Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
628 · Mar 2018
Begging For Lisbon
Tom Alan Quest Mar 2018
I walk my life, a subway station
Where dirt consorts
The air around.
It pounds my nape,
It flames my mind
With sights and fates
And sounds.

Above, a tram goes up the alley
Tinged with canary hue.
Below, my wit:
What void, what valley:
It sank, in Tagus mused.

I take a seat, doors screech behind.
O, what wondrous whiffs?
Of metal beams
Attriting loudly
Against metal wheels?

To a halt it cuts my chain of thought,
Rivals my dream, they brawl.
'Tis from the gallery
Of broken hope
The beggar man crawls.

Intemperate horns his entry announce,
Dysphoric scenes aground.
He comes detuned
Near clears his throat,
Lethargic voice resounds:

I beat my cane
In wrongful rhythm,
'Cause wrongful
Was my life.
My voice hurts from
All this singing:
'Twas morphed into
A sigh.
I longed, I longed
For all my sinning
Was ought to be repaid.
Deserved so much,
God took my
Will, my sight,
My love, my
Name.

So tell me, vagrant,
What did He take?
-Said I-
Who has loved you?
What is your will,
What name did you go by?

I used to be a man of soul
Whose heart beat strong and dign,
I used to write
And then I died
On the 10th before July.

He took my coins for all my service
At wars:
At land
At sea
-The waves still have her,
Laying there still,
Waiting away from me!-
Said he-
I will my love,
My fire, passion
-My young Natercia!-
Most darling of all nymphaea!

So God is just after all,
Replacing sin with grief.
No need for me
To pay the man:
God has done the deed.

The deadbeat coins of his cup
Turmoil ever so slightly.
I leave my dream,
Doors shrill again:
'Tis time to end my journey.
An ode to Portugal's best.
An ode to Europe's brightest and warmest city.
A view on psychological historism with sarcasm
610 · Mar 2018
DEVOUR ME
Tom Alan Quest Mar 2018
Pulse of life cannot exist
Without our concentric synergy
Propelled about through the mist

Devour me.

I only ask
My bubble-gum
My evening hum
If not asking too much
Do tear this shear
I only need your touch
To air out the fear
And finally be.

My lucky strike
My gentle blaze
Grape our love
In nectar sweets
Of gods’ haze
And beaches’ breeze
Seize me.

Like I seize you
In fragile devotion
To memory.
Yes, I commit
To climbing your body
Reaching summit.

Day the night away
This time
With me.

Our beams are one
And so is our skin
Harmonized in tone.

My flicking harp
My growing distance
My grown apart
Must show myself
We’re not to be.

The more I write
The more I feel
With time’s cruel beat
The less it’s real.

Our waves still merge
No opacity
In added layers
Of make believe.

Between vibrations of me and paper
Fractalized into being
By doing simply
The fruits of labour
Define me.

Yet it is our love
That I most seek
Through amassed mounts
Of moments hissed.

Our passion fix
Was never real
Nor blew away
Nor meant to be.

My skinny thorn
My poison ivy
Maybe anyway
But if never worn

This love will surely
Through apathy
Against my yearning
Destroy me.

But as I live
So do we
Then we’ll make plans
But as I live
Devour me.
349 · Apr 2018
I
Tom Alan Quest Apr 2018
I
I, tired
synecdoches

For exhausted sadness.
I, fragmented animus,

(……….)Stilled air in a mutiny,
(……….)Sent afloat from mine eye.

I, aimless bounty
Missing bligh.

(……….)I, nimble crumbs,
(……….)Too mouldy and dry

To be scraped off the floor
Into bins, out of sight. I,

Too perilless,
Too stagnant

To die.
(I, tired)
From the depths of depression, the self starts deteriorating and collapsing on its own selfish loathing. This is what that infected ghost speaks and how the very speech gets chopped up, obfuscated, and verbally suicidal.
304 · Mar 2018
I Would
Tom Alan Quest Mar 2018
Could I stop to think I would
Could I write a verse slower
Could I discover my own mistakes
Could I love the stillness of our moments
I would

Could I bring myself to the forefront of my own time
Could I grapple timelines I would
Could I stop your suffering
Could I know the full extent
Could I box my inner demons
I would

Could I compass the whole world in a time-lapse
Could I analyse for the sake of bringing time to its knees and bring yourself closer to me
Could I feel I would
Could I be reasonless and pure
Could I cuddle your expectations
Could I brake past’s shackles
I would

