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455 · May 2014
weather channel
Tom McCone May 2014
she sings like flowers
crawling upstream
sweet, headlit
lines exscoriate out
side the hillsides
play usual patterns.
crawling dust
fronts, measurement
in depths.

i'd rather sleep. least
i might see you.

a hotel away, i'd
be quiet. small
matter. mostly
yours.

concrete carves side
walks out, lifts life,
runs fingers through
morning fog. breaks.
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.
439 · Nov 2014
nov. 9
Tom McCone Nov 2014
made a fool in case,
jest in case the tide
turns i can't say
anything& it's slowly
eroding cliff faces. caught
run on to shiver under
swathes of light i
desert the anxious encompassing
my own grip on this spinning
confusion
and oh,
how light hangs about you in
motion i am too deep here i
am too gone the
desk lamp goes cold my own world follows
this chaos in breach
this pattern to fold
under
437 · Apr 2015
12.21
Tom McCone Apr 2015
we shiver our way, caught in rain-drifts.

in dreams, i
buckle knees, spark of flint
beneath
every unfolding seam,
every glistening lake,
each
tremulant dichotomy; we
sang songs, like:

the sky sinks, week by week, endlessly-
outcrop, crawling under tide.

stars caught, all in your eyes. all set alight.
all time & try.
431 · Jun 2015
six and one
Tom McCone Jun 2015
caught, trembling-handedly, in the usual
act of wait. questioning cycles in the
sky, rift from day to day:
what is elementary? does
start or stop again sing
life into this void? the
vestiges of hurt are seeping
through, water in the brickwork.
with nothing caught on tongue,
silence just lies here, too, awaiting
hope or the end.

does it end? are we
just cycles in the sky? tiny burnt
and burning hands, to reach at one
another, from our shy corners?

no answer. just the dark out,
gently leaking in.
trying to pull the wool over my own eyes.
431 · Nov 2015
rory
Tom McCone Nov 2015
last night, in a haze,
i stood in your room,
the eternal fool, as
you played out pattern
of the universe and
said:

"tom, go home n
sort yr **** out."
thanks
424 · Mar 2013
corollary
Tom McCone Mar 2013
that was the summer
I tried to fall in or out of love
but my heart's all used up and
I
can't do anything right
417 · Feb 2013
in stormlit nights
Tom McCone Feb 2013
get out
of my dreams, you
burning violent soul, your
teeth like knives and knives and knives and
you’re
tearing me

a
-*******
-part

so,
get off my back, those teeth
sinking in and
bleeding me, all the way
out to the hills and streams where
smoke, billowing from
your porcelain screaming organs,
making my skin grate along yours in
the dense black
fog of that shimmering
night under the pines
and

I’m not
*******
sorry
any more.
405 · Dec 2012
from scratch
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.
394 · May 2015
the invention of fine
Tom McCone May 2015
every-body was a blurred dot in the threshing ocean
as i washed away; every wavelet playing sunder.
once,
concrete was the sea and i
failed to differentiate, blind,
for the light between slender limbs. disguises,
trees called lovers. silt turned pavement.

we mill about for bits. hearts turn to sand.
        by impact, to glass. one note sung, to shards.
                 the impossibilities of preservation:

anything that is real is fleeting. on crumbling precipice, daydreams spelled out on soft wish were then real, but now, like Siberian radio, waver through our bodies with little effect, and tail off, as time slips on.

but what hurt over concrete is a pale scar,
slurred over weeks, months,
towers spread news, but
-i'm not really listening.-

and footnotes tell tale of time & try & effervescent sentiments;
where we'd play seemingly meaningful games.
where we'd skin knees.
where we'd lie under seemingly meaningless stars, as foliage;
to freeze & bind,
some slower dance through
the corridors of our darkened days.
trembling hands, held at distance.

    where water cuts a warm hole between sky & feet,
     i set out on a separate path. at the root of
    this tower, sitting and staring pure up, failing to
   see the forest for one leaf, i tied strings to
    my fingertips, and just watched autumn come on quick.

