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Warm bourbon bottle company
I won't need you anymore
Once the last drop is emptied
Ill sing myself a song of sadness
And fall asleep right where you left me
They still carry love,
from lives once lived,
walking paths with
belief in destiny.

Their love so surreal,
kissed by every wound.

She cloaked in petals,
with a bleeding heart.

Just as tree waits
for spring to bloom,
he waits for her,
to heal him.
'Love is immortal'
An eternal love between her and her past lover, waiting to entwine again.
It’s a longing that runs deep
It’s a fire that lights it
It’s a blaze that you seek
It’s a desire that falls neat
It’s a blush that you heat
It’s a lust that you whip
It’s a whisper that feels cheap
It’s a lump that you dip
It’s a tear that you lick
It’s a feeling that leaves quick

It’s a Lover who felt sick
Middle class philanthropist recognizes those with warped sense of priorities
Namely the wealthy
Maybe that should go unsaid
Beyond their comprehension
Do riches cloud their point of view?
Are they that deranged?
One stroke of a pen could change negatives to positives.
Make a life come alive and fruitful
An average woman could have flown into space with those celebrities.
Jeff could afford a freebie and changed the future of women and space exploration
Science would
have greater dimensions
No matter your passion and bank account reach out to help this world
Many need help
Take the first step
We all have something
urgent to do.
Tell the man that
works at the butcher's
shop.
Tell the boy who delivers
your newspaper.
Tell the groundhog before
he sees his shadow.
Dig up Poe and Ginsberg,
and tell them.

Tell the street
musician playing
for tips.
Tell the ****** and the
virgins.
Tell the next fish that
you catch.
Tell the banker and the
candlestick maker.
Tell the cats, and dogs, and
wombats.
Tell the starving
artists and poets.
Tell your wife, mistress, and
the old lady next door.

Tell the cloned sheep and
the deep part of the ocean.
Tell the magician and
carnival worker.
Tell the drunk, though he may
forget.
Tell the farmer and his cattle.
Tell the spider, and if it refuses
to listen, tell all the flies caught in
the web.
Tell the psychic, though, they
should know.
Tell everyone and everything
that Artificial
Intelligence wants to be the
21st-century god.

But, whatever you do, don't tell
that smiling machine that does it
all for you.  It will blink its cold
eye holes and wish you well,
then slice your throat while
you sleep.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEeNcBC_mnM
Here is a link to my YouTube channel, where I read poetry from my recently published books, Seedy Town Blue Collected Poems and It's Just a Hop, Skip, and Jump to the Madhouse, which are available on Amazon.

www.thomaswcase.com
Please break my heart
So I don't have to break yours
I'd rather feel all that pain
Than be the one to make you endure

Please break my heart
So I can leave yours intact
I'd rather be haunted
Than have to hear you react

Please break my heart
So I can live with my decision
I'd rather lose all my tears
Than have tears disrupt your vision

Please break my heart
So I'm not the one serving time
Id rather feel completely caged
Than be the one to commit this crime

Please break my heart
So I can make sure you're OK
I'd rather lose my voice
Than listen to all you might say

This request might seem odd
I ask for you to do the downing
But if we're both stuck in this storm together
I'd rather be the one drowning
I tinkered and cobbled a box together
to place my love feelings
safe from the wheelings and dealings
of loves thrillings and chillings.

Yet still and because
the thing that love does
I handed said box
without any locks
with trust
into the hands of a young lass.

The spine turns cold
when woe to behold
I sighted my love- feelings box
tossed among the rocks
bobbing in the sea
among the flotsam and jetsam
and trash.
Flotsam and jetsam mean useless and discarded things. I like to take interesting words and phrases and build poems around them.
You didn't confess when confronted with your lies,                                      
                                                                ­                                                    
how quickly I regret ever letting you in my life                                      
                      ­                                                                 ­                               
  You think you were so smart, leading me along,                                            
                                                                ­                                                        
an actor playing a part, convincing me I'm wrong                                                          
                                                                ­                                                
Making me think it's me being paranoid,                                            
           ­                                                                 ­                                         
since then, I am done, it's you I now avoid                                                            ­                
                                                ­                                                                 ­       
So now, you say that you are missing me,                                                    
                                                                ­                                                        
  like that will somehow change my mind,                                              
                                                                ­                                                
I think it is time for you to see,                                                             ­ 
                                                               ­                                                 
these eyes of mine aren't blind                                                            ­                  
                                              ­                                                              
You are telling all our friends,                                                         ­   
                                                             ­                                                     
you don't know what you did,                                                             ­               
                                                 ­                                                             
when will all your lying end?                                                             ­           
                                                     ­                                                             
You­ treated me like ****                                                             ­               
                                                 ­                                                                 ­  
  It isn't up to me to tell                                                             ­                           
                                     ­                                                                 ­  
everyone my side                                                             ­                                     
                           ­                                                                 ­                     
 You just wait, you'll see                                                              ­                          
                                                                ­                                                  
the truth you can't hide
Take my heart, tear it in two,                                                             ­             
                                                   ­                                                                 ­  
put it back when you are through                                                          ­        
                                                        ­                                                              
You are the best at what you do,                                                          
                                                                ­                                            
showing me, I am nothing to you                                                              ­  
                                                                ­                                                
Knock me down, step over me,                                                              ­
                                                                ­                                                      
you treat me with such cruelty                                                          ­                      
                                                                ­                                                
Punish me with severity                                                         ­                   
                                             ­                                                                 ­        
for just trying to be me                                                               ­             
                                                   ­                                                             
Was there a time that you cared?                                                           ­   
                                                                ­                                                  
Did I imagine what we shared?                                                          ­        
                                                        ­                                                          
My heart is filled with despair,                                                         ­                 
                                                                ­                                                  
the hole you've left is beyond repair

