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Malcolm Mar 22
Beamed up,
strapped down,
cold metal, sharp light
alien hands, no ****,
send me back.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Malcolm Mar 21
A Sewer of Secondhand Stanzas & Desperate Hands in the Dark
Rotting forum, crusted in filth, a mausoleum for hacks,
where perverts slither between broken metaphors,
their trembling hands typing—no, panting—
over poems that stink of sweat and self-pity,
rejected lovers turned dime-store philosophers,
clawing at rhyme like it's the last cheap thrill
they’ll ever taste.

A graveyard of ghost accounts and hollow praise,
twenty usernames circling the drain,
sniffing each other’s failures and calling it art,
a place where "critique" means slapping a heart
on yet another recycled *****-verse
about “aching souls” and “dying stars.”

Oh, the predators—old men and woman in shadows, lurking, waiting,
writing thin-veiled fantasies and calling them poems,
prying at the young with tired compliments,
sickly sweet as rotting fruit.
They call themselves poets—
but they reek of desperation and dust.

And the “art” they birth?
Half-baked, half-rhymed, half-thought,
trite as a teenager’s diary scrawl,
sewn together with clichés and copied lines,
whimpering at their own reflections,
******* to mediocrity.

The site itself? A glitching, gasping relic,
a dumpster fire on dial-up,
barely held together by duct tape and denial,
its threads—old, stale, circling the same six topics,
poetry regurgitated like bad meat,
a static grave for static minds.

So here’s your goodbye, Deep Underground—
a place where talent goes to die,
where “community” is a euphemism for
mutual mediocrity,
where words are not weapons, not wonders—just waste.

Let it sink. Let it rot.
It was never alive to begin with.
Good riddance to bad *******.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Good bye deep underground
Malcolm Mar 19
poetry used to be a map, a hymn, a burning
we wrote like our tongues bled, like time
ached for translation. words cracked open the sky,
made men dream, made women rise,
made silence sit and listen.
but now,
now, if I whisper of rivers, of dust-lit dawns,
of the wind curling like a mother’s hand
the echoes fall hollow.

but let me write skin, sweat, moan, bite
watch them come running.
write me naked, paint me burning,
say lust, say ****, say writhing hunger
and the crowd swells, tongues heavy with thirst.
it’s not wrong—no, never wrong—
but it is telling.

it is a hunger that does not end.
not for beauty, not for meaning,
not for the poetry that unfurls the world
just for the quick hit, the lit fuse,
the take me there, take me now, make me feel something
for five minutes and leave me numb again.

if I say the word tree, I get ten eyes.
if I say thighs, I get ten thousand.
and that’s where we are.
not where we were.
not where poetry was once carved into the bones of history,
but where it flickers like neon in motel rooms,
glows for a night, fades by morning.

I do not blame them.
I do not shame them.
but I will not forget
what poetry used to do
when words were more than
just a pleasure-driven plate.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Malcolm Mar 19
A fusion of free verse, prose poetry, and lyrical refrain  
By Malcolm Gladwin  ( the video is what we did as kids to be free )
 
Be free—like a bird caught in the updraft,  
like a fish slipping silver through the currents,  
like a balloon let go from a child’s hand,  
floating, floating, floating into the blue yonder.  
Be free like a song sung with no fear of echoes,  
like wild grass bending only to the wind.  
 
Life is one life.  
One breath, one moment, one golden chance  
to walk barefoot where the waves kiss the shore,  
where the sea salt burns your nose,  
where the wind does not ask before it touches your skin.  
Run. Jump. Throw your arms into the sky  
let the sun catch you midair.  
 
Have you ever watched how the butterfly dances,  
how the bee lands, drinks, moves on  
how the river spills itself over smooth stones,  
never asking where it must go?  
Sit beneath the weeping willow,  
watch the shadows shift, toes in the passing current  
the water never waits, yet it is never lost.  
 
Be free. Jump. Clothes on, feet muddy,  
off the edge, off the bank, off the cliff  
five, four, three, two—SPLASH.  
Let the river take your weight,  
let it wash away your hardship,  
let the wild raspberries stain your lips,  
let the lemon grass hold you as you watch the clouds drift  
turning into faces, into beasts, into whispers.  
 
And when the city calls, remember:  
freedom is not found in glass towers,  
not in the weight of gold, not in the rush of clocks.  
It is in the air we forget to breathe,  
the quiet moments we do not hold long enough,  
the waiting at the bus stop when we look up really look  
and see life moving, unchained.  
 
But my freedom  
my freedom lies in the ocean’s roar,  
in the summer rain that does not ask permission  
before it kisses my skin.  
 
Here, I am alive.  
Here, I am free.

Watch the video below - it's a place we went to when we were hot and felt like blowing off some steam , being free in the middle of nature.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?si=nTE89XbZfGmA54W9&v=BDi38mUM0xY&feature=youtu.be
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Be free
Malcolm Mar 18
Who am i really?
I wear the masks they whisper about,  
Words spoken in the hush of broken corridors,  
Light bringers or public enemy number one,  
black for the night, white for the oath,  
red when the wires scream.  
I walk unseen through the veins of the world,  
The shape shifter that walks amongst the wolves and sheep,  
a pulse, a fracture, a glitch in the circuit.  
I am the ghost that never stays dead,  
Messiah that rises time and time again,  
They call me a keyboard cowboy,  
I know the dark because I had to.  
You don’t track a predator by standing in the sun,  
wolves don't just knock on the door,  
Don't you know,  
They lurk,  
I hunt,  
Crosshairs,
Fire
Dead!

