m not a tall drink of water. In fact I’m not even a shot and a beer, but that’s okay because I still pack enough of a punch to set you back on your heels if you’re into that sort of thing. I met John Burroughs in Canton, Ohio at some coffee shop I’m pretty sure I’ll never set foot in again. I really thought great things would come from that fortuitous meeting, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Of course my instincts as focused and as razor sharp as they often are doesn’t mean I always get it right or for that matter even know what’s really happening much of the time. We lean into it. We grow our hair long and believe we’re letting our freak flags fly when actually we’re too buttoned up for our own good and until we figure out how to unzip our minds the terrorists will win with their fear and their hatred and their loathsome way of turning our most hallowed of beliefs into some vile mind game ensuring our very destruction. We destroy our freedoms by peddling so much rhetoric it’s impossible any longer to tell the good guys from the bad guys, if there was ever a difference to begin with. Whenever someone espouses the words holy war just know they’re completely full of radioactive shit and will do their very best to run you down in the street like a dog because if they don’t silence you or at the very least blow themselves up while trying to silence you, then they’ll have to live with themselves for another uninspired, methodical day and that’s something no one wants to face, especially when they have no real love to give. Charles Cicirella 11/18/15

The Fog of Love Lost in the dark stank of your love. I’m drowning and not even Dear Abby can right this ship. I’m full of rice and beans and lots of other stuff I refuse to own up to without my attorney present. The fog of love is not happenstance or for that matter even circumstances gone awry. There were no coincidences when we met other than me being asleep in front of that ballpark in South Bend and you at another gate waiting like a bandit for the world to end. It’s time for me to lay down because oftentimes only sleep can cure what ails us and that includes the stench of guilt dripping from our every exposed and unexposed cavities. Memory Lane did not quite suit me so I put on a football uniform and pretended I was an athlete for a spell. No one believed me and before you know it I was back on the bench wishing a cheerleader or band geek would take pity on my wallflower standing. I sit here waiting for the words to come and when they don’t I do my best to fake it until I either make it or break into the teensiest pieces and parts of another comatose poet, hell bent on diving headfirst into oblivion without even a spell checker to right my wrongs. I know you thought I was a better man so I bet it came as quite a shock when the curtain was pulled back and you realized my strings could be pulled just as easily as any puppets and my survivor status was about to be revoked for failing to answer the call when Darwin came knocking on my tortoise shell. Lost in the perversity of another hangover that could have been so easily avoided. I don’t believe Charlie Sheen has a compassionate bone in his soulless body and what’s with all these self-serving actors who have everything handed to them on a gold or silver platter and still expect unprotected sex even when they’re HIV positive because “he was famous long ago for playing the electric violin on Desolation Row.” It’s true not all of us have tiger’s blood or are on the path to “WINNING”, but we mustn’t forget being a complete unknown often outweighs all the red carpets, free gift bags and free drugs because going through life as an anonymous entity really is a gas, gas, gas and beats the rude awakening of no longer being a celebrity and not even being able to land a commercial for toe fungus. Charles Cicirella 11/18/15

I Don’t Want To Be Happy I don’t want to be happy. There I said it. The cat is out of the bag or the box or wherever it was hiding. It’s no great mystery. I always feel like the other shoe is waiting to drop and happiness is just putting off the inevitable. So I’ll sit here and write and vent and eat and write some more and try and do my best to not wonder why no one ever calls or asks how I’m doing. I don’t want to be happy it’s just a burden. And maybe I don’t really mean that, but I am tired of putting in the work with little to no real payoff. So this time I’m going to stick to my guns and if you don’t like it well you can be one more person I’ve let down. I’m forty six years old and I like to joke that I’m an irascible Care Bear and perhaps it’s true or maybe I’m just an arrested adolescent who refuses to get their shit together because responsibility is such a drag and survival of the fittest proves nothing except that tortoises live for a really long time and the early bird gets the worm and the morning newspaper. I’m the curmudgeon living under the bridge that all of the children’s books warn you about, but I try to always be an honest broker even when I’m lying to myself and the Queen of Denial has become my best and only trustworthy friend. Let’s not mince words or put anchovies on our pizza because they’re too damn salty and minced words are only good for haiku and telling someone to fuck off. People will tell you only the strong survive and that may be true, but I see lots and lots of weak people doing the daily grind and they seem to be doing just fine. I don’t trust that any of us are really safe. Home invasions scare the crap out of me and so does intimacy with another creative being because people who are good at expressing themselves always seem like they’re the first ones to crack. Charles Cicirella 11/22/15

