Tom McCone

Tom McCone Jul 2013

I dreamt we were somewhere, I don’t know where, just far away from anywhere, on a soft-grassed singular hill amidst plains, rolling amongst forests and streams to distant mountains puncturing the crystal ocean of the sky at horizon. We sat on a thick blanket, with a picnic basket and no cares. A breeze ran along the carpeted grassfields and the sky blinked, washing the sparsely clouded above to a clutter of delicate stars in but an instant, hanging, two centimeters between stolen glances and the whispered fractions of my slowing heartbeat. I shuffled my lips to make words, but it was silent. Everything was silent, save for the distant murmur of twinkling lights, like drops of still water on the endless shoreline of morning, just waiting to fall once more.

Tom McCone Jun 2013

lacklustre ambition {me}

I pick small flowers from the curvature
of the nape of your
neck;
i wake up,        one minute:
you    are
gone.

I move on
with my life,
i move out
of these same walls,
like the
next
fervent
dream,                                                        where I still  believe
I'm over                                          it,
I'm

just still kind of
in love with
you.

i'm sorry always
sorry i pretend
like I
care
or
don't care

and

I don't really know where the hours
went, or the years of life you wasted on
me.
x

Tom McCone Jun 2013

(falling-out-of-)love letters

stuck in a hollow room,
handfuls of pictures of
years, now simple past,
rain still bound, fallen,
the quietness of absence,
the eclipse of
your dissolute smile;

one day,
years ago,
I must have woken up,
and forgotten to stay in love,

or just realized,
I never really was.

Tom McCone May 2013

dawn, anywhere {ii}

the door is still ajar and there is still a lamp lit
and hue spills out in a straight line
where I follow markings on the
sides of highways to forget
how I won't forget the impression
you leave on the sidewalk through
season after passage of next to
brightlit stripmalls somewhere
with snowcapped mountains
and lakes and lakes and lakes away know
I'll probably miss you

when streetlights burn down
when stoplights wear out
I'll be out on the ocean
you'll find me in
hillsides on
indian summer mornings
or in
rain flecks on train windows
winding trails around
provinces I'll
never figure out how to pronounce
you won't miss me

Tom McCone May 2013

lakes and lakes

rain falls             consolidated
dust          it opens up gutters
outside        the pristine bank doors              there was (there were)

a bird (birds), and                      a
girl (laughter),   and a passenger
side                      rear-view wing
mirror (spider's long gone)         we saw
everything                                    always
party to           the                    low lights
disappearing
            days (weeks, decades, et cetera),

how does this just keep happening?
the endless benefits of
                                    a three week
tooth whitening regime       you'll
be
so
              popular
                   with          all the cool kids

gutter        bees wax          shoe polish finish         forever
                                                                         in
                                                                        your midlife
                                        so bri quets; rain:
ame (雨)
pleure, Βροχή, pluvia
वर्षा, წვიმა
lullabies             in cold            words, shuffled
you, singular field,
words, words, worlds  away,

you and I still fall                                                      you and I still I.

Tom McCone May 2013

carry over {i}

I struggle,     stumble,
under the  momentum of
          slow crushes:
a riverbed,      cultured-

                               the way you walk,
                                       you speak,
                           or turn corners,
                                           you
                forget how far nowhere is from here

       -how long it is until
passage through those alps
          to forget how far I've gotten
                     from the town
                             you turn into,

forgetting, you're
    not, ever, going to
       want to
be a dancer

                 "...because I'd have
                               to move
                               I guess"

and the only town left
I know you in anymore,
is all cracked concrete,
empty parking lots,
lights way down,
you not ever
there.

Tom McCone May 2013

when you're sad

weather splinters in
      to fragments, repeating, like
          dense recollections of
what's already
    happened,
                 and
change dissolves indefinitely,
                      into all
streambeds, like        calcium
cycles              backwards out
               of my diet
these days and lately
         of course, being I, the mess,
am not
or ever
                     doing anything to fix this,
                                     and it's
               not like I don't need the
                sustenance, like
                                            all
warm               confusions
              you so graciously
                      endow upon my
                                    life.