Rain And Coffee And Nat King Cole Prompt Me To Say...

It is winter and I just don't do much in the winter time. Not because it is cold; on the contrary, it has been quite nice with a few small spells of traditional December weather here. It is not because of the holidays, I don't mind them too much save that they make me feel that time has somehow sped up within the last few years. I just don't do much come winter time. I read, work, and stay in to doors mostly. Listening to music and drinks with friends is about all I can do. Thus, I haven't been producing anything new, which almost scares me, but after this spin has been happening for the past few years, I know it only means I'll start again with new and different perspectives to represent. Different versions of myself, so to speak. I have also had a great many decisions to make that of which deny me the simple luxury of writing poetry well. I have been thinking of going back to further my education in college. This seems like such a simple decision, and to an extent it is, but I do not know if I wish to move or not, which drastically complicates things. I have a sort of life down here. It is one of which I am not ashamed of but I am not satisfied with it either. When the holidays leave this place all of the friends I still talk to will run back to their lives and I will once again be alone in this town with a very short list of those whom I still spend time with, their plates being very full too. That is when you will see the poetry come pouring out of me- when I have no other choice. But then I wonder, "if I become busy myself between work and school will I be forced to neglect my writings and give up the word?" I don't think that this is likely, but life is strange like that. Still, my writing began when I was in school long ago and has thrived ever since nourished by the years of life external to the institutionalized ways of schooling, so I feel that it might only become more frequent from the increase of activity of thought on a broader scale, a controlled scale at any rate. Why I'm telling you all of this is beyond me. Perhaps its simply because I felt the need to write something on this rainy saturday morning and it may as well be explanatory. Maybe I'm just journaling again.

Christmas Cookies

Here are a couple little bits since I have been neglecting my proverbial "post" here at The Mother.

What?

One more night
Like this,
Where I can't sleep like I should
And I'm going
To smash everything I can
With the aluminum bat
Next to my door, man.
Hey,
I used aluminum in this poem,
That is didactic.
There it is again...
Right on.

The Big Man Upstairs Is A Cold Motherfucker, Dig? Pt. 1

Someone said, "God, chill out!"
And suddenly it was December.
The tree's became giant sticks stuck upward
From the ground,
And ice ants invaded the town,
And everyone was falling on their ass
While snow tumbled around them.

Public Announcement

I am very sick today. I have a cold, and I can't do anything except cough, sleep, and take pills. I hate, hate, hate being sick.


Thus, there will be no words tonight, I'm afraid.

I'm Only Sleeping...

After all,
It's not as if I want to miss it-
Miss that little bit of you
That lingers in front of me.
It's not your fault,
I'm only sleeping.
I don't take notice
Of the things you say
The way you wish I would;
I'm off again
On another daydream
With or without
Permission.
Resisting this
Is so damned hard, I know.
I never expect you to stick around.
It's only ever after that
I see how I've been gone again,
And then its just too late, I know.
I just don't feel the way I should,
I guess there must be something wrong.
But then again,
I'm only sleeping;
As chance would have it
Usually dreaming about you.
I don't feel your smile around-
My head's somewhere up in the clouds,
And nothing, no one, nowhere
Takes me back down.
It's not your fault,
I'm only sleeping...
Then I awake
And you are gone.

Thesaurus

I have the worlds oldest thesaurus in my pocket,
And motherfucker it is great.
Now, I know what you're thinking...
"Enigmatic, cataclysmic, allegorical, asinine fool."
Well my friend,
Words are bricks so I throw bricks at your face.
And then,
When your teeth lay prostrate
In the palm,
I will kick you swiftly in the ass
With a bit of forever,
So you can sail high-horsed to the moon,
Then fall back educated.

The Moth and Poems For Peaches

The Moth

The moth flies clumbsily to the light,
And having nothing better to do
I sit spanning time here tonight.
The cars drive by noisily,
The cigarettes taste the same.
But that little moth, he sings to me
A melancholy hymnal of distress,
And it went a little something like this:
"I came upon a night so dark,
Fraught with cool and cruel black
That when I saw the light so stark,
I knew there was no turning back."
Up to the light the little moth went
As I sat back and felt a grown man's lament.
I smiled wide as I rubbed my rough chin
As the smoke lay thick and the traffic got thin.
Well the moth flies clumbsily to the light
And the man sits uncomfortably night after night.
And having nothing better to do
They both span their time away;
One towards the light,
One towards decay.

----------------------------------------------------
Peaches (Part 1)

Peaches,
I'm not at my best today.
The lightbulb burnt out in the bathroom,
The parking meter ran out during work.
I spilled soda on my pants at lunch.
The traffic took too long again,
And my bills are overdue.
I locked my keys in the truck
And your letter still isn't here,
And neither are you.

Coffee and Instabilities.

"At rising tide you're looking fresher than a July Bride; we're picking up what our mothers always stigmatized. The field is right for reaping."


It's a late night tonight. The coffee, the coversation, the cigarettes, and the late night our prelude my inner workings towards dream-starved nights of sleep again. Translation: bad sleeper. You've got to give props to the english language for its constant ability to outdo itself over and over and over.

So I once worked this telemarketing job. Apart from the, of course, depressing presence that it is to be working at such a place, (for those of you who have) it had its little wobbly bits that made it extra shitty, but slightly humorous. First of all, I sold over the phone (of course) these little things called "Shopping Spree Cards" and they were titled by the city they were sold in. Anyways, you get blah, blah, blah something like $2 to $3,ooo in goods and services for the small fee of only about $65. I don't care to recall too much of this place, because then I will just and rant and rave about a million different instances that would better be experienced than told, and as you can already tell, I can't tell a story for shit. Anyways, I'm thinking of a specific instance one time while working there upon going over some old notes I made on a little pad I had used while I was there.
We had this manager, fresh into the company, that used to sell cleaner or some bullshit, and the big boss some him doing his thing on the streets one day and approached him, asking, "Son, how do you sell so much of that stuff?" Blah, blah, blah, they hit it off like a couple of girlfriends and the bossman just had to have him working for him. This magician of sales went by the name of TJ. Dumb fuck of a name, if you ask me. I mean, I guess the guy can't really help it, but I'm sure "TJ" stands for something much more practical. All those sales assholes always like shorter names. I guess they think its hip or something. SO TJ comes on the scene, fresh off the streets, telling us all this new, amazing shit that is going to double our sales and get us excited about our growth potential. Well, after many lofty speeches and all that crap, we got back down to selling, only we had a few alterations to the routine. Everytime we made a sale, we were bade to ring this little bell and yell, "JUICE!" as a sort of inspiration to the rest of the whoring herd of jabber-mouthed pushers. J.U.I.C.E. stood for Join Us In Creating Enthusiasm. How. Fucking. Stupid. Everytime, and this motherfucker would monitor us to make sure we said it. Shortly after this incident I decided it was decided that my time was over with this fair firm of the phone. One day I walked into his office and plainly said, "Hey TJ, I gotta tell ya, I don't really think this whole telemarketing business isn't my thing, so I'm going to go ahead and mosey my ass on outta here." I quit, and it was glorious. But... That wasn't really the best part of it all. The best part was that about a month later I found out that the bossman's golden boy, the prodigal salesman, Mr. TJ had been using the company's computers to operate about a hundred different pornographic websites while working there and keeping everyone JUICE'D. Glorious. Of course he was fired.

That's the telemarketing story. I told you I can't tell stories for shit. If anyone else had told it it would probably have been a regular riot. I'm more of an improv sort of fella. Ah well, strong suits, right?

I am still entirely too wired from the coffee and what not, so I'm going to rock back and forth in my chair for about half an hour, kick my shoes off, and take that long lay-down into dreamland, dancing in with tap shoes and tapestries of atop my tepid thoughtpool brain-spout. If you can disect that one I'll give you a cookie for being cooky. Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.


Goodnightalready.

Two Little Bits From Somewhere Back There...

Too long have the nights,
Like crystallized structures
Burned sorrow in my eyes.

Too long have the days,
As listless and fruitless
Hardened my innocent ways.

My body slowly settled,
Comfortable in such bones
As those that never meddle.

My heart, so nearly conquered,
Every moment giving way to
The love that’s not been offered.

Well time presumes me well,
Measuring and shaping such
A comfortable hell.

-------------------------------------------------------

*Personally, this one fucks with my head a bit, at how true it sometimes feels. Yikes.



Hypocrisy is in my heart.
You’re not that lover,
I was the one to play that part.
I am only truly tragic.
For every kiss, (that gracious step towards heaven)
I let you down.

Tonight I see myself transparent.
No words would do so much justice as a tear.
Nothing floods my eyes but my own loathsome reflection.
I pierce my heart with hints of your scent;
I pierce my heart with my own words,
Trying to kill all of myself that’s been left behind this wreckage.

You’re like the rain.
And not some simple simile, I say.
You’re full; you pour down on me, all over me,
My soul is already drowned, my dear.
You and me, you and me, we lost that sense.
You’re breaking up inside,
You must not be so down.
For I’m not well; I only apparently know how to ruin good things.
If everything I touch, I break,
Then I’ll never touch again.
I’ll ride that empty darkness;
Claim it as my only council.
Never ever let my heart again be shown to anyone.
I’ll never speak.
I’ll barely breathe.
I’ll lock these things so far away that no one will remember who I use to be.

If love comes passing by,
I’ll run from it until my heart won’t beat.
I never meant to hurt you...



