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Tom McCone Feb 2013
wake up, feel terrible
for all the right reason
   it is all too easy
          this augmentation
                        this grandeur of emptiness

                                     it is silent

     a car traverses
  another road
humans are out there
alive and breathing and asleep
                                  still asleep
                                  eyes open
                 the humans are just
                          as empty

   in seventeen years
they will be as empty
      in paris
  or new york
  or moscow

their eyes will still speak
  as their mouths curl
and their children cry from
   their cultured gardens
the unfixed faucets dripping
     in their marble slate bathrooms

in the shower
they still wonder
what happened to their lives
          their dreams
and how they'd changed
with every pivotal moment
         they'd passed up
              for comfort
                or a new dream
     conveniently forgetting the rest

   they'll think back
to the faces of lovers
they lost to the road
   or to chance
     or to themselves
       and cry
           in the shower

            if they haven't
     forgotten how to

               recollecting
         how once
       long ago
   in a dream
       they had learnt
dreams don't mean anything.
Tom McCone Jan 2013
one day, you will fall out of my life,
and I will never smell such sweet smoke again.

the world will reclaim you, and make us
strangers, as we were born, once more;
and memory will never do you justice,
as your face becomes static.

you will not be a part of me, anymore,
just a faint echo I hear,
from time to time,
when I recall the concept of loss,
and all the time I waste, doing nothing.

one day, I will wake up,
and forget to remember
that I don't want to forget you,
the curvature of your lips,
or the way you try not to laugh,
and how it escapes, anyway;

it will be the same echo,
I slowly become deaf to, as my ears fail.

but, I don't want to lose you,
please.

I've already made too many strangers.
Tom McCone Jan 2013
like all life, in turn,
the wind falls for the sea.

he whispers secrets to her surface,
the words of every voice
that had screamed or spoken into his midst.

the sea retorts:
"I can not love," she says
"there are too many a ship's wake
I still bear on the skin of my pride,
those vessels that had torn holes into me,
sunk, to my depths,
and, now, all they do is decay."

the wind heaves a sigh, and a town, picturesque,
seven thousand three hundred and fifty-four miles away,
rustles under the front.

the land, that child, bristles, fumes and
the wind brushes the sweat from its forehead,
sings lullabies,
'til the earth does not heave any more.

under the choir of stars, the wind weeps
the sea takes his misery in,
and, feeding her countless children,
she sings back
to the wind:

"you breathe the life into me,
without you, all my organs would cease,
but dry your eyes, love,
all your ripples on my skin
serve to tear me apart,
and, by this moonlight,
I shall not know
where either of us begin"

the wind calmed, smiled,
fell and drew near to his lover,
sighed once more, content and delicate,
and, on a shoreline
four thousand five hundred and thirty-seven miles away,
a child, watching the sun fade,
felt the slightest hint
of a salted breeze caressing her hair.
Tom McCone Jan 2013
people watch themselves, eye to eye, in the mirror
so ******* afraid, if they turn away,
that they will put the knife down their own spine:
‘it is your fault my heart is dying’
they would say,
‘it is all your fault I am so alone’

so, everyone neglects their profile,
their victorian shade decays,
so, all humans now are, in silhouette,
as hideous as their engorged sense of vanity.
such is the nature of our society, narcissique.

but you, damp heart,
where the rain falls and makes
sweet sap, under that arterial lacework,
your side, lit by heaving sun,
took all that beauty and bound it
under and over your skin,
cheek palette like slow fire,
eyelashes like aching needles,

you keep stealing,
in all those moments between,
stealing me.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
days pass like other days, just
lullabies in single,
you, and me, and the end of everything:
how we had found thoughts, like life, unraveling,
in that pristine and angular field,
locked up- brilliant, crystalline, and in voices shaded pale cherry,
some statement of ephemeral lust, no doubt;
we've always been fools,
holding ideals, far too grand
for the size of our routine worries

and, now,
the clock's still claiming moments,
the faucet hasn't lost it's gauze, yet,
the radio's crackling paper moons, in sevenths,
and, me,
recalling a patchwork sentiment and, then, little charming you, you, you, you, you...

made up of scattered electricity, you always leave me lost and drowning;
drowning, drowning, drowning, and
watching those soft-changing colours, through the drifting canopy as
brine-soaked seafloors meander, take place, and
me, falling,
dreaming in shades of slow loss.

so, good night to all the lovers,
all the shimmering faces;
to all the lights of the cities,
all the pleading droplets of rain,
all the shortwave signals, furrowing their ways up north,
to all the heavyset expressions, long led goodbyes,
all the sorrows, left a mess for so many years.
good night, that is all,
good night.
Tom McCone Dec 2012
found my way through the city lights back home
winding intersections trailing the warm asphalt
a single offcolour white rose
that I thought would have woken her up
lungs aching like smoke from the burdens of love
or want thereof

I'd have liked to have known you
but nothing's easy
Tom McCone Dec 2012
sailing for better shores, or abandoned islands,
      folding paper boats, destined for the mainland.
sat on a bench an hour and a half, out on that bay,
                                          watching seagulls scream,
walking through the dusty overgrowth in a daydream haze,
                                            drawing tiny recipes for loneliness
             out of the thin air.

                         for three days,
        haven't seen fit to eat or drink;
   all sustenance just unsettles
that terrible ache
in the pit of this assemblage of flesh,
        as long days curl into the crescent of
             such half-hearted lunar illumination

the sand always brings those thoughts back-
           how the lights out east
                         strangled the knots
                       in that mousey forest of hair,
eyes, opaque in the shade of half of a hand,
            watching the clock,
               with nowhere to be.

           she disappeared
like paper boats sailing out to sea.
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