Charlie Chirico

Charlie Chirico Jun 2015

The popularity of ten word poems
is more frustrating than the excessive use of exclamation points. Vonnegut may have thought of semicolons to be transvestites, but a readily available exclamation is the patron at a restaurant asking which farm the free range eggs have come from. To which you respond politely, while pinching your thigh. And the ten word poem is far beyond the measure of either punctuation. Those ten words are the publicly shared suicide note, crying for help, and seeking validation in the form of a digital thumbs up.

Charlie Chirico Jun 2015

Two is Too Much

Overindulgence
can be habit forming.
A **** with diction
expounding
addiction will provide
rudimentary confliction.
Therein lies the problem
engraved on a needle
thrown in a haystack.

A **** or addict
can only shoot up
in a barrel that smells
of dead fish for so long
before stagnant water
leaves a residue and
film that peels off
quicker than a
week long scab.

To search for clean cotton
resembles digging through
a trash can for ingredients to
prepare a five course meal.
Flatware covered in water spots
are placed on a napkin that
doesn't dare dab chapped lips.

Fork to the left,
knife to the right,
and bent spoon shoved
in the back pants pocket.

If life is a box of chocolates,
overindulgence is the empty
box buried at the bottom of a
trash can. Struggle becomes a
wet glassine bag in an empty
wallet. And death is a pair of
silver bracelets. This is all about
over-extending, because if one
is enough, then two is too much.

#addiction #drugs #struggle #vice #addict #needle #overindulgence

Charlie Chirico Jun 2015

Marathon Cakewalk

It's about who you know in a room
full of strangers. Often times it's
fashioning a blindfold while
squinting to hear whispers.

Some may even consider the use
of a napkin to blot lipstick so a
collar presented at a later time
can be given a delicate touch.

And the manipulative know that
it's easier to **** someone with a kiss
than to completely rely on *******.

And lest we forget the crude that
claim ignorance when referring to
spit slowly sliding down someone's
skull as proper lubrication.

This all proves that ****** fluids
that contribute to a body of work
is priceless, especially Crimson.

To manage this all requires an
everlasting recipe. This is cake
made with blood, sweat, and tears
compared to the uncooked cake
left dormant in a box.

Preheat the oven.
Lower the libido.
More sugar..
A Country Crock...
Serve cold.

Charlie Chirico May 2015

Dirt and Ice

If rock bottom is melted ice;
diluted whiskey becomes the last
drink the goes down far too easy.
Red eyes stay dry because of a cap
left off a bottle that succumbed
to evaporation, and squinting to read
the ingredients is as useful as calling
the Sandman for a loan. That's proof
that sleep doesn't cure all ailments.
Try biting into a cactus for a drink
of water and swallowing with a barb
lodged in your throat. You would have
better luck winking with both eyes and
smiling with no teeth. Hope for an
eye-patch and set of dentures, or a
gun to the temple loaded with blanks.
That's the amount of sense everything
makes when you're stuck between a
rock and a hard place, or thrashing
in quicksand. So when you set fire to
wooden bridges or cut cables of steel
the width of a forearm you're left with
a cracked foundation and the body of
a home carried miles away by a cyclone
of wind. Just hope you're not a continent
made of ice that melts and swallows the rest.

Charlie Chirico May 2015

What May Lie in Lead

A perfect inadequacy, in theory, is
inconsequential compared to an imperishable
half truth. This is calling a clear plastic cup a glass,
using a smile to implore that the contents are
half full, when in all actuality it was a full cup
tilted to the side and slowly poured out.

One can be morally sound as well as be pathetic.
But any man would prefer not to be both, and as
a Man's dignity starts to feel like a half empty cup,
any truth stretched has the ability to seem
palatable even if the fabrication is deemed
inconceivable. That is when listening instead of
speaking forms golden silence, because
confusion when dealing with humility makes
the act of prevarication go undetected.

Word for word will become word against no matter
how indefatigable the liar is. Time will always
uncover falsities, as only truth can stand the test.
This is why the pathetic poet begins his endeavor
writing in pen, and as insecurities infiltrate intellect,
a pencil comes to be appropriate, which is an
afterthought to be read through smeared sentences.

And after the last period is placed, adhering to
a correct structure, the only way to regain
integrity can be attained by poetic justice.
Which is lead poisoning acquired
from a number two pencil.

Charlie Chirico Apr 2015

Soap Beside the Swear Jar

This bar of soap
has been in my mouth
for far too long.
Foul words do not become encapsulated by bubbles,
nor does bubble language follow intrinsic guidelines as much
as it may be visceral.
In all actuality it is simple chalk
on simple sidewalks
that wait for gray clouds to release their collective and
wash away the different
colors into a storm drain
that teenagers throw garbage into.

At this point it's knowing
which soap tastes the best,
and hoping and praying that
a single curly hair is not lingering.

Charlie Chirico Jan 2015

If My Words Die Before Me

Drug addiction killed the writer.
Long before longhand became slow talk from a slack jaw, I was closing my eyes, not knowing whether or not I was tired or nodding.

Insufflating, incomprehensible snorting, the sound a nose makes when one is in disgust. As ugly as this euphoria is, I can't stop. Or I won't stop. That is why this writer is dead.

How many times can you wake up from an intentional overdose? More than three-hundred and sixty-five. **** it, because one day becomes one year becomes one lost person that is not only insufferable, but also a person that is no longer provocative, no longer privy to a responsible privacy that every man deserves.

So, as a man loses his privacy, that which we all seek, he can only close his eyes, because of drugs or not, and hope and pray that this is the night that he reaches eternal sleep.