*The former is fairly recent; maybe a few months ago. The latter is much, much older, say, three or four years ago. It is somewhat aparrent that my life has been slowly spiraling downward. Well bravo! Let's welcome this descent with drinks all around! Drink up, comrades. Drink to morrow's bad tidings.

The Dead Apple Trio And My Blues

Moody little jazz
Meets me in the bathroom as I linger,
Away from the table
Of the red dress and the pointed finger,
I stand leaning against the sink
As the boys pour in with the familiar stink
Of alcholic drink.
Troubadours and trumpet sonnets,
Smooth and amenable
Guage my perception of the
Narcissistic bride of tonight.
I sashay to the bar ahead
As the sauntering symbol slides my step
And order another scotch,
While the bitch smirks at me hard;
It's going to be a long night.

Intalian Roast and Significance Revealed

Early morning air
And everything else surrounding me
When winter's soon to settle down
To give us all some time for thinking.
The heart thinks long
In the winter days,
It struggles to relate itself
To everyone and everything
It knows and wants.
Still, it is not that time,
Not on mornings as these
When I can settle myself before the winter
And be satisfied
With a little quiet about me
And the river-breeze upon my face;
Whispers of small wonders
For the taste of next years comings and goings.

Mediocrity Rules, Or So Le Tigre Says, Those Nasty Bitches.

Mediocrity everywhere.
In the shower,
In the kitchen, or the corner of the fridge.
Around the oven,
Under the ironing board.
In the floormat of the car,
Under the leaves in the yard.
In the faces of bosses,
And bosses bosses bossing around
Them and everyone.
In their voices.
"They" are everyone, and anyone.
But when you meet someone
And not meet someone
Simultaneously
Cravings make some minutes
In this long monotone lifestyle
Worth the doing;
Or maybe its just that pebbling hope
That not all days will be this full
Of Mediocrity everywhere.

Some Poems From Early 2006; ENJOY!

A Winter Song

Winter setting, cold and clear.
Into the great gray skies I disappear.
Longing for the big change,
Longing for that big love to take me away.
Or something to rest my head and heart;
They are in need so much to rest.

O hopeless woeful ways of winter,
Forever folding over my wonder;
Wherefore is my purpose made?

My head falls downward as I ponder…
The thickness of the air makes everything unclear.
Some change is due in this wreck of a life,
Some sort of reckoning need take avow;
Yet still here and now do I find
That I do not find myself anymore resolved.

O hopeless woeful ways of winter,
Forever folding over my wonder;
Wherefore is my purpose made?

Will the face of spring, like a red robin sing
All of my aches and ail away?
To this day I wait, and so carefully concentrate,
And yet the clarity I seek is repeatedly unseen.
I go before the fires and I seek a new perspective.
To change my life among these things
Is but my only solid directive.

O hopeless woeful ways of winter,
Forever folding over my wonder;
Wherefore is my purpose made?

To this and these great longings do I guess;
That of myself, and of my workings,
I’ve yet to give my very best.
Since I’ve left out on my own
I’ve come to realize how very far
Away into the years it will be
Until I finally feel at home.

The sadness dissipates my virtues,
And brings me down some depths unwanted,
And yet what mysteries are still to come
Forever press me on and on,
Even if my heart gives in and all my breath is gone.

O hopeful woeful ways of winter,
Forever folding over my wonder;
Wherefore is my purpose made?

------------------------------------------------------------------
I Saw You Dancing

The last time I saw you, I saw you dancing.
In a spell of wheels spinning and grinning;
Timid, I aware of you who stares,
Yet unmarked measure come prancing vivid airs.
Low and behold, for now I walk off into clouds;
A vision spiraled and aroused by consonant beats.
I claim to change what I claim to own,
And yet as if I go alone, I go unwelcome.
Here is a home for you to call on.
Here is a place you can hang your hat
I had to walk on.
No silence but a constant reason;
A subtle circumstance for my own penance,
When I should not have called you so late.
So late it was, and were I balanced, I would have
Walked upright among the others,
But here I crawl and slobber and choke
On my own words, now come apart.

-----------------------------------------------------------
O!

O, the future is taking me!
Whispering while all I do is shout and shout.
I look for you, I look for you;
You’re dancing in and running out.

What am I to do?
Carry all this mess with me and live in all this doubt?
People pass on by;
They’re laughing; what’s it all about?

I’m sitting here all sick with worry,
You’re running fingers through my hair;
Telling me a million things through little looks
And I’m still looking for myself in you and
O, I just don’t know anymore.

So I go into my room.
The lights are dim, the walls are cold, the feelings old.
I can’t fall asleep.
Dreams were never made to keep a heart still sinking, soft and cold.

Let me pass you one request.
Don’t go falling in love with me, it’s more than I can stand to see.
When you go into the day,
Remember that the boy you left who’s heart you kept was only me.

I’m sitting here, all sick with worry.
You’re playing tricks on me this time;
Flaunting that you know you’ve got me,
I’m not sure that we’ll make it darling;
And O, I just don’t really know anymore.

----------------------------------------------------------------
I Know.

I know it’s not so easy.
I know my eyes don’t let it show.
I don’t think you’re supposed to know me.
It might be better if you’d let me go.

But if in the night you need some comfort,
You can use me if it makes you feel better,
Sleep long and dream easy.
I know that it’s not right.
I wish I could be use to someone.
God knows how I’d make it workout,
If ever I knew there were a chance that I could change.

I know I’m hard on you sometimes.
Dissolving hearts are hard to hold.
You can use me if you like,
Just don’t hold on to me so close.
The winter’s coming when warmth is needed.
I’ll spend it cold, when you’ll wish I’d come over.
I cannot give you what you want and wish and need.

I know it’s not so easy,
I know my eyes don’t let you know.
I don’t think you should want to know me.
It might be better if you let me go.

--------------------------------------------------------------
Looking At My Watch Again.

Try as I may,
The world still arrives by the time of the day.
I still feel the same, though it never quite reveals.
Now I’m caught out on a plank;
The water is deep and the boat’s going to sink,
I’ll jump and see the bottom far before
I even get the time to really contemplate.
These people here, they always divide me.
Pieces of myself strung out before the table,
It’s a shame I don’t ever seem to collect them like they do.

Longing for a presence,
Some peace of mind is my only resplendence,
And now it seems I’ll not be having any such thing.
I do recall, by days and nights,
The simple life to which I set my sights;
I’ve yet to find it, did it leave me behind?
O, how this place feels like a cage,
And no the caged bird does not sing,
Lest we be silent.
So long as there is talking, there is laughter.
Cheating ourselves out of truthful answers;
Those very ones that divide the continents of our hearts.

So I float away in all this wonder.
Spend my days in a constant ponder.
Wondering and following, but still waiting for my freeing.
But have you ever seen a bird to the open cage?
The freedom is unfathomed. We retract in such distractions…
Its that bit of air outside that makes a scare we’d rather not wear.
And fear I do, the days ahead. When this is through, and the music’s dead.
I did not say it had to die, but tell me again how it wouldn’t
If and when our hearts divide?
Sighs and sighs and always goodbye.
I wonder why I even try to say hello.
I’d rather go, where nobody knows who or why I’m there.
At least I wouldn’t fill the air with empty promises
To catch the passersby with pleasant replies.

I am a bit of fellow folk.
I talk and I spit out the same old shit.
It’s all in good meaning, with no meaning really at all.
When we fall, we fall hard.
The ground, or whatever, I have yet to hit.
So I keep falling and fleeing from this and that.
The time presumes my presence well.
The madness with the minutes passing,
While I’m asking why it always ends this way.
It only gets bigger everyday.
Goodbyes are harder, looks are longer;
The things that last only grow stronger.
And here I go again on my own distressing gestures.

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*I hope you have enjoyed these. I wrote none are really connected to each other in any sort of way, nor are they in any particular order. Just a few that even I had not read in a while. If you want to do me any sort of favor in regards to them please let me know which ones were more appealing.

The Lady's Dowry

Here is the boy,
Here is the boy that you once knew.
He came back for a while,
Maybe just to make you smile.
There's a cold house that's abandoned,
In it stands the lady's dowry.
Tables, chairs, a vanity she used to perch on,
Now it's gone, but I still listen
From the hallway to her ghost
Echoing inside the bedroom;
I can't see, her perfume lingers.
I can almost see her hair brushed
Down gently, but it is only in my mind,
The house is lost,
The boy is drifting away again.
She won't replicate that place
And he can't find the key inside his pocket.
The childhood love that ran away
Is gone to banks of dank brown waters,
Small waves attached to stories
Of pallid people far below the surface
Speakers wishing you would wish them well.
Here is the boy,
Here is the boy that you once knew.
He comes calling for her tonight,
But she'll not answer;
You'll not answer me this time,
That house is broken,
All the same,
Her dowry; her heart is broken with it...
And he won't build another.

Strife And Submission

From these dark and dismal hands
A tortured madman works the stars
Into patterns of bended light and pain
For the pleasure of only one to gaze upon them.
O, my hands have seen some unsettling things,
But my ears ne'r known such tribulations;
Where Cupid stood there now be snakes
Whose arrows pierce the heart in only
Lonely lengths to stretch the days away.
I have held my head so high in wait for answers
Now found vain and absent, true and tragic;
Distant and darkened
Out of crows' nests' not since bothered since their stir
And unsettlement from such heartbreaking cracks
In this fair atmosphere.
High on the hill
The artificial siren stands, writhing in gasps of
Forgetful wishes to forget such souls
As those whose hands lay waiting for the next
Bird of prey.