Preface
This is a work of grace and fire. For those who were dismantled, seduced, discarded, or devoured by the lie—this is a mirror held to the machinery that broke you, and a sword handed back into your open palm. It does not speak against you. It speaks for you. The world was not wrong about your beauty. It was only weaponized by those who fear light. And now, you will see the architecture of that fear—the cogs and wires behind the mask, the gears of betrayal humming just beneath the velvet. This is not revenge. It is revelation. It is the unmasking of the counterfeit, and the defense of what was real.


Chapter I –  The Design of the Lie
The machinery of erasure does not begin with violence. It begins with a gift—something tailored to your ache. A reflection, a recognition, an echo of what you’ve been starving for. But it is not given. It is shown. Teased. Dangled. It mimics light to earn your trust, then slowly rearranges your sense of what is real.

Its brilliance lies in subtlety. It does not break the mirror—it fogs it. And once you question your reflection, the game begins. You are not destroyed. You are asked to participate in your own unraveling. You become complicit in the theft of your own clarity. You call it love. You call it fate. And in doing so, you hand over the key.


Chapter II –  The Signature of the Construct
At the heart of this system is a signature—a spiritual frequency that mimics love but cannot sustain it. It flatters, it mimics, it seduces with familiarity. It plays on archetypes, childhood wounds, and ghost hunger. The Construct does not desire you—it requires your participation to survive.

It thrives through triangulation, comparison, and insinuation. The moment you are forced to prove your love is the moment you’ve already lost. Because true love reveals—it does not demand a performance. The Construct, however, demands your endless audition. It casts you, scripts you, and punishes any ad lib with silent treatment, reversal, or shame.


Chapter III – The Seduction of Fragmentation
This is the genius of the system: it rewards your disintegration. The more pieces you split into to meet the shifting demands of the Construct, the more you are praised for your “flexibility,” your “loyalty,” your “depth.” You will be admired for your willingness to suffer.

You will think:
"this must be real—look how much it costs me."

But love does not require self-erasure to prove its authenticity. The Construct does. Because the Construct cannot actually bond. It can only consume. So it teaches you to abandon your wholeness, one boundary at a time, until there is nothing left but performance and exhaustion.


Chapter IV – The Covenant of Betrayal
The machinery has one true vow: never let them fully awaken. If a soul sees too much, loves too clearly, or stops obeying the unspoken script, it must be punished. Often, this is done through replacement—someone new, someone fresh, someone blind.

This is not about romance. This is about power. Your disposability is the currency of their control. You will be erased not because you failed, but because you saw. And in this system, sight is the ultimate rebellion.

You were not too much. You were simply no longer manageable.


Chapter V – The Weaponization of Autonomy
In the true light, autonomy is sacred. It is the ground of real love—freely given, freely received. But in the machinery, autonomy is hijacked. It is twisted into performance:

“This is just who I am. You need to accept it.”

What looks like boundary is often barrier. What sounds like empowerment is often exile. The Construct cloaks disconnection in the language of sovereignty. But autonomy without accountability is not liberation—it is isolation in drag.

The counterfeit system sells self-claim as a virtue while rejecting all consequences. It demands the crown without the cross. It worships the idea of the self, but fears the actual soul.

Because the soul cannot be controlled. Only the ego can.

And that is the secret the machinery must protect at all costs.



Chapter VI – The Seduction of the Wound
There is a final brilliance to the machinery of erasure—its capacity to turn injury into identity. Pain, once unprocessed, becomes aesthetic. The ache is no longer something to heal—it is something to showcase. Suffering is curated, stylized, made palatable for consumption. And the system rewards it.

