commemorating the 204th plus birthday of Charles Dickens

greetings mutual friend,

hard times dash great expectations in this bleak house

whereby battle of life ensues when Sunday chimes

from master humphrey’s clock

somber american notes

invoking overshadowing doom

from young gentlemen: Oliver twist, Nicholas nickleby, Barnaby rudge

martin chuzzlewit, david copperfield

and young cricket on the hearth little dorrit

who collaborated on pickwick papers with dombey and son detailing

how a haunted man/ghost’s bargain code named mudfog

got self absorbed in his old curiosity shop

where invisible madding crowds

hunted down his boyhood days (akin to an endless Christmas carol

frieze child’s history), now a thick dust covered forgotten holiday romance

portraying this selfsame signal-man

(according to george silvermans’s explanation)

eerily similar to the mystery of Edwin drood,

exiled after his trial for murder

birthing three ghost stories inhabiting a haunted house

permanently affecting the young couples lamplighter,

an uncommercial traveler evidenced by pictures from italy

prone to ranting speeches, surreal sketches by boz and his lazy tour

an oft repeated tale of two cities best read at dusk!