Wreckage No one’s paying attention. Perhaps I was late to the game, but I am finally starting to understand if you don’t give a crap then no one else is going to care about you either. Maybe if you’re lucky an advocate will come forward when you’re lying on a pallet on the floor dying from nausea or starvation or a simple lack of empathy, but more than likely you will die alone without even a birthday cake to call your very own. People say ask for help if you’re hurting when actually no one really wants to listen to you crying in the wilderness. Even John the Baptist had to wait around for Jesus and look how that turned out. Welcome to America where we baptize you in the blood of children while lip service and prayer service are doing nothing for anyone including those poisoned in Flint, Michigan. I’m starting to believe it has nothing whatsoever to do with the bottom line as the haves do everything they possibly can with their co-opted power to completely wipe out the have nots. If you don’t believe me just look at all of the ways our homeland has devised to murder blacks and push back on anyone who isn’t white and of means and are a reminder that the American dream was intended for everyone and not just those with guns and a fat bank account and the inability to possess any honest to God compassion. I’m wrecked on White Castle Cheeseburgers and my own powerlessness to pull myself out of this self-appointed nose dive, but that’s okay because I swear to God I’ve never been less of a liability no matter what you may choose to believe. We need to push past the barriers and believe again in civil disobedience for and not against the people. We need to stop electing leaders who pander and capitulate to the lowest common denominator while not giving even a second thought to those who are actually in need of some heavenly aid. We need to get it through our thick skulls once and for all that bullies don’t make good leaders and also keep in mind that just because someone is a politician that doesn’t automatically mean they’re on the wrong side of the issues. I got the biggest stick I could find and poked around the wreckage looking for some ideals I could actually do something with. I became enamored with those who believed anything was and is still possible because without hope fear is just another growling dog with no real purpose. I understand these may in fact be the end times and yet I refuse to give up because surrender has never been in my DNA. Please keep in mind it’s always darkest before the dawn and that a slow train is coming up around the bend. Charles Cicirella 1/29/16

David Bowie Rain Ghosts David Bowie rain ghosts are beating down the pavement in Lyndhurst, Ohio. Time to pack another bowl and salute all the humans who have spun off this mortal coil. I want to open my mouth, tilt my head back and taste David Bowie on the tip of my redolent tongue. This isn’t about star fucking a space oddity or getting high on someone else’s stardust. I just miss the shit out of him. David Bowie rain ghosts scuttle across the black pavement like glass spiders from Mars. Your music exists inside of me like a thermometer taking my psyche’s temperature. You’re red, white and blue like no paid political actor will ever be and you never sold us a bill of goods or pretended to be someone you’re not. Your authenticity is the elephant in the room everyone is wary to get accustomed to because no one wants to visit the elephant graveyard this soon. Time to pack another bowl and imagine what it would have been like to run with you when we were both Young Americans. Charles Cicirella 2/3/16

Words & Gore Words and gore racing through my head like a Stephen King haunted diesel. I wish I could tell you how I’m feeling, but I keep those thoughts even from myself. Poetry is not an autopsy so stop lifting the sheet looking for a corpse. I’m committing these words to the cloud because I like how they sound when his music rides in and saves the day. The nights used to be quite lonely until I found a composer who actually gives a damn. He makes things more seamless when throwing everything including the kitchen sink at the endless words and gore I supply so shamelessly. I have no clue what I’m doing here. It just feels right so I thought I’d stand here until either you noticed me or I was arrested for loitering. Don’t pretend you didn’t feel it too when I brushed up against you and you winced. Not sure if I’m feeling inspired, but I don’t feel like making a scene so I am going to finish this poem against my better judgement. Words and gore roaring from my cavity as I reach for another square and wonder if I’ve seen all of the Seinfeld episodes. Poetry is not an affliction so stop scratching for an alibi and just confess to what you did or did not do in the heat of the moment. Charles Cicirella 2/7/16

