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Malcolm May 29
The willow drank my name from silver rain,
yet left my thirst to bloom in salted mist;
Love hummed through wormholes stitched with shadowed pain,
and kissed me once, then marked me as a list.

I chased her echo through a coral field,
where seabirds wrote in cursive on the wind;
My ribs unzipped, a galaxy revealed
a void where all my wanting had been pinned.

She danced like Saturn's ring across my sleep,
then vanished in the hush of Neptune's yawn;
I held her in the roots of stars too deep
to bloom before the hour love is gone.

So still I orbit songs I never knew
and dream of being real inside her blue.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Cartographer’s Kiss on Jupiter’s Moon - A Shakespearean Sonnet
Malcolm May 29
The mosaicing smiles of colour
each a fracture dressed in light,
a kaleidoscope lie,
grinning with the ache of having once been whole.

Each piece of broken glass
a different view,
a different time,
a different feeling
splintered in the sun, bleeding memory in hues.

Red rages like a throat mid-scream,
blue sobs with the patience of oceans,
green lies like envy draped in silk,
gold forgives but never forgets.
Each colour,
a passion,
a pulse,
a past dressed as presence.

They say:
“Stand back. Admire it. See the masterpiece.”
But I know better.
I know what slices under the shine.

No matter how intriguing,
how intricate,
how heartbreakingly beautiful it seems

It's still just broken glass.
Edges smoothed by delusion.
Truth glued with trembling hands.
Not a miracle.
Not healing.
Not whole.

And no matter how it looks
it's still just broken glass.
And
It's sometimes better to just sweep it up
Else
Cut your fingers putting it together
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Mosaic
Malcolm May 29
Because of you, the springtime scents oppress,
I ache in gardens bloomed with floral breath.
Your face is lost in veils of nothingness,
Your lips forgotten in cold death’s caress.

Thinking of you, I love the statues white,
That drowse in parks, in silence held and blind.
I’ve lost your voice, your laughter, and your light,
Your eyes erased like footprints swept by wind.

Like flowers bound unto their perfumed shade,
I cling to vague remembrance, frail and torn.
This pain’s a wound too deep to be allayed
Your touch would leave me more than bruised and worn.

Though I’ve forgotten love, I see you still
In falling stars, through windows dim and still.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
What I Cannot Forget - A Shakespearean Sonnet
Malcolm May 29
Silent threads of light,
Galaxies spin woven webs,
Stars hum cosmic songs.
Planets weave their paths,
Moon and sun in orbit’s loom,
Milky Way’s bright thread.
Before time unspun,
Darkness stretched a fabric vast,
Nameless space unfolds.

And yet here we sit
two minds beneath all of this,
wondering what’s true.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
Before time
Malcolm May 29
It has no shape, no voice that we can hear,
Yet raised the oceans, pressed the mountains high.
It holds no grief, no joy, no hope, no fear,
Yet sends the planets circling through the sky.

It has no name, no words to mark its will,
Yet trees grow tall, and rivers run their course.
It breathes in root and storm and meadow still
A quiet law, a motion without force.

Before the peaks were raised, the skies were spun,
It was — complete, untouched by change or need.
Still as the dusk, and older than the sun,
It moves through stone and sky and wind and seed.

I do not know its name, though I have tried
I call it Great, where all things still abide.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Great - A Shakespearean Sonnet
Malcolm May 28
Before Thy throne, the Gods in awe incline,
Exalting souls that spring from hidden fire;
From Thee, Unconscious Source of the Divine,
Emerge the Fathers whom the Gods admire.

Two twins arose, one base, the other bright,
Their union shaped the world of form and name;
One bore the truth, the other forged the blight
Yet both returned unto the secret Name.

Then she, with mind both good and true,
Did craft the earth in wisdom’s silent grace;
All perfect things she to the spirit drew,
And housed them in the Mind’s eternal place.

Though man be last, his soul the stars contain
For gods and men are of a single chain.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
The Race if God's and Men
May 2025
Written as a Shakespearean sonnet
Malcolm May 28
Golden thread pulls tight,
soft whisper dressed in longing
the soul forgets home.
Flame that feeds itself,
burning joy into sorrow
let it die to live.
Cravings rise like mist,
vanishing with morning light
truth waits in the still.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
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