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

When You're Only Twenty-Two It's Not Attractive To Complain About Your Sore Back...

But today the damn thing is killing me. No Joke.

Well, I got the staples removed from my head yesterday; the first time in days since I could run my hand through my hair and not feel metal and a sting that produces an instant headache. For those of you who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, I'll give you a recap: Two mondays ago I awoke to find my motorcycle stolen from my very own house. Big. Fucking. Deal. It was a blow of which I shall never fully recover. My trip of SIX WEEKS has been condemned to death by the actions of the mysterious thief who is now in posession of a very lovely bike with my name all over it. Anyways, the staples come in the next day. I was working on a construction site and moving an eight foot ladder which happened to have a hammer at the top, waiting to fall on my head. Well, it did. That thing hurt too! My father asked me if I was bleeding, I said, "I don't know," and then down my face the blood began trickling. Five staples later and I can't walk through a metal detector without a strip search. But all that is over now, thank God, or whatever it is we're suppose to thank. I have to wait for my stupid insurance agency to buckle down and get me a new bike, but its in the works and i guess I'm over the loss of the trip now for the most part.

I must confess, dear readers, this type of entry (talking about facts of my life and such) is exausting to me. I don't really find my life all that interesting so I guess I can't really fathom how anyone else should either.

Basically, I just want to feel forever like I'm about to burst into millions of particles the rest of my days. By that I mean, well, you know, that feeling... That "first kiss" rollercoaster feeling inside, filled with excitement and anxiety and sleepless needing satisfaction and shear wonder unfolded over eyes forever. I'm convinced its possible. It would take both a change of perspective and a very busy-body to make it so. To never stop. Whats to say that we can't act out all of our intuitions; our desires? I mean, for the most part anyways. More practical people will always argue against it, but thats only because people never want to give up anything; only accumulate more. If I had to give up all my furniture, music, and most else that is of any value to do something I really, really wanted to do, then I suppose I just would. In all honesty I would love to only posess at any given time the clothes on my back, my bag with a few gems of books and journals, and as a distant secondary maybe a mode of transportation (motorcycle). I would go from place to place and experience adventure after adventure. That would be a life for you. But... we always think it and never do it. It would be hard to do, especially with all these comforts of home. I have my front porch with the bugs and the low-light and the cigarettes for my ashtrays and the night air and a good book for a decent drink. Nice, huh? Well, when you're forever in motion drinks slow you down, cigarettes are bad for you, books are too hard to read, the night air is always changing and bugs whack you in the face. But.... the scenery is surreal. From mountain to ocean to river to lake you are there, in the physical, and nothing and no one can tell you what you are feeling, seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting except you. Fuck. Sign me up. I'd love a friend along for the ride, but I understand its hardly ever possible. We DO have to grow up sooner or later. Thats the damn facts. Unless, of course, money comes through such irresponsible behaviors, in which case, keep going. Well, I have this hobby I like to perform now and again. I like writing. Its nice to throw the words on the paper and fuck with them however I want to. Maybe i could go out in the world and write? Maybe I will.

-C.A. Dominick

Drunk.

Plainly put, I am tanked, or I should say, Tanked Out. I have been drinking for hours, touring the bars of Joplin for actually the first time since I moved back. Lets see... first there was the "dead, trendy, money, indie, or no fuck bar," then there was the "lesbians anonymous" bar, then there was the "hipster, college elitest dick bar." Figures. Leave it to Joplin to turn me away from the bars for good. You know, sometimes I really don't know why I am still here. Apart from my bike being stolen and such, I think I perhaps should have never come back. It might have been easier on my and everyone if I had just stayed put.

*I do realize that as of the last, say, eight entries or so I have been a depressive asshole; I want to apologize for that. I don't want to be and I'm not going to be anymore; at least i will try not to be. Cynics never win, its in the goddamn rulebook or something.

C.A. Dominick

Thought Recovery And Coping With The Psychological Misgivings of A Moon Found Falling On My Eyelids This Early Morning, Or Is It Evening?

