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What shall I see?
What now will Beauty be,
Naked,
Garbed no more in words.
Syllables scattered and tossed,
Language now forever lost?
What of my soul, what of me
Searching for meaning never to be.
What shall I see?
Frontal lobe dementia differs greatly from Alzheimer’s.  It is characterized by early loss of language as well as loss of inhibitions, often leading to unusual new behaviors.
In the hush between raindrops and stone, the hills lean inward, as if listening for a voice that never returned.

Low clouds drag their grief across the shoulders of the land, a soft lament in vapor, layered like old letters, unsent.

The trees don't speak— but their silence is fluent, a language of absence etched in shadow and bark.

The sorrow here doesn't weep, it settles in the terrain like ash from a fire no one recalls lighting.

A tragedy, perhaps, of the forgotten— the slow erosion of faces from stone, the fading of footsteps into deep green moss.

And still, the wind carries a lament— a breath, a whisper, a suggestion that the past is not past, it merely sleeps beneath the skeins of brooding, hung cloud.

M@Foxglove.Taranaki.NZ
A dedication to Agnes de Lods’ beautiful, "Raindrops in Schreiberhau" .... a modern artwork of this tradition of verse that echoes the patina of the past. Her lines:

“I drink the peace, I eat the rustle of the wind, Absorbing the steady pattern of raindrops…”

…feel like a continuation of the region’s artistic soul—where nature, memory, and longing converge.
I’m driving on my way home
from a job that doesn’t make ends meet.
Pawned all my gold, silver and chrome
and placed my hat and sign on the street.

I’m living in a creative hell
One that serves me but doesn’t serve well.
Into my flesh I would carve,
“You wouldn’t be a starving artist if you didn’t starve.”

At each red, I clutch at my steering wheel
and scratch my lottery tickets.
Manifest a positivity I don’t feel,
when it scans I hear only crickets.

I’m living in a creative hell,
one that traps and encases me as a shell.
Preventing me from air, society and heat
“You wouldn’t be a starving artist if you could eat.”

I have no certifications and no degrees,
my only trade and skill are the words that I write;
the gift that both comforts and tortures me,
it’s too bad that no one pays for plight.

I’m living in a creative hell,
voicing it quietly while ringing a bell.
Begging for help but don’t want to be rude
“You wouldn’t be a starving artist if you had food.”

I’m living in a creative hell
One that serves me but doesn’t serve well.
Into my flesh I would carve,
“You wouldn’t be a starving artist if you didn’t starve.”
The best things in life are free,
going extinct like the birds and bees.
I want money.
Look at him,
paper-mache angel wings
stapled on an empty
toilet paper tube,
preacher of the gospel
of selective misanthropy,
mourned by shredding
secular holy books in
tiki-torch candlelight.

If you must remember him,
and pray, you needn't,
do so in truth,
as a simpleton's martyr,
no more, no more.
Flowers do wilt and die
It seems pointless, yes
But have you seen a bud?
Open its sleepy eyes to the dawn

As if a young child was letting out a yawn
With petals for hands reaching out to open skies
And the sun smiled at it
Telling it to open its arms without worry
I was starving in
Pennsylvania.
One night, I had
enough.
Done with it all.
The poverty and
sickness.
The drunken mad
nights
and dog-fight days.
Brutality for breakfast.
Served sunny side up
runny yolks with
butterflies trapped in
the yellow sunshine.
Spiders built webs in
my soul.

I stood on the torn-up
couch in my living room and
yelled at the walls.

Listen, you devil.
You want me, you better be
ready for a fight.
I paced the floor like a
washed-up heavyweight champ,
eyeing the ceiling like a
drunken sparrow in a cat's mouth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8k5NY8ZMx3I
Here is a link to my YouTube channel, where I read poetry from my recently published books, Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems and It's Just a Hop, Skip, and Jump to the Madhouse, available on Amazon.

www.thomaswcase.com
the night whispers the black water fall of ashes
that bloom into the sparrows of sorrow...


the sorrow sparrows are back again
sitting in the tangled woods of twisted trees.

Van Gogh heard their voices
bouncing off love's walls.

the sorrow sparrows are leaning into me.
my sad eyes, dream of you brother.

I lean into the soft lit room
searching for love's quiet hours,
with sunlight flickering through willow trees.

"don't cry, darlin," my wife whispers.
the leafless tree branches.
clouds drift in the pale sky
and the deer leave footprints
in the snow

and all flowers fade,
so, throw the dead flowers
across my grave

and with time
winter's wounds will heal
so spring can follow
when the river sheds its skin of ice
and the deer footprints turn to mud

and the earth forgets the cold.
sunlight kisses, the flowers sigh,
tulips bruised red,
for-get-me nots whisper,
daffodils linger.

the sunrise whispers anew
and trembling in sunlight
the green leaves wave

as the wind dances with newborn flowers
that for tell of the Grace.

O, my wild garden.
no more death please, for a little while
The rain,
makes my grass glow fluorescent green,
and grow like it’s on steroids.

Love,
makes my heart a mix of hyper-serene,
like out-of-water chimaeroids.

How do we ride these natural phenomena?
Trustingly —
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