A Week In The North

Well, it hasn't been the most exciting time, but it was good to see old friends. The first two nights were laced with booze, cigarettes, and laughs; my usual cup of tea. The next few days were catching up, and seeing all those old folks that I used to run with. I stopped off at my favorite park for a smoke and a brief walk, but it is cold, so the walk was the length of a cigarette. I witnessed the first snow of the season up here. It has since melted away. All in all it has been a good time. I would share pictures with you but I don't have a digital camera. Words will have to do. Today is my last day in town, the day of goodbyes until next time around. Sad but not too. I still keep in contact with nearly all that I've seen up here, so there is no real goodbye. Then again, you never know who will run away, including myself. So tomorrow I will drive home, broke, tired, and with cold. It will be nice to be home with the pace I have set for myself, but I can already feel the lonely presence in the four walls of my room waiting for me. So long as I get right back to work all will end up just fine. Lets hope it goes just that way.

An Old Writing Stumbled Upon

-I wrote this January 1, 2004
*disregard any typographical errors


"To me,
Did you forget what it meant to live? Apparently, you adult you, who makes your decisions, and no one really listens, because nothing is ever said. Few and far between belie some words you might have said before, and not too sure to even writeare any real and true felt lines that you have come to know. You adult you, you think everything's so much harder, so much further; life so far away. Life didn't stray, it was only you that lost the way. A turn you meant to take, a mistake you meant to make, a truth you called a lie. You adult you, who only knew life by the moment, never a picture, never a story you might someday tell. You left apart the best of choices for yourself to someone else's, lived a hundred lives except your own. You adult you, who seeks adventure, hides from future, aches so much for change. You have to make it, don't you know? Can't stand and feel like it will come if only you can wait. You adult you, who hides your will from cheaper thrills and half-paced motions you think are true cause. True cause must have true struggle, and harder levels; less of leisure, more so measure to the man that you can be. You adult you, who only knew life by the pages, and the stages of your stories. You have to know the end of a page is not the end. You can start again, and press on stronger, with something better; and fall you may but remember to rise again. You adult you, so full of love, below and above; you try so hard to make the whole world love you back. You keep on giving- never stop, and spread the good you know so well. Well like the stars you stared so hard, that shine so true, like you sometimes. You adult you, who sometimes seems so sad. Don't walk away, its nothing easier down that road. You must let go, and then hold on to all that you still have. You adult you, you're just like me, not free in an open cage. Sometimes the rage of loneliness alone can wear down to your soul. You feel so absent of control; feel so without something sacred but you're not, you've got your heart, the only thing that keeps you moving, keeps you humble and so hopeful. You adult you, who swears she's out there, dreaming somewhere, thinking of someone like you. You're right, you know. She is, you'll see, but only if you choose to live instead of be another wandering soul at rest, unrest. Your very best still locked inside, your favorite stars still in your eyes, your best of words still stuck beneath the hands that you so poorly keep. You're bursting heart that falls apart for every time you didn't speak. Your will still weak, for it you did not train to seek. You adult you, who only knew what 19 years could know. So you go on whispering instead of shouts into the air, apart from the glare of determination, now you've let one more moment die. You sleep now but you'll stir again. You don't know, but you'll comprehend. You break, but soon you'll learn to mend all of these lost dreams. And though it seems like all's avail, keep close your aim, keep set you sail. And though it seems like all's a waste, just find some hope, and hither taste sweet success. For within you there lies the best to see; humanity. You adult you, stay true to me."

Uma Experiência Nas Palavras; Tell Me Where It Takes You.

"In the silent, silent night
When stars have put themselves to bed
Beneath the clouds, and I rest my head
For the long-drawn dream flight
I talk to the air, or is it you?

A sin or an action?
Of morals, or God?
By the silence, or a nod,
My confessions found in fractions;
O, what compels these ghostly words?"

"Some unexpected love arriving right on time is more welcome to the ill than penicillin."
-Rod McKuen

And now for the musical break, (Please listen for at least thirty seconds)

Moving forward>>>> ...

Severely shaken,
The adolescent lamb
Climbs gently through the tangles
As the grass surrounding,
Higher than a farmers knees
Softly rolls with winds
That sound as if carrying
Some distant, violin driven
Dance of death. Deeply green,
Sickly so like a ressurrected
Sea from depth not meant to
Be found,
And the little lamb climbs
Fastly to the tangles
Beginning woods away
From the heard below.
When lighting strikes,
He shudders, crazed.
When thunder sounds,
His legs give way and
He falls to the ground.
Quicker he runs,
Into the dense dementia
Of the sinister fingers
Rising from the ground,
High brown, all around;
The little lamb lay
Daunted in peril's icy breath.
-The storm subsides-
Light rain falls steady,
The air is calm.
The trees, only standing
Straight and tall
Absorb the fall of drops
Atop the little lambs head.
He rises to run,
Merrily along the woods;
Lamb has known such things before
As rain and trees and nothing more.
The rain resumes its slow decay,
And soon it will have passed away.
The lamb is brave
And walks with ease,
And eating some mushrooms
He feels most pleased.
After a time
Thirst is dragging down
The smile of the lamb
Transforming to a frown.
Luck is better still
When timing plays its part.
The lamb discovered a hole
Filled with something cool and dark.
Bending slowly down
His nosed touched what was wet,
And pushing slightly downward
He drank all he could get.
The little lamb
Walked all around.
A home for whom?
A home he'd found.
And so he took
To drinking more,
Then the thunder sounded
As it had before.
The little lamb
Shuddered and froze
Next to the water
No longer in repose.
The thunder was quiet,
Not quite like before.
But the lamb never moved;
For a sound his heart could not ignore.
It came frightfully close
And then it died away.
The lamb still lay there still,
Then called out in a panic
As if someone would hear.
Someone heard that little lamb,
A moveable thunder
With a hunger in demand.
When the lamb called out
A second time
In the mouth of the wolf
Was the lambs last whine.

*Pausing for assessment as to whether that was a complete waste of time or not...

What for more else in the sickening silence of night do we men and women decline the constant offerings of madness on a pallet of mere regard? Wherefore do we find ourselves complacent and how may we ignore the deafening silence of our own measured minds?


I. Have. Nothing. To. Give.


Ok, finally being serious for you, I am going to just say that its an off night. Nothing coming out of this bearded brain of mine. I listen to maddened strings and pianos together in an intimately deviant dance that fill me with something- but something to which there is no directly filtered product to display. Perhaps my dreams will enchant some extroversion of my latest perversions of the mind. Until then, you melancholy froth-spoons, goodnight.

As I Dream The Shapes Shift Into Petals or Of Cloves, but...

All of my women,
The tinted halves of faces,
Beautiful and decadent;
Lost in love’s hollows
All the same.

I see them in my nighttime dreams,
And in the corners of the streets
I walk about when it is late,
And lovers’ company would be
The perfect way to end the night.

At some or other time I left them,
Or they left me, it's all the same.
Arms outstretched were pulled back in,
They disappear and I begin to
Purge and search for newer flowers
Freshly woven in the first of sunlight hours.

But O my women gone;
Those red rouge specters
Smiling wide,
Sweetly touching with their tongues
The outer sinews of my soul,
They haunt me softly
When I’m sleeping all alone.

Often do I wonder back
To walks along the riverbank,
And in the car below the bridge,
And in the beds of theirs and mine.
How we teased each other so.
Promises flung into the night air;
Gentle tastes, saccharine and brine,
And my arms still reach out
When they are not there.

They will come and they will go.
Time is surely going to solve
The problematic things of love.
So long as I remember
Not to be
This way forever.

However will the hover of love go passing by?

Comfort

Music, like words,
Saturate the room.
As your fathers’ footsteps in the hallway,
And your mothers’ in the kitchen.

Wherever the magic is birthed
All around it breathes and soaks.
The walls, the floor;
The bedside lamp reflects
The darkness
Softly, and with warmth.

It is some magic, you know.
Some overwhelming
Sort of feeling passes by;
Outsized snowflakes
Of December snows.
Rain running fast
Through front porch gutters.
And magic,
From nearly nothing at all.

The Times

They are going to hang Tikrit's favorite son soon.
In a region full of history,
Burned in time by blood and bombs
The death of one more is nothing new.



America, in all its infinite wisdom
Is the mantelpiece
To this burning blaze of infamy.

When will men realize
That fire with fire,
Bullets for bullets,
Bombs for bombs,
Mean nothing in the end?

Plato said it best,
“The only end of war man will see is death”
Still we roll on,
Full-breasted, spearing and slamming
Humanity to dust.

We'll Never Sleep, But God Know's We'll Try

"So boys will turn from sleep and search the darkness,
Seeking the love their fathers have forgotten.
And they will dream of her, who have not known her,
And ache, and ache for that lost limb forever."
-Carolyn Kizer

To think of someone so much so that sleep is sacrificed for the thought is absurd, figuratively speaking.

You wonder of who I think? You wonder of what thoughts?

I'll never tell, and don't be so quick to guess at it either. I'm not that black and white, am I?

Sleep still, soft silence. Sleep seaps at every crack in time's fair measure. Pull your harbored worries homeward, let the trade winds bring you back, and steer your landlocked heart ashore to be rebirthed with love impending. Sleep, lone whisper. Sleep so the wind can carry your message safely away while you rest and wait for the sunchild to come out and play. Sleep; let not your eyes misjudge the darkness for the chambers of your mind, resonating fractures of your past, present, future, death, life, love, strife, crisis, peace, disquiet, discomfort, dissolitude. Off to bed as a child would were the favorite story read at the foot of their bed whilst the pillow drowns their head in soft, hugging threads.