Spinach I’m a poet. That’s who and what I am. I used to have a problem with labels until I realized some labels stick for a reason. And Popeye had it right all along. Even in the ill-starred Altman film he knew who he was and what he was after. And we’re all lame ducks if we don’t do our very best to push against the tide. The moon is not our friend and look what the sun did when Icarus got too close. I’m tired of bitching and I’m tired of moaning. Something is not quite right and I’m not sure what adjustments could be made to make things more desirable or at the very least fuckable. There is tragedy and there is comedy and that which lies in between and is the fuel we feed upon to keep us up and running regular. I’m a dirt bag. That’s what and where I’m at. I used to have a problem with labels until realizing some labels stick for a reason. And Olive Oyl had it right all along. Even in the ill-fated Altman film, Popeye, where Shelley Duvall was a slave to her art in more ways than I care to count. Charles Cicirella 2/10/16

When did idealism and our country die? Say what you will, but this isn’t our country anymore. The Republican sadists have been controlling the conversation for so long even the word liberal has been replaced with the less offensive word progressive. “The land of the free and the home of the brave” means zip unless you bear arms and aren’t afraid to use them. To be idealistic these days is to be seen as naïve and weak and why are so many people against pie and the prospect of it floating in the sky? The “powers that be” talk about reaching across the aisle when what they really mean is their way or the highway. I remember friends I had when I was a child who if they didn’t get their way would hold their breath until they were catered to like drug lords or Supreme Court Justices. I felt then the same way I do now let them turn blue and pass out because if everyone cannot have a seat at the table then why are we pretending civility exists at all? Go your own way and I’ll go mine because meeting in the middle nowadays means standing in the center and leaning right and I’m sorry but that’s no way to run a country unless you want to continually run it into the burning ground. I was frozen on the outskirts of town when I looked up and spied Lady Liberty looking quite bereft like she’d just lost her best friend. When I asked her what was wrong she choked back green tears as she talked about our country having died a premature death. She said it had everything to do with the truly ignorant holding onto their conservative and austere agendas and that “what's good for the goose is good for the gander” even and especially when the gander is drunk on power and hiding behind God’s skirt tails. I have been standing in place for so long I couldn’t tell you which way the wind is blowing or if the wind is blowing at all. We all suck if we’re just going to throw up our hands and say “It's what they're going to do. It's what they've always done.” I know in my red, white and blue heart it has always been the American way to push back against tyrants and that’s exactly what we must do now. Say what you will, but this isn’t our country anymore and if we want that to change anytime soon we must be the ones who affect that change otherwise it’s all for naught and the American exceptionalism we like to talk about is one big fat lie. Charles Cicirella 2/14/16

Valentine Ultimatum to Myself I always think I want to be in love until I am. I suffer from the same stigma Groucho Marx suffered from not wanting to be a member of a club that would have me as a member. At this point in my so far forty six years of living I have a pretty good idea what’s wrong with me. I’m just having such a difficult time understanding why it’s so hard for me to point out my good qualities. I’m not a serial killer. In fact the idea of taking someone’s life holds no interest for me whatsoever which I suspect is quite a good thing. My personal hygiene has never been up to snuff and it’s definitely something I need to look into and figure out why I don’t want to be clean. I wonder if it’s because I don’t feel I deserve to be clean. Like I’m punishing myself or am I just too lazy to get into the shower and wash away the dirt. I’m not much of a cereal eater. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m lactose intolerant or if I’m just too lazy to lift up the spoon and put it into my mouth. I wanted to go the distance with you until I saw how far away that actually was and decided instead to stay in watching the idiot box and eating more stupid food. I suffer from a low self-esteem that suffers from delusions of grandeur and if you’re not careful you’ll catch my disease and before you know it will be writing yourself fan letters and signing them in your own fecal matter. At this point in my so far forty six years of living I have a pretty good idea that my fifteen minutes of fame have come and gone and that it happened when I was in the crapper wishing I were someplace else. This valentine ultimatum to myself will get shoved in a drawer like all the rest of my writing and perhaps it will one day be discovered or perhaps not. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles and another complete unknown gathers no moss. Charles Cicirella 2/14/16