Deep in the heart I frolick with laughter drenched in hues of blue and yellow. Red, red is just too drawn and distant tonight. I am calling from the distance and the echoes of my valved voice wander through the hills and the valleys, and hopefully, find you sleeping soundly.

But, then again, it is not fair fortune whose all too timely measure bereaves me of this heart-song sung in the late night hour. Perhaps its just a calling future whose only wayward message is to be done in the ways of foolishness and melancholy.

I am such as water does when it digs the deep ground and lay silent for decades.

When the music starts, I start with it, and never before; as do I end when the song has been sung.

*I do not know where all this came from; interpret as you wish, but I do believe my bed is calling.

C.A.Dominick

Ha. Ha. Ha.

I have a copyright, and I think that that is funny. Look:

Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony DominickCopyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick
Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick
Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick
Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick
Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick

Do you see?

Tonight I went for coffee and a few smokes. I got some coffee, and some smokes, and I smoked my coffee and I drank my cigarettes with as much vigor as a twenty-two year old boy should. I read some words. For a bit, I read some words by Vonnegut. Then, for another bit I read some words by Bukowski. Poor Bukowski is dying and taking it harder than I thought he would and Vonnegut is just talking some crazy shit about stupid religious terms and meanings and the end of the world and all that jazz. They do entertain me though, and how.

Pretty girls with pretty eyes...

Listen honey, I like your smile the most, and all that big decision talk bothers me, how about we just get drunk at the park and let the night have its way with us.

Anyways...

I've got sleep hounding at the damned door. Don't you hate that? Christ, I do. It's always saying two things: "Charlie, you're too stubborn for your own good, get your ass to bed or regret the next day altogether," or "hey, one more cigarette?"

I always say yes.

Always.

I used to tell someone that love is first born in the heart. Any thoughts? How can that even make sense, right? The heart is a muscle. It is the most habitable thing on the planet. Why do we give it so much credit? Maybe, if the heart were a feeling thing, we would always want to be on its good side or it could just up and stop and we would all just drop dead. Fuck. Well, thats just stupid. I would rather have my heart just stop than my brain shut off and I become a vegetable of a man.

*Note To All Readers:
If the author suddenly has a brain shut-down and becomes a vegetable of a man you are instructed (those whom the author knows personally, of course, unless you're very bored or something) to pull the plugs; stop the heart. Let his miserable, blank, emotionless ass be put to the good, hard, long sleep and all you have to do afterwards is recite passage 6 from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman. Do that, and you will have made his life worthwhile.


Go to bed, you animals.

C.A. Dominick

Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick (one more time, for good measure and all)

No More Muse At The Bottom of The Carton Tonight

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...

Now aren't keyboards silly things?

I think I like my pen better.

Quick Thought

Romance for romances' sake is empty and useless. I have been a practitioner for far too long, I think. I'm going to wait until I can't stand it.

Stay with the one you're with, let love run its course.

Every Town Is A Small Town Somehow

Trying to gain my bearings in my silly little world, I decided to go and buy some lightbulbs to feel useful again, and yes, in some way even productive. My productions have been half-hearted and lacking these days. If you really want to feel productive go to the grocery store; its amazing how much satifaction you can get out of buying yourself some cereal and milk, some meat and a nice batch of apples; even the bread for the morning with the coffee. Grocery stores are the key to sanity. I guess I'm just chock full of miserable straights in the streets that are my home. When here, I am a mess and that is that. Needs and wants, I guess. What do I need? What do I want? Peace, quiet, and some small way to expel this energy built up inside of me. Its kicking and screaming like a newborn babe whose milk is satisfaction not obtained and I am looking for that satisfying state the permeate this suffered brain. I want a range life, if I could settle down. I want to read and write all of my days, and play music I create, and only me, unless I find three or four other folks who see the way I see. I want to run from the cops and chase shooting stars for money and for happiness. I want to be bold and unhindered by silly sophmoric, romantic girls who take my time and snap it against my skin like a large rubberband that only stings and lingers for days. No more women even though I've not had so many. No more charlatans and no more pretencious drunks who know whats what and I don't know shit even though the shit I DO know I never offer them anyways. No more of that. Just whisky and some words and a little moonlight and a little holiday on the Mississippi River just like Samuel Clemens and I love how he admired that river so much. I guess its my drive, or something. Maybe I create this separation and this killing of the attachments in people that I surround and that surround me. I think perhaps I am too kind to say, "fuck off" defiantly enough for them to get the picture. Who knows. Maybe I just need good drugs and alot of sleep away from my father and my life for a few weeks. Maybe I need to be a criminal or eat more bananas or go to the picture show with a hand to hold. Maybe I need to operate machinery or take deep breaths in the checkout line or emancipate and proclamate the immediate state of my affairs. My I need a better lifestyle, some new shoes and whiter teeth in one month. Maybe I should read the Times or The Wall Street Journal and look into high yield investments and take my cash money to the carribean for a nice rum drink and a little ocean breeze to calm me into comatose comfort. Whatever it is, its just a big mish-mash of misconception. I'm going to go buy some lightbulbs and even a coffee or a cigarette and some more dull and meaningless conversation. Cynicism didn't consume me until I came here; now you know how I must leave.

Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick

All The Time

In a town,
In a place,
All the time,
All the time.
Here I sit,
Full of shit,
All the time,
All the time.
And the cars
Slowly go
To and fro,
There they go.
And I wait,
And I don't,
Now it's time
Now I know.
All the time,
All the time.
Life can be...
Well nevermind.
I'm just so sick
Of life sometimes.
Makes me tired,
Makes me jealous.
All the time,
All the time.
Hammered emotions
Beat my brain
All the time,
All the time.
Human relations
Are getting to me
All the time,
All the time.
Lights go dim,
Dreams are grim,
But sometimes...
The golden row
Of sunlight flows
throught the tangles
And I know
That things are nice
Sometimes.
I guess I just wish
For it
All the time,
All the time.

C.
A.
Domin
ick


Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick

Absurdity

Absurdity
In the games we've played;
Honey,
Aren't you tired
Of this charade?
Wouldn't you rather
Just run away?
Or should I
Just go away?

Sometimes...
I could grab you
And find my lips
parallel and parted;
Just as quickly
As it comes
It fades.

You run away,
Or you want both.
Well that won't do,
I'm stuck on you
And that won't do.
So take the fall
Or make the choice
Pick up your phone,
Let me hear your voice
Inciting,
Inviting,
Uniting,
Or dividing
You and I.

C.A. Dominick

Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick

Sophisticated Creatures

The lights of Grenoble
Are calling me up tonight.
"Stay awake, stay up late!"
They say, and so I pour a drink,
Turn on the think-tank
In the beak of my brain
And tip the tea-pot of thoughts over;
Pouring out the stuff of ages
In fractions all the same
As generations prior.
Words- they leak out like
The little drops of oil
from my '83 Dodge Pickup.
And soon, but not terribly,
The engine will run dry;
My words will find themselves
Empty in the vessels of my heart-
Burned, beaten and black
Like the starless night
Between dawn and daylight.
It's not so bad, really.
Spears of starlight press down,
Touching my eyes, glistening and falling;
The ebb and flow of a nighttime ocean
Above instead of below.
If I dress myself appropriately-
If I dress for success
I guess I will avail,
But the redundance of this life
Is something stinking;
Filthy and flandering mouths
Open wide and abide their contortions,
Passing themselves off as
Sophisticated creatures,
The idiots.