Sleep.

Charlie.

Bow Out Gracefully

Well, another adventure into the heart of this little city, the beautiful, elegant, definate town of which I live. Out for drinks, friends and things, the barroom filled with barroom stink. So we hopped from place to place, face to face. Then I went to the dancing club. Oh boy. Yes, folks; I, the whitest of white boys was forced on the floor by three other girls to dance my night away. I tried escaping but it was impossible. They have grips like a vice and moves like ol' Mike Jackson from the 80's. So I danced, and drank, and smoked all my cigarettes until it was time to turn this buckaroo in. Here I am, recuperating as we speak. Well, we're not really speaking, since you're reading and all. Dance, my friends. Sacrifice yourself on the alter of dignity and dance yourselves into oblivion.

-Charlie

Eyes

She's
A classical beauty,
Classically tragic;
Like a burned match
Ignited from a sharp static.
Pulling me in
Like the last glass
Of the red, red wine
Enough to drown me
Out of my fearing her;
Or so I burn my finger
By the match I am
Clinging to.
She'll use me,
O how she uses my feet
As I stumble door to door
In the low-lit walkways
To find her smiling wide
As apples in the mouth
For a moon-sized bite
And I just can't get her
Out of my mind
Tonight.

Mr. Sandman Left The Light On, The Bastard.

I don't sleep much, if you couldn't tell. I lay awake most nights wondering what the hell I'm doing. Now, before, and next. A heavy conscience for a light sleeper is a wreck of a way to spend the evening. Often I think on where I'll be, assuming I'm going somewhere. If you've no preparation for travels away then how can you really travel? I'm waiting; waiting to take the excursion of life, but like all other things of difference to me, I lack the backbone to make the choice and follow through. I know what it means. I know that life is going to go right on ahead and deal my hand whether or not I am up for it. Wherever I am, whatever I do, I should at least let the cards fall where I am happy and able to receive them with some sort of expectancy and the capacity to deal with a loss here or there. Still... Here I am, fucking around at 12:30 in the morning, pounding away at the keys that bind me to my horrors in infamy while the sensible boys and girls have all run off to play with one another elsewhere. It is the way of things. It is the strings that bind me to myself. I have been falling since I've returned home and soon I will finally stop at the bottom, only to again rise up in time for spring when love and the weather are quick to receive my long awaited longings with comfort, warmth, and distraction. Where I will be by then, who can say? Not I, nor whom I will be, for that matter. It is the great mystery, I suppose. I know, wholly anyways, perhaps three things about life. You live, you die, and things change. In saying that, it really doesn't sound like life is all that those old men boast it to be. Those old men, old soldiers of the day and night and everything inbetween, know one other thing. Details. The little details we pick up on throughout our wandering. Please, don't read anymore. I'll not have you staying up late because I decided to go ranting and raving so slightly tonight. Go to bed, you scoundrels and vagabonds. Your internet connections are not your only friends, you know. There's a nice bed and pillow or two with your name all over them; cold, lonesome, and ready for a good healthy jump. Don't forget to brush your teeth.

-Charlie

Gunslingers Beware, Lookout Rabbit Spots The Drop Again.

Boy oh boy have I been revealing... I have come to the conclusion that I say way too much of my own shit on here that anybody can read if they want and you know what? Earn it, motherfuckers. I love you all, really, but I don't know you, you never comment, and in the end I just feel like an idiot saying all my personal thoughts with no response, reassurance, or what have you else. Take that, Tokyo.

I will spend this evening out to coffee. I will go to the cafe, order my drink, and sit on the terrace embracing my book and my sketchbook and my pen, the cigarettes, the coffee and the evening air. It is no good to drink coffee alone, but then again, what is the use of staying home? There is nothing here to make me feel warm and welcome, happy and peaceful. Escapism is perhaps the next best thing to peace. I fight for peace, but there are no fights tonight and so coffee out alone is what I shall receive, and I'll have it with as much pride as a man living alone might muster up.

Remembering Francis

I picture you all alone at your table.
I picture you, a single horse in the stable.
Fire from your nose,
And all the urgencies
From the race in your mind.
From the mouth of my petulence
You are born
And quickly fly off the wheel again,
But death lies loose on the backs of the disturbed.
Sipping at your coffee; the drink of all your thoughts.
And what such thoughts would make a drink
That having could have not?
Filterless cigarettes whimper in the tray.
Your stained, river fingers draw them on with disarray.
Well I have warned you twice old man,
If again you piss anywhere but in the can
I'll make that coffee fly out of your hand,
The cup be up your ass.

In October

It is sometime in October,
And I hear the harlet song
Of the crows among the trees;
Raspy voices singing long.

While the cool breeze chills my neck,
And the sun falls down in sprays
I stop to look high for a moment,
I should have stayed in bed today.

But the sun came falling down
On my sleeping eyes this morn,
And to wake beside no one
Makes a bed as mine forlorn.

When I came to see the grounds,
And have breakfast at his table
I did not expect my spirits
To be so carefully disabled.

So I took my coat from the hanger
And walked outside in anger;
Never does a man feel brave
When he rises to dig a grave.

So I plunged my heavy shovel
Into the cold October ground.
When I stopped to take a breath
The crows were no longer around.

The cold, brown steel against the earth
Was all that I could hear.
As the grave began to form
The mortal wound whispered in my ear.

And so I did, late on this day
Give rest to another who has gone away.
And now I can tell you, by my hands cold and sore,
Death comes for the dead, but it takes so much more.

My head is filled to the brim with dizzy, sorted thoughts on this eveing like all others, but somehow special for the rest of the world. It's Saturday night and nothing matters to me much and I wonder why that is and also if I've just become so wrapped up in my sins that I dismiss everything else around me. I am stuck on a little wooden boat, far out on the ocean front, and the storm before me awaits my drift and rumbles and tears at the skyline for my arrival, of fresh blood and aching; of old passings, and new beginnings ended. As I press my weight into the oars I think on times that weren't so troubled. I wonder if it was that version of me and not this one that was the right; of days and of nights, when the drinks and the friends and the laughs were thick, instead of lost to me now. Why, oh why must it be this way? Someone, anyone will say it doesn't have to, but you don't know and you never will. I have had a headache all day long. Nothing has helped it. The oxygen, like the mountainous places I've travelled, is thinner in my lungs from the smoke and the paniced pangs of constant loss from my grip of life. I'll never fall too far. Just far enough to shut out the light and stay in to doors remembering instead of living, watching instead of seeing.

A Strange Day

This town is finally, really getting to me. Maybe its just that I'm not busy anymore. I work everyday, and then the weekend comes round and nothing usually comes of it. Sometimes it is good, but mostly I just sit and think about what I would be doing elsewhere. Funny how that works out...

You know, I really wish I could say something wise or meaningful to you here and now but the words aren't coming and they aren't coming more and more often. I don't know what that means either except that perhaps there is some sort of deficiancy in my heart. I don't feel inspired by much anymore. It seems that the people I know and that are around me are distanced; glazed over eyes to the world and I suppose the mirrored face that is mine seems the same to them. Like when we meet one another, and how all these words that should be spoken lay lazy in the backs of throats not wanting to surface themselves. So we just sit quietly and think ever so slightly why we aren't saying what we want to say. Well, whatever it is its only going to become worse before it becomes better.

On a more awkward note, my cat, the ever loveable Jerry, has leukemia and is currently suffering from a nasty lung infection that he might not make it through. My mother is sad and I am too since this will be the second cat of ours this year. I know its only a cat, but this cat is gorgeous and loveable and fat and friendly and he teases my dog and used to chase him around the yard and it was hilarious. He's a talker and a former smoker. He's a damn fine fellow of a feline and if he goes I'm gonna miss the little son of a bitch. Quite strange isn't it? A cat with leukemia? I've never heard of such nonsense, but whatever. I guess now if I get cancer I can say that it runs in the family. Oh well thats an odd thing to think about though too, me getting cancer. I'd be pissed. No kids, no accomplishments, no great adventures; yeah I'd be fairly pissed about it. I probably will have some sort of cancer, lung or liver, if I don't change my ways.

To cats with cancer and deficiencies of the heart,

Charlie

Monday Morning Thoughts For Breakfast

I drink my coffee in the morning with the rain spouting here or there and the cool air sneaking into my truck somehow (it is an old truck you know) and I watch the cars go by me and the people in the busied streets off to work and what have you. I think good thoughts about people that make me think them and I think that maybe today I will have the patience to quit smoking and go to the supermarket and buy better foods and maybe even have a go at a jog in the evening when the day's work is done but then I think maybe not, it is monday and maybe I am aiming too high again and these are just thoughts that come with the change of weather but they are really lovely thoughts all the same so I continue this big spin and wait for the work to come and for the coffee to kick in. The washing machine is sounding behind me like a thunderstorm (it is an old washing machine you know) and its spinning round and round my clothes in cool water and I can't help what it was like before we had washing machines and how technology might have been better not so rushed and that if we have come so very far with it in such a short time that perhaps all that time we cut away was only to bring us here waiting about our doom that is soon to come from all this technology and everything and it makes me say that I wish I could have washed my clothes by hand now instead of all this excess. No matter, its only Monday and I sit here with a fresh cup of coffee and I listen to music and I love it because it requires very little of anything on its own except good things like talent passion love and understanding and so I am listening to dream a little dream of me and it makes me feel fine any time of day with a sound that is unlike the music that is current (it is an old song, you know) and I feel fine and the coffee warms me and the music loves me because I love it back. Monday thoughts, like how nothing really surprises us anymore as people and anything created these days for the greater population of man is too complicated to understand and that no cause these days seems very admirable or if it is I know nothing about it and I'm sure most people don't either which makes me sad. It makes me wonder in the coming years what team I should be playing for or what I should be doing with myself to stay out of trouble with others and yet still abide by my own morals and rules about life and me and everything else but then again these are just silly Monday thoughts that never go anywhere and are far gone by Tuesday's wake and so I'll wrap this up and simply step outside and smoke a cigarette against my better judgement (it is an old habit, you know) and try to think of good things again and work well and sleep well and maybe we'll talk soon and maybe we won't. Maybe we never talk.