Spillage Spill your deepest, darkest secrets. If you’re an artist isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? If you live in a bubble how will you ever get to the truth? Perhaps the reason you’re not able to write isn’t because of age, but because you’ve locked your life up so tight you’ve suffocated your muses and turned away from the light. Being an artist isn’t a calling like I once believed it to be. In fact being an artist is less of a declaration and more of a reparation that will never be paid to those who are actually owed them. Our world falls on its face when absolute power corrupts absolutely and if you don’t know what I’m talking about just look in the mirror when sucking in your gut. I spilled the truth on my new Cashmere sweater and no amount of club soda is going to get the stain completely out. Sometimes in the middle of the night I wake up to find myself sleeping like a little lamb. Other times I wake up to find myself missing, only a note left on the pillow scrawled by an insolent child or incorrigible monster. And you think you got it bad well trust me we’re all either dying of cancer or know someone who is or has already given up their ghost to this profit making angel of death. Dying is big business and there’s no getting around that especially if you prefer to live on the dark side and your sexual proclivities harken back to an age when consent was not so ironclad. Do I like what I’m writing? Well to be perfectly honest that’s not the point. Do I agree with the words I’m spilling onto this screen? Again that’s beside the point. I’ve been told the truth will set you free. It’s also been recommended that I get a good lawyer if I decide to testify on my own behalf. The evidence was circumstantial, but public opinion was irrefutable so I sucked it up and pretended I was sorry for whatever crimes they said I committed. I no longer believe truth is in the eye of the beholder not when the beholder suffers from macular degeneration and rose tinted glasses have gone out of style. Go ahead and tell me something I don’t already know. There’s plenty I could still learn as her frozen eggs call out my name and I do my best to ignore them because I’m nobody’s daddy now. And you thought you could outdraw me when nothing could be further from the truth. The only thing that dwarfs the talent I believed I once possessed is John Hancock’s signature on the Declaration of Independence, but I’m over that now as I learn to live with my artistic irrelevance and the uncertainty of another brand new day. Charles Cicirella 2/15/16

Red Haired Renaissance Stranger (For Willie) I listened once. And I’m listening again. You’re not lost in the shadows and I respect that. The record swings like a red wheelbarrow. Your voice channels rays of welcoming sunshine. I’m swept along by your need for needing nothing. I’m listening thrice. As I feel a weathered and braided heartland embrace me. Trigger transcends space and time like the best Saturday matinee. This record reminds us that our stardust is reminiscent of days and nights to come. Your voice a sacred medicine wheel vital to keep us young at heart. We’re carried away by the bluesy smoke signals you create when exhaling so naturally. Charles Cicirella 2/18/16

Mental Tumult “Why the heck did "Mental Tumult" suddenly cause my mind to visualize pie?” Juliet Cook said that and it made me laugh and want a piece of coconut cream pie. She gets it like so many people don’t and she always comes through in the clutch even if what she’s going after does not appeal to your run-down senses. Her dog Sockeye passed away and it continues to make me sad because I know she lost a good and trusted friend and that friends like that don’t come along that often. My mental tumult is legendary and Juliet got a taste of this when I pulled my hair out in front of her because she wouldn’t spend every last second with me. That’s how I finally got into Twin Peaks because it was the only way to get her to sit still and spend some qualitative time with my dispossessed self. We break down into the littlest pieces and parts when pretending nothing affects us and denial becomes the only way we can make it another vaulted and vociferous day. I oftentimes write line to line with a blindfold on and my bladder full of pee and other less refreshing liquid refreshments. And I’ll never forget walking with you down 5th. Avenue as you went off to COSI and I just went off. Sometimes I think my mental tumult is the only thing that will get me through while other times I know if I don’t get my shit together soon it will all be for naught. We’re writers or we’re Whitehouse Chefs or we’re some other conflated concoction that may or may not make sense to the senseless masses and that’s okay because when it all comes out in the wash the blood stained reminders of past failed relationships will remain like a charmed amulet or your worst best kept secret. And I loved you when we first hung out at your apartment with the mice and Taxi Driver poster and I fell in love with you when the smoke cleared and The Subterraneans had finally been given their day in the sun. Charles Cicirella 2/19/16

