The poor thing got
lost in the escape.
And she was still hungover
from the childhood terror.
Her personality was
ruined--redolent with
the first flowers of
madness.

She made a pretend
world, full of delusions.
A house of cards that
was laden with
lunacy, her insanity
became safe and dependent
on her never taking
responsibility for her
actions--she was a
pawn for the adage,
Hurt people Hurt people,
like Blanche from
A Streetcar Named Desire,
and
Don Quixote,
Her world crumbled and she climbed
into the abyss,
when she looked
deeply into the
mirror of reality.

Dawn will crackle with
madness, and a sad
soul sickness, that
breeds an all too
familiar
incomprehensible fear.

It's such hard
work to get that
click, to be okay;
to see the squirrels and
smell the leaves,
to lick the lice off the
sparrows and the grackle.

I'm back in rehab....never give up.
I just want to thank the hp community for all
the love and support...it's sunshine
in my dark night of the soul.

All my Love,
Thomas W. Case

I passed out on
some apartment
steps downtown.
Too much beer and
****** the night before.
two cops wake me,
and take me to jail.
when I got out the
next day,
they gave me my
clothes and property.
I had two ****** left,
and ate them while
changing out of the
tangerine colored jumpsuit.
I stepped into the
bright sunlight,
slipped on my ray-Bans,
nowhere to go.

I take 3 steps forward, and 1 step back .
I was sober almost 4 months.

Doing swell, the job, prolific writing.
and then, wham, A bottle of Absinthe in two hours,
Not even Van Gogh on the box or the worm wood could
make sense of the garbled words I wrote.
**** Hemingway and Fitzgerald.  And Stein can go to Hell.

I danced and drank,
****** and sang,
like some kind of
warped god,
like I owned the night,
pretending tomorrow
was a decade away.

Dawn proved me wrong,
and once again,
reality received my
waking eyes.

And when the morning
proved too much to
bear...
I danced and drank,
****** and sang
like some kind of
warped god
all over again.

Which season shall be my victor
in this sick and silly world?
Will the icy kiss of winter
freeze my early fate?
Or maybe the hateful summer
with its raging humid air
will bake my broken spirit
amidst the August fair.
Will death come in the green of spring
against a bouquet night?
When robins return, and poets yearn
for lovers not in sight.
I hope in fall the inevitable comes
to a soulful Irish tune
while watching a glorious sunset
fade gently away too soon.