-C.A.Dominick

A Song For November While We're Still In October

I have a new song playing on this page, in case you hadn't noticed. Hey lady, you were right, this song is wonderful.

It is a bit sad though, too. Ahh, we silly thinkers, we always like the sad stuff a little more than anything else. You know why? It seems more real.

We go on throughout our lives remembering good and happy things, and we remember them just fine, but that hard, fast, holding pain of life always seems to draw us in a little quicker than anything else. The triggers are small, simple, and many. The reaction is as vast as the mind will allow. It only makes sense. The human body is designed to weep. It is very frail and very symbolic and very tender and very capable of unlimited expanse of the collective thought processes. It is embodied with more emotion than anything I could ever elsewhere conceive, simply because it has found so very many ways to express its emotional pain besides simply crying out or walking wounded.

Truly Human. Truly loved and lost and frail. Nothing in the mind can be measured except by the mind, and if it can be seen in the mind; if it can take physical form, than it can be done.

...still, this sad song moves along and the words I half-hear because I am so caught by that beautiful rhythm that is backing them. I wish I had been better to music. I wish I had wanted it more, for I would create it with the love and respect of a musician who wanted it enough to make himself capable. I listen to this and I know that I can create such beauty with my hands, mind, and voice. Well, maybe not my voice, but I could do it with my hands and head. I hear songs in my mind I've never know all the time and wish I could just work them out on my own instead of always hearing them resonate inside me. All in due time, I suppose.

I did not find resolve this evening, oh no. No matter, it will come too, with time. I hope only to sleep and dream a good dream for once this week; all week long my dreams have been so hard on me and I awaken hurt, confused, and sad. I don't want to find sadness in my sleep when in my waking life I listen to songs like this and am reminded of so much of it. There is so much of it that I have known. That seems silly, since I am but 22 years old and nothing of life has even grazed me, but it is there all the same. It is in the people. The people make and break your years and cause your every function, right or wrong. We are never alone whose heart is not somehow consumed with the want of companionship in another. To be alone, to know that ultimate want for others, is to understand how very frail and fragile we as human beings are.

Randomization Stations, The Smiths Are On The Speakers Above

I'm listening to the Smiths right now. I know, I know, kind of wussy music, but it's alright. I like it just fine, except it always makes me feel strange, like I'm reminiscing on times gone by. I haven't been listening to the Smiths very long, a couple years maybe. Because it makes me feel like that it also makes me feel like I'm invading some generation past that I didn't grow up in or fully understand. Sure, the eighties, right? Yeah, I was born in the eighties but I was six by 1990 and at six you don't know much more than your friends, your bike, and your parents and family affairs. This generation, this strange generation we are apart of has had a dramatic share of changes, and could be said that it is unlike any other. Of course, that too could be said about every generation since being that within every generation different great events have marked themselves in history. I really don't know where I am going with this or anything, just thinking out loud, so to speak. It gets you thinking of how very young this country actually is; the spoiled child of the world with all the money and all the power and no idea what to do with it; naturally it turns towards spoiling itself. I wonder how bad things can get before people realize whats going to happen. I wonder if I'll still be around when a few more of the great, big changes take place, and if they are going to be for the better, or, and the more probable, the worse. Will I be sitting there somewhere listening to the Smiths when all this shit comes falling down? Probably not. I can't imagine the Smiths giving me much more satisfaction with my years to come, unless the women I marry is a die hard Smiths fan or my kid finds an old record of them stored away in the basement and begins an entirely new, old obsession. Well, we all know how I'm not one to be talking of social affairs nor politics; I don't have the brain or patience for it. Maybe I can scrounge up something else for you instead.

I got word a few minutes ago that it is snowing in St. Cloud, MN right now. my former home. Funny. I could be living there right now and be bitching about how its snowing. Someone else did this time. In a way it almost seems kind of convenient, as much as it is dreaded. I almost hate fall for the fact that I have to feel fooled in the changing weather. Sure, the leaves are pretty and all but the sun is out and alot is still green and then at night the wind brings you the winter air that chills your nape and lends a few shivers to be warnings for the waking of winter. To have it simply arrive would cut out all the waiting and just make cause for adjustment. "Well shit, its snowing.' 'Guess we oughta put on the big jackets and bring out the shovels." Oh but fall is beautiful though.

I have just sprouted a theory: all this quiet dismay people seem to be feeling; could it be a reaction based on the fact that all of us quietly know how the earth is not going to be the same for very much longer? That is to say, that we all sense its slow and steady downfall and realize that we are powerless to reverse the damages of man's doings?
I know I said I would get off this subject since its normally not my style, but it has been in my head all evening. I look around me, and physically speaking all I can see is wood, concrete, glass, plastic, asphalt, steel, copper, morter, sheetrock, paint and rubber. All these things whose creation and shapings and moldings depend on petroleum and that take up so much space for the housing and convenience of people. I wouldn't want it another way; I've not alternate solution that would prevent trees from being cut down, gas burned, or grass left uncovered. I'm no tree hugging hippy nature extremist or any sort of person like that. I guess I was just thinking...

Seriously, is this what the Smiths do to me?!?! If so, I'm not sure how much I want to listen to them anymore.

The Unbecomings of A Broken Man

I turn on the light and open the browser; click the link and hit "create new post." Thinking, "maybe something will happen tonight." I guess thats not really the point. I haven't been myself too much lately. I think I very easily have forgotten who it was I was in the first place. I feel that I have destroyed alot of relationships with people I have known in the previous year; and that I have defamed my own character by actions unfit for the person I sometimes boast I am. I am not that person right now. I don't know where he went, when he fell, and why he couldn't make it out without carrying all this clutter with him in shame and illusionary form.

...I listen to a song presently that reminds me of winter here in town. This particular song has a soft introduction with a piano and it always makes me sad but with a clarity in the sadness, as if all along I was supposed to feel this way, and that it is the appropriate feeling to feel. I often wonder about that, too. How I should be feeling at particular moments when resolution takes avow. Well, that is another dilemma all of its own.

Mostly I am weary for the past few months and the actions I have taken with the people I have met and known. Nothing of true and tragic disaster has taken place, but subtle occurrences have made it so that I feel, and seemingly am now apart from the few people still around here that matter, or mattered to me. For those of you who may read this and know what I am vaguely addressing, my apologies for any pain or ill-manner I have caused. I have now learned to keep to myself these days.

That is precisely what I have been doing now for the past few weeks-- keeping away from anyone whose presence is less fortunate by my own. I understand that I am making this out to seem a little too much on the dramatic side; it is a little more black and white, but then again you are getting my perspective of things and how I have perceived them. After all, this is my blog. It seems a silly enough concept now after having it for all this time. I should save all this angst and simply use it towards a better project of my own rather than always giving you the inside track. Thus far it has done me no true good. Many of the people who read this have been affected, and not necessarily positively by it, which has in turn caused some of this lamentation I now endure. For that too, I apologize.

It is late and I am unresolved, therefore I will return to my solitary state of being and try to seek some clarity from the present mess that is my life. I blame it on having too much free time. I should engage myself in something of substance and keep my mouth away from the drama's and dilemma's that reak of adolescence and unnecessary circumstance.

Yours respectfully,
C.A.Dominick

...how secrets fly swifter on the shoulders of sisters holding hands and walking fast to help their mother.

I do declare a reformation to take avow and transform spectrums of unpleasantness into foreverness of progress towards newfound innocence. This, but one dense distance of arms to lovers' arms reminds the viewer of a time when branches shivered between the tangles, fair and fortunate to be freeing themselves in a procession of marriage to the wind. In the darkness we are all the same in that we breathe so quietly and quickly in the drifting of our peaceful sleepstates. If I could sink in this vividness, if but only for a moments time, then I would make you my bewildering bride and run away in the sage of this dampered day so soft with fray. How secrets fly swifter on the shoulders of sisters walking fast to help their mother is a wonder to me. How brothers lay distant in the sepulcher of their prideful hearts of their fathers' blood and bones. When the night is won by the low-light spray of the moon's display I am over and gone beneath the the hillside streaming through my fingers every star since lost in flight.

To be continued, perhaps...

-C.A.Dominick

Brainspouts, Spigots, Drips, Drops, and Spays of The Waking Memory

"You who were born with the sun above your shoulders, you turn me on, you turn me on, you have to know... You who were born with the sun, she keeps her distance. you turn me on, you turn me on, but so does she. You who were born there where beauty is existence, you turn me on you turn me oh but it heals my soul. you who were born well you shiver and you shutter. you turn me on, the girl is gone so come on lets go."