Reality versus Shit-Crisis Let’s get down to what’s really wrong. I’m talking Marvin Gaye your daddy shoots you dead wrong. I’m talking out of my ass, but it’s okay because I come bearing two ply toilet paper and a wet vac if shit really goes sideways. I remember the first time you spilled the beans and how embarrassed you looked when I knelt down to help you gather them up and ultimately set them free. When I looked into your eyes I could see you’d loved your share of loser poets who believed their outsider status would either see them clear or silence them before they needed to go to Sears and buy a baby crib. I’ve always believed cults were for people who couldn’t think for themselves and I still believe that even though I’m having a problem even keeping a roof over my head. Let’s get down to the nitty gritty. I’m talking the nittiest grittiest grime you could ever hope to find when you’re dating some doofus hipster and they refuse to allow you to run your hands through their third world beard. I’m clearly talking out of both sides of my mouth because like Hillary Clinton I’m afraid you won’t like the real me so I keep repositioning myself on the issues in the hopes that I’ll build a better mousetrap or at least get out of this campaign with a shred of dignity. You wanted to know what’s really wrong. Well I’ll tell you it all started when you attempted to shut me down. If you don’t like the way I criticize and judge my way through life like a martyr hell-bent on either sacrificing themselves or catching a stray bullet while fetching the morning newspaper than its best we go our separate ways before one of us regains consciousness. I slipped myself a roofie and began to play I spy with my most trusted of invisible selves. I spy with my little eye a world that is nearly ready to implode. I spy with my little eye something red, white and blue that castrated itself a long time ago. Charles Cicirella 2/20/16

Disingenuous I don’t write with meaning in mind. I don’t read with meaning ever escaping and outlasting prisons of time. I like it when you slap me with your enduring recklessness. I braved the storm as the snow beat through us like a frozen heartbeat. You’re not a soldier no matter how many uniforms you wear. You’re not a lover no matter how many kisses you place on the Buddha’s forehead. I don’t believe in beliefs and that is why I’ll never be a zealot or a zebra trainer. I don’t portend to change the world with obvious puns or crossword puzzles dipped in honey and oxblood. I still can recall the first time we met. You were fancy and I was a stumblebum and nothing has changed and it never will. I don’t write with mind in meaning. I don’t covet the messages in a bottle because I know alcoholism will only leave you helplessly blind and desiring even more moral ambiguity. She was disingenuous to a fault, but I forgave her trespasses because the way she moaned was like a cavalcade of whispering fanatics. And when we made love I felt completely free for the first time in my Purina Puppy Chow life. Charles Cicirella 2/21/16

Words are just Words These words are just words. They’re not bullets or guns or knives or bombs strapped to your chest. These words are only words and yet they’re more powerful than any weapon could ever possibly be. They say people kill people not guns and I call foul on their politically motivated crapola. You want truth I say look in the eyes of the mothers whose children have been slaughtered because some founding fathers well over two hundred years ago said we had the right to bear arms. Now Scientology will tell you it’s all about the psychotropic drugs being handed out like candy and I call foul on that as well because insane or not we’re still shirking our responsibility and laying blame at someone else’s bloodstained door. These words are just words and still they can bring the mountain to Mohammed if you just know which buttons to push and how to turn on the safety. These words can bring an entire nation to their feet and this most definitely includes a divided nation that cannot agree on anything including the color of the sky. These words are not knives that will stab you in the back or a gun that will blow away your face or a bomb that could level an entire city block. These words are calls to action and these words are the healing salve that will put Humpty Dumpty and all the King’s men back together again. Charles Cicirella 2/21/16

