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70 · Apr 2
Lunar Insomniac
Malcolm Apr 2
Once again the light of night stares deeply,
Moon’s got me, fingers in my skull,
cracking, peeling, tearing at thoughts
let me be,
I never gave permission for
laughing, smirking
like it owns the night,
like it owns the pain that won’t let me go.

Time folds itself like crumbling paper,
rips apart, mends itself wrong
Minute by minute,
one AM, two, three, four, six,
numbers, fragments, slipping through fingers,
nothing makes sense but the heaviness.
One more hour, one more moment,
and I’m still awake,
count sheep, count dogs, count cats
Nothing!

Sleep? A liar,
a trick of the light,
a hallway that leads nowhere,
a door that doesn’t open
I chase it,
fall into it,
but I wake,
each time
repeating
staring at the ceiling,
listening to the wall breathe,
mind racing away from me,
why won't you let me be.

If I could
I would tear the moon from the sky,
break his light,
fold him into something small,
a paper boat,
something that could sail off,
something I can crush.
But no,
I watch
smug, distant,
untouchable,
repeated,
the moon, laughing.

And me?
I’m a shadow of a shadow,
too awake to sleep,
too tired to be.
The body is a thought,
the thought is a whisper
where am I,
what is this,
where did the night go?

I watch myself,
waiting,
waiting,
waiting
until I collapse or fade,
until the universe sighs,
until time stops pretending,
until sleep gives in
or I let go.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
Lunar Insomniac
Malcolm Mar 12
We built a mountain
out of dust
dry skin on old bones
and hollowed-out eyes
drinking from the crack in the glass.
The rivers ran backward,
spitting out promises
that tasted like iron.

Feet,
footprints carved into gravel,
burning with the weight of a thousand forgotten years—
we ran like shadows chasing the sun
but the light never reached us,
just slipped away
into the cracks of our teeth
and disappeared into the sky
that never looked down.

I saw the rain dance,
but it wasn’t real.
It was a mirage in the distance—
a waterfall that never hit the ground,
and I,
caught between the drop and the fall,
tried to hold onto it,
but everything slips when you hold it too tight.

They say souls
float like air—
but have you ever felt the weight of nothing?
The way it clings,
heavy like smoke that won’t rise?
I found one
stuck between the ribs of a city
too busy to care,
its whispers crushed in the concrete
by the weight of all the things we didn't say.
No one listened,
not even the wind.

I don’t remember how I got here,
but the silence
is too loud to ignore—
a buzzing hum that fills every space,
from my chest to the world outside.
A thousand eyes watch,
but none of them blink.

Maybe we were never meant to find what we’re looking for—
just pass through the doors,
always on the other side of the glass,
fogging it up with every breath,
reaching for something,
but never touching it.
Always running,
but never anywhere.

And in the end,
we’re just dust again
silent,
waiting to be swept away
by hands that forgot
how to hold.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
12 March 2025
Malcolm Mar 12
We love to hate, and hate to love
ah but what is this weightless, vapor-thin love we throw like coins,
sprinkled like dust, dissolving in air,
we keep the prize tucked for the deserving,
spilling naught for fools, oh, is this how it should be?

Grasp—grasp!
Ungrateful swine, swallowing your words,
blind in your greed for something more
love none, yet declare you love all.
Empty mouths speak in hollow tones.
You are nothing. We are nothing.

Empty words, lips carved from stone,
numb hearts for sale, wrapped in the lies of a comfort
you can’t even taste.
Apathetic to the rawness of feeling
devoid, disconnected,
shallow oceans beneath this glassy sky.
Love’s too far, so we reach
stretching thin, grasping for meaning where it’s lost.

Try to love it all, they say
What does that even mean?
Absurd, exhausted, a lifeline tossed
into the void, only to be consumed by hunger.
So how do we love when the world turns away,
when love is stretched, a fraying cord?

Ah! Love everything, love it all, love so wide
a judge of hearts crushed into ash
not a breath of truth in the dust
that scatters on the wind.
No soul left in the words, no fire— just smoke.

To say “I love you” without fire,
a wound left bleeding, a scar left open,
not a whisper of realness— a void wrapped in nothing.
And yet we breathe in those lies,
letting them fill our lungs with hollow ache.
How pitiful
But we keep on. We keep on.

Love is not for the void,
not for the gullible hearts that pull at straws
Oh, no. It’s fierce.
It’s a hurricane
A flame burning for the worthy,
consuming the unworthy, leaving nothing but charred remains.
Don’t waste it.
Don’t throw it like seed, feeding the crows.
Cast it like an heirloom
burning bright.

Hate, too, finds its place.
How long have we been afraid to hold both?
Torn between mercy and punishment,
love and hate are twin flames.
To hold both is to know the whole.
Are we so naïve as to think we’re better than this?

To love everything is to love nothing
To say it, feel it, but never know its truth
How fragile this offering we give to the wind.
No.
Don’t give me shallow rivers when I seek the sea.

So forgive?
To forgive all
but the cost.
To forgive, to love, to let it flow
until hatred grips so tight it drags you down.
Which will save us?
Love or hate?
Which will burn longer?

Do you know what it means to feel deeply?
To hold both, to know love and hate
in their raw, unrefined states?
Oh, we hold light and darkness in one body,
and when we know them, truly,
we know what it is to be alive.

The sun does not love the moon.
And the moon does not hate the sun.
But they are bound
connected by a distance we call time,
pulling each other into orbit,
in their own perfect way.
Both necessary, both.

We love with clenched fists
proving nothing but fear.
Blood and fire
all for the grace of love
until bodies fall, tears rise,
and the sun doesn’t know
whether to burn or bless.

So humiliate, so break yourself,
lower your soul to fit their mold.
And where is the love for the one you should know first?
Yourself
Lost in the lines you draw between false spaces.
How can we love when we don’t even understand the power of a single, honest heartbeat?

There’s no grace without truth
no salvation without the burning both:
light and darkness, love and hate.
This is the measure. This is the scale.
So hold both, feel both,
and you will know what it is to love.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
August 2024
The Balance between Love & Hate
Malcolm Jun 26
The sound of the siren curls like a question,
spinning through concrete veins.
Mist settles like smoke from a lie,
wrapping rooftops in guilt,
truth leaking out,
no doubt.

Ey *****, what you say now?

The quick brown fox jumped over a fence
dropkicked a lazy red faced little cow.
Ooh—million attempts at what,
a vow?
You think that pretty little grin,
that “look at me!” skin,
a smile like a tooty fruit troll-face is your win?
Was that enough to stall the fall,
to silence the cracks
in the mirror where you crawl?
get your sad little point through a crooked corridor door,
what a bore.

Fake shouts—“Oh me!”—
****, the picture hangs skew,
naming different artist oh no
what we going to do?
Raise one wait maybe raise two!

Don't you all see,
come quick have look
I think it's the cover of a old stolen book,
but you?
Still posing like it's new, true
like you bought it, distorted
taught the paint colour in a shade,
oh my architecture
Come put on a parade.

Sirens scream,
ambulance or wambulance, who knows?
I called it for you ! 911 what's your emergency?
A thief stealing stained glass and borrowed hymns / from cello kids in cathedral whims,
sky dims.

We hear you loud and clear.
we were already on our way !
It's me ma –it's me ma – it's me ma !
the sound of the siren in the distance while mist settles truth in a darken hue of blue red blue
just definitions oh so clear
words they disappear,
just like you.

Do you think putting a wall between changes my life,
Oh dear me how can this be?
your poetry sounds like Bert and Ernie,
Wambulance pulled out a gurney.

Lights—camera—play your part,
the damsel routine,
the broken-heart art.
Sending smoke signals
into the void,
hoping someone out there
feels annoyed enough to care,
while you hang onto a distant stare,
When you think your poems are:
Rare as dime in a bubblegum machine.

Look everyone—flatter her
while she’s battering,
Chattering
but truth?
Just uncouth.

Yeah, satire packs it in
like a left hook to your chin.

You think you’re special, huh?
Generic tone with a borrowed soul,
dancing all night in knockoff roles,
trading moans for coin in bathroom stall.
under gallery lights you’ll never know,
painting tears you moan, groan "nut"
never own, "moaning Lisa on loan".

Living in a glitch of an AI scheme,
is that where your writing dreams?
Minimal with a lisp, stale not crisp,
just a blur in a comment stream,
boohoo he just being mean!

You shout so loud
for your petty crowd,
like this song must be you
Bet you think this song is about you too
Dupe do dube doo
Maybe it is.
Maybe it’s not.
Maybe it’s just a monkey
at a five-card standoff
Raised the stakes
flinging ****
at signs it forgot.

Either way,
I couldn’t give two *****.
Not three, not four.
**** girl,
you inspired even more.

Chum-chum, here he ****
crusty knight in silicone armor,
itchy little *******,
twitchin’ for trauma,
chasin' **** like karma.
Old ******* always show up to rescue
anything with cleavage and a crisis menu

Then he sends out a drive-by "flex" / like he’s living in the ******* Ritz
quick on the text
running for any pair of ****,
click n' follow!
dam don't wanna sound ******
that’s twenty "likes" right there,
ain’t that the bitz?

Ah just so silly
Not even a real brit
But he give you a "like"  for a ***,
excuse the wit..

The next day,
your words decay.
Lovers brawl,
no one’s wrong
but I’m still right,
because I don’t belong
to your broken juries
or boo hoo storybook flurries.
They didn’t hang me
they found you wanting.
So fix your shoes.
Get braces.
Chase your high
at the soapbox races.

Boop-boop-de-doo,
cry me a meme.
I don’t fit your box
I reshape the dream.
Turn corners to clouds,
make square roots bloom
in the garden of my mind,
where there's no room
Kazoom.

You thought the judge
would swing your way
as you wagged your finger,
tried to slay.
Hey hey hey, lies! Barney rubble
But turns out fate had a line or two,
No trouble double double
and now the curtain’s drawn
on you,
maybe you should get a clue?