The soundtrack plays, my heart, if for a moment stays back in time to try and measure the way things were. In the car, driving from place to place; the heater cranked, it was so cold then. We would take it to the top of this parking ramp and look over the sleeping town, watching the cars go by and the lights lit up; stars in front of our eyes. But the music... Maybe the best thing about you and I. Always, we had music. Everywhere we went it was a silly competition to see who could outdo who at discoveries of melodies and soft voices and hooks and lines. Those were the times, and when we dined we did it well, and laughed and joked and you or I would always give the waiter a bit of a hard time. You and I, miles and miles are there between but we still dream all the same. That tree, that one magnificent branch that should have fallen by now, and just as well, for neither one of us will climb it anymore. But I still drive, and I know you still turn the key and go back in time when I was there; I know you know that I felt just the same as you. Well, timing is everything, as they say. The timing was off; its always off, it seems these days. Just sitting down by the riverside spreading my arms to the open wide, you there always by my side. You, you, you. Me, me, me.

The sedatives kicking in, I think a little of the years gone by and wonder how it will all turn out in the end. But it is late, and I must sleep, and so should you. I want to write of many things, but some are just so hard to find and others touch too deeply in the waking of my sleeping thoughts.

Whatever all this is it means nothing. The written word means nothing really; it never will unless something of it has happened and unless someone has felt it and known it. Now the drugs are deep in my lungs and my blood is thickened by them so much so that I forget to make any sense out of anything.

Goodnight

-C

A Conversation/Splittin' Atoms With Apples In A Room Full of Assholes.

"Southern charm? You'd be the devil if you weren't a church goin' man, I measure!' 'Well what would you know about it anyways?' 'It seems to me that you are simply watered down frustrations and a ball of mental malfuntions, my dear.' 'As if you know en-ee-thing about it!' 'Why, it was but three days ago where I found you, like a child in a candy store gawking so fervently at those teenage girls.' 'Mr. Benns, you're just a pervert and a scoundrel and no amount of so-called "southern charm" deludes my judgement.' 'What was all that talk about church then, Miss Clawdy?' 'Well... I spect as well that your only real initiative for the house of God is so you can spy on all those pretty young things sitting in the pews ahead.' 'I suffice to say, you are an incorrigable one and no amount of prayin'd do the job to rid you of your demons!' 'That's just a bunch of claptrap.' 'Oh I fear, Mr. Benn's, you some kind of disease on womanfolk.' 'Well then Clawdy, you old bird, here comes Baby, now lets just see if Baby's got the Benns..."

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*Tiny living soldiers stand guard every single night when the lamp goes out and the wishy-washy moonbeam glides through the window pane.

Sgt. McNarles, first name Charles, stands guard at the medicine cabinet and things are getting desperate. "It's just the right night for a midnight fight over pharmaceutical delights," he spouts as the soldiers shout out the roll call in the mess hall behind the bathroom stall. Tiny soldiers, all conformed to the everydays and nights of the big, savvy people and their enormous fight against nose hair and gingivitis, make of themselves simple, sorted systems of symbiotic strife. The cat is fond of them; they lose a lad nearly every month, but the cat is glad, with a belly full of miniaturized green beret. So the motto goes, "wherever there's a soldier, the cat knows, so be on your toes."
Charles McNarles, guardian of endless bottles of cure-all concoctions, is found remiss and a little on edge tonight. "I've got to get going, I've got to stay ready," he repeats to himself, over and over and over as the sink water drips and the shower curtain wades through the undertow of the air ventillation coming from below. But this was long, and long ago. The soldiers life is another story for another time.

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"What the hell am I talking about?"
-The Author

"Brilliantly written; it is warm and inviting like grandmother's cookies."
-The New York Post

"This is one of the greatest tales of the year."
-The Times

"A masterpiece among masterpieces."
-Chicago Sun Times

"Who ate the last piece of chicken?"
-Roger Ebert

"No, you idiot! You weren't suppose to put that down!"
-Roger Ebert

"Oh fuck this shit, you're all nuts."
-Roger Ebert

"I think it's nice. Go and get me a Sunday paper now."
-Mom



Well, if there's one thing we've learned in this day and age it is that the world is full of crazy assholes with nothing to do and no one to talk to and I'll be damned if I am some sort of exception to the rules. You'll be damned too. We'll all be damned. Want to know the shit-end of it all? There's no ice cream in hell. Isn't that a shame?

-Chawrlee

What I Need

What I need; 22 and nothing to do, is a big cigar and a nice cold beer. I'll sit out on the porch with John Fahey in the backround and a little Hemingway to read and observe the pleasantries, (if there are any) in the neighborhood at night.
Every night, or very near it, when I go to bed I lay awake for several minutes, and in that time it almost always happens that I hear a siren sound off somewhere in the distance of proximity of my part of the town. The siren goes off, and then the neighborhood dogs begin the howling. There must be nearly eight or ten of those howling goddamn dogs. Part of me laughs and part of me sighs.
Ahh, but I'm not to that part yet, and while I'm still fooling around with the present ol' John Fahey's guitar is a-whalin' away and I am taken aback at such a splendurous sound. If you ever come across it the next time you go music shopping, I suggest picking up his later album titled, "Old Fashioned Love" for it is well worth the twelve or thirteen dollars you may spend. It is at once lively and romantic and sad and honest and rivers and meadows of chords flood the ears with pleasurable tone.
If I can't have a cigar then I'll settle for a Camel. I've gone full circle again; until recently I hadn't been smoking camel's for nearly a year. Maybe thats a lie... Who could know if not me? Or care, for that matter, I suppose.
What I need to do is get rid of all my excess I see cluttered about me. I hate having things I never use. One day, sure, but not right now. I don't mind bare walls and the bare essentials to get me by. Keeps things simple and easy and I know what I'm doing most all of the time.
I'm so glad to be reading Hemingway again; it has been quite a while and since renewing my taste I wonder how it was I went without him in the first place. I'm not certain, but I feel as if I could confidently say that he is my favorite novelist. I love the way he always talks about the meals wherever he goes and how people feel about the ordinary things. I wish I could have known him in the time when he was my age. Then I would be in Paris maybe, and see the great city along with him and go to the tracks with he and Hadley and maybe even discuss books with he and Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare and Company. That would have been much nicer than a carpentry job in a middleweight, sleeping town of only fifty-thousand or so in the southern part of the middle of the country. We can't pick our battles, we can only choose how to fight them.

I'll get on that good foot again and soon it will be high times with lovely people and drinks and dancing and all the good things I used to be so fond of, and that were fond of me also.

-Charlie

Two Steps Back

I feel as if I've still been trying to rush so much of everything here lately. Honestly, its hard to find that happy medium. On the one hand, I can be a huge procrastinator, never making up my mind; never finalizing. On the other, I am prone to spontaneous actions, going wherever the wind takes me. Quite frankly, its getting to be too much. It makes me not want to speak to anyone about anything because I will probably say something that won't be true or I will do something I said otherwise. I want to take this winter off from everything. To not think about college or where I am going to move or what I want to do or bands or poems or anything. I am tired of making excuses and promises and engaging myself in things that are not completely rational and what I really want. Sure, I am young, and still have time enough to screw around a bit longer without losing too much slack, but I don't have that much more time at my disposal and I guess I'm just through fucking around with myself. I will smoke cigarettes and do push-ups and practice my guitar and write when I feel I must and work hard and relax with good books and good company. I long for some of my northern friends and their savory conversation and their delightful company, but I feel at this point it would be wrong to go running back. Not until I have myself straight.

-C

What is A real Life

I have no clue. My friend Brenna says there is no such thing. Word.
*Dictating...

Brenna is the smartest person I have ever met in my life. She is fabulous. She makes the Dhali Lahma look like a smo. Word. She's pretty happy with that description. Perhaps...

Meanwhile,
Your southern born saint, your drumpster-dive of a hero, me, is in dire straights, and I don't mean that crap-ass excuse for a band. I am arguing with the empty glass of whisky as to whether or not Jean Paul Sarte makes any fucking sense. Your call, really. I got ten dollars and nothing to buy, cause I just got the book I been wantin' for awhile. I'll give you a hint... its Hemingway. Yay. By the way, do you like goulash? Isn't that an ugly name for a food? I think so too.

I am not drunk, which gives me no excuse for this bullshit of an entry. Oh man, I suck.

-C.A. Dominick

Praire Fire That Wanders About

I'll not stir,
But leave this night forever alone.
Lovers to come will find me cursed;
Shadowed by a sorrow of my past.
Is it because
I did not meet your eyes with mine?
Is it because
I did not ask you what was wrong?
Or better still
That I ne'r took your hand
When it lay waiting in vain?
Whatever the matter, I will dismiss.
The resonance
Of this significance is meaningless.
Well I'll not stir,
But softly fall asleep again;
Dream a dream,
I dream so many dreams it seems.
You were sad,
And I could not make you happy,
And so I let you go.
I'd rather not
Use up the rest of what we've got,
But stay in doors tonight
And carefully complain to these four walls
That feel more like a tomb of thoughts.
Do you stir?
And filter all this through your mind?
My last impression is the best I've got,
And it is yours when I leave this place.
I have shone this light a thousand nights,
And yet it is eternal darkness.
I'll not stir,
But leave this night forever alone.

