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I know well enough,
How to play the game,
That I can blend in with the crowd.

I know what things
Should bring me shame
And which ought to make me proud.

I would be alert
-If not all the time,
For in the fog there’s much to miss.

And it’s only when
His eyes meet mine
That I fear the reaper’s kiss.

I can wear the face
I’m expected to,
And you’d never know it didn’t fit.

When I take it off,
As I’m apt to do,
I never quite know what to do with it.

It’s a social game,
As it’s always been.
It’s not the kind that you win or lose.

But the kind you play,
As light-hearted children,
Before you perceive any mountains to move.

I hear the talk,
“World’s getting meaner”.
And over decades, said over again.

But the grass has never
Really been any greener,
I think the shade was just different back then.
I am a well, almost dry, from which no lasting life has sprung.
I am an object of no desire.
I am a short and miscalculated sum.

I give no comfort; joyless, for I am an empty ***.
The numbness never passes.
I am a fire that burns, but never gets hot.

And I will take the blame,
For it’s all that I see offered me.

No matter your perspective, or the strength of your connections,
In the dark,
In the silence,
We are all of us alone.

If you’re part of a collective, if you share strong predilections,
Whether hopeful,
Whether hateful,
We’re, in all our truth, alone.

And I will take the blame,
For it’s all that I see offered me.

I no longer bend.
I only break.
I see no further
Steps to take.
And every thought
Seems a mistake.

And I will take the blame,
For it’s all that I see offered me.

I never got to know me,
And now there’s little of me left.
But I cannot cry injustice,
Or brutality, or theft.

It was merely that I hid behind
Whatever I could find.
And how could I think to reach myself
When I’ve never really known my mind.

I know he loves me, though I know not why.
And the voice inside is cruel and cold.
I scrape it out. It builds again.
I create new wounds out of those that are old.

And I will take the blame,
For it’s all that I see offered me.

My words are wrong.
My thoughts are wrong.
My perspective is a mess of sand.

I can’t **** the parts selectively,
But I can **** it all,
Or else make it bland.

And I will take the blame,
For it’s all I ever could see offered me.
Quench your rage with cooking oil,
With powder, or with ***.
Whatever way you quench your rage,
Our world will soon be done.

Calm your nerves with nicotine.
Use narcissism, or use noise.
It will not matter what you’ve used,
When all the world’s destroyed.
Should not art be aspirational?
Why then, this sketch of our most putrid places?

Should not art be sensational?
Why then, these small feelings and forlorn faces?

Should not art be an escapade?
Why then, tread only on familiar ground?

Should not art make you feel afraid,
Elated, enraged, or at least something more than flat and drowned?

Should not art be sincere expression?
Why then, is there nothing found here to call relevant?

And when art is thoughtful impression,
Should it not reveal a truth not immediately evident?

There need not be beauty,
Perhaps not even soul.

But if mere pale entertainment,
Should we call it “art” at all?
Disclaimer: written in August 2022, long before I joined this site. Has nothing to do with anyone or anything on here.

Besides, art is always subjective. And what one person may find empty and pale may speak in vibrant colours to someone else. None of us hold authority over meaningfulness.
You can drown in your perversions.
You can stew in your thick hate.
You can find your enemies surround you,
And them, annihilate.

You can bathe in your own prejudice.
You can reach for your release.
You can tar and feather trinkets,
If you don’t destroy my peace.

You can open every wound you’ve had.
You can blame it on the rain.
You can coat yourself in fervour
Until you finally go insane.

You can hope for their destruction.
You can poison their recipes,
But in your own cake’s construction
Don’t you dare destroy my piece.

But peace is an illusion.
And which piece will finally fit?
In the pain of their collusion
What chance that peace will finally stick?

You can wonder what they’re thinking.
You can judge and reprimand.
But in the cloud of sweat and stinking
Hate is all that makes you stand.

You can hope and pray for silence.
You can hope and pray for fire.
When you shovel coals of violence
Hate seems all that you desire.

Behind your gas masks and your rhetoric
You can make faces at their fleas.
You can step on every snail you want,
But don’t destroy my peace.

You can lock their thoughts in cages.
You can manifest disease.
You can curse the fallen ages,
If you don’t destroy my peace.

But peace is an illusion.
And which piece will finally fit?
In the pain of their collusion
What chance that peace will finally stick?

And that peace was only ever an illusion.
This is actually a song. It’s just over two years old and began playing itself in my head after hearing about the first hospital that Russia “accidentally” bombed in Ukraine. Obviously, there are a lot of other issues on my mind brought up as well. But that was the spark that lit this particular little fire.
  May 20 The Wilted Witch
Malcolm
Square breathes ash
gaslight’s twitch,
flickering truth
in a puddle of pitch.

He croaks.
"Come buy, come bite"
His tongue a hook,
his grin not right.

Crow gathers.
Eyes rusted shut.
Morals on mute.
Hope? Cut.

Meat swings
arms of the disappeared,
femurs of the faithful
nothing’s sacred here.

Prices sing:
A thigh for a thrill,
A pence for the tongue
that once whispered, still.

Butcher’s plate shines,
not silver—just red,
a pile of love
now splendidly dead.

"Step in! Step up! It’s holy, it’s hot!"
He laughs in cleavers,
bones in a knot.
His fingers glide ribs
like memory lost
No guilt. No name.
Just meat and cost.

These veins once ran
with lullabies.
Now they pulse
in motherless cries.

Who spun the blood
into life’s first thread?
Gone now.
Unwoven.
Unsaid