Destinations (For Bob) I don’t know where the words come from, but they come all the same. It doesn’t trouble me to write them down because I’ve been taking dictation for 32 years. And when the four winds blow I’m often taken by surprise as it should be. I once thought it a blessing or a curse, but I know better now as I change destinations and try to keep my mind right. You were a precious angel or a hellhound on my trail. Either way you gave my life meaning before everything fell to pieces and the parts stopped making sense. I don’t know if the code of the road applies here and for moral compasses I’ve given up believing in them quite some time ago. Pick up the pencil and put the nub in your mouth. Sharpen the point with your canines and never forget you were once a savior to the masses before you abandoned love and went the way of changing partners. It was in Akron, Ohio that I first saw you play. I’ll never forget the Queens of Rhythm and how you made that Rubber Bowl seem like a home away from home. I have no idea why you stopped playing “Like A Rolling Stone” and so many other songs that sounded so righteous and resplendent to my ears, but I know that you know best as the tide rolls in and the California coastline continues to disappear. I don’t know if I’ll ever get it right or if hustling is something I’ll ever get the hang of, but I’ll tell you this inspiration can and often does arrive like a thief in the night. I wanted to break bread with you so bad I could taste it on my Jewish-Sicilian lips. Yes I wanted to get to know you on some whole other level, but the powers that be just wouldn’t let it be. And I was walking down the desert highway and you pulled up alongside and asked if I needed a ride. I would have let you go by except I was in need of a friend who didn’t ask so many questions and I knew you were just what the doctor ordered when doctors still made house calls and the world was a much different and friendlier place. Charles Cicirella 2/27/16

Sawbones I want to write another poem. I can feel it in my bones. And you were standing there. It was like a Beatles song. Except neither one of us was dancing. Do you remember when you were on fire? How no fire extinguisher could even begin to put you out? They say to self-combust is not for the faint of heart. And once I saw you go up in flames I knew exactly what they meant. The flames licked your body like lemon ice and before long you were gone. My sawbones are itching to get back into the fight. Problem is I cannot find the ring and never was much for wrestling with my shirt off. And you were a dream come true until you became the nightmare I could not shake. We live inside our most hallowed of poignant memories until memory lane becomes A Nightmare on Elm Street. I want to write another poem or at the very least give up the ghost before everything has been said and done and doing it no longer makes a fucking difference. Charles Cicirella 2/29/16

Monolith I want to communicate without language. Only painted music stands between us and the grave. We’re muses subsisting between the silence and the Crucifixion. I was lackadaisical. Bereft of luster and in need of reshaping an unsharpened intellect. You did everything in your power to recreate and redesign my failing chassis. I wasn’t born yesterday. I was born forty six yesterday’s ago and still my conception of time is short-sighted. You’re a star teetering on the tongue of a God refuting worship and defying limits. There is a Monolith. Revered in stillness and resurrected like an aboriginal savior. Do you remember when sign language dripped from our fingers like cow’s milk? We must learn to communicate with textures and tectonic shifts. It was the Earth moving between us when first making contact. We’re the only thing in this indecipherable world of sleeping robots that’s conscious of death. Charles Cicirella 3/3/16

The coffee is burning my fucking mouth. I tried to sip it to no avail. Had to swallow the allergy tablets and generic Advil before again blowing on the brew and slurping it down. Sometimes I do everything at the speed of sound. Other times I am as slow as molasses. I’ll never forget the mint jelly in my grandparent’s fridge. To the best of my recollection they never served lamb so not sure why it was even there. Perhaps I am still too young to understand somethings and I’ll never be a grandparent so I’m probably doomed on the mint jelly front. This poetry may reach you or it might just leave you cold. I was young and brash and left many people scratching their heads as they headed for the exits. I screamed “White Jeep” not to shock the audience, but simply because it was the only way I could deal with the anguish I was feeling. She had big beautiful breasts and the first pair of granny panties I ever set my eyes on. One time we had sex when she had the flu and later she said she remembered none of it and that I had taken advantage of her. I remember going to Johnny Go's House O' Music and buying Van’s Avalon Sunset and how when we listened to the record together that almost made things okay again. As I’ve been writing this poem I take a sip or two of the now perfectly tempered coffee. It’s four in the morning and after a couple of episodes of Modern Family I’ll lay down on the sleeping bag and get about forty or so welcoming winks. Oftentimes I’m lost in translation even to myself. Other times I know exactly what I need and how to go about getting it without waking the dead or being rousted by the cops. Charles Cicirella 3/4/2016