but, slowing of pace makes little match for the wind. lives wind like snakes under the soil, but disentangle just as quick. primes become primitives, this much is certain; but, still clueless to the fact, i shy away from ideals & search once more for concrete, or truth,

or at least evidence.
19-5\1
387 · Dec 2012
[or lover's] block
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*
Tom McCone Feb 2015
let rise this scene from
the air, as clouds' coalescence:

in a dream took steps,
as in reality. breathe.
don't make the same
mistakes. don't hold
nothin' too tight. don't
forget to daydream.

vision returns in waves,
the horizon softly aglow.
we are in a car and don't
seem to know where to
go. twigs on the sidewalk.
ghosts of ghost towns.
lullabies starin'. out the
rear passenger window.

[i cut this song out, and stood up anew]

and thought:
could i find
your eyes in strangers,
as heavens evaporating,
or at all?
forgot not to daydream
oh well
377 · May 2015
extract [i]
Tom McCone May 2015
got
snowed on whilst walking. as if
everything froze, i, too, turned
to ice, within a moment. and
then fracturing, split and
scattered; forgetting the world,
lost in existence. a foot hit the
pavement once more, and trees
and streets revealed
themselves. and again, life was
static and stone.
permanent question
369 · Oct 2014
choke
Tom McCone Oct 2014
some moon slunk through stifled air
as, upon stone and soil, a piece of
humanity trembled on. cold starlight.

dried out, under the streetlights where
my footsteps oughta be. standing and
slaughtering my hopes, never knew
near enough
                                
                         ­    i guess i'll survive

nothing lost for all small collection,
he dug nails into palm. the sound of
asphalt will make him sick, in time. not
that he isn't already. just doesn't know it.
just doesn't know who he is, if anything.

my excuses bear down, sharp
teeth in the kitchen, asleep, aside
drunk& disfigured i, contorting amidst
these dreams. waking up bleeding.


waking in the morning, sunlight
screaming through, ocean roar silent;
to stand up and start moving, without
making a sound, through the same
ideals. the same patterns.

*i am held at the throat, at the fingertips
of this rend, of my own heart.
369 · Sep 2015
old coast
Tom McCone Sep 2015
once, you stood tall and bold
against the sky
and said, in all simplicity,
that we are forever stuck
misunderstanding the threads
that run through our lives.
i feverishly agreed, and
already could not make out
sand or sky, and
knew that i was no exemption,
but never to be
cursed or normal, either.

and the sky opened up,
and, steady we,
as we'd prayed for rain,
whispered of continental drift
and the draperies of unseen
seasons. but nobody knew or
knows, and aperture of eyelid
makes no difference. evidence
in broken glass, run smooth
again, that pain can turn out
pretty.

so, we outstood clashes & contrast
patterns in earlier lights, twenty-
twenty ways to unlearn the wrongs
burnt between our sinews. and i did
believe. and i did believe. but time
barrels back and forth, and belief
structures erode out, for better or
for worse, from under
our feet.
sorry i ain't written in ages. thank you all.
368 · Dec 2012
what will [likely happen]
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.
350 · May 2014
third cause
Tom McCone May 2014
tonight is the first night i truly sink my teeth
into an idea
     of letting it all go
and yeah sure i've been here before
yeah sure i've put another bullet through my skull
but what good is that to you
and what good am i to you
but still i can't think at all
can't think of anyone else

with bare hands you wring my flesh loose
with cold time i repeat nothing else
and subliming frustration
with two words you broke my ventricles down

with "all yours"
don't say anything
and i could dripfeed you sugar, honey
but what good is that
and what good am i
in the middle of some other night
capturing some other set of eyes
all i've got is gasoline for a smile

but don't wait up
  don't wait for anything better to come
'cause you ain't got me yet

but if you wait up
if you wait up
i can catch you
i can catch the wind

but i can forcefeed you frigidity if you want me to leave
and i can not matter if you want me to...
335 · Jun 2015
11.57
Tom McCone Jun 2015
a quiet
the scent of distant fires
slow, swimming pulse

— The End —