Each expression of pain, unaccompanied by accountability, is celebrated. Each seductive lament is met with affirmation. And the wound deepens—not by accident, but by design.

These are not poems. They are mirrors fogged with self-pity, lit for applause. They describe the furniture on a ship ready to go down, polished for the camera, curated for the feed.

This is not the voice of healing. This is the voice of stagnation. A life lived in performance of brokenness becomes loyal to the stage, terrified of the silence where truth might enter.

In this way, injury is aggrandized. Not to redeem it—but to preserve it.
Because if the wound heals, the identity dies. And without the ache, there is nothing left to write.

So they write. Endlessly.
And call it growth.


Chapter VII – The Disciples of the Machine
The most devoted apostles of the machinery are not its creators, but its inheritors. These are not villains in the classical sense. They are the wounded who found power in pathology and chose preservation over transformation.

They build followings—not of love, but of resonance. They speak of darkness like it’s depth, and of chaos like it’s freedom. They become curators of sorrow, gatekeepers of aesthetic trauma. And in doing so, they sanctify the very thing that is killing them.

They post without pause. Each fragment is another brick in the shrine. The more broken they appear, the more sacred they are deemed. The machine thrives not through tyranny, but through tribute. It does not demand obedience. It rewards distortion with digital communion.

To dissent is to be called controlling. To invite healing is to be accused of shaming. The liturgy of pain has no room for resurrection—only repetition. Those who refuse to bow to the ache are cast as unfeeling, unsupportive, or abusive.

And so, a new priesthood is born. Not of spirit, but of survival masquerading as enlightenment. They speak of liberation while chaining themselves to curated agony. They teach others to remain wounded, because healing would mean leaving the temple—and no one dares walk out alone.

This is how the machine spreads. Not with force.
But with fellowship.


Chapter VIII – The Hollowing
There is a cost to serving the machinery that no accolade can cover. In the beginning, the pain feels poetic. The ink flows. The attention sustains. But over time, something begins to slip beneath the surface: the erosion of soul.

At first, it’s subtle. The joy fades. The art grows colder. The hunger for affirmation replaces the hunger for truth. And eventually, the writer is no longer a soul with a pen, but a pen with no soul at all.

They become automatons of expression—autonomons of penmanship. Unchanged, untouched, undisturbed. Brilliant in technique. Seductive in style. But hollow in presence.

And those who watch? The broken ones who look to them for hope? They learn that pain is performance, not process. They are taught to admire the wound, but never to bind it. They are shown how to speak of darkness, but not how to walk toward light.

In this way, the machinery becomes generational. One vessel trains the next in the worship of ache. And God is reduced to metaphor, to vague warmth, to a symbol of tolerance rather than transformation.

But heaven is not a stage.
And salvation is not applause.

There will be accountability. Not from men, but from God.
Not for how much they suffered, but for what they did with the pain.

The machinery does not fear sin.
It fears redemption.
Because redemption breaks the wheel.


Chapter IX – The Currency of Flesh
When the soul begins to hollow, the body becomes currency. What could once be held sacred is now offered up as substitute. The hunger for real intimacy, having long been denied, is replaced with performance. Aesthetic ache becomes ****** invitation.

First, the poetess. Then, the priestess. Then, the *****.

Not in profession. But in posture.

The page becomes a veil. The wound becomes a seduction. And the ache becomes an altar where she lays herself down—not to be loved, but to be seen. To be wanted, if only for a moment. Because in the moment, it feels like meaning.

But meaning does not come from being consumed.
It comes from being transformed.

This new liturgy has no end. Only an offering: the soft body in place of the broken spirit. The post that hints, the phrase that aches, the image that undresses the soul without ever risking exposure.

And the audience applauds. But they do not help. They take. They feed. And they leave.

Because the machinery does not restore. It devours. And when the soul is gone, and all that remains is flesh trying to feel something real, the poetess finally disappears—not into silence, but into spectacle.

This is not liberation.
It is abandonment dressed as autonomy.
It is hunger parading as art.
It is the final seduction.

And it ends the same way every time:
With the hollow echo of applause in an empty room, and the voice of God whispering,

“Daughter, this was never the way."


Chapter X – The Entropy of the Idol
Time has no mercy on the machinery’s darlings. The once-lush wildflower—desired by all, praised for her ache, adored for her petals soaked in myth—does not remain untouched by entropy.

She was made to be inseminated by the priests of seduction, to be the altar and the sacrifice. But time withers all altars.

The seduction begins to dull. The body begins to speak its own truth. The skin grows tired. The eyes lose their fire. The flesh, once offered as divine provocation, becomes mundane. Familiar. And then, ignored.