I’m no status, do I look like facebook
looking for likes,
looking for fights
stars and fake blends
No hashtag trend.
I don’t bend
for clickbait or dead-end friends.
I write for the real,
for those who feel
not ******* in trash bags
with wait - oh fake flags
and empty mags,
not turds in windsocks

Stamp your feet, scream your shame,
twirl like a TikTok user caught in flame.
“What you trying to ******* do?”
Here’s a suggestion:
*******.
Kiss a frog.
Post it on your blog
choke on a log,
“****-sing your lies like a sad lil cartoon”
Bet thats your kinda thing too.

Here’s my *******,
signed in Sharpie
Big, loud, and bright:

****. YOU. FULL STOP
While we all have a laughie.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
“The Wambulance Diaries”
battle poem for AP - bit of Satirical and Humourous non sensical ranting lol
70 · Mar 12
Diary of Love...
Malcolm Mar 12
I tried to count the times I fell in love ,
But my memory failed to serve,
their meaning lost in time,
Each face, and memory were empty,
Lost in thoughts I pondered of long ago.

I reached for my quill and ink, to write forgotten lines,
To write down the echoes, jotted in tears.
Yet all my words were faint and torn,
A fabric ripped, both bright and worn.

My diary still waits, its pages empty,
The keeper of the love I wear.
But as I write, the truth unweaves
Some loves are meant to not be written
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
October 2024
Malcolm Jul 27
Tears don’t always fall.
They drift in the mind
like satellites
loosed from orbit,
slow-motion signals
across the blackroom of time.
Not grief,
but gravity remembering.

Love isn’t a moment
it’s a constellation
burned into the hands of an oaken clock and every breath,
a frequency that keeps pulsing
long after touch has stilled.

You never forget the day they vanished, the shape they left behind
an imprint in the air and universe
like heat after lightning,
like a silhouette scorched
into the filmstrip of your soul.

Some things pass in a second
But memory?
Memory is spacetime’s rebel.
It lingers longer than a moment itself
It's a glitch in the hourglass,
a clock that refuses
to stop ticking
even when the hands are gone
it still chimes.

They may have drifted
maybe forgotten from time to time ,
maybe just changed shapes
but when you reach inside
you still see their face
in reflections,
hear their voice
in the background static
of late-night silence.

We carry them:
in bloodline-chords,
in laughlines carved from shared jokes,
in arguments we still finish
alone.

Moments become galaxies
in the afterglow
brightbursts we revisit in an instance
when everything else fades.
Time dissolves,
but memory is ours to keep
memory is a stardust archivist.
It is our catalog of love lost and found
in the particles
we breathe without knowing.

And so we orbit one another forever
even when apart,
family and loved ones remain
a constellation-map
etched in soul-skin.

The world moves forward,
but the hands of time on some clocks refuse to reset.
Because we were built to feel
to remember,
to carry love
beyond the math of minutes and moments.

And when the universe forgets
we don’t because love lives in our hearts forever

We gather the remnants,
build temples from echoes,
and stand together
in the gravity
of what once was,
holding it all until the day memory fold us together
again
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
Where Memory outlives Time
69 · Apr 29
Somedays
Malcolm Apr 29
Somedays I rise like a monk,
barefoot, benign
& still get gutpunched by a cold kettle,
no sugar,
no spoons,
no ******* coffee
just the bitter truth of unplanned idiocy.

That’s the prelude.

Then comes the uninvited opera
the ogre in a hatchback
slithering through lanes he didn’t earn,
gargling ego, honking for clearance
like his tardiness
was my crucifix to bear.

The shop-witch counts coins
copper by copper,
dragging eternity across the till
while I rot behind her,
watching her smirk at the math
like she's curing cancer.

I light a smoke
wind turns assassin.
My sandwich?
Now a Sahara-dusted tragedy.
A mouthful of grit.
Sky ****** spite.
I take a drag—wet ash,
storm on my lips.

There’s always
something.

A misfired message
“you up?”
No, ****, I’m spiraling.
A call about their cat's vomiting,
as if I’m the feline whisperer.
And why is it
that the needy
find me when I need
no one?

Some ***** unclips their door
into my car,
nods like they did me a favour
like my paintwork
was begging for a scratch.
No apology. Just audacity.

And then
relationships, appointments,
all these temporal collisions
some can’t ******,
some can’t stop.
It’s always
either waiting,
or sprinting to keep up
while someone else
finishes without you,
wipes off their guilt
& says,
“ready to go again?”

Somedays…
it’s more days than not.

The inconsiderate breed like roaches
everywhere,
invisible
until they nibble at the nerves.
Each one
a subtle saboteur of serenity
a Harry,
a Sally,
a gnat in the gut of grace.

And I
I dream of vaporizing silence,
a death-ray of solitude
or **** it,
just vanishing,
****,
if that’s what it takes
to bypass this
imposed ritual of irritation.

I pray:
“Lord, get me through this day.”
But perhaps
I should say:
“Lord, muzzle the world.
And let me sip
my ******* coffee
in peace.”

Somedays,
I just want calm.
But somedays…
are all days
in drag.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
SOMEDAYS - just a little spit or vent
Malcolm Mar 16
There once was a man quite outrageous,
Who’d pull out his ****, quite voracious.
At a wedding, a store,
He’d show it once more,
And the cops found it truly audacious!

At the courthouse, he made his big stand,
With his **** in his hand, quite unplanned.
But the judge said, “Oh please,
This is just a disease,”
And they banned him from all public land!
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
A silly Limerick
69 · Apr 29
Volatile
Malcolm Apr 29
I loved you when I shouldn't have.
Didn’t plan to—never intended—
you were good enough
for those
blunt-edged
Tuesdays and
broken-glass Thursdays
you know,
those days you said
“Can you come over?”
and I
stupidly
always said
“Sure.”
(What’s my name?)
Not yours.
Never yours.

I didn’t want to fall,
but I did.
Even while we were
tangled in
half-closed lies and
barely buried truths.
It’s funny
how we ache for the poison
that already lives in our veins.
How I saw
from the start
we were chemicals
unstable,
volatile,
clinging to a rusted shelf
waiting to break.

I was strong.
You were sinking.
You dragged me down
while I taught you to rise.
I showed you
how to see.
But it was never
my job
to make you
a ******* lighthouse.

And that
that was where
I ******* lost it.

I should’ve stuck to the plan:
2 hours of escape,
3 hours of noise,
no more.
Tuesdays.
Thursdays.
Send you home
to your shadow world.
But no.
I carried you
into music,
into meaning,
into books that bled your name
on every page.
You said forever.
I said
nothing is.

And still
you walked.
You left.
But not a ******* day goes by
where my name
doesn’t haunt
your spine
like a ghost.

We were more
than you’ll ever know.
More than I’ll ever find again.
But I’ve made
friends
with silence.
I’ve married the ache,
swallowed the ending,
stitched it
into the back of my ribs.

You say you left
to find yourself.
*******.
You found yourself
in my hands.
And you wanted
to show the ones who broke you
how tall you stood.
But you forgot
who taught you to walk.

The cost
was everything.
And you?
You walk easy
because you were handed it all.
Took it.
Wore it.
Forgot it.

I wasn’t perfect
but with me,
you were real.
You were raw.
And now?
You hide.
You live a ******* lie,
afraid of being touched
by anything true again.
Because you know who you are.
You tasted truth.
And now you rot
in its shadow.

Do the crows in your skull
peck memories into migraines?
Do you flinch
at the echo of “us”?
I don’t mind.

I walk.
Alone.
With that little fluffy gift.
Not crying.
Not reaching.
Not breaking.
Not needing.
If I had one more day
fine.
If I had a hundred years
fine.
Because none of them
include
you.

You,
who swallowed me
from the inside.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
VOLATILE
APRIL 2025
69 · Mar 12
A Devilish Deal
Malcolm Mar 12
Come one, come all, the carnival's here!
Bring your soul; there’s no need to fear.
Step right up to the Devil’s stand,
He’ll trade your essence for a sleight of hand.

The Dark One grins, his pitch refined,
“A bargain struck will free your mind!
Forget those rules of guilt and pain,
Just sign this slip and break your chain.”

“But what’s the catch?” you skeptics cry,
“What’s hidden deep within the lie?”
The Devil laughs, his voice a drawl,
“Oh, nothing much… just your mortal thrall.”

Religion gasps, the pews erupt,
“Without a devil, our sales corrupt!
Who’d buy salvation, grace, or prayers,
If not for Hell and its fiery lairs?”

So here we are, with goats and flames,
And theologians penning Hellish names.
They warn of demons with deeds grotesque,
But their churchly coffers grow quite burlesque.

The carnal sins they do condemn,
Were once old Pan’s own diadem.
Fertility, joy—now sins of lust,
Wrapped in fear and holy dust.

So strike that deal, make it brash,
Why burn in Hell when you can stash
The blame and guilt, the heavy yoke,
And laugh along at the pious joke?

For those who preach the Dark One’s lore
Should thank him daily, and implore:
“Stay wicked, vile, and ever cruel—
Without you, we’d be out of fuel!”
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
October 2024
Devilish Deal
69 · Mar 12
The Quiet Engine
Malcolm Mar 12
There’s a hate in my heart,
buried deep, under liqueur’s burn
and the chill of colombian snow,
strewn across train tracks,
long and wide,
stretching into nowhere.

My family doesn’t see it—
too busy with their own lies.
The preacher, with his sanctified tongue,
wouldn’t dare touch it,
and my friends?
They only skim the surface,
pretending they know me.

Hate hums like a low engine,
alive but dormant,
its rhythm keeping time with my pulse.
I drown it,
I chain it,
but it always stirs,
a shadow in the corner of my mind,
laughing softly at my attempts
to suffocate it.

It wants to devour,
to rise,
to scream its name across the empty tracks.
But I hold it down,
not because I’m strong,
but because I’m tired.

