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Tom McCone Dec 2012
scene: Fast-food outlet half plastic paper cup rolling aberrant twixt the fingers of a mild breeze, leaving traces of hollow sounds against the leg of a bus shelter.
~
Feeling diseased, predominantly symptomatic of the hard shutdown and cardboard cutout nervous impulses of this nigh-fluttering arrhythmia, the haunting thought of how I really just can't do this anymore, permanently leaving dwellings of what could've been in sheltered murk; remembering the sound of exhaling as I had fallen to delicately brush your cheek, the little things you never noticed... you never did notice, did you?

[
not that I gave you any reason to.]

And, now, it's all loss and letting go or giving up: so, nothing has changed, save for long-deliberated decisions finally made, regarding quitting and cutting down on thinking about such matters and moral dilemmas whilst time dries out; I have more lives to lead, do I not? Even if, once, the belief was that you were all the life I needed, in whatever meanwhile we tangled up in our collective noose-knots. Even if I thought I'd loved you.

Left with the curtain pulled, grey rolling hilltops, all I have to admit is that there's no reason, any more, to get messed up over these bits like gravel and tar into tender soles; it all drops out with disaffected expressions, a little pain [
much, much less than would eventuate, if circumstances were left the way they are*], and those lingering half-degree burns your lips left around my breath.

It's not your fault.
I never meant to fall for you in the first place, anyway.
I'm trying to make things right.

So, don't worry any more, for to neglect the corridors of my heart set aside for you is all I can do, now.
reworked bus-stop chest-leakings.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
been this old nearly half a year now, with that dull dragging urge;
you know best of all, it's just life and pointed time,
slow leakings of admissions of weaknesses,
the inevitable hollow rust that forms
on the underside of ribcages,
digging dripping sugary claws into internal organs as
convictions came and left,
patching up like cold drizzle into heavy rain,
finally, leaving me running on empty for this past era.
arrive, arrive, arrive, leave:
is this all we are, anymore?

they say things about the world, today especially;
you're supposed to have opinions on these kind of things,
but, far too indifferent to care now,
having survived so many tragedic spurns already,
ruin, like second watch-hands,
flows like the escape of tepid sinkwater
and

I'm still dreaming,
I'm still all absences, tearing holes in the wallpaper
where, once, we leant and watched smoke rise from
the stark and blind holes in the floor,
dissolving into remnants of conversations ill-spent,
the same and continual pitch clutter of such verdant loss.

I'm still losing,
though.
I'm still learning lessons from the age twenty through -one,
where once dark forests grew, pine needles drying,
habitual corrections, subsequent defections
back into those same straight lines,
and

I'm still wasting time, blood and the will to not give in.
I'm still dying.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
faint voices crackled, fourty-five minutes *******,
I had heard the radio with windows open,
the words melting through copper alloys,
                  the dreams all turning to dust,
left these thoughts until last, dusk eyelid flicker, and...

                          and now I'm all spent

and can't keep these lines of narrow survival held up anymore,
and everyone's apologising,
and the rain, just waiting to fall, hangs on stagnant breeze.
                                       so, we could wait around, or get up and run right now:
                                                 full eyes drinking the harvest moon's glow,
                                                            secondhand stories told poorly at best,

                                                                       killing time until
                                                     intoxication
                                     burns old ghosts,
and I'm still burning down with each breath of wind,
each charcoal fragment snaking into alveoli,
each compromised lie, illumination,
reaches so far within,
dragging out moments between heartbeats, just like you.

*just
like
you
20th submission. woo. thanks to all my followers or kind strangers or anyone else you're all kinda really cool and stuff. <3
Tom McCone Dec 2012
it took that walk home (the same three hours as usual) one last time, or at least the promise of, to realize, maybe admit that there's no good reason any longer to pretend to know what idle thoughts (those ones that had been left to mull for the last three months, at a minimum) had or have to do with reality, if they've even stayed remotely consistent or if it's the predictable chaos of daisy petals, tiny and pure clean as they are, dropping sequences of murmurs through wound car windows or heartfelt sunrises or collapsing into the mess of sorrow in the library for the fourth time that week, the flash of peripheral reflections across the ceiling and slowly forgetting someone else- she'd said "don't ******* off, this time...", but all these stories blur to blue clouds in these porcelain hands, wondering why the same circumstances pass with all those skewlined angles on the surface of this world, distinction-drained lovers, and it all culminates with that **** centre point: the human, half in covers, could god have built him so wrong? (or does all will lead to the same end, am I fated in freedom to such fallacy?) I could forget everything, you know. guess I'm just waiting for a reason to.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
It's too hot to sleep, or, rather, the apricot garden
looming in the darkness of the kitchen,
and my thoughts conspire,
to keep at least the back of my sieve-shutter headwork
alive and stealing electrons, from the still air;
that maze that fails to circulate,
regardless of how wide the window has been torn apart.

She leaves seashell footprints down my spine,
the sea shore of my wanting more to this life than idle standby,
the will to stand up and not feel the blood drain
to my smaller toes,
and I am losing consciousness to the sound of agapanther print curtains
only to find it, in full gain or minor refrain,
pulling hemispheric or lobelike conditions
up and out
and out
and out for
hours on end.

So, god save me or forsake me, for I
fall far too easily, into grey-backlit memory,
tasting some sickly scent of smoke and secondhand perfume through my hair until morning,
when I will get up,
wash that old life of wants or hope away,
move promptly and, without warning,
start fresh with another disaster-

Like the day before last.
Like each day, scattered through our respective futures or pasts.

Like the life I once wanted,
and have now come to hide from.
Those bits that just keep slippin' away.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
cut straight down, meat on bones
'how hard is it,
really,
how hard is it being alone?'

but. you don't go near far enough,
sitting still,
there,
in the violent and tender collections of clouds.

I don't think you
even realise
how much you don't know,
how hard
it must be;
at least three-quarters of that old life inside of me,
all knives from the chasms of mind,
the darkness of winter mines,
go-on, it'll all be fine.

it'll be fine.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
I lack will to put down any word,
unsure in what to let out, in vague strains and standard refrains and
I feel like a fog, settling over a row of hilltop pines,
    like I've nothing left, short of to get up and try.
  
    but I won't try, I won't try,
   anymore,
  no, not if you won't
give me a sign or reason,
               please;
just give me anything    to believe in,
because I keep running out of those,
                                               of time,
and it's still just
                                                    you,
                             turning my mind
into dreamsoaked wishful hopes,
             and that subsequent collapse into hopelessness,
               and all I know, in this,
is how lost this small, sad person is,
or seems to feel like,
                                 on any average day.
just like any other day.
*shrug*
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