Ice-cream I’ve written other poems about ice-cream. Now I’m writing this one. I like rainbow sprinkles on my sundaes. I have never called them jimmies and I never will. I believe this poem is over before it’s even begun like this world and the next one. I believe Christ was a real bad mother, but he also was a teacher and a healer and a deliverer of that which cannot be sowed. The fire burns internally and that’s why you’ll never see the damage caused when your eyes are bigger than your warring stomach. She had a sheepish look on her face when we made love. Does it make me a bad person that this look pushed me ever onward and made me love her even harder? I’ve written other poems about desert landscapes and the wrought iron fences around each and every last one. Now I plan to escape before this one leaves my thirst unquenched and my hunger undiminished. I like to listen to Judy Garland eight days a week. I have never thought much of Paul McCartney, but the other Beatles most definitely hold a special place in my frozen-confection-heart. Charles Cicirella 3/17/16

Breaking the Silence The silence needed to be broken It needed to be broken in two We need to revere the outliers and stop playing to an inside straight I need to learn to take my licks and to not complain when things don’t go my way We oftentimes bring it upon ourselves, but that’s not the whole story The whole story is rarer than a solar eclipse, but I don’t want to bore you with the details And here we stand awaiting another Pomp and Circumstance failing of epic proportions And the next time we drive across country I will do my best to raise the corn from the shuttered Earth She broke her silence by going onto CNN I broke my silence when I left the wilderness and entered the big city for the first time Met Allen Ginsberg. The meeting wasn’t very memorable for either one of us, but that’s often the case when two Jewish poets meet and have nothing to talk about, but the poems they wrote about their assholes. I am so tired of going against the grain that I’m considering selling myself to the highest bidder if they’ll have me and the status quo can eat crow all day long The silence needed to be given a good talking to It needed to be taken out back and shot in the face This isn’t Chicago where de-escalation is the elephant in the room everyone refuses to feed peanuts and give a fighting chance I need to learn to lick the melting ice-cream cone before it gets all over my hands and I end up with a pocketful of crumpled napkins and sticky, unforgiving hands. Charles Cicirella 3/10/16

When did idealism and our country die? Say what you will, but this isn’t our country anymore. The Republican sadists have been controlling the conversation for so long even the word liberal has been replaced with the less offensive word progressive. “The land of the free and the home of the brave” means zip unless you bear arms and aren’t afraid to use them. To be idealistic these days is to be seen as naïve and weak and why are so many people against pie and the prospect of it floating in the sky? The “powers that be” talk about reaching across the aisle when what they really mean is their way or the highway. I remember friends I had when I was a child who if they didn’t get their way would hold their breath until they were catered to like drug lords or Supreme Court Justices. I felt then the same way I do now let them turn blue and pass out because if everyone cannot have a seat at the table then why are we pretending civility exists at all? Go your own way and I’ll go mine because meeting in the middle nowadays means standing in the center and leaning right and I’m sorry but that’s no way to run a country unless you want to continually run it into the burning ground. I was frozen on the outskirts of town when I looked up and spied Lady Liberty looking quite bereft like she’d just lost her best friend. When I asked her what was wrong she choked back green tears as she talked about our country having died a premature death. She said it had everything to do with the truly ignorant holding onto their conservative and austere agendas and that “what's good for the goose is good for the gander” even and especially when the gander is drunk on power and hiding behind God’s skirt tails. I have been standing in place for so long I couldn’t tell you which way the wind is blowing or if the wind is blowing at all. We all suck if we’re just going to throw up our hands and say “It's what they're going to do. It's what they've always done.” I know in my red, white and blue heart it has always been the American way to push back against tyrants and that’s exactly what we must do now. Say what you will, but this isn’t our country anymore and if we want that to change anytime soon we must be the ones who affect that change otherwise it’s all for naught and the American exceptionalism we like to talk about is one big fat lie. Charles Cicirella 2/14/16