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Malcolm Jun 28
Words come from the distant deep,
where silence hums and secrets sleep.
Thoughts that flicker, wild or meek,
drip like rain from the soul's dark beak.

They rise from marrow, not from air,
from bloodied dreams or whispered prayer.
Sometimes steep, a summit scream,
sometimes soft as a lullaby dream.

They ride on crows with razored wings,
or butterflies with silver strings.
Some arrive like axe-blade sighs,
some as tears in a child’s wide eyes.

They are born beneath the skin,
in quiet wars we hold within.
Lines crawl out through open scars,
stanzas shaped like fallen stars.

Married in unison — pulse and page,
they outlive time, they outgrow age.
A poem doesn’t end — it loops, it plays,
it’s sung through moonlight and firelit days.

Words don’t rot, they bloom and bite,
etched in ink or screamed at night.
They are rivers of chocolate, or ******-red,
they live when we are long past dead.

So write — with truth, with flame, with breath,
for poems cheat both time and death.
They touch the places no one sees,
they plant forever in the breeze.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Where Poems Are Born
Malcolm Jun 27
Noon burns bright.
Orange sunsets.
Earth breathes.
Candles flicker
light slips away.
Gone is day.

Storms roar loud,
then quiet fast.
Chaos folds in waves;
silence breathes last.

Night moves slow
for those who wait,
a velvet hue
deep and late.
Fallen leaves rest,
new-found fate.

No clocks here,
no time, no tense.
Just dark and light,
turning night
in heaven’s hush
along earth’s fence.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Endless night
Malcolm Jun 27
A poem is built from thoughts so deep, truth so obvious
laced through knuckle-script
and molar brass.

It leaks when no one’s watching
from ankle-chords,
from the valve behind the eye.

You don’t find it.
It outgrows you,
It lives when
you don't .

It’s the eighth toe
you never knew you had,
curling in a sockless shoe,
itching
during weddings.

It is not about trees,
or time,
or the myth of birds.

It’s the scent that doesn’t belong
crushed battery in rosewater,
ozone in your mother’s drawer,
that unforgiving scent.

A poem bites the slowest nerve.
It knows which tendon you dream through.
It blinks in ternary.
You forget its face
until it replaces yours.

Don’t look for it.
Check your palm
That spinal shiver
next time you speak.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
What the poem does not say
Aka Phantom Tongues
  Jun 27 Malcolm
Rubyredheart
beyond midnight
restless
Whiskey floods the veins
Unshed tears over ashes,
these remains
Mourn the dead
Mourn the gone
Mourn the heart
from strong to wrong
Mourn the squandered past
the hollow aimless now
Frozen memory of that final last Farewell
Ponder empty broken words
Promises unkept
Pierced with sword
of hopes inept
Future nameless, fading figure
Sink as restless sleep takes over
Failed the fight
Dead tonight
Hope perhaps with morning light.
Originally published 20th Nov 2021 to DUP as “Restless” | Edited 25th Feb 2025 | lightly edited June 26, 2025
Malcolm Jun 26
Shaded shadows cometh to carry my weary soul,
burdens lifted not in part but whole.
Life, it changes from now to then
does it end, or start again?

A breath unclaimed in silent air,
a final blink, a distant stare.
Time folds in on whispered skin,
and all I was drifts deep within.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Malcolm Jun 26
I don’t fear death
we all go.

What haunts me
is return
no memory,
no map

just ******* it all up
again
like it’s
new.
Malcolm Gladwin
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