-C.A.Dominick

When The Catfish Is In Bloom

On the bank of a muddy river
Life is folding over in wonder
And freeing what is needed
Of such forever flowing freedom
And my hand into the pool
And my thoughts all gone askew
Since my heart’s been renewed,
Renewed by you.
How now
Can all this come to form?
Since I left home so long ago
I’ve felt my heart been reproachful
Saddened, refused and torn
But now the sun breaks through the clouds
And once again my heart's aroused
By something more
Than ever I had known before.
All by you, and true and still
The wind is whispering upon the hill
Where I am standing, sure and still
Against the troubles of my past
Where once the boy was not this man
Who you now know,
Who hopes to grow with you beside;
And he’ll not hide from you nor I.
Moonlight drenches me in folds
For lands and loves that I have known
And time is first born in the mind
As love is first born in the heart
But no fair distance and no length of time
Has lifted me hence from this design
That calls me from the wood-banks
And hounds me in my dreams,
Taking me in droves
And tearing loneliness at the seams
Revealing something of a garment
Fluid, fought, won, and worthy
So that in the final memory
When I seem to be alone
In an echo over the mountain
I hear you say to me, “Come Home.”

And so I'm forever trying to find you, you who is my home...

Strawberry Vodka Critique's Another Sunday

I can still smell the strawberry vodka and sprite on my desk from last night. It turned into Sunday again. I hate Sundays. I really don't know why... just a feeling, I guess. It was cool and cloudy and I woke up late and nothing felt right. Not much does, but here and there are a few things worth feeling. Strawberry vodka, a blonde, and some dancing. That's alright to me.

I'm thinking about running away again. I think I might be joining the Americorps and going somewhere probably a good distance from this place again. My first bet is on Portland, but I wouldn't mind Maine or Washington. Hell, even Alaska would be alright by me. Just to get away, and with some purpose at that, would be a nice thing. I've got some hefty decision making to be doing here in the next year or so. I have to put up stakes somewhere soon and not run away so quickly. It's tough sometimes to decide the who's and where's of most importance.

Blah blah blah, enough of that shit.

Yes, yes, I am dry and empty today. That I think is my contributing factor to my hate for Sundays. Never a clear thought. Well, the weather's changing again with another year nearly done, yet again without resolve.

-youknowwhodammit.

Reflections While In Transit

Well, it's 11:50pm again; "another day, another dollar" as they say. I talked to a marine today; one whom I knew from years ago when I was in high school. I often wonder if I should have gone off such as he and so many other of my fellow young friends did. I guess at the time I didn't feel the necessary escapism it would be to have joined. Now... it is certainly a candidacy for debate. Of course, I would suffer endless arrows of judgement from my peers and siblings. This and that about the government and its unecessary involvement and spouts of Bush and his power plays with politics and the likes. People continually fail to understand that a man or woman doesn't join the collective fight for those reasons, hardly ever. They do it for personal reasons; their own. Some for the discipline and sense of purpose, some for the money either for educational or convenience purposes, some simply for something to do in a world that to them is seemingly mediocre and insufficient. I myself would participate for the experience itself. How else am I to truly understand a conflict or incident if I am not actively involved and able to physically see? That is my logic though. It is not very often that I take someone's word for anything. Some would say that that is a stubborn atitude but in truth it is just a matter of choosing not to. If i see fit the counsel of my fellow man or woman than I shall adhere to it and not question my own promptings. I choose my own promptings. At any rate, I am not saying that I am going to join a branch of the armed forces and send myself elsewhere for a matter of years. I am just speaking theoretically about a particular situation that has been repeatedly brought to my attention.

I really don't know what I will do. I think if there is any constant state in which my mind has been behaving as of lately it would have to be a small but everpresent sense of helplessness for the future in which I am involved. That, to me, seems like such a silly way to be thinking, but I cannot help it sometimes. There is a statement for you; "I cannot help feeling helpless."

I know in time the things I am seeking with clarify themselves; that I will sooner or later find what it is I am after and follow with the confidence of decision to pursue it without reprimend.

Being home, as I am, seems to be a starting point; a place where I can gain insight into who I am and what I want to do. I have nothing overly distracting to me here, so I am continually faced with evaluating the me that is my being in existence. Sooner or later things will surface. For now I study, and work, and write and breathe and smoke a few hundred more cigarettes. I often wish I could just forget that I was ever a smoker to begin with. I would wake up and breathe the air and not think about craving those awful little things.

Well, enough banter. I'm tired and this is all just purposelessness.

-C.A. Dominick

September: I Am Lost To You These Days

September is here; it has been for a while now i guess. This month, now just another month, was once a sort of embodiment of all my longings, harbored feelings, sadness, joy, pain and passion. This year it seems all that has been erased or eroded away from me, my heart, my head. I guess I don't really understand. If growing up means leaving behind all those feelings, feelings that were real and affecting, then I don't wish another day should pass. Often I recall what it is that was going on in my life at that once sought for time. I see that I was young, full of energy, innocence, and lack of responsibility or at least the awareness of it and its toll. Whatever was going on it was more potent than it is now; or perhaps I've fallen asleep to life's wayward ways. When you are a child, perfection need not be achieved, for children and childhood itself is perfection. Adults are a mess of complexities and insecurities. It is clear now that the subject I am encircling is Innocence. For purposes of explanation I will share with you a poem I wrote, of this very month, years ago.

*It is a lengthier piece but it sheds light on what I was like three or four years ago as opposed to now. I'm sure after reading my blog once or twice you have a relatively good idea of where my head is at these days.

"I feel the fall bring with it a wake in me I know I’ve known before.
The simple song of sweet September; somber, reflective, desperate for a need to be needed.
The distance between my arms and my lovers stays astray because I cannot give myself.
Seasons change like moods, and leaves fall quiet, but why? And whoever for?
Were to all be expected such rejoice from all this captive silence?
Not I, surely; I live lonely in its swelter, through its peak, and of its purpose.
Can I reside the future?
Can I take the stars that I so chose to claim whence I was a child?
So and some do long this whisper, though they all very well know they idle,
Brisk or slow amongst the solemn streets they go about, and inside shout for something more.
You will say that things will change and I will say how brilliant!
Amaze me, amaze me evermore with such words of wisdom!
Go on, tell me that death is inevitable, that the pain we all feel is never fun,
Fill my head full of your common sense jargon.
Blank is the page and clear is the canvas we see before,
Jests aside I wish no more,
For you are bade to paint and pen across all the emptiness you see.
You will fill the reasons for your pain, and tears and aching; revel in its joyous occasions,
Ones that you made real.
Chilling against my cheek is the air that lingers about in places;
Change the mood and see unfold of old the times and custom we create,
A lonely wall that speaks to you some of the longest and loneliest nights and seasons;
Starless, scapeless, hopeless and dreamless souls that scrape their hardened hands against
The cold and callous stone.
Will you plead your sadness too?
Consider the stream to which you find in you confides an essence of the past you know you cannot change.
Will it always be so saddened and distressful and subsided and forgotten, like an answer you wish you didn't find,
Stuck in mind like all the others that lead to your swimming in the streams of loneliness?
Just to harden out all the facts, do you remember the green of life anymore?
Have you forgotten all the lovely walks and every bit of splendorous color your eyes cultivate?
Please don't remain so settled in such despair, Sweet September.
For out of us to know that you live in hearts forever, apart of the season so much of us know most well.
My love for life was made in you, and I live on for reasons such as that."

Alright, alright, so even then I was a bit of a grim motherfucker, but at there were hints of hopeful moments. I don't know of whom some of the poem was directed; my best guess is myself. I don't write like that anymore either; not just the tone but the style. Everything is shorter or more fictional. I think at once I had a good glimpse of myself as to who I was and where I was going but that has since been lost to me. Perhaps it left with all of my changes, both physical and mental. All the things I've done over the past few years, good and bad. Reflection and hindsight lead me to believe that there was a sense of purity and purpose before and that that is all gone now. I don't want to believe it but I am having so much trouble trying to find it in the life I now live. I keep thinking, "somewhere else, that'll do it." Somehow that can't be the total solution, though I'm sure it is in part. Another part of me thinks it is that it has been so long since I have felt love for someone; and not fucked it up or been too scared to actually embrace my feelings. The more I go the further from myself I seem to get. This transition has been the hardest yet and whats worse is that I do not know where it will end and who I will have become. Me, of course, but the physical body is nothing to the reflection of the inner soul.

September, if it has maintained anything of its presence in me, is a month containing reflection and rememberance.

-C.A. Dominick

Prose Exposed No. 3 (A Copy)

"and here, among the quite quiet slumber of the evening, here he turns to the gray, gray skies henceforth and listens. What is said to him is precisely this: 'Behold, for we now become as silhouettes upon a dream-starved earth, so cropped with falsified innocence, ere we are aware that our passions lie besieged upon some midnight clear, and far ahead in future raptures we reluctantly obtained when not our hearts could understand.' 'Dramatically inclined, he ventures to the corner to find her standing on the curb, alone and quite frightened by the distant lights ahead.' 'What is there to be so frightened by,' he asks, as she slowly, and with much struggle, turns to face him. "I am waiting for a feeling, and a feeling to end this feeling that I'm feeling," she replies. "Can I help you?" he asks, and she whispers softly into his ear, while taking slightly his hand by the fingers, "but you already have," and then she kisses him softly on the lips. A noise resounds from behind and he quickly turns to investigate, letting go of her hand for but a moment. When her turn back round to find her face again, it was empty space where once a dream had stood in the form of a beautiful face. If on a corner you see him standing, head tilting side to side, you see the very boy, in search of the very girl, the traffic glance romance that lives forever on dim-lit streets in dim-lit towns on dim-lit nights as these. The sky will tell you so, if you really want to know."