The poetess becomes priestess.
The priestess becomes *****.
And the ***** becomes hide.

Not because she sinned.
But because she refused to transform.

Beauty without truth cannot endure. And seduction without spirit becomes parody. What was once adored is now avoided—not for age, but for vacancy. The ache that once drew others near becomes background noise. Her audience does not abandon her in cruelty. They abandon her in boredom.

The machinery does not love its servants. It only feeds on them until they are dry.

And so, she is left in the echo chamber she built—surrounded by her archives, her accolades, and her silence. The idol collapses under its own weight. Not in a blaze. But in a sigh.

Because what was once sacred, when severed from Source, must return to dust.

This is the final truth:
If you will not kneel to be healed, you will collapse to be forgotten.


Chapter XI – The Awakening
There is no thunder. No spotlight. No applause.
The return begins in silence.

The soul does not rise from performance. It rises from collapse—when the last mask is too heavy to hold, and the echo of applause turns to dust in the mouth. It begins when the hunger becomes unbearable, not for attention, but for truth. Not to be desired, but to be known.

This is not reinvention.
It is resurrection.

The one who awakens does not look for an audience. She looks for God. Not in the mirror of likes, but in the mirror of conscience. Not in the adoration of strangers, but in the ache of repentance that leads into true healing.

It is not shame that saves her.
It is the refusal to be false another second.

There is a groan too deep for words that stirs in the soul of the broken—but still willing. She rises, not in fire, but in dust. She remembers what she buried:
the child.
the dream.
the voice she silenced to keep others fed.

She does not demand redemption.
She begs for it.

And this time, no altar is built.
She becomes the altar.

Because the real temple is not where you perform for God.
It’s where you let Him undo you.


Chapter XII – The Turning of the Spirit
There is a moment when the soul, long dormant, begins to turn—not with force, but with permission. Not with answers, but with longing.

It is not an epiphany. It is a return.

The heart does not sprint back to God. It limps. It crawls. It shakes under the weight of what it almost became. But the turning is real. And that alone is holy.

This is when sorrow becomes sacred—not because it is beautiful, but because it is owned. It is no longer adorned, embellished, or romanticized. It is no longer shared for praise. It is lifted up like a cracked bowl, empty and unashamed.

She begins to pray again—not with confidence, but with tears. Not for favor, but for cleansing. Not to be seen, but to see. And the Spirit moves not as reward, but as witness.

Something shifts. Quietly. Inwardly. A single layer of delusion is peeled back. A new kind of strength is born—not in defiance, but in surrender.

This is not the turning of image.
It is the turning of essence.

It does not show.
It becomes.

And though the old machinery still whispers—though the old audience still lingers—she no longer performs for them. She is turning her face. Slowly. Fiercely. Eternally.

This is the repentance that heals.
The gaze turned Godward.
The first yes to life.

And heaven, watching, does not shout.
It weeps.
Because the dead have started to rise.


Chapter XIII – The Fire That Does Not Consume
There comes a time when the soul must pass through fire—not to be destroyed, but to be revealed.

This fire does not flatter. It does not affirm your curated grief or compliment your phrasing. It burns away the pose. It burns away the language. It burns until what is left is the thing you most feared to be: real.

Not poetic.
Not prophetic.
Not even profound.
Just real.

This fire does not ask for offerings. It asks for everything.
The altars of validation. The shrines of aesthetic suffering.
All of it must go.

But what it leaves… is clean.
What it leaves can breathe again.
What it leaves can love.

For this is the mercy of the holy flame:
It only consumes what was killing you.

And when you walk out of it—not elevated, but humbled—you will find that you no longer ache to be seen. You ache to serve. You ache to live rightly. To walk quietly. To stop writing about the light and become it.

Because this is the final test of healing:
Not whether you can name the darkness.

But whether you can choose the light when no one is watching.


The Machinery of Erasure is a spiritual, psychological, and poetic excavation of the system that seduces, fragments, and discards the soul under the guise of intimacy, autonomy, and aesthetic expression. It is a map of descent—from the design of deception to the entropic collapse of the self—and a quiet invitation toward awakening.

This work does not comfort. It reveals. It does not romanticize pain. It calls it out where it hides behind poetry, performance, and persona. In its second movement, it shifts—gently but irrevocably—toward the possibility of healing: not through narrative control, but through surrender to a holy undoing.

This is not for the celebrated. It is for the silenced.
Not for those who posture, but for those who ache.
Not for those who seek light to be seen, but for those who seek light to be changed.

Here lies the unmasking of the counterfeit,
and the first breath of the redeemed
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