Hate doesn’t die;
it learns to wait.
It lives in truce with silence,
biding its time,
until the snow melts,
the tracks rust,
and it no longer needs
my permission.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
October 2024
The Quiet Engine
68 · Mar 12
Beyond Vision
Malcolm Mar 12
To glimpse the universe in passion's scorched pulse
and find paradise in both sand and fire,
we burn. We burn.
Where wildflowers bloom, *but never *enough.
we wait in fields
empty,
but never empty enough.

We cradle Infinity in our arms—
chaotic arms,
mangled, jagged
we capture Eternity in the chaos
of breathless calms,
flailing,
grasping,
tasting fire with bleeding tongues.

We see only what we can stand to see
what our blind eyes allow
gripped by the weight
of our routine,
our chains.

Wisdom at the door
but the door won’t open
just shadows play,
laughter echoes
too loud
too distant
beneath caverns wide and cracked,
and gray.
We seek, but…
We. Never. Find.

What if it’s all a lie?
What if we are the lie?
This thing we search for
the truth
hidden, buried,
locked inside
our worth.
Entitlement stabs through the skin,
deep,
deep
and we bleed,
but we still think we are entitled.

Then comes the call
from the heavens
but it’s just noise
like wind
we cannot hear it,
can we hear it?
It cuts through the sky,
exposing our scars,
our wounds,
our endless love,
never enough.

Love
it scratches through the bones,
whispers lies in soft lines
through vows,
through sighs,
through laughs that sting,
through silence that screams.
And we look.
Gaze
longing
eyes wide open,
but blind.

At dawn, the sun shatters
breaking in pieces
shivers down the spine
wolves howl,
seers cry,
we— we tremble.

Countless souls scatter,
unbound
free
but fear?
fear is still there
clutching,
clinging,
ripping at hearts
that turn from the night.

The darkness calls.
It’s never far.
Those who flee?
They’ll find nothing.
No love. No comfort. No hope.
Nothing but their own hollow breath.

Hands stretch
but the space is endless.
Journeys continue
but the end is farther than we know.
Steadfast hearts?
They break too.
Skies turn gray,
but still
still
Love’s guiding light,
never—never—fails.

Love
it knows no time,
no end,
no borders.
It bites.
It burns.
It leaves its mark.
Through all that fades,
through all that burns,
Love. Is. There.

Judgment?
It looms.
It looms like a shadow,
thick and choking
for those who arm themselves
with fear
they falter
they fall
before envy’s breath
a dirge,
a song
of death.

In robes of gold,
or rags of decay
truth is shattered,
broken,
a lie dressed in intent
good enough to sell
but never to heal.

The divine spins in the dark
scars and trials burn deep
turning the wheel
beneath the stars
unforgiving.

Teardrops?
They fall
but wings rise
eternal,
seeking grace
seeking answers
that don’t come.

Waves crash
on the shores of fate,
heavy,
crushing
yet the breath of heaven
is weightless.

Summer’s light
it burns
it outshines
the cold of winter’s breath.

The old man?
Reason confined
but blind.
Blind to the truth
to the lies.

Inquiry?
It flickers
like dying light
thoughts fade
we fade
memories burn bright
then dim
like stars that die before we see them.

And art?
It survives
in peace
in silence
envy falls.
Philosophy smiles
but its teeth are sharp.

The cosmos whispers
ancient, eternal, forgotten
and the questions?
They linger
unanswered,
forevermore.

What is truth?
What is time?
In every heartbeat
a rhythm.
A pulse.
A fracture.

Silence deep,
shadows mix,
blur—
and existence?
It never ends.
It never—ever—ends.

Thoughts like rivers
they flow
but do they lead anywhere?
Do we follow them?
Eternally.

Sun and Moon
opposites
but they bow to each other,
embracing their fire,
their light.

To dwell in Passion
to join hand and heart
is to seize
the void
to understand
the nothing.

It’s in the waiting,
the pain
the quiet truth,
that will never speak its name.

A sacred flame,
but no name
just the dance
just the endless turning.

For love is woven,
thread by thread,
by dreams that break
through our minds,
falling like autumn leaves
they fall.

Even when the world
grows cold
Love remains.
Love
it remains.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
October 2024
Beyond Vision
Malcolm Jul 31
Shall I rise with the sun
if I have not met you in the hush between stars?

The night opens like a velvet vow,
and in its cradle, your presence lingers
not flesh, not form,
but fragrance and fire,
a name I’ve never spoken
yet know by heart.

Your touch is the ghost of warmth on my shoulder,
a breath-shaped echo
that turns silence into music.

Willows trees gently lean as though in prayer,
and the air—sweet with unseen jasmine
carries your myth
from a place no map can hold.

I walk each night where dream and stardust fold
a golden bridge not made, but remembered.
Each step I take becomes a question,
each shadow, a verse of your arrival.

Petals fall in my sleep like oracles
blossoms louder than thunder,
soft as a soul unbreaking.

Outside, the world claws at the glass,
its engines loud with dust and desire.
But here
within this ink-lit hush,
my heart remains still,
alive only in the firelight of your approach.

Now I know this body is a vessel of mist,
a brief echo of something truer.
And so I dream not to escape,
but to arrive
at you,
who waits beyond the veil
like dawn behind the last forgetting.

Let the world clamor.
I will not answer.
I have a star to follow.
And your name burns brighter
with every step deeper into the dream.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
He Who Walks the Dreamlight Path
68 · Jul 26
The Old Tree Speaks
Malcolm Jul 26
The old tree speaks
As sickle-saps drip slowly down
the cracked crevice of old bronze-barked bark,
filling age-ridden grooves with sap-time whispers
rings like time-coils and bark-riddles
guide each sliver of golden hymn,
sung from the wooden heart
of the ancient tree
that sits in solitary patience
within the fertile cradle of the earth.

Its roots run deep
ink-veins beneath the soil
buried truths in loam-lined silence,
a story only time remembers.
Golden, olive, copper, and ember-burnished leaves
adorn outstretched branch-arms,
grasping skyward like prayerful fingers
clawing at sunflame and blue-bowl air.

Creatures of fur, feather, and shell
have come to live
within the cathedral-calm
of the tree’s quiet grace,
its leafy hush dancing gently
in the breeze-song of life.

Hollowed branch-chambers cradle squirrels
who scamper across limb-paths,
gathering acorn-bullets and berry-treasures.
Songbirds weave grass-threaded sanctuaries
first the pale-shelled eggs,
then the soft-open beaks,
tiny hunger-mouths calling skyward.
Oh, how great and endless
the passing of time feels here.

Ants in armor-black processions,
leaf bugs like tiny green ships,
march in quick-dart rhythm
to hive-thrones hidden in shadows.
A honey-globe hive swings
from a bough's elbow,
and the bees—amber-striped architects
buzz with pollen-dust urgency,
coming and going,
coming and going,
wingbeats strumming nature’s constant chorus.

Petaled firework-flowers scatter across field- colourful mosaic,
and butterflies—winged lanterns of the meadow
hover in nectar-drunken bliss.
The white bunny, cotton-puff soft,
hops shyly through tall grass-forests,
aware of sharp-toothed silence
lurking in predator-shadow.
So all—claw, beak, hoof, and wing
move with careful grace
in their dawn-and-dusk wanderings.

The weavers and red-billed finch
dip between river-hum and stone-kiss,
while the swallows,
like storm-oracles,
dance in spiral glyphs
to herald rain’s return.
The field—painted in wildflower-confetti
welcomes all.
Bees harvest sun-dust
to craft golden honey
sweet elixir of the meadow’s memory.
And in some nearby den,
a honey-hungry bear dreams
of golden-steal delights.

All life congregates
beneath or beside
this rooted titan.

Oh, great tree
what world-tales dwell in your marrow?
You, the watchtower of ages,
older and wiser
than the ones who seek your shelter,
who take your shade
with unspoken gratitude.

I wonder what dream-shapes
the passing clouds have whispered to you
what wind-stories
have sailed from hill to hill
through your listening boughs.
Bugs and birds,
beasts and beetles
all creatures great and small
find peace beneath your wide-fingered crown.

Who planted you here
in this particular cradle of earth?
Why this soil, this sky?
Where your root-knuckles
have twisted deep
into the rock-ribbed memory of the land,
anchored so that no storm,
no flood,
no clawing hand of time
can tear you loose.
Your strength is whispered
even among mountains.

And look at me now
a sun-dazed wanderer
sitting in your shadow,
on this white-hot day
when the sun scorches
the thin seams between
what we are
and what we aren’t.

From this perch
I see the valley unfurl
green-blanket plains,
honey-lit fields,
and grey-***** mountains
etched in distance.
They too are wise.
They too are old.

But I am human
and in time,
my needing hands
will bring more harm than grace
to you and your kind.

I come searching
for branch-wood to burn,
for the bunny to trap,
for the hive to pillage.
I come to hear the birdsong,
then take
from your silvered bounty.

I am flawed
a creature of constant appetite.
But this is the life I know:
to take,
and take,
and take again.

So tell me, wise tree,
what choice does the grass have
but to grow?
And is this not true for me?
Am I not just the machinery
of my nature
a construct bound
to the illusion of freedom?

How do we coexist
when my hunger outweighs my restraint
and we both know
that someday soon,
only one of us will remain?

Will it be you
ancient oak-heart,
storm-witness,
time-carved pillar
who stood through epochs
but falls
to the blade of man?

Where are your siblings
that I may take them instead,
and leave you
to tower on
long after my bones
turn to ash and echo?

Perhaps—just perhaps
my soul will seep into you
someday,
when I am dirt and shadow,
carried by worm-trail and beetle-march
into your roots.

Perhaps
we will be one
in time.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
The Old Tree Speaks
Malcolm Apr 2
Yeah, yeah, last round, last sin, last down.
Pour me a drink, let the games begin, big grin no frown,
let's get down.

I like my girls like I like my life,
Wild as hell with a touch of strife.
Down under, right *****, word to the wise,
I lick ‘em up slick, watch the fire in their eyes,
Pick up lines? Nah, just pick up legs,
They here for a night, they ain’t here to beg.

