Sounds like you coded in Scheme, not Lisp. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16584082) Common Lisp was designed for the messy real world, it's a workhorse, even at the cost of 'prettiness' that Scheme fans like to point out as a benefit for Scheme. So it's been used (either directly or to output a lower level machine code) for all sorts of real world things like OSes (see the Lisp Machines), video games, CAD systems, Mars rovers (subject of this submission), etc...

From the most basic level of syntax, something like https://github.com/TeMPOraL/cl-wiringpi2/blob/master/example... doesn't seem that different to me than the C equivalent I've written for embedded devices.