Sketch Comedy Touch my penis. And I will rub your vagina. We’ll either enjoy it or we won’t. That’s how the cookie often crumbles when your mouth is filled with milk and despair. We were going nowhere fast so I put on the breaks just to see what would happen. I’ll never forget watching as you went through the windshield and the sickly pangs of joy I felt as the delicate creature you once were became indelicate and indisposed. When I got out of the car I couldn’t believe how sexy you still were and how the whole mangled and mashed thing worked for you. Stroke my issues of low self-esteem. And I will somehow reach your candy center before you become sour and muted. You always had this off-kilter way of making me feel brand new when my thrift store body and second hand intellect had had enough and there was no point going on, especially when our love had taken a detour and I was tired of all those three ways you were becoming enmeshed in. That’s how the femme fatale breaks when her eyes are bigger than her stomach and her legs will only bend so far back before they snap like insubordinate twigs or sugar free candy canes. I used to believe we would make it through no matter the harsh conditions swirling around us like Frosty the Snowman with a crystal meth problem or Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with a nose so bright that the PoPo knows exactly where to look when rounding up the usual suspects. Some people cannot get enough cowbell while I’ve learned less is most definitely more, especially when it’s next to impossible training your significant other to play all of the parts in your next sketch comedy. You cannot make someone do something just because you demand it of them unless you’re a dictator and what fun is there in that if you always know what the outcome will be and genocide becomes just another over played hand you’ll most likely get tired of once everyone has gone up in smoke. Charles Cicirella 11/23/15

Bottom of the Well I don’t know how we got here, but here we are all the same. It’s chilly and dark and all hope has been vanquished. Poetry is not a whore or a manservant. It’s another tool, another form of expression like insurance fraud but far more lucrative. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m taking about because I know you speak the language of love and hate and all of the other squishy emotions existing between the South and North Poles. I remember when we met in that diner on the outskirts of the city. I wanted to order chocolate cake, but you said it wasn’t American so instead I ordered apple pie ala mode and choked it down like all good Christians choke on Jesus’s communion wafer. I’m not intending to be blasphemous that’s just how it comes out when there’s a gun to my head and terrorism has become the new patriotism. I’ll never forget when we fell down the rabbit hole, but because your name was Alice you were treated differently as the Queen of Hearts repeated over and over again "Off with their heads!" as I did nothing more than simply ask for a glass of H2O. I’ll never forget staring death in the hollows of its erroneous face and how emotionless and unforgiving I felt as I went mad from unsuccessfully trying to feed my head. I don’t know what it is about the bottom of this well, but something’s telling me I’ve been here before. The déjà vu washes over me like reruns of unaired Honeymooners episodes as you sit there in the corner of the room like some ventriloquist’s dummy that’s been left in the desert for forty days and forty nights. There’s something to be said for changing the conversation by simply changing the color of one’s stripes, but for some of us it’s not that easy or advisable when the terms dictated are the very same principles you abandoned so long ago. Charles Cicirella 11/23/15

"The horror! The horror!" Porn has gotten a hold of me and it won’t let go. I pray I come out of this black hole in one piece. Things used to be simpler. I could see a pair of tits and it was enough. Now I need the whole enchilada with all of the toppings including sour cream and hot sauce! We begin as children sneaking a peek at our father’s Playboys and hoping no one is the wiser. It’s like there’s something wrong with how we’re suddenly feeling and the shame drives us into a deep, dark emptiness that some of us never quite escape from again. I remember trying to find the word vagina in the dictionary and coming across Virginia and becoming quite perplexed. The last week or so I’ve again found myself on a model cam sight. I tend to watch the models from other countries. Kazakhstan has become a new favorite and of course the Japanese, Korean and Chinese models never fail to leave me wanting more. We trade in the shreds of our dignity for a shot at the fuzzy peach because we believe one look and we’ll be set free from our daily labors and night terrors. Nothing could be further from the truth as I discover myself feeling even more lonely and depressed as I slither from a room at six or seven in the morning wondering if the baggage I’m carrying will ever become lighter and less damning. Porn has got me in a stranglehold and I cannot break free. I’d get down on my knees if I believed there was someone actually listening who could wave a magic wand and make me a less obsessive compulsive horndog who wasn’t always so concerned about his next conjugal visit with his right hand and the release that may or may not come when everything is said and done. Things used to be simpler. You’d turn on Cinemax after everybody had gone to bed and you’d watch people sort of having “sex” and just the thought of you doing this naughty deed while your family slept upstairs was enough to get you off. Now everything has changed and antiseptic porn just won’t do the trick and you need harder core and more illicit images to push you over the edge. Charles Cicirella 11/28/15