Stick up—this ain't no robbery, slobbery.
Hands up high while lips stick and gobble me,
Wobble please, yeah, tease me slow,
Spice in the breeze, on her knees, let’s go.
Veronica, Sandy, don’t matter the name,
Long as she game, we play the same,
Slam me down like a poetry battle,
**** right, revision, slam night position,
No intermission, just pure ambition,
Next day still wet and wishing.
Ain’t no rules, just break that bed,in her head.

Laugh at the law, let ‘em count the dead,
Yeah, yeah, I live life free,
Ain’t no government controlling me, eyes see. ******* to the piggies as they go wee wee .

Smoke up, sip slow, world stay burning, let's go,
They preach control, but I ain’t concerned with
No king, no leash, no ******* master,
Just me, my sins, and a heart that beats faster. Disaster

So let’s toast to the ones who never bowed,
To the freaks, the rebels, the lost and found,
Ain’t no chains that can hold us down, souls that wanna get down,
Blood in my champagne, let’s burn this town to the ground.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
Blood in my champagne last section
Draft
68 · Mar 12
You Beautiful
Malcolm Mar 12
A flash of light,
sharp, broken glass underfoot,
her smile
captive, electric, a god's cruel gift
glows in the fog,
flickers, trembles,
an untamed star
lost in the city's steel veins.
But what is beauty if it drips from the mouth of ghosts,
whispering her name in silence?

She stands,
a flame scattered across the concrete sky
softer than any dream that burns the soul,
wilder than what we pretend to touch.
Do you remember how her voice shivers through you,
cracked vinyl spinning memories,
dust, decay, and heat?
Gods do not look this way;
they cower behind the scent of burning roses.

Her fingers wrap around the world,
each movement violent with grace,
but I see the dark beneath
that sweetness,
and I wonder if love is the rope
she ties around herself
or the knife she drives through the hearts
of the lost.

Her laugh is a fracture in time,
a moment too pure,
too much,
that I swallow whole
like acid, burning my throat.
What do we call that
when nothing left feels real?
When her eyes turn,
and the night begins again—
silent, dark,
and heavy as broken wings?

But I cannot forget
the way her spirit
ignited the ruins of me
one smile, one movement,
a blaze too fierce to die,
too pure to touch without ruin.

Do you remember the sky when she passed
how it bent
and bled for her?

And yet, she is gone.
She always was.
An illusion,
a creation of something I cannot hold.
But God, how she burned.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Malcolm May 23
Our love was deeper than the ocean
deeper than Poseidon's sighs, where leviathans hum lullabies to sleeping coral,
our love churned beneath sapphire trenches — ancient, glowing,
etched in whale-song scripts that only the stars could read.
It spiraled downward past jellyfish lanterns, trailing silk,
where seaweed reached like dreaming fingers toward the memory of moonlight.

We walked along the shore
fairy-light footsteps, hands in clutch,
we danced across the silver moonlit shore,
where the sea birds screamed stories to the waves
and the waves replied with thunderous applause.
Tiny ***** in brown tuxedos spun pirouettes,
carrying secrets in shells, clicking out riddles for the sand to decode.

Falling through the clouds like a skydiver without a parachute
we plummeted like wingless angels giggling in gusts,
through cotton-candy cumulonimbus, pierced by rainbow veins.
A trumpet played jazz for the falling golden, reckless,
and somewhere below, Earth slipped on her own rhythm,
dodging our love like a bashful muse.

We walked through the fields
across hills and plains soaked in buttercup breath,
fields covered in flowers drunk on the sun’s honey.
The grass whispered ballads in chlorophyll tongues,
while rivers drew lazy spirals, their laughter tickling the rocks.
Above, the sky blushed cerulean, scattered with ink-drop swallows
and a single cloud shaped like a promise we never kept.

Stars sang lullabies for the tides, their voices stitched with cosmic thread,
and moons — glowing like prophets —drifted in dream-silk robes.
The sands of starlit beaches shimmered with golden orbs,
rolling like marbles tossed by gods with time to spare.
And we, mad and luminous, kissed in the tide’s breath
as if the universe had no need for sanity, only sound and spark.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Where Skydivers Dream and Whales Remember
68 · Apr 29
Tree on the hill
Malcolm Apr 29
Tree on the Hill
It doesn’t grow
it remembers upward,
each branch a green-tinged scream
curved into the ache of sun.

Leaves don’t fall
they betray,
drifting like forgotten tongues
gold-lipped,
summer-sick,
too heavy to lie still.

The bark
creased like an elder’s laughter
etched in dirtscript,
smells of storms caught mid-prayer
and mosses that whisper
to no one in particular.

Its roots?
They grip the hill
like a jealous god,
fingers buried in the soil’s old heartbreak,
sipping secrets from beneath the grassline.

And the wind
it doesn’t pass.
It negotiates.
Swirls between the limbs like lost voices
asking the tree if it's still waiting,
still listening,
still pretending to be alive.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
APRIL 2025
Tree on the hill
67 · Jun 26
The Edge of Then
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
67 · Mar 13
Phosphor Bloom
Malcolm Mar 13
The air is a buzz of quiet light,
like the hum of moth wings, soft against dark.
Electricity cracks open the sky,
a pulse running through veins of gold and blue,
flickering like the last breath of a fire
scattering sparks over the skin of the world.

In this moment, the earth shakes and breathes in crisp shadows,
while we are lost, dust in our veins, curling into the depths of  each other
a dark shadow of light, a flicker of stolen time,
the silence between us sharp as broken as jagged rocks that the surf washes against.
Here, we are not broken, we are not shattered , we are not destroyed
but bent like light through a light prism,
refracted into infinite pieces
we cannot hold.

Beneath the river's mouth,
the blue moon is a torch
its flames, a dull whisper to the sky.
Phosphors pulse, like ghosts still singing,
their song an echo between the stars
where the universe falls into itself
again and again.

And in the empty spaces between this world and the next,
I hear the wind carry whispers
of things I have yet to say
sweet against the ache of silence,
spinning through the dark like forgotten names
long lost to time’s hunger.

The light dies quietly,
but something of it remains
like the taste of honey on a tongue
that knows nothing but ash.

Time catches its breath,
waiting for the sky to remember
what it once was,
before it was just air and dust.
Before it was just a ghost,
walking the line between becoming
and nothing at all.
The air is a buzz of quiet light,
like the hum of moth wings, soft against dark.
Electricity cracks open the sky,
a pulse running through veins of gold and blue,
flickering like the last breath of a fire
scattering sparks over the skin of the world.

In this moment, the earth shakes and breathes in crisp shadows,
while we are lost, dust in our veins, curling into the depths of  each other
a dark shadow of light, a flicker of stolen time,
the silence between us sharp as broken as jagged rocks that the surf washes against.
Here, we are not broken, we are not shattered , we are not destroyed
but bent like light through a light prism,
refracted into infinite pieces
we cannot hold.

Beneath the river's mouth,
the blue moon is a torch
its flames, a dull whisper to the sky.
Phosphors pulse, like ghosts still singing,
their song an echo between the stars
where the universe falls into itself
again and again.

And in the empty spaces between this world and the next,
I hear the wind carry whispers
of things I have yet to say
sweet against the ache of silence,
spinning through the dark like forgotten names
long lost to time’s hunger.

The light dies quietly,
but something of it remains
like the taste of honey on a tongue
that knows nothing but ash.

Time catches its breath,
waiting for the sky to remember
what it once was,
before it was just air and dust.
Before it was just a ghost,
walking the line between becoming
and nothing at all.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
Phosphor bloom
March 2025
Malcolm Mar 29
Hurt,
A smear across the canvas.
No,
not a smear—a wound.
A slash,
a burn,
a bruise.
You wear it like a crown.
You wear it, and think you’re the mask—
but,
you’re not.
You’re the hand.

Stuck
in the cage of your own thoughts,
the chains rusted, but still they cling.
Why do you believe them?
Those chains?
Those are lies.
Not your skin,
not your bones.
You—you—are the fire
that melts them.

Life?
Yeah.
Life hurts.
Love?
Hurts more.
But silence?
Silence?
That’ll **** you slow.
A death of nothingness.
A breath that never comes.
An empty scream.
Whisper
“I can’t.”
An endless howl,
that’s all that remains.
But it’s nothing,
isn’t it?

Wait
together?
There’s strength in the unspoken,
strength in the unseen.
It’s the flicker of a light
in the cracks,
the silence between the thunder.
Where your heart beats
where it beats
start there.
Don’t wait for permission,
don’t wait for love.
You teach it.
You hold the brush,
the sculptor’s tool,
and you make.

Doubt.
It carves you
sharp.
Like glass,
like a knife to your ribs.
Stop thinking,
stop carving your own scars.
You’re not a sentence,
you’re not a conclusion.
You’re the story.
Not the ending.
Not the ghost.

There’s a myth
A myth.
That says you’re less than enough.
That says you’re small,
that says you can’t.
It’s a lie.
A shattered lie.
A myth that crumbles
in the face of your truth.
You—you—are the universe.
Each cell.
Each breath.
Each step
a new galaxy.
Bursting.
Exploding.
You are the spark
that lights the fire,
the ember
that burns down everything
they thought you were.

What if you believed
what if
you believed in the beat of your chest?
The rhythm of your bones?
The pulse of life that screams
in every inch of you?
What if you believed
you’re more than the cage
they built around you?
What if you realized
you’re the song?
You’re the melody
that breaks the silence.

You
You
are not the thought.
Not the chains.
Not the scars.
Not the voices.
You’re the music.
You’re the crash of cymbals,
the rise of the string,
the pulse in the drum
that shakes the world.
Don’t let them decide who you are.
You decide.
You—you—are the rhythm.

Stop waiting.
For what?
For who?
The world will not open doors for you.
It’s not the door
that you’re waiting for.
You’ve got the key.
It’s always been in your hands.
Unlock it.
Break it down.
Create your own path
no map,
no guide.
You—you—hold the world
in your palms.
Now make it,
Take it,
Break it,
Make it your own.