C.A. Dominick


Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick

To Anonymous: A Reply To Your Comment

I again apologize for the explosion; it has been a bit of a rough summer for me. In hindsight, you may very well be someone I infact don't know, and therefore couldn't possibly understand what a question like that would do to me, responding and such. Although, you did mention the word "act" which very well leads me to believe that you do infact know me. Ah, fuck it. Who cares, right? Thankyou for responding. If you do know me and feel that I am reserved as opposed to how I write it is for the same reasons and the same actions that I'm sure you commit yourself from time to time. Do you not act differently around your family as you do around your friends or significant other, if even a little? I'm sure, to some extent. I couldn't always be as passionate as how I sometimes write; people wouldn't understand. With the friends that I do have we all posess, in our individual relationships, a sort of understood ground for which we are based on, and we hold that ground until we perhaps see fit to move elsewhere. Some friends just aren't cut out for the sort of things I put down here. Many of my friends don't know about this, nor would I tell them. I would rather be sure, I guess. It's not about judgement either; I've never feared ridicule for the things I prefer, my actions, or interests. It's just out of convenience, I suppose. Oh, on and on I could probably dissect this subject, but I need a shower, and I want to sing a song in the mirror and shave my face and drink some water and smoke two or three or five cigarettes before I rest my head to bed. Goodnight all the rest of you old timey bastards, you devils you.

C.A. Dominick

PS
"Hey, Mr./Mrs. Anonymous, gonna tell me who you are?" If not who, then where from? If you dare, you can send it to my email, dominickontherun@hotmail.com if you don't want to have it be for public viewing.

The Lengths

Heart like leaves falling awkward on the ground,
daffodil smelling features,
Smile like Gene Kelly singing in the rain...
All these things,
And I can't complain,
But just a little bit
Since I'm going away.

In the rain,
Things that never really matter
Suddenly seem
Like bits of forever.

Well she eats strawberries in the rain,
Now how can that
Be wrong?
Not when I'm with her,
Oh no,
Not when I'm around.

Words are good.
Songs are good.
Rain is good.

By the soft light tonight
She'll be awake,
Quietly listening,
Still and sound
To the sounds of the songs
That speak about a
Goodbye.

Bittersweet it is,
Since now that I am home
Somewhere else
Is where I should have gone.
But most of all,
More than the rain,
I should have kissed
Your hand.

Goodnight sweet girl.


Copyright ©2006 Charles Anthony Dominick

Reflections Ressurected: Where Subject and Object Intersect

"In the thick of it, we either find clarity or doom."

I am only seven days from departure on a trip that will decide the course of events for the rest of my life.

Now, I know that that is a bit of a large and rather loaded statement, but in many ways it is true. I texted my friend today whom will be joining me on this excursion across western America, and I said, "we are 8 days away from our greatest achievement so far." He replied, "and death shall have no dominion." Fate is the strength in me that takes my burdens and turns them into this remarkable event that is near to unfold. I am, by my own governing nature, a body of creation and a seeker of truth and a lover of the written word. Something will happen very distinct and very real and very, very transitionally relevant that will come from me and my creative elements while I am away. He is right, not even death has a say in what performances of my exploratory heart consume me on this endeavor.

Digressing, and changing subjects, I just found this in my files and thought I would put it up to read.

"i dreamed that i was to die. Lying there, and a baby bird appeared,
but it was cast in a shell and helpless, so i freed it of its shell, so that it could fly away,
and to hope that i would not die so thoughtless and alone.
The bird flew away, aned i grew tired.
Each time i would near sleep an awkward noise aroused my ears,
so i fought to stay awake.
I did not know what i would meet upon my death, but i was not ready to forever sleep."

It was some time ago that I wrote that upon waking from sleep. I just thought it was interesting. Death is interesting, I suppose. I could understand how Poe's dominant bulk of work would be derived from such a subject. You can pray to a god and assume wherever it is you go when you die is something of their doing, good or bad, or you can simply think that when you die it is simply death, your system down, the lights out. At the end of the day it doesn't matter, because factually neither party truly knows what happens. It is perhaps the greatest of mysteries, never to be solved. In my time of passing, however near or far, I will call for God, simply because of a social upbringing inclusive and inviting towards such beliefs, but none the less I do not expect it to be so easy. I like the way Whitman puts it best though: "and to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier." If there is one many ever to exist that was an exemplary model for humanity and love it was that man. I hold my deepest respects and my fondest love for the written word because of his works.

I will conclude this entry with a very old poem I wrote when I was a senior in high school. I find it interesting, and I am just as happy with it now as I was when I first wrote it, minus some commas that need not apply. For that, I am sorry, just be patient and ignore them if they get to be too much.