I have stood with the blue team  
steel-*****, firewalled, watching the abyss watch back,  
Jedi.  
While worms nawwd at the core, trying to eat through the system.  
I have moved with the red team  
silent hands, slipstream body,  
a wraith in the blind spots of giants.  
Drilling our way through the earth to come out on the other side,  
to see what's unseen,  
to hear the unspoken,  
to find the hairline cracks in the impenetrable,  
I have drowned in the purple dusk  
where order and rebellion  
collapse into static and bones,  
Where community communication finds comfort.  

Tell me—who owns the truth?  
Tell me—who decides the crime?  
Tell me—how do you catch what doesn't exist?  

They call me villain.  
Ghost. Phantom. A shadow that never asks permission.  
Digits flash—unauthorized.  
Vaults unsealed—malicious intent.  
Secrets peeled raw—classified breach.  
Knowledge is what I seek—raw unfiltered.  
I rupture the systems of those worthy,  
a howl in the wires,  
a storm that does not obey.  
And yet—  
they never ask why the lock was picked,  
What was behind the door.  

They call me guardian.  
Sentinel. A shield made of wreckage.  
They call me protector  
when I patch the cracks before the flood.  
But no one asks how I learned to swim in the dark,  
Even when you lose your soul to save others.  

They call me enigma, breaker, builder, ruiner, redeemer,  
a paradox in a world made of glass, fibres that stretch the boundaries of the earth,  
I see the fractures  
the vulnerabilities, the rusted locks,  
the way everything is breakable  
if you know where to press,  
Some call it crime.  
Some call it sight.  
Some call it inevitable.  

I am silence in a world that never stops screaming.  
I am lightning crashing through the wall.  
I am the unseen weight tipping the scale.  
Sneaking in and gone before you know it.  
Footprints on the floor?  
Fingerprints?  
I doubt it.  

And still, I ask myself  
Who the **** am I?  
Just a shadow?  
Or truth
Copyright Malcolm
March 2025
Who am I
Malcolm Mar 17
The sun bows slowly, mourning the lost son,
a candle flickers—one last breath,
whispered through a temple of fallen dust,
where the wind kneels—where silence feels like comfort,
cut from the cloth of the wordless sky. Here we stand.

A hand traces the names on ancient stone,
a name once worn, now barely warn.
The years have left their weight, as there they wait,
each carefully carved letter like a jagged might,
though the body’s gone, the soul’s still sight.

She told him once: "Sow your steps where light still sews,
pare your grief where rivers flows
let no weight of loss take more than air
never will you find me, neither here nor there."
She smiled then—bare in truth, yet strong as bear,
roaring loudly at eternity,
spinning the cosmos into a mother’s care,
a fallen sigh, her golden hair.

The clock hands turn slow, but time still stares,
each tick a tremor, a time we remember—each tock a tare.
He stands at the edge of then and there,
where memories bend like a bending bare,
where fate unwinds with a tangled wear.

A voice hums soft in the scented breeze:
"Your soul is stitched into the stars with ease,
your love is more than what the world still maars or sees.
When I was here, you held me dear,
but know this now—I was never mere."

The sea replies in endless waves,
pulling the past through endless days,
unfolding time in fleeting new ways,
where loss is love that never waives.
Where death is just the name of change,
where love is light in shifting veins.

He turns, he walks, his shadow sores,
each step an echo, yet never sore.
The world moves on—his grief takes form,
but she’s still born, through breath, through storm.

Through ink on pages, through words that write,
through every wrong that turns to right.
She lingers not in earth nor stone
but in the rite of all unknown.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Rite of Return
Malcolm Mar 16
The Debt Always Comes Due
Always the victim, never the cause,
twisting the past into thorns in your crown,
spitting out names like they branded you first,
but no, you lit the match.

Nothing was real—just a game, just a spark,
a flicker in winter, a flame in my hands,
burning because you willed it to,
then blaming the fire for touching your skin.

Never was love, never was truth,
just a hollow echo you painted in gold,
a script rehearsed, a play well-staged,
but the audience left, and the curtains fell.

Every excuse, every shattered mirror,
you threw them like knives at the ones who cared,
but glass cuts back, and now you bleed,
alone in the wreckage you swore wasn’t yours.

Karma doesn’t knock—it breaks the door,
it creeps in quiet, it settles the debt,
no need for vengeance, no need for rage,
I’m healed, I’m whole, and you’re still lost.

And now? A shadow chasing its own ghost,
running, running, never home,
but the past always knows where you sleep.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
The Debt Always Comes Due
This poem is written for someone that one day wished would get over herself but I suppose sometimes it just better to sweep the broken glass away than keep cutting your fingers trying to pick it up glue it back together - let karma deal with them
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