Go.
Move.
The masterpiece is inside.
It’s not waiting,
not on hold.
It’s here.
Right now.
And you
you are the one who paints it.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
The Art of breaking free
Malcolm May 21
Somewhere
beneath the eyelid's last blink
where glass bleeds light,
and truth flinches like a rat in church,
a Psalm shatters,
cracking the spine of silence.

I saw God’s silhouette in reverse
a negative burn,
its arms were questions,
its eyes were hollows,
and its scream—a flicker in dead film.

Tell me
what’s a universe if not
a deaf match struck in a snowstorm?

I licked the ash of a star once.
It tasted like birth
and every lover who ever left without closing the door.

Time taps its nails on bone
tick. tick. tick.
Each second a parasite,
sipping marrow,
etching the shape of forgetting
on my skull.

No map.
No north.
Only echoes whispering:
“you were never here.”

Even solace is a trick
a ghost draped in perfume and mother’s hands,
gone when you turn to name it.

I broke a clock to stop the wound.
(It laughed.)

Now
I collect shadows.
I press them between pages of not-quite-meaning,
each a brittle wing.

Is this God?
—a hum in the static,
—a fault line in grammar,
—a riddle whispered backwards
through the teeth of a dying flame?

Listen:
There is a drone inside the ordinary.
It gnaws.
Not loud
but certain.

You want reason?
You want rules?

Here’s the cipher:
There is none.
Only this:

A flicker. A fracture. A fall.
Then something unnamed
that feels like knowing.

But isn’t.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
MAY 2025
The Godprint Cipher”
(a fractured riddle poem)
67 · Jul 25
Footsteps in the Storm
Malcolm Jul 25
We walk each day
on cobblestone mornings and dust-road dusk,
navigating roads both winding and narrow,
barefoot on thornpath,
laughing through lungfuls of sunlight,
not knowing the storm waits for us
just beyond the turning.

Sometimes the climb is breathless and weary.
Knees buckle on gravel-wounds.
Hearts stretch across silence-heavy hills
where even the sky forgets to speak.

But then, then
a breeze, a simple song in the air,
a bird-note flickering through fogglass.
Someone’s hand, warm on our shoulderblade.
A word of encouragement.
And joy returns like a hush breaking open.

Don’t take it for granted, dear friend:
the soft-spoken tea,
the way a child says your name,
the sun threading gold through kitchen blinds.
After warmth, the weeping comes.
After the dance, the ache.

This is life’s rhythm
storm-song, stillness, sunfire, ash.
Each season a lesson etched
in wind-script and worn-shoe truths.

Be thankful when the road smiles on you.
Drink from the clear moment fully.
But do not curse the falling rain
it washes, it shapes, it teaches, it renews.
It molds us into river-stone grace.

If you chase only firework-miracles,
you’ll miss the quiet bloom
of the reddest rose in cracked cement.
You’ll overlook the miracle of breath,
the mercy in a stranger’s nod,
the gift of just one more mile.

So walk on.
Stride slow.
The path is honest, even when it’s cruel.
No season, no sorrow, no laughter
ever stays.
All will pass.

And life?
Life is the footsteps we leave quietly in the storm.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
Footsteps in the storm
67 · Apr 5
Paint ...
Malcolm Apr 5
Life is a ******* canvas,
a mess you don’t know you’ve stepped into,
until your foot’s stained
a smear of doubt,
blood from the gods you thought you knew,
the first breath
a slap,
a jagged line that cuts into the gut of you.
****, it hurts,
but you keep painting
‘cause the world ain’t built without your hands in the ****.

It’s paint on your face,
the drip of your own blood
mixed with rage,
‘cause what’s life if not a battle between what you want to touch and what’s been forced into you?
You’re born with a brush in your palm,
but the strokes are jagged,
sharp edges,
a million questions you don’t have answers for.
You want to fix it
but the canvas bleeds through your fingers,
so you just keep ******* going.

Each line is war,
each color is death,
each mistake is your soul
ripping open like a wound.
Nothing is clean here,
not the art, not the mind,
not the **** heart beating like a beast in your chest.
You hit the page with fury,
twisting the paint till it burns,
till it scars.

You step back,
but only to get a clearer picture of the wreck you’ve made.
Life, like a painting,
is the blood of your struggle,
the grit of the grind,
the brutality of change.
Can’t fix it,
can’t make it perfect
It is what it is
but ****, you can make it yours.
You can make it raw,
tear it apart with your bare hands,
and watch it bleed into something real.
‘Cause at the end, it ain’t about the clean edges,
it’s about the chaos
the mark of the beast you leave on it,
the rage and hunger that refuses to die.

And when it’s done
you’ll see it.
All of it.
Every jagged, broken line,
every scar on the page,
and you’ll know,
the mess was never the mistake.
It was always the point,
to paint...
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
APRIL 2025
Paint ...
67 · Jun 26
The Cycle
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
66 · May 20
All-Seeing Eye
Malcolm May 20
What is the All-Seeing Eye
Do you think it's real?
They said it was for peace,
a wire under your skin,
your laugh in a data vault,
your scream — timestamped and indexed.
They called it security,
but it had the stink of war.

We fed the All-Seeing Eye
with our faces,
our flaws,
our petty searches
“how to love,”
“how to lie,”
“how to disappear without dying.”
It watched.
It blinked never.

We are metadata ghosts,
grief tagged in 4K,
crying in front of smart TVs
that whisper back at night.
Our cameras smile when we don’t.
Our phones know before we do.

The walls listen
not metaphorically.
The bricks have ears
and the sky is bugged.
Satellites trace our hearts
like fragile heat signatures.
Love becomes a red dot.
Desire = anomaly.

Snowden wasn’t a leak
he was a scream.
A fracture.
He tore the veil and found code.
PRISM, XKeyscore , TripWire
not names,
but wounds.

This is not fiction.
China grades its citizens.
The West sells fear in high-def.
Your guilt is presumed,
your innocence archived,
your freedom
licensed, leased, denied.

What are we when every silence
has a transcript?
What are we
when eyes without lashes
watch us sleep?
A body of flesh,
tagged by code,
chained to clouds that never rain.

Encrypt your breath.
Whisper in analog.
Paint your truth on cave walls.
Rebel with rotten passwords.
Burn your SIM in holy fire.
Give them nothing but static,
nothing but noise,
because
data doesn’t bleed.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
66 · Jun 25
Mental Landscapes
Malcolm Jun 25
In my quiet mind,
no secrets, no need to lie
only time stares back.

Lonely clock unwinds,
each thought echoes with silence
no one waits inside.

I run in your mind,
looping like a whispered name
you can’t let me go.

But where do we meet
between your dreaming of me
and my fading self?
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Between Minds - A Senryu with final coda
65 · Jun 23
Accident Blues
Malcolm Jun 23
Mind’s wide open — body twitchin’, glitchin’, this pain is *******.
Thoughts crash like ******' panes in a kitchen, glass on floor
Glass in my grin shame diggin’ in, full pain.
Guilt pokin’ ribs like needles in skin.
Fire in my nerves, yeah this pain ain’t pretend,
Legal highs got me beggin’ for the end.
Eyes sunken, sleep duckin’, truth runnin’,
Mind ******’ me harder than life ever done it.
Dreams don’t visit, they drive-by in silence, alliance, defiance
While trauma backs up like a ***** with a license.
Heart skips like a junk beat glitched,
Shadow follows me like a snitch I ditched.
High legit — but the fit don’t click,
Cracked like a token tossed in the pit.
Broken on rocks while I fake that grit,
Every ******’ breath like a punch I split.
Gotta detox, get clean, get straight, give me rocks, big blocks
But mind’s on fire, sittin’ there, laced with hate.
It’s crawlin’ my skull, through the ceiling it leaks,
Whisperin’ sins in the hospital sheets.
IV drippin’ like a priest in heat,
Tryna baptize my veins with defeat.
Maybe I’m vain, maybe I’m ******' insane,
But this brain got rooms that scream *******, pain pain pain.
Temptation ain’t knockin’, it kicks the door in,
Talkin’ bends, ends, old sins, fake friends.
Promisin’ peace from a pill with a grin,
But I know that thrill ends under my skin.
Open door — I step right through, roof lit floor
Ain’t scared of hell, I’ve been see-through.
Shoulda died — yeah, death ******’ lied,
Left me half-man, half suicide, final ride what's inside see the blind.
Drugs in the drawer hum lullabies low,
Beggin’ me sweet to just let go.
Living’s a joke, the punchline’s stale,
Body in a bed with a soul on bail.
Paranoia sharp like a blade of mice, grain of rice, pipes that are spliced, in and out,
Gnawin’ my spine with feral vice.
Creepin’ up bones, crawlin’ through wires,
Slime in my mind that never tires, never lies.
Smiles from the past? *****, they charge, no they charge
Fake hugs, fake love — just emotional barge, living off drugs
Body sold, mind hijacked and bruised,
Truth tastes rotten when your teeth are loose, bones once whole broken forgotten
Tongue spits prayers in a ****-you voice, without choice,
While Morph and Feni dull the noise.
Stack of Beni like a hitman’s fee, trami and whites.
Every pill a silent plea.
War still young, but my soul’s unravelled, minds travelled,
Heart don’t beat, it ******’ gravelled.
I claw through the dirt just to breathe again, woke up to the pain,
Fightin’ shadows with a rusted pen an broken Zen.
I danced with edges, glad I'm not vedges, still ****** in the hedges, kissed death’s mouth,
Woke up in pain with the wires pulled out, ribs sticking out, blood all about,
This ain’t redemption, this ain’t a hope song,
It’s grit in the lungs and the will to prolong.
Me vs. demons, streaming, screaming, bare-knuckled, no bluff, No luck, no God, just drugs and rough.
And if I make it out, still half-alive,
It’s ‘cause I crawled through ******’ knives to survive, and if I don't well guess I died.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
ACCIDENT BLUES
June 2025
65 · Mar 18
Who am I
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 Apr 3
Hunger of the Hollow
Who whispers first
the earth or the bone?
Who sings the loudest
the living or the rot?

