Happy 211th birthday Charles Dickens

born February 7, 1812,
whose living descendents
I would be thrilled to befriend,
hence if anonymous reader
by some genetic fluke
linkedin to said
prolific storied author
please kindly reciprocate.

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
issue somber american notes
invoking overshadowing doom
from young gentlemen:
oliver twist, nicholas nickleby, barnaby rudge
martin chuzzlewit, david copperfield,

young cricket and on the hearth little dorrit
collaborated on pickwick papers
with dombey and son detailing
how I (a haunted man/
ghost’s bargain) alias mudfog
got self absorbed in his old curiosity shop
hunted down by boyhood days
(akin to an endless Christmas carol
frieze as child’s history),
now a thick dust covered holiday romance
memory portraying this signal-man

(according to george silverman’s explanation)
eerily similar to the mystery of edwin drood,
exiled after his trial for murder
birthing three ghost stories
inhabiting a haunted house
affecting the young couples lamplighter
an uncommercial traveler
evidenced by pictures from italy
prone to speeches, sketches
by boz and his lazy tour
an oft repeated tale of two
cities best read at dusk.