I titled it, "A CALL FOR HELP"

I see the faint street lamps glow across the plane,
And hear a soft breeze that whispers something sacred.
The death of me to not hear its words!
For I see people,
Who reign in judgment,
And hide eyes,
That are too scared to look deep into the future,
And know truths but just ignore,
With actions, fronting feelings,
Pushing away all that is human,
For a feeling of belonging,
A feeling of false comfort,
And they know it is false,
But choose to fall into things anyways,
Forgetting all that they were taught by instinct,
For a fear of rejection.
I will not abide this,
Or allow or condone or promote these actions,
They are like machines,
Pretending to be human,
In any way that they can,
To find a plastic future,
In commodities and stock options,
And trades and commerce and income,
For retirement and social security,
Neglecting what is needed of their hearts and souls,
Through bodies that push so hard to carry on
The life-fulfilling task that daily time consumes
So they can live through unrest at night
And dwell on future failure and feel as if they falter
And beat their selves down until dignity is shouting out
In a call of feign sighs to be grasped and reformed,
To take years of life and leave and lastly, love;
Who know not what devotion is nor care what it is for,
Who live off their own problems, in a blame for blame maze
That repeats and never has an ending, and if so, usually tragic,
To indicate that we all will be saved by a profitable Jesus,
Who will save us with donations, if we give a little, we feel redeemed,
And more alive with passion that only lasts till next Sunday,
When Jesus saves again, and nativity scenes were never so lavished,
So as to reflect the amount of devotion the community has to Christ,
Through a beautiful chalice of baby saints and virgin wonders,
So I wonder why I am still here,
When no one really cares but rather doubts their fellow man,
Because they are too busy,
Distracted with dreams that never surface,
That only brings their quality of life down.
I have seen it, you know.
Marriage counseling after one year,
The couple resides on some alternate source,
Relying on something else to fix the problem,
They both know they can resolve.
I take my walks and see,
The glassy reflections of lost eyes,
They stare blankly as if at a canvas,
And cannot decide what the world really is,
Except a mass of dirt and water,
First discovered,
Then conquered,
Then explored for selfish reasons,
And stupid competition between nations,
Starting out for wealth and ending in blood,
With holy wars that only excuse the fighting,
For the fact that man has built a hate,
That spreads like a fire in all of us,
And soon sandy graves take stake in our soil,
And so we blame someone else,
And grow more hate inside,
Seeking vengeance on another’s’ actions,
While everything falls out of place
And I find no peace in any space
Except in my own heart
That aches to be called out of the corners
And scratched right down the center,
To beat back all the anger in this world,
With tears that never leave my languished eyes,
Confronting feelings I know too well but cannot control,
Or understand or comprehend or mend with simple actions;
I still believe in all of you, don't you know?

C.A. Dominick

Thoughts On The Afternoon: Alone, Again.

There's a reason why I always carry a pen, you know...

I'm going to begin to tell you my story. A story about afternoon sunsprays between the leaves of trees. A story of the crisp, cool, morning air of the winters in the north, and almost everything I have learned with a years' turning. Please bear with me, I'm not the best at finishing what I start.

Love is binding, wholesome, and real- which is why we seldom recognize its actual presence in our lives. I am seeing, in this early evening sun, how it has been with me for a long, long time, only I could never see it.

I don't know much about life. I have not experienced many things in the ways of living. I know that the year I was away was one of the hardest years of mine yet, and because of that it is all the more beautiful to me. When the snow fell last winter like all my struggles it settled to the ground with my anguish and self-doubt. Rising from that trialsome winter, devoid of all comforting things in the ways of home and familiarity, I am forever changed. I've since returned home; it has afflicted me with a sort of sickness that I cannot ignore. I perceived returning home would be a sort of relief from the sometimes dreadful encounters of my previous life. O, however so was I wrong... So I turned to projects but they never kept me still. I turned to false lovers but they always turned me out. I turned the bottle and it turned me angry, distant, and sadder than I had ever known.

It's too late to change now. I've planted a seed that I cannot harvest until the new year's passing. I must return once again to this place and suffer my misgivings until I am purged and found free again.