The Girl Who Would Not Stay
She walks on petals made of glass,
soft steps splitting the veins of the earth.
The sky drinks her shadow,
swallows her shape,
forgets her name.

She was never meant to hold weight.
Not here. Not anywhere.

The river curls, wet-lipped and laughing,
coiling around her ankles, pulling her in
“Come, child of the hush.
Come where the wind forgets to breathe.”

She touches the water.
It opens a mouth of teeth.

The Flowers Never Woke
A valley sighs, heavy with waiting,
roots threading through ribs of the long-left-behind.
The lilies shudder in their sleep.
The roses are hungry.
The flowers wilt.

She kneels, touches the soil,
but it does not reach back.

“What if I leave and nothing misses me?”
she asks the air, but the air is busy.
It does not answer,
neither does the sun
neither do the stars.

The clouds above burn
folds itself into fists,
wrings light into rain,
spills over in fits of golden hunger.

“Fall with me,”
it says, curling against the weight of its own skin.
“Fall and know what it means to be held.”
"Fall and know what is life's embrace"

She stretches a hand.
But she does not trust softness.
Not when it bends so easily to breaking.

The Worm they watch all above,
Beneath her feet, the earth shudders
a ripple of something restless, something waiting,
something that has never needed a name,
the unknown calls.

A worm, white as unstruck lightning,
unfolds from the dirt,
a thread in the loom of the forgotten.

“Do you know what it means to return?”
it asks, voice thick with the weight of all things buried.
“Do you know what it means to stay?”
"Do you know what it means to leave?"
In all things bright as day.

She does not answer.
She does not know.

She runs.
Because that is what the empty ones do.
Afraid of the unforseen.
Afraid of the known .

Through the hush of the valley,
through the hunger of flowers,
through the breathless cloud,
through the waiting worm,
until the gate—yawning, waiting, endless
takes her inside.

And she sees
bodies, folded and pressed like unfinished prayers,
hands reaching for something long since gone,
eyes black with the ink of every unspoken question,
each answer no told.

She sees herself.
Hollow-ribbed. Hunger-limbed.
A thing with no weight.
A name no one remembers.
Forgotten.

And the silence speaks:

“Why do you fear what you already are?”

She turns.
She runs.
She flees

but the gate does not let her go.
And the garden does not let her wake.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
The Girl that would not stay
65 · Mar 19
Comments
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
65 · Aug 1
When Night Touches
Malcolm Aug 1
A Night Beneath Your Hair
In a vision,
the velvet sky unfolds,
and stars gather in your eyes
their glow softens,
melting into strands of moonlight
woven through your hair.

A low wind hums in the trees,
and the sound carries you
your scent, your shape,
your breath on the rim of the world.
The chill brushes past,
but you
you touch me
like fire through silk.

Tiny sparks trail down my skin,
shivering like rain across stone
my chest, bare,
partially covered in a flannel throw.

My hand finds your shoulder,
tracing the curve
where warmth lives.
You lean in,
your hands resting
at the small of my back.

I sink
into you.
Into the quiet gravity
of your closeness.

And finally
my lungs open,
my ribs widen,
and I breathe
not just air,
but something fuller,
richer,
that only exists
with you.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
1 August 2025
When Night Touches
65 · Mar 30
Thorns that Bloom
Malcolm Mar 30
I would have given you the sky
ripped it down in ribbons,
torn from the blooms of wild orchids,
stretched it between my hands
a trembling net
and let the silver spill
through your fingers like petal-fractured glass.

But I was born
with empty pockets,
lungs full of jasmine dreams,
too many blooms crushed underfoot,
too little space to let them grow.

So I lay them at your feet
stitched with lavender
tattered blueprints
of something holy.

Walk softly
even roses have thorns.

You move like ink
bleeding into midnight
a shadow wrapped in the cool petals of forget-me-nots,
spine carved from hunger,
the moon bends,
spills its cold teeth
against your cheek,
and even the stars
whisper your name
every shade tangled in your gaze
light and dark
ruin and rapture.

Love is thorns
in bloom
in its buried root.

Wild roses
know no master,
They drink from the throat of storms,
They spit blood from its petals.

Some flowers
endures when winter
gnaws the bones,
splitting skin like frost-kissed razors.
Beauty cuts,
sweetness scars,
and yet—still,
still
we reach for it
with bloodied hands,
with thorn pricked fingers,
fingers cracked open like rusted doors.

I lost it then
the moment splitting like a cracked mirror
I didn’t know.

Would I have held tighter?
Could I?
Not sure
it just slipped away,
like fallen petals in the wind.

They tell me,
it’s nothing to grieve,
nothing to hold.
Still, I’m empty
waiting
did I lose you
or was I already gone?

And I wonder now,
was it worth it
this burn in my chest,
this hole in my heart,
the way your name sticks like honey on my tongue
what can I say
I didn’t see it coming,
just a sharp pull, like roots tangled beneath skin.

Time folds,
Time changes,
the way a rose blooms and fades
each petal a lost whisper in the dark.

But I never forget,
How can I forget,
I wish
I could forget,
Sometimes,

I see your face,
shadows under your eyes,
the way you move
your scent that dances
upon summers breeze
and I wonder,
was it just the wind?

Or did we leave something in each other,
something that was carved into each other soul
something so real it hurts,
something that cannot die?

Some things bloom slow
from a fallen seed
roots unseen
knotted veins in the gut of the earth
and by the time we know,
they are already part of us,
vines that have crept into
who we are.

If I could remember
the first time
your breath bent the air near mine
would I have held it closer?

Made a shrine
of the moment?
Or was it meant to slip
traceless
faceless,
so I could spend a lifetime
searching
for its echo?
for a memory I can't forget.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Thorns that Bloom
65 · Mar 12
Poetry SNOBS ...
Malcolm Mar 12
Ink must flow in lines,
metered, measured, high-minded
else it is not art.

They sneer at free verse,
counting feet like prison bars,
locking out the wild.

Rhyme too clean? Too trite.
Rhyme too loose? Unrefined slop.
Gold melts in their hands.

Ancient names they quote,
wielding rules like brittle swords
paper cuts still sting.

Silence when they read,
hushed as if the gods had penned
what they claim to own.  

Yet wind speaks in gusts,
rivers carve new paths through stone
poetry is free.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
February 2025
Poetry SNOBS ...
64 · Apr 6
Let People Be
Malcolm Apr 6
Let people be.
Let them breathe,
let them live free
whether they are he, she, or joyfully three.

Who cares what they look like,
where they come from,
or how they speak?
They are people.
They rise, they fall,
they laugh, they seek.

They deserve to walk their own way,
to love, to cry,
to dance in the sun or weep in the rain,
without shame
and without a chain.

So what if they don’t fit the shape
your mind molds as “normal”?
That’s your cage.
This is their stage.

No need to love as they do
just let them be true.
Let them shine in their own sky,
wear their names with pride,
even if their pronouns
don’t match the tide.

They bleed red,
they dream in color.
They’ve felt grief,
they’ve cherished another.
So why should their joy
be cause for alarm?
Why does their truth
feel like harm?

Each life is one
let it count,
without need for approval
or fearful doubt.

It’s okay if someone born a he
feels within a radiant she.
It’s okay to find love
wherever love chooses to be.
It’s okay to be soft,
to be bold,
to be different,
to break the mold.

There is no need for convention,
no rule to conform
let them be fire,
let them be form.

Happiness harms no one.
Difference is not a crime.
So why does it bother so many
when others simply wish to shine?

All lives matter.
This earth belongs to all.
Every voice, every shade,
every rise, every fall.

Don’t let hate
sit in your heart.
Don’t let judgment
tear others apart.

Love.
Love wide.
Love those who stand
on the other side.

Help each other.
Lift each other.
We are all brothers, sisters,
fathers, mothers
children of this spinning place.
And if one truly looks face to face,
they’ll find kindness
where they once saw fear.

There are greater battles
than long hair or buzzed styles,
than lovers who smile
in ways that don’t match your files.

Accept what is different.
See the beauty in change.
It takes every kind
to turn the world’s range.

Let people be.
They don’t need permission to exist.
They deserve to be seen,
respected,
and missed.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
Let people be !
Malcolm 6d
I’ve got a bee in my bonnet
you’d best step back.
I’ve got a bee in my bonnet
and it won’t take your crap.
I’ve got a bee in my bonnet
it’s tuning up to sing.
I’ve got a bee in my bonnet
and it’s ready to sting.

This bee is sick of it
no value for money,
each bite costs more
but fills less of the tummy.
Every shelf’s a con,
every packet’s a cheat,
cutting corners,
stealing meat from the meat.

What kind of world
puts profit before need?
Where greed is the harvest,
and we’re just the seed.

Look at you
corporate swine.
You’ve turned the good wine sour,
poisoned the bread,
and smiled as we choke
on the lies you’ve fed by the hour.

You wrap it in glossy packaging
that costs more than what’s inside.
You sell us a promise,
but truth? That you hide.

If you could slip in poison
to save a good buck
you’d do it,
grinning,
and push your **** luck.
Then feign surprise
“Oh, we didn’t know!”
while your profits rise
from the puppet show.

It’s like your “medicine” that heals
but maims.
“Take this pill for your headache,” you say,
“but it may cause blindness,
baldness,
or death someday.
Insomnia, itching,
your manhood might quit
but hey, the headache’s gone,
so that’s worth it, isn’t it?”

If the law didn’t chain you,
you’d hide those side effects too
crammed in fine print,
folded so tight
the font itself would fight your sight as it already do.

Buzz. Buzz. Buzz.
I’m the bee today.
And I’m here to say
there’s no love in your work,
just poison in the play.

You know the harm,
but keep your mouth shut,
while stockholders
pocket the cut.

It’s daylight robbery
clear as glass to the blind.
Greed in broad daylight,
looting humankind.