Could I show you what I write and let yourself in the absolutely grudgeful dread of madness my mind persists on being for the sake of dying someday
Could I find the hero in me like once we both knew and let him fight these battles for me while I relax for the both of the three of us in our love of itself and our life on its own and expectations grown to ideas grown to lived experience and maybe die alongside you maybe grow myself out of this looping madness we know it’s madness so why keep it up when I actually had foreseen it all I think it was it at least what I saw was suffering and I’m pretty sure this is suffering I’m feeling and if it’s not it still hurts I can tell you and I don’t know what I hate more if it’s me or if it’s you which it certainly isn’t or entropy itself with all its cruel apathy before our issues you must surely know by now I’m not functional so why won’t you just leave me alone and why won’t I let you go I don’t know but I just can’t I just can’t I just won’t so let me tell you once and for all
Could I solve myself I would
Could I let you free
Could I grant all your needs
Could I be who I promised to be
I promise
I would
Poetry is just how you write it, even if it's prose. This is one of my favourite styles to write. It lets me be completely honest and free while holding me in place with just enough structure. Thanks for reading.
290 · Mar 2018
Letter From Me To Teen Me
Tom Alan Quest Mar 2018
I heard a tale once
Of vapid medium matrix
And taut smiley convolutes

A tale which embarked me
At that time
Yet gave me no notion of its truer
Nature

You see
The ocean has no currents when you’re under

You see
You don’t see into your own eyes very often

You see

But the many yous that make a lifespan up
Can see you and make you see through

There is a tremblesome youngster in all of us
The one which makes crusaderies bearable
And laughter cramps quotidian gamblers

The breathtaken gasping-at-everything
Taken aback little idiot with the
Thunder in his belly
And the crawls below her skin
And the overhead waves
Evermore crashed within
Yes my meek teen rally
Once a half-contrived sin
Once my part bright moon
Of a solitary kin
Comes in all of us it seems

And we make up threads of social
For the fabric of our culture
That we start to weave adawn

Yet at dawn we are not there
With a full grown self aware

And at the solar peak of glare
We are still too young to care

Then at scarlet tap of dusk
Still a bit too tough to bare

Last at midnight we are gripped
With the fullest conscient gaze

So we can all marvel upon
How much oxygen we waste

In this marvellous endeavour

I think though it’s for the better
And I’ve slowly learned to praise
All the veiling in this system
Of Born
Dead
Then Raised
Then Very Dead

What I mean is there’s some Wise
In the grinds of our Ways
How Ethereum with potential
Gets palpable and cased

Because then we can all be
With the hardship of adult
And the vestige of a kid

And then we get to die
To get it over with…

But wait I still have something
A little more positive to say

Like the first person on Mars
Is likely still a kid
So when we get to Mars
We’ll still float in that kid

If you feel trapped in the smiley
And depressed and yesterdated
Version of yourself

It means you still have all
The other phases ahead

Yet it might not still be quite
As freely as you’re expecting
That your form will excavate
Through life’s cruel winding

Not all of us will get
To float our kid to Mars

Yes, you’ll get it All
Oh yes, you’ll get to try

But in the end, my friend
You’ll be glad you get to die.
If you think it's underlined by humour you're right!
Take yourself lightly, and this poem as well :)
287 · Mar 2018
CHAOS
Tom Alan Quest Mar 2018
Oh, I've been thinking
Mostly about this, about us.
Fate brought me here.
Chaos brought me here.

They are one of the same.
So as we are the same of both.
The mates of soul.
Through time
And its sheer
I see:
Chaos brought me here.

Through mental planes
Stuck in bliss disorderly
As the cookies inside
A grocery bag
Airborne and otherly
Like an odd reverse oracle,
I backsee through all the fear:
Chaos brought me here.

Ought not to be afraid now.
I used to be lost.
Amongst the Maelström I stood.
Not now. Not myself most.
Now's the time to not know how
To disappear-
And with my tear-hunting smile,
Bewitched by the longest lost peer
I see
What is only shown to the luckiest
Seer, I see:
Chaos brought me here.
Yet it's no longer within me.
Written when meeting someone new cured my depression. We're still together.
224 · May 2018
Love Of Wax
Tom Alan Quest May 2018
We seat beneath the candlelight drops
As we teach each other our story
I’m compelled to let the words out
I’m here to grow us up

Way before our candle was kindled
Way before light roamed any sky
Some force was forced to say
We either grow
Or we die

In dying we are warm and modestSpheres of chaotic comfort
Unchallenged ponds
With nothing to defy


Yes, before the molten world
Was turned to rock
And then weathered away
In little strife
Someone was compelled to say
In life
We either grow
Or we die

In growing we have a hard time
Because all bigger growing
Means greater dying
Whenever the growing halts

Way before the sun warmed your cheek
Other synergies were brought to a stop
Before my hand reached your velvet streak Other supernovas contracted outIs my slight tucking away of your hair
Broadening your face for a slap?

Because someone wise
Surely wiser than me once said
In love
We either grow
Or we die

As any one-celled world
Was forged into a rightful cosmos
It might have been us
Or a treacherous cancerOr all three

In all our power we could remain powerless, you see?…

Could this candlelight pool
Where we gain our room to swim
Be dripping from a toll from over the brim

Where a fire was set aflame
Through wax lines untamed
Of our locked stares

Through time and space and mind
Could it all be the same
Is our room to swim
Room to revolve away
Is our manner poured in wax
A giant candle from which
We see

But also the fervent sight
We must somehow keep in mind
Whenever the coming darkness
Grows us blind

Whereas now all I seeIs a sentient mirror smiling at me…

Compass with me for a second
What this all means
Is I don’t want our death right away
Nor do I want it any way
And in growing up myselfI grow us up in part

And in growing up in part
We might just grow apart
Our candlelight might fizz out
Our death might, in pain,
Come anyway.

But I’m willing to give it a try
Our candlelight, our sight
Are, in turn,
A great light to photograph
And a great memory to hold…
Beneath the hourglass wax drops
We teach
In teaching we learn
Through embracing we love
And the silent tug that follows…Is where I’m willing to belong.
210 · Mar 2018
Iron Lung
Tom Alan Quest Mar 2018
There’s something in your magnetism. I’d love to find that out.
Maybe some other day, my love, or should I say not?
Because today I’m not in the mood.
I’ll need a good wash, a lonely walk and a snack
Perhaps some thoughts of happiness to invade my head
And conquer my horizon.

There’s something in your pull that stops time in its tracks.
It keeps past at bay with all the unfaded memories.
May them strangle my future,
Or take it charmingly astray
Along the lines of gross idealism.
I hope I stay not here.

There’s something in it, I can tell.
Whatever, how far, or how many moments whizzed by.
The hold of your gaze was meant to pierce through.
All the rules and casts we put ourselves in.
Yours, my love, or should I say not?
Was the only iron lung I look forward to.
Just a little something
184 · Jun 2018
Pain in the right chest
Tom Alan Quest Jun 2018
In my chest I bring a pain
Which in time accept
As a stubborn implant
Right in my right chest

This pain knows not where it beats
Nor does it come from near here
But it pulses deeply through
And it almost sounds like you

In the timbre of its screams
That vibrate the thorax
And puncture when you weep
I live memories of sites

Yet it is here she belongs now
Whatever was once made of her
And even if she’s not aware
And even if you’re not yet aware
I am:
It lives in my right chest

What a patron stepmother
Crude lioness heart
Synchronic pounding in negative resounds
The **** acute pain
Of this machine I carry
Implanted, conflated, pointy

I imported it from our nights
And stares traded in summertime
Iris tinged with shavings from the sun
Cut up from the negatives of the blinds

And in negative pounding
Conducting in this right chest of mine
This implant of torment
Torment and own delicate shine

So delicate it may take the torment and make
At times: simple discomfort
Others: a happy life in a moment

And who may be source of this pain
Of this heart in negative
Creating only torment
And what gorgeous torment
Which at worse discomforts
At best resuscitates my life in a moment
And turns me back to us

This pain and anguish
In adolescent torpor
Unrealising you made of
Me the glad recipient

Where to grow and lodge
Like the lost bullet in time
That naked ****** universe
Formed into material emotion

Animal biological material
That from this story I have with you
Gives anxiety during bed time
Your anxiety
But that pounds in negative
As the now accepted implant
When it comes dark longing
Of us not seeing what is to come

It’s just that here in pain and everything
Beats content from imperfection
So beautiful and sinistral
In mine deep dextral chest
Your youthful beating heart
180 · Mar 2018
Dragon
Tom Alan Quest Mar 2018
There was never such readiness
In the eyes of her lover
To run.

Fragile Rose was never such
To make a lover mad
So why.

Rose couldn't predict the wet patch
On the cobblestone she walked on
The cold-shoulder of life is flat for her.

"There is no dragon"
A few months ago

"There is no such thing as a dragon"
Rose meant it

Yet her lover left all the same
As the aging dragon would

But there was no dragon she assured
And the dragon said "?"

"There is no such thing as a dragon"
Lover might as well be deranged

Who would do this to her
Who would have the audacity

Alone and half covered in blood
Rose spoke, half covered in water

"There is no such thing as a dragon"
And the creature concurred
Growing three more scales.

— The End —