by Chris Cipollini

(image c/o taylorbazinetdotcom)

“TRUE PUNK“

is not CBGB relics or boots crusted with the sweat of a hundred nights.
It is not for sale in the windows of John Varvatos or hot topic
stitched into leather and priced for the hungry ghosts of tourists.

It is not the mythology of trashcan flames,
or the dead boys canonized in gutter smoke.
It is not Sid and Nancy dissolving in neon tragedy,
or piss-marked bathrooms pretending to be altars.

True punk
is a pulse beneath all that —
older, quieter, far more dangerous.

It is a woman shaped like a single mother.
who carries a history of broken bones and unspeakable nights,
and still rises with her fists full of justice
for the ones the world steps over.

It is surviving the unimaginable
and refusing to bow your head.

It is the overture before the revolution,
the tremor in the ground
before structures crack.

True punk
is passion stitched into every unsaid thing.
It is dancing with the imagination in a world that settles for being cynical. 

True punk is frightful to the ignorant and cataclysmic to the frightened.

It is looking corruption straight in the eye
and saying:
you look stupid.

Then kicking back to its lair
With none but truth as your weapon

It knows the oldest sacred law:
that blasphemy done with heart and intention
is holy.

Punk is feeding the hungry
while the fat cats gorge themselves on gilded delusion.

It is championing the ones without a voice.
It is a revolution made of gestures 
small, ferocious, merciful.

It is turning to the cast-offs
and saying:
Your story matters too.

It is finding the forgotten
and whispering into their wounds:
I see you.

It turns record stores into cathedrals,
microphones into pulpits 
no dogma allowed 
only breath and truth
and the electric ache of being alive.
It is you
and you
and I
and me
and all of us as one,
lifting the roof off the world
with nothing but our courage.

We are the detonators of the new dawn 

-Time to blow it open.

“True Punk”

Christopher Cipollini is a poet, author, and performer whose work bridges myth, history, and lived experience. He has published several books including The Musings (2012), A Secret Kingdom (2015), Trifecta: Stories, Sojourns, and Words of Life (2017), and Pantheon: A Cathedral of the Mind (2025). He is also a contributor to Gerard Malanga’s Love Love Magazine and winner of the 2022 Sedona Poetry Slam.

Cipollini has performed internationally in New York City, Florence, and at Shakespeare and Company in Paris. He is the co-creator of Pen-Demonium and The Gilded Quill, two monthly poetry series in Cottonwood, Arizona. His work can be found on Instagram at @im_chriscipollini and for Pen-Demonium updates at @pendemoniumpoetry.