C. A. Winter Blog

Can't sleep It's daytime Can't stay awake I'm exhausted When is dinner, when is evening, when is bed time I'm ready For tomorrow Doesn't bring anything new But perhaps A different menu * My mind wanders to the furthest Corners of the room Which activity can I do Should I stay or should I sit with my back Pressed against this plushy couch? To move Is it worth it? * Filtering, pouring, waiting, sipping This is my coffee we speak of In the morning I crave it In the night I avoid it Getting too old for such An exhilarating relationship This is my emotions,  We speak not. * Do you feel the prose? What about my craft Are you invoked by what I said? Have you stopped to think? I doubt you, More than you can ever know. This is garbage.  * A poet is a poet is a poet. Sitting with my fingers nimbly Putting nonsense into life Tap tap, tip tip Now I'm off to fucking write. *

Stimulus, I Pray to Thee     How exhausting is it to have a brain in this day and age? The loops of soundbites, the flashes of lewd images, the intrusive thoughts. I'm cooked to the core like a steak well done and my juice is gone and all that's left are fatty nuggets of info-dumping, melody-humming, soul-sucking, half-baked, trauma-inducing zygote-killing memories. I'm fiscally infertile for new content or consumption. They've ripped the virgin out of the olive oil and I need a cold press or a hexane bath to extract whatever's left of my humanity. Have you ever stared at a cold blue screen and read the words of utmost importance just for Doja Cat to play like a little lyre behind your ears? Have you ever focused on something you think you love, only for the thought of a thought of a thought to derail your total utter interest? Suddenly I'm on the phone again, suddenly it's been an hour, suddenly it's been a month and whatever I was supposed to do has fl...

I suppose on a surface level I'm irritated. My skin is itchy and my lower region is aching. Dull, uneventful, untouched. Constant. Where is this coming from- lack of sleep? No, I've slept well. Lack of water? I've pissed twice in the hour. Perhaps a lack of understanding of my own nutritional needs and a simple case of the 'ball pain.' Not much else to say about that. On a deeper level, I'm irritated with the state of life right now. I turn to my phone and all I hear about is how awful everything is. RIOT RIOT RIOT! If I turn off my phone, it goes away. Does the problem exist in the physical or simply in the universe? Like a rendering of a quest not mine, an echo of a life unrealized. Running the simulation with no overlap in the main story. My story, untarnished by whatever melodrama the WEF or ICE has cooking up. Am I a bad person for checking out when there's a tuning fork right on the fucking pulse of a violent clitoris? Is it wrong I avoid the feelings ...

By C. A. Winter Before the second drink slid down my throat I was a mess. Purely wretched, filled with diabolical malaise. Shaking like the West Coast and sweating like the Amazon. Thick, putrid drops of beaded ammonia slid down my wrinkled forehead and practically served as nature’s bitters; a splash or two in the gin won’t hurt anyone. The first one settled my fingers but didn’t do much as far as the brain was concerned. If anything, it made me more irritable. A taste of what I wanted turned my little demons feral. What a disgrace. And it’s only noon or so.  I’m lurking in the kitchen in front of my father. He’s left a knife on the tipping point of the sink in case another peanut sandwich entices him. I’m shivering from my abstinence but I’m on my way. My hands are hot and the fridge cools them while I wait for him to pass. He surely heard me kick the freezer shut. That’s why he hasn’t said anything. Yellow mustard stares me down. Do I take a squirt to cover up the smell? Will he...

 Dear reader, whoever you are. My numbers are low but there are at least numbers. My words are few but at least they are readable. My brain is exhausted but for you I push on. Dear reader, I wonder who you are. You're the one that sends the notification to my phone that someone, somewhere has clicked and scrolled on the latest post. That someone is you, dear reader. I need you the most. If you are the reader, which we both know you are, I wonder what you think of these ramblings. Stories and sentences, blogs and blurbs. The innermost thoughts of my mind, smushed onto a page and formatted to be bitten and chewed. Writing has devoured me, and the words are perpetual. If only to be read by you, they must exist. You and I must exist for the words to exist. Dear reader, I urge you to press on. Whatever kind of day you're having, what month or year. Grief, sorrow, joy, discovery. All of it. Take it. Feed off of it. Dear reader, never stop. Without you I am nothing but a rambling man ...

  C. A. Winter - For January 22, 2026 Chapter Analysis; Sample Sections The purpose of this submission is to see how my section from last week stands in different lighting. After some feedback, I was able to edit it based on what I interpreted, then another time based on what I liked. There are commingled factors in all of them. I want to know which of these samples works best, without the context of the rest of the scene, since I did not provide it before.  I took a look at the core of the section and found two things; we were jumping around timelines and I didn’t realize it was jumping. The first edit (Sample 2) is what I did the night after hearing the feedback. The second edit (Sample 3) is a serious reconsidering of the structure and importance of the timing of everything. Does it matter where they did the call? Does it matter when he was at the gas station? No, I don’t think so. Not anymore, anyways. Written feedback given:  “…To directly answer your questions: Are...