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That jazzy voice you handle from your lips
Is to be handled carefully. Well, it happened already
You took away every bit of somnolence from me
Suddenly emptied me, left me as a cunning child
Naughty enough to deprive himself of a night lavish with dreams,
To escape the sleep routine under the bed sheets.

And then your phonecall,
Breaking fragile silence like a hammer smashing glass,
I followed you beyond the ringing,
Discovered a trembling annoying voice.
You crafty devil, you planned my unsleeping all along,
Filling my ear with problems of all kinds and sorts
And the endless unsatisfactions of a life you never lived as yours.

So tired as hell, the phone hitting the wall,
Your voice remains, some sort of restlessness
Invades me and keeps me going all night long.

I shave, I’ve got but two hours before all cuts are healed
I put my sleep back together
Shard by shard,
Rebuild its slow glassy reflection.
My sleep is after all
A mirror which doesn’t often work.

The daylight knocks already
The nighttime fades behind me
No sleep tonight for poor devils or for me,
No sleep tonight at all.
Tom McCone Feb 2013
pelagic hearts sink fast,
intercostal routines never cycle to dead standstill:

we've drowned, at last!

taking vicious inbetween gulps of night air, stealing unsatisfactions,
meagre half-lung fills.
tread the water,
watch it grow
from clean nothing
to the murk of azure, affections and
crowding of teeth on that
vast sandy below,
miles down in the darkness,
husks of hope,
filter-fed,
through experiential banks and
cut down to bled chum.

and me,
here;

I wonder why,
you're so sad,
with the world in your palm.

— The End —