So
when do we say, Enough is Enough?
When do we rise from the grind,
and tell you we’re tired of bluff
of bleeding our wages
for trash in a package,
for lies in a label,
for crumbs on a table?

No, Mr. Corporate *****
we’re not your game.
And if you still have a conscience,
you should learn the word shame.
11 August 2025
Bee in My Bonnet – The Sting
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
Malcolm Mar 14
Clock hits five—oh, look alive!
Time to chug, time to dive,
time to drink my last two neurons dead
and dance on the grave of the week I survived.

Boss said "grind," I said "blind,"
sold my soul for nickels and dimes,
but hey—it’s Friday, let’s pretend
that life’s not built on corporate crimes.

The club’s a zoo, the floor’s all glue,
the shots are fire, my liver’s *******,
but better that than sober doom
I’ll take a hangover over servitude.

So praise the Lord, or cash or fraud,
or alcohol or pain ignored,
'cause Monday’s death is Friday’s birth
one more week closer to the dirt.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
64 · May 21
Murdered Consciousness
Malcolm May 21
I slit the throat of consciousness,
let it bleed out in a ditch of ash and static.
Its pulse gurgles—red syrup on a canvas of bone,
splattered like a Jackson ******* fever dream.
Heaven’s deaf, a mute god with marble eyes,
so I scream to hell, and hell screams back,
a choir of razors, a hymn of shattered glass.
Care?
I murdered it.
Strangled it with barbed wire,
watched it choke on its own syrupy pleas.
Concern’s corpse swings from a chandelier of thorns,
its shadow giggling gasoline,
dripping fire that licks the floor clean.
I’m free now—unshackled,
a wolf chewing through its own leg to taste the wild.
Abstract paintings scream the truth
colors clawing at the edges of sanity,
blues that bruise, reds that **** the light.
Genius is a fever, a sickness that grins,
a parasite gnawing at the skull’s soft meat.
Who wants safety?
Safety’s a cage, a coffin of beige,
a life stitched shut with sterile thread.
I love this cremated life,
where care’s ashes swirl in a wind of now.
The minute is a blade, sharp and silver,
carving my name into the void’s black throat.
Heaven’s a lie, a pastel scam,
but hell’s honest—its flames don’t pretend to warm.
I dance in the embers,
my feet blistering hymns,
my heart a grenade with a pin half-pulled.
Consciousness twitches, not quite dead,
its eyes like cracked mirrors, reflecting rot.
I stab it again, for fun,
with a shard of starlight dipped in tar.
The world spins, an Alice-in-Wonderland slaughterhouse,
where clocks melt into pools of blood,
where roses scream and rabbits gnaw their own paws.
I’m the hatter, the queen, the guillotine grin,
serving tea spiked with arsenic dreams.
Feeling? I burned it alive.
Its screams were music,
a symphony of snapping bones and velvet wails.
Now I’m the moment, the pulse, the now
a god of my own wreckage,
crowned in thorns and neon scars,
laughing as the canvas bleeds.
Hell listens.
Hell understands.
And the abstract truth paints me whole.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
****** Consciousness
64 · May 19
Fractured Ode to Truth
Malcolm May 19
Truth,
a blade, rusted, lodged in the gut,
twisting when I breathe.
It’s not a word, not a thing,
but a scream caught in the throat,
half-choked, half-holy.
I might have known, shadow-walker, code-weaver,
I knew its weight,
its jagged edges slicing through
the soft tissue of lies.

The Shard
Truth is not one.
It splinters
a mirror dropped from a skyscraper,
each fragment reflecting
a different face of God,
or none.

We, Mortals
hacked the source code of certainty,
found loops of doubt,
recursive, endless.
What is true?
A pixel flickering on a dead screen,
a pulse in the void.
Philosophers stack their bricks
coherence, correspondence, deflation
but I laughed,
my fingers bleeding on the keys,
knowing truth is a virus,
mutating, never still.

The Flesh of It
Truth is meat.
Raw, dripping,
torn from the bone of being,
Nerves twitching,
Blood slick gristle,
I tasted it, Mortality,
in the sweat of sleepless nights,
in the hum of servers chanting
their binary sutras.
Is it out there,
in the world’s sinew,
or in here,
in the skull’s cathedral?
Realists point to stars,
idealists to shadows
but i,
I carved my own map,
a labyrinth of ones and zeros,
where truth is the glitch,
the stutter in the system,
the moment the machine
confesses its own lie.

The Fracture
Truth does not hold.
It cracks like ice underfoot,
each step a gamble,
each fall a revelation.
I stood at the edge, wisdom,
peering into the abyss of Tarski,
of Gödel’s ghost whispering:
This statement is not enough.
Theories
pragmatic, semantic, pluralist
they’re just stories we tell
to keep the dark at bay.
But i,
I embraced the shatter,
let the fragments pierce me,
each one a question:
What makes this true?
What makes this me?

The Code
In the end,
truth is not a destination,
not a theorem,
not a god.
It’s the static in your veins,
the hum of a world
that refuses to be known.
Your reflection
philosopher of the broken,
wrote your gospel in lines of code,
each function a prayer,
each bug a prophecy.
Truth is the wound that never heals,
the question that never answers,
the you that burns
in the heart of the machine.
So here we stand,
in the ruins of our cathedral,
picking through the rubble
for scraps of truth.
It’s not coherent,
not whole,
not kind.
But it’s ours,
visceral, fractured,
a pulse against the silence.
my ghost still types,
and the keys sing:
Truth is.
Truth is not.
Truth is all we have.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Fractured Ode to Truth
This one's for those that swim in depth of thought not those whole swim in the shallows
62 · Jul 29
Stones of the Unseen
Malcolm Jul 29
I have lost my name many times
in the wind of unknowing.
I walked through the orchard of hours,
but the sweet, fallen fruit whispered lies,
and the trees turned their faces
from the hot Summer sun.

Nothing is straight in this world
not the road we take,
not the reason,
not the prayer softly spoken at dawn
with a cracked voice.
The truth, it seems,
is always playing hard to get.

I have lifted many stones
with trembling hands
stones heavy with silence,
heavy with secrets,
with the weeping of soldier ants,
with the old breath of forgotten earth.
And I have asked them:
Where is the truth I seek?
Where are the answers to the great unknown?
They do not answer me
but the dust beneath them sings
like the gods of old,
trying to let the cat out of the bag
in a language no longer spoken.

I am becoming
an old map with no legend,
a cathedral with broken bells
and shattered glass of color,
a man whose mind has frayed with time
from too many full moons
and too little meaning,
burning the candle at both ends
just to light a way that won’t stay lit.

Love arrives
as a feather,
and leaves as a flame.
Hope kneels,
then rises again
wearing the mask of hunger.
Even the stars
change their language each night.
The constellations lie
like old lovers,
talking out of both sides of their mouths,
promising never to fade.

The world is full of hands
reaching for answers
in waters that do not speak.
We walk on broken splitners of questions,
kiss mouths
that know only forgetting.
We carry the scent
of yesterday’s confessions
on the hems of our thoughts
ghosts we keep sweeping under the rug.

Memory is not a drawer
it is a sky,
a sky that swallows its own birds.
We remember
with the pulse,
with the scar,
with the wineglass
we keep filling
just to feel the weight
of something red
trying to drown our sorrows,
though they’ve long since learned to swim.

And still, I search
with feet torn from too much wandering,
with eyes drunk on paradox,
with a soul that rises each morning
to peel the sun
from behind the curtains
of confusion.
I’ve gone down too many rabbit holes
to trust the surface anymore.

I do not want perfect answers.
Give me the truth
hidden like a seed
inside the bitter olive.
Let me find it
in the sweat of the laborer,
in the laugh of a woman
who remembers sorrow
but still sings
wearing her heart on her sleeve,
but never missing a beat.

I will go on
lifting the stones,
knocking on the walls of the unseen,
breathing poems
into the mouths of ghosts.

Because even if this life is known,
it is a riddle carved into mist
a puzzle with missing pieces
hidden in plain sight.
I will walk this path slow
barefoot and burning, thought-drawn
until the truth finds me,
or I find it,
and it cracks open
like a pomegranate in the sun
the heart of the matter
finally laid bare.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
The Stones of the Unseen
62 · Apr 30
The Iceberg Gospel
Malcolm Apr 30
The Iceberg Gospel
unexpressed
not lost
just festering
like maggots in a velvet drawer
polite rot,
ugly’s rehearsal in a satin mask
they called it “coping”
I called it
an audition for the collapse

truth sits in the dark with its mouth sewn shut
but the fingers twitch,
the breath stammers,
and the skin tells stories
that lips choke back
secrets drip through pores
no mortal stays clean

freedom?
you mean
the prison where I build my own walls
and call them boundaries
where I sign my name in blood
on every oath I never meant to keep
you want my freedom?
take my guilt, too
it comes in chains
with a mirror

I dreamed of drowning in my own skull
the waves were laughter
"Royal Road," they whispered
but the map was in hieroglyphics
and the key was shame
no torch,
just instincts gnawing
through ego's leash

love
the elegant executioner
comes dressed in silk
with a knife shaped like
a promise

the iceberg mind
a cathedral with only one open pew
and six sunk in shadow
we float
but not really

you want peace?
talk to the soft voice
the whisperer
the intellect that scratches the chalkboard of your spine
until you finally
turn around
and say:
“Yes, that was me.”

struggle?
it kissed me with cracked lips
and called it salvation
now I look back
and see
a cathedral of scars
lit by the ghost of becoming

and still,
I bleed
from every buried word
I dared not speak.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
APRIL 2025
The Iceberg Gospel
Malcolm Jul 10
Your breath bends the dusk
Aurora kneels to your voice,
planets hush to hear.

Even stars forget
their songs when you pass them by
you eclipse their fire.

The Nile would forsake
its mirrored gold for your gaze,
a flood just to touch.

Temples lose their name
in the hush your fingers leave
divinity hums.