-C.A. Dominick

Second Hand Merchandise

You know, I don't know anyone that says this personally, but I'm sure there is some old geezer out there; someone's grandfather that tells them all the time how everyday is a new adventure. Well ladies and gents, here's my grand and all encompassing adventure of the day.

Actually I think I might have built it up just a little too much with that last sentence, so prepare for disappointment.
Anyways, I went to a local thrift/vintage goods store today. The mission was to rid myself of some vinyl that I no longer found desireable, plus I needed some spare cash to feed my excessive habits of drinking coffee, buying books, music, and journals, and lets not forget my closest friend of all, the mighty cigarette. So, I took in what was probably around twenty records or so, some good, some shitty, some so-so. After a look at the bundle the guy says to me, "I don't know, 18 bucks?" I say, "sure." Some would call that hasty, but I guess I didn't really care. I did begin to think about how nothing these days retains any value, except of course for Honda's. Those damn Japanese know how to make a car, God bless em. Well, I browsed the store for a bit, found a book about Physics, bought it for $5, and headed for a coffee and to search for A Moveable Feast by one of my pesonal favorites, Ernest Hemingway. I didn't find the book, but I did find the coffee, and a pretty lady to make it for me. Normally when I go to this place for the hot stuff I like to sit on their small patio area and read and smoke cigarettes and write and admire the beauties and so forth, but alas, dinner beckoned me elsewhere. My sweet momma, she gave me a call and told me to come to the folks house for dinner. What? I'm not turning it down, its good, free, and better than what I've got at home; some pizza rolls and frosted mini wheats. Anyways, the kicker of the day was on the drive to my parents' house for dinner. I began to think again about how my records collected me so little money and how nothing really holds value and all that. Then I had a funny thought.

..."What if I offered to sell myself to the store?"

I began to play it out in the car.
I walk in, walk to the counter and see the man to which i just an hour ago sold my records to, and say, "excuse me sir.' 'I have a sort of an odd question for you." To which he would say, "ok?" "Well, I was thinking earlier after I sold you my records how nothing really retains much value these days, but I started wondering... Well, I'll put it this way: you guys buy and sell records, cds, books, movies, clothes, furniture, etc. right?" "Well, yeah, yes we do." "Ok, well, I was wondering, how much would you pay for a person?" The clerk, a little confused and condescending would say, "excuse me? You mean like, a person, like a human, right?" "Right." "Yeah, is this a joke, or..." "No, no. I'm seriously asking you, how much would you give for a person?" "Umm, well, I don't think we can do that, so..." "Well, what I mean is, you know, buying and selling people is, is well, sort of been going on for a while, you know.' 'I mean, it kind of built the foundation for our country and our system of government, and you know the Egyptians did it and stuff.' 'Why not now?" "Because its against the law!' 'And anyways, even if I were to buy you, who would get the money, you?" "Well, yeah, I guess." "What are you going to do with it?' 'Spend it here at the store?" "Maybe, I guess." "No. I mean, you would have to stay here, with the rest of the merchandise, and you know, we'd have to feed you and bathe you and, uhh, it just seems like more trouble than its worth." "Hey, I'm just lookin' for a dollar amount here, I didn't say it would be the right price or anything like that." The clerk would give me the hard glance of frustration and anger over the ridiculousness of the conversation and say, "Well, look, man, I think you're completely nuts." It would go on like this for several minutes, until finally, I would convince the clerk to buy me.

So there I am, at the second-hand store, along with all the other merchandise. I would wear a T-shirt that says both front and back, "For Sale: See Clerk For Information Regarding This Merchandise." Every once and a while people would laugh and ask the clerk about me, thinking that I was just another employee, and the clerk would say to them, "no, he's really for sale.' 'Would you like to buy him?" "How much?" "I think we could part with him for $650." "No way!' 'I wouldn't pay twenty bucks for that guy!"

Twenty dollars. Assholes.

Anyways, one day months later some poor jerk would come in with his girlfriend and inquire about me. And they will ask, "how much?" And the clerk will answer them, and it will be my lucky day since they just won big on a scratcher ticket and have money to blow. Then I'll be carted away, finally. The staff will be a mixture of crying young madens whose fondness came about from my doubtless, sublte charm and good taste in headwear, as well as books, and others who were just plain annoyed with my very existence, both out of my taking up their space and them being jealous that they didn't think of it first. I'll go home with the happy couple, lucky winners, and spend the rest of my days taking care of their thirteen cats and four dogs, a parakeet named "Banana" and a gerbil named "Sherlock." I wash their cars on Sundays. I clean the house and do their laundry and every once in a while we watch That 70's Show together, and their favorite character is Fez, whereas mine is always Donna. Once a month they let me go and visit my family, and in the evenings after the dishes I get to read, but only approved literature. They don't want me to taint my slave like brain.

It's kind of a far-fetched tale, but hey, it could happen. I mean, just because my United States of America blood is backed with a bill of rights and The Constitution doesn't mean I'm obligated towards its evident principles. By selling my self to the company store, I voluntarily denounce my right to freedom and the "American Way" and voila!

Maybe I was a crack baby or something; I'll ask my dad tomorrow. He always gives the story to me straight.

Goodnight you cheeky bastards, you devils, you.

-C.A. Dominick

Boo-tay, Ya'll

Yeah, I said it. I went pub crawling tonight- not drunk. Bummer, right? I have had three drinks, all of which cost way too much. let's see, first I went to The Creamery, where some awful man was covering everything terribly. He told me he was soon to have some songs by Greenday and Nickelback; very big deal. Then we went to Champs, where it was not so happening. The bartenders are idiots there. Finally, we end up at the local dance club, the most happenin spot in Joplin, good old Club 502. This is one of those "shake your ass" kind of clubs. Yipee. Well, I ran into my old guitarists' older sister, and you know what? We fuckin danced. Yup, the Chucker shook his boo-tay for the lady on the dance floor. It was really fun. Well, at any rate, at least I did something instead of chumping out like alot of poor suckers at those places. Man, I used to work in that atmosphere, and let me tell you, if you're not engaged then you're not gettin' anything. I guess it helps to be the charming son of a bitch that I am, but still, you gotta play the game, fools.

Fuck all that. I have no idea what I'm talking about.

In the end, (where it actually counts) I am here, alone, with some rather depressing music playing in the backround and no resolution; no resolve. I am left to go to sleep and dream about nothingness until tomorrow where the only thing on my agenda is to pick up my laundry and dodge another bullet of lonliness. Well, fuck that too, I guess.

I'm going to read a book on existentialism tomorrow, that's what I'll do.

This is the most pointless entry I have had in a long time.

P.S. Is it wrong that I think my old guitarist's older sister is attractive? I don't think so. Man...

I've overstayed my welcome again,

-C.A. Dominick

Bukowski vs. Everybody Else

I'm sitting here quiet
Three books in
And its all very real
Very interesting
Entertainment all the same.
After three books-
Three consuming efforts
Towards the man
The myth
The lengend
The drunk
And the womanizer
Nothing stays.
Bukowski
Isn't like everybody else,
I'm certain.
And now everybody else
Wants to be like Bukowski.

Blood rushes to the brain.
My head is dizzy
From the prize fight
Between Bukowski and the classics.
The old farts are taking a beating;
A sign of the times.
Still
This isn't a fight,
It's a wallop.
Everytime
I try and remember
A lasting line
From this new legend
Emptiness
And hard words are all I feel.
But...
Cummings
Millay
Whitman
Blake
Frost
Sexton
Keats
Dylan
All limping
Like aged prize fighters
Wind back and strike
And knock him on his ass
With every last line
I ever read.

Bukowski can have this decade
Because nothing gold can stay.

C.A. Dominick

Perspective, Perspective, Perspective.

Sitting around in my cluttered room now; the night is nearly over for me. I look about the room, not seeing much, since the only light comes from my screen and a small reading lamp in front of me on the desk. The desk is cluttered too, it seems. Old receipts, an alarm clock, Rod McKuen and Anne Sexton, my keys, a zippo light(my roommates, I recently lost mine) and various other dawdling of crap.

I turn off the Reigning Sound and turn on Belle and Sebastian; yes it is one of those nights.

I was supposed to meet a friend after band practice this evening. Yes, thats right, I play in a band. Didn't I tell you? Anyways, its nothing very interesting. I never feel inspired when the lyricist writes the lyrics after the melody has been made. Songs should be concepts. Everything else is like that. When a car manufacturer comes out with a new car they always call it a "concept." That's just what these songs are: concepts. With the exception of the most recent tune we've established, all these songs are full of lyrical nonsense. Too fucking abstract. Too fucking general, impersonal, fictional. Then again, what the hell do I know? I, the meager drummer and quiet, indifferent one of the group. I guess I don't put stock in much of anything these days. Not the women, not the music, not even the writers. Fuck. I know. I should drink more orange juice and go for a jog in the evening. I should change my perspective. Well, suck them titties. Maybe thats just what I'll do. But as it stands I am nearly broke, without a steady job, no motorcycle, no cigarette money, and the taste of lousy coffee in my mouth with a head full of bullshit coffee talk. What's a girl to do? Get vertically challenged.

-C.A. Dominick