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Tom McCone Dec 2012
those
countryside colours
dug deep in the pantries of
longlost obsessions and falling pinecones
stowed between rifts in woodwork-framed floorboards,
leaving vague lessons for the sunday crowd who'd
finally groomed their hair and walked out,
sunglint balding projections soon crawl

under the drainpipe circle of light ancestors ago would have thought god,
with revelations through seven now
each night broadcasts photon showers,

leaking through drying eyelids, blaring and spinning,
a stranger sits home,
feels so alone,
hadn't been taught to deal with transmission,
recursing discourse in patterns
in static of two
one where life went fine, and the other where we went on,
keeping tact forever and feeding geese on sunday afternoons
as the sun
shone through chemical ceilings,
*we had
tiny
birds
in
our hair,
then.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
say something or just
keep on makin' ghost-patterned, intervening silences,
                    singing
or half-murmuring
                                 verses, those ones from slow songs under low light,
the same refrain that runs between all the others,
through the passage of weeks, stained tobacco sweet by eleven-thirty iterations;

                       [post-meridian or particulate matters only,
                                                                           of course,
                                                                        it's hard to wake before noon anymore.]


with the way these rhythms keep us down
                                                          and out,
counting the methods-
the summations of potential miseries,
and the probabilities that all would or could turn around, before the end of the week.
                                                                                        or the next one.

                            and,
outside the door, the one after that,
                                       over the acres of concrete and pale shade,
streetlit likenesses hushing air through melting neighbourhoods,
                                                            I make imaginary footprints,
wondering which, of the field of household starlit comforts,
                           is the blade of grass you cast seeds from
to inadvertently germinate and sprout a well of aspiration, the wind in a stranger's ribcage,
                                                                      continually growing, hiccoughing leaf litter,
                 with every last breath.
I couldn't think of a title, which ended up in lawn research
my sister said "I think I'm here", as I embraced another goodbye and I was already opening the door
[this was unnecessary, but I liked the line]
I am tired,
too tired for my own good. and, still, awake.
It has been another day.
Like any other.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
is this a valid query?
too late, or too long taken,
every time
just ending up tangled up,
in this web of indiscernible tangents.

and I've no faint idea of how to say:
'darling, would you care to capitulate this idea of us?,
the one I've built so tall in my head?
I am most certainly yours, but,
I can't tell if you even want me,
so, please, just put me to bed...'
Tom McCone Dec 2012
I'm afraid,
for what it's worth,
I'm scared
of
giving up, or letting go,
or
forgetting, whatever you'll eventually come to mean,
and the drawn-out time, until then,
where everything gets further,
and further,
on a daily basis.

and both of us will be powerless to stop it.

and we won't talk anymore,
-not that we did, that much, anyway-
and I'll have to
struggle
to remember your voice,
and how it gently tugged on my ear,
in the middle of nights we haven't yet seen.
so
let us hope this is worth it,
or, at least,
I will do my best.
you just tag along, if you like.
I would like that. Probably.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
to deliver any of these moments, in perfect clarity
the dust, caught, between streetlight resolutions
footprints, in short and fragrant sidewalk grasses
heard the tears leaking from the road
outside of rosemary's house
nobody deserved that loss
so soon

I
hadn't said
my last sentences
haven't seen you in years
this news rests heavy on my father's eyelids
attempting sleep, in a log or tin cabin miles and miles away

summiting the path that diverges from penny lane
through semi-forested, midnight blanketed steps
the glitter of the valley below lies in wait

the clouds ventilate interior spaces
leaving a halo of shadowlit castles
three stars pinpointed about
the perimeter


lost my breath
telling myself you'll want better
before anything can change.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
I stood, with back arched, once,
waiting for pride to find my side,
I tied the knots inside of my stomach into hope,
I was still sinking, then,
but could not recognise the inertia, for what it was,
or which signpost heading it carried.

I thought I could be
whatever the world entrusted my hand to,
I thought I could calm these sporadic weaknesses.
I spent time thinking everything over.
or, wasted time. I'm not sure-
I never reached any reliable verdict.
still,
the world turned and turns.
things hardly change.
or, at least, seem to consistently stay the same.
and the thoughts that keep me in constant check,
foliage on my branches,
weight on my ankles,
ice under my tread.

Someday, I'll figure out what I am,
what I should probably do,
how to live
like I mean it,
like I'm not planning to die
or live, trying.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
three minutes sixteen seconds,
******* in, sharp coils of
losing faith,
breath run down,
someone else's apologies,
we build or built castles,
for the wash to reclaim, smoothing out the creases.

our efforts are small, our steps are juvenile,
but, like all-consuming shades of night,
soon, this will blossom and grow,
soon, we will be but memories,
all endings, farewells and tired eyes.
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