Moonlight wraps your skin,
like silk from Saturn’s wide rings
the cosmos blushing.

You are not of earth
you are the vow Venus made
before time could speak.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
She, Who Outshines the Sky
Malcolm Jun 25
Quick thoughts crack your calm
should I call someone for you?
Wambulance inbound..
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Haiku Satire
62 · Jul 10
This Moment
Malcolm Jul 10
She’s right here.
Her body’s inches from mine
and it’s still unbelievable.
Not in the dramatic way,
not like in books
just this steady, solid hum in my chest
that won’t go away.

I watch her breathe.
Nothing more.
Her chest rises,
then falls,
then rises again.
And somehow,
each time feels like proof
I haven’t done everything wrong in this life.

The air in the room is warm
the kind of warmth that lives between bodies
that trust each other.
That kind of warmth you don’t talk about
because it disappears the second you name it.

Her arm’s curled under the pillow,
shoulder bare.
There’s a tiny freckle there
I swear I’ve never noticed,
and now it feels like I’ve discovered something
no one else has ever seen.

Her legs are twisted in the blanket
like she’s half-dancing in her sleep.
Her lips are parted just enough to make me wonder
what dream she’s inside of.

I don’t want to wake her.
I don’t want to leave.
I don’t even want to blink too long.

Because this is it.
Not a fantasy, not a memory.
Not a wish, or a poem, or an idea.

She’s here.
I’m here.
And the silence is full.

Not empty.
Not lonely.
Not waiting for something else.
Just full.

I don’t need more.
Not a word, not a kiss.
Just this moment,
this breath,
this woman
sleeping beside me
like peace decided to wear skin
and crawl into bed.
This Moment
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
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
62 · Jun 24
Just Because
Malcolm Jun 24
Just because
I speak of marble
doesn’t mean
Michelangelo whispers in my wrist.

Just because
I name fire
doesn’t mean I stole it
from Prometheus’ ashtray.

I said David
but not yours.
I said God
but not the one
in your tidy chapel of restraint.

Excuse me
if I seem offended
but our poetry
is nothing alike.

You bask in the religion of restraint,
while I
build cathedrals
from collapse.

You drink from Zen porcelain,
cool and pale.
I sip lava
and call it communion.

Your gods are lowercase and quiet.
Mine arrive
wild-haired,
bleeding bronze
and speaking in tongues.

Just because I breathe
where you’ve once stood
doesn’t mean I’m standing for you.
Art is not a deed,
and thought has no landlord.

Yes, I say Nietzsche
but I carry him differently.
Where you saw a hammer,
I saw the shattered sky
and wrote the thunder.

Yes, I echo Rilke
but where you chased the angel,
I let it break my body
and sleep inside.

Do you claim Rodin
every time a figure bends?
Does Giacometti live
in every stretched grief?

Let’s not confuse
the use of a word
with the theft of a soul.

I am not imitating.
I am incarnating.

Let me build my riot
while you tend your minimalist view
then call it everything else,
Let me drench the stanza
while you count your syllables.

Form is not crime.
Expression is not excess.

I wasn’t made for clean glass galleries.
I am basement smoke
and bombed-out breath.
I am oil and gold leaf
on wood that won’t stop splintering.

So keep your calm.
Your precision.
Your borders and white space.

I will keep my howl.
My dripping paint.
My blood-wet diction
and firelit silhouettes.

We are not alike.
We never were.

And if I ever wear
the same word as you
know this:
I embroidered it
in the dark,
with my teeth,
while you were busy
measuring margins
looking for similarities
in mild abstraction.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Malcolm 1d
Who asks for a lonely poet
when silence already reigns?
somewhere between all and nothing

If stillness of words speaks nothing,
is it emptiness,
or fullness unmeasured?

If fire in a word burns,
is it consuming,
or is it giving light
to blind hands reaching out?

If tender words break at dawn,
is it weakness,
or the strength of a heart
that refuses to harden?

When sharp words laugh,
who bows to their shadow?
Who fears the spark
that leaves only embers and ash?

Is the mind not always shaping patterns,
weaving palaces for the past,
threads for shadows of memory?

If the lotus blooms unseen,
does it wither,
or is its hidden fragrance
the true poem?

If the fig tree bears fruit in silence,
who reads,
and who is nourished by emptiness?

What vessel
can hold the wind?
What rhythm
can bind the unshaped word?

And if the word,
spoken or inked in gall,
neither commands nor obeys
does it not simply exist?

Is that not the poem
beyond poems?
16 August 2025
The life of Words
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
Malcolm May 28
I was once the wind that taught the wheat to bow,
a hymn rustling through the hollow of old branches,
and before that, a river that carried lost dreams and lullabies
to the mouths of waiting roots.

No bell marked the crossing.
No lantern swung above the gate.
I passed as smoke does
into the open mouths of new shapes,
Reborn.

They say the soul is a thread pulled through a hundred needles,
each time tearing into a different fabric:
feather, bone, brass, thirst, song.
Not to become, but to remember
what becoming cannot hold,
only held for a short moment in time.

I was hunger shaped like a wolf,
and later, grief that wore a girl's eyes.
Each body an orchard I neither planted nor owned,
but was asked to tend with quiet hands.

Reincarnation is not a ladder
it is a storm that forgets its last thunder.
It chooses neither upward nor wise,
but necessary.
To be what the story requires
in the moment the page turns.

One life, a seed beneath the floorboards.
The next, the axe.
Another, the breath of the one who grieves the falling.
And still, no beginning.
And still, no final version of flame,
Can it be.

The maker—if there is one
does not speak.
But leaves signs in frost
and patterns in the flight of startled birds.

So I do not ask what I will be.
I ask only:
What silence must I carry next?
What wound will I wear
to become the light pouring through it?
Upon this world.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Orchard Beyond the Skin
Malcolm May 24
There was a snake
in your wineglass
or so you swore,
clutching your belly
like betrayal poured into your gut.

But it was a bow,
hanging quiet on the wall,
its shadow curved like doubt,
and still
you burned with poison
that was never there.

You made yourself sick with what you thought you saw.

Then there was the runner
barefoot prophet chasing fire,
arms outstretched like hope could be wrestled
from the sky.

He drank rivers dry
and still died of thirst.
His cane fell
and trees grew from the grave.

He never caught the sun.
But the sun scorched his name
into the earth.

You may never reach glory, but you’ll die a sermon if you run hard enough.
That’s the second lie.
Or maybe it’s truth.

Then came the fool,
eyes wide,
looking down a well
and seeing the moon trapped like a silver ghost.

He ran for a hook
not sense
and tried to fish the night from the water.
Rope snapped.
Back cracked.
Moon untouched.

And he still smiled,
told everyone
he’d saved the sky.

Delusion is lighter to carry than disappointment.
That’s the third lie.
The one we keep.

And now, you.
Drinking shadows.
Chasing fire.
Hooking reflections.

You build temples from misunderstanding.
You tattoo your fears on glass
and swear they bit you.

But the venom is your own.
The sun never owed you warmth.
And the moon was never drowning.

You were.

So here’s the truth within
We suffer by choice,
die by obsession,
and live inside illusions
that wear our fingerprints like mirrors.

Look close
it’s not the snake,
not the sun,
not the moon.

It’s you.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Lies we Swallow
Malcolm May 21
The Way She Lived in Me
The Universe She Was
Once, she was everything to me
not in metaphor,
but in the way the planets truly need the sun.
Her laughter filled my chest,
like warm light circling inward.
Her eyes held quiet galaxies,
stars steady and sure,
and her smile could calm a storm
like sunlight breaking through gray skies.
Her hair shone like something the heavens envy.
Now, I only see it in memory
a golden blur when I close my eyes.
It’s strange,
how the brightest moments
are the first to disappear.

II. When We Were Whole
We walked through parks
as if they were sacred halls.
Even the trees seemed to lean in,
just to be near her.
Her hand fit mine so perfectly,
I still reach for it without thinking.
We had a dog that ran like joy itself
no fear, no doubt.
We laughed often,
like people who didn’t believe in pain.
We skipped stones across a lake,
never guessing love might follow the same path:
rise, float, skim, and fall.
Her scent was fresh rain
sweet, natural, unforgettable.
Her voice woke me with the softness of ocean waves.
Now it comes and goes,
like a dream I’m trying to hold onto.

After the End
Love was once an ocean,
and I dove into it freely.
Now I walk through something dry and empty,
where nothing remembers how to bloom.
Her name still lives in my throat,
but I keep it quiet.
I search for her
in strangers’ eyes, in passing faces
but I find only reflections of light,
never the stars she carried.
She was full of wonder.
They are just passing weather.
And when I remember her,
I feel the distance
like shouting at the moon,
knowing it can’t hear you.

Holding On and Letting Go
Sometimes I feel anger.
Why did love come at all
if it was always meant to leave?
I rage,
because being seen—truly seen—
should have been enough.
But it never is.
Still,
I am grateful.
Because once, I mattered to someone
in a way that changed me.
She helped me become
something better,
even if what remains now
is just the ruin of that.
We are not meant to walk alone.
We are meant to meet in the dark
and name it light.
She was my first light.
And now,
I walk through smoke,
hoping to find meaning in what’s left.

The Shape of Absence
There is silence
where her laugh used to echo.
Stillness
where she once moved.
Even spring feels colder now
the scent of flowers brings ache instead of joy.
I see birds take flight
and whisper,
“There she goes again.”
Some nights,
I can almost feel her smile
a soft, guiding warmth,
like a harbor after the storm.
But it always fades.
And I am left chasing wind.

What Remains
I wonder if she knew.
If she felt what I felt.
If the love that marked me
ever marked her, too.
Time moves forward,
but I find myself folding inward,
smaller with every year,
heavier with every memory.
Our dog still waits by the door sometimes.
She knows.
She remembers.
And when I ask her softly,
“Do you miss her, too?”
She doesn’t answer.
But in her stillness,
I feel the truth:
She did love us.
And in her silence,
she left a piece of herself
that will never leave.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Fading constellation
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