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I was told to write to help me understand
that the emotions I'm feeling aren't out of my hands.
But now the greens all gone
from both my wallet and my lungs.
And without crutches left
I have no legs to stand on.
I've been sitting here in silence
waiting for anyone,
to see who'll start a conversation
instead of responding to one.
Oh no.
Is it back?
Could this be?
The fingers flying
Clicking clacking
Bach on the keys
Streams of thought are hard to maintain.
Just lie back and let it take you away.

The boom boom kick.
Rhythm to my heart.
I should probably do some cardio
if I plan on living long.

Twenty October, 2015.
The day we go dark and cease existing.
No I don't mean we as in you,
but more as in me.
An inside joke taken a bit too seriously.
But I'm wary and my instincts tell me prepare
to say goodbye to everyone
because the end is near.
Absurd paranoia and yet I can't avoid it.
Or turn off the nihilism.
Everything seems pointless.
can't say have found it
though trying every bit
now in broken wing

an eluding greying wish
one thread of missing piece
i'm still searching.

from all the cluttered mess
doors windows address
sky and trodden ground

beg this weakening arm
to have it hold it firm
what's nowhere to be found.

from surround's all the sight
daylight darkened night
milky way and stars

seek these rolling eyes
unravel from disguise
that hidden universe.

feebled though this mind
crushed by daily grind
inching to depart

might one day lift the shroud
hear its voice speak loud
reach the mystery's heart.
 Jul 2015 Invocation
Tom McCone
small chill sets through past& present
tides' turns; although, somehow, i've been
sweating more, lately. nerves, or insides
slowly lit& spread. but, if you truly
were wildfire (and, sometimes, you
are), i'd stay the kindling that i am,
anyway.
                   the light and
length of days
                              shuffle,
as normal steps, in this adjoining dance,
and i try not let it show but,
im still feeling the same.
still aching and burning.
little shivering hope, sat by a
little wavering candle, whispering:
you might change your
mind, but
people seem to stick to
their songs, and
i'm not quite sure if
you'll change your tune in time, but

i still adore you, so
i'll just keep waiting,
for now.

but i can walk around, having
written all the angles between
streets in the ravines in
my skin. and i can still
stare at the sky, from hilltops,
and know maybe the world doesn't
have to carry so much meaning or
get dizzy whilst spinning or even
notice that,
in its silhouetted waltz,
the moon, brilliant& alight, is quietly
headed out to sea.
 Jul 2015 Invocation
Tom McCone
finally, i saw space in your eyes,
believin' something unnerving;
sent to lie, cold,
at vague degrees of separation.

i smile back at you,
or, at least, the shadow now
gone, along with your light:
meaning& memory
seep in monochome, sterile.
what, once, was the irreparable
i, sans toi?
the glisten of distant houses on the hill?
the ebb& swell, of the wash of our scenes?

sent spinning static tones:
keep slippin' down. keep changing.
keep the sun & stars.
keep heart.
{some things spill out}
 Jul 2015 Invocation
Tom McCone
under the frigid sky i
slow& wonder; somehow
gather hope. pass under
bridges. feel the same, et
cetera- the same, always.(
sometimes, there's no storm.
or, at least, as far as an eye can see.
)sometimes, we get hollow. if i
am, i am
happy& hollow, with you,
though.
                   know this, always.

green and gold were the days i
spent learning the architecture
of your smile. the hues still colour
these afternoons in abstract: small
patterns in the woodwork. an
accumulated sunbeam, late
morning.

continue, sing songs. breathe
most of the time.
someone once
wrote:
               "life is but a joke if
you make it through laughing"
little sigh
 Jul 2015 Invocation
Tom McCone
pair
 Jul 2015 Invocation
Tom McCone
my insides reel, as typical as could stay. only in slow coils, though. only in long sighs. still breathing, twinge of sad, but i saw your light in the sun. found peacefulness in moments between. gratitudes, to a world that somehow strung us up& out to turn to dust. and here i stand, slowly coiling into little little little happy dust. is that so strange. can't tell. don't mind.
where there's light
 Jun 2015 Invocation
Tom McCone
fox
 Jun 2015 Invocation
Tom McCone
fox
~this is not an apology, although i owe you many. this is just a story, that will one day be little more than a fragment of a memory.~*

i heard heartbeats under water, and found myself fishing. there was light on a horizon, unmade. stifling change. you, on unimagined shorelines. there was wind through trees, boughs shaking: i, reflected in leaves tumbling. our paws, through leaf-litter and pure chance, met. we were ghosts, hopeless and beautiful.

     the waterline obliges & breathes, though. the walls are
       pristine, and all is coffee-stained and content.

so, an agonist's thoughts, the hands of fate's implausible existence, some ideal named virtue, laid out in beds of unsent letters, touched our lives for one turning moment. there, we were left to swim until we sank, and i drank cold water and thought of you and the sky, and how sometimes our hands are made to feel smaller when both the sun and the moon hang, on tiny strings, intersecting every six months or so.

                or how i could feel nothing had changed, or stayed the same.

     and my hands feel smaller by the day, as
       i watch shadows across the fractions
           of the moon; and guess at how you may
             feel the same, or if you look at all, or
                 what generates these soft mechanisms of hurt.

thus, we set out to measure the earth, one palm's-length at a time, and laugh and ache all the same. and once, you'd said, gently, that i was beautiful, and i got so frightened that i choked. i was so convinced that i'd hurt you. i was so convinced that i was worth so little, and that you'd figure it out. and maybe i did. and maybe you did.

       we sing songs in our heads all the time, though,
       recite one another's words in slow light. and i
       feel less like a ghost, as my shells shrink back
       onto me; but, there are still bits missing that
       branches tore away and sent to you, on the wind.
       we walk right-turning paths, and, as much as
       i try not to tie my footprints up, they remain
       cycles, dirt-trodden through patches of brush; and
       my soles stay as cut-up as my thoughts, and,
       out on endless concrete, i smile unconvincingly and
       squint, as to make out where or what to be.

                                               in dreams, i meet you out on the backfield.
                                        we sit on the fergusson intermediate driveway
                                          and exchange silences, eloquently. in dreams,
                                      we dance and kiss in the hallway and i stop and
                                            remember how nobody's wanted to kiss me
                                         for three years. in dreams, you are gone, out to
                                 sea, and i wonder if i thought this all up and wake,
                               to a dream, where my father is ill but won't admit it,
                                   and has cleaned the walls of the washroom. there,
                   i hide and feel hollow, so sure that nobody will notice; and
                                 realise that my father is always fine and maybe i'm
                                    the one that's ill. i hear your voice, through doors
                                     and halls and continents, and consider that there
                                       are unmeasurable aspects to our shorelines and
                                                             ­                                    psyches and
                                               how i managed to turn out to love you.
                             in dreams, i see my best friend, now not in quotation
                                       marks, and wake and feel stabbing pains in my
                                                chest; a star in the sky for each time i have
                                   crafted abandonment, until the night fills up with
                                        blinding light and, finally, i am clean and pure
                                                   and know nothing, save the warm lap of
                                                        dawn's­ reprieve at the window. i stay
                                                         in place, reeling and absurd
                                               motionless realities playing out on the end
                                                of each fingertip, with your blink-patterns
                                               sin­ging morse through my haze; the entire
                                                          ­ world, folding down to a cascade of
                                                   hurried cries from a small bird, losing its
                                                        nest in the glow. it spreads wings and
                                           claws out from my ribs, and heads north; this
                                                   small bird, called hope, cartwheeling out

                            *to the ends of the earth, where heaven is just
                         a sequence of your most beautiful memories, and
                                   there's you, angel on the oceanside,
                                      dancing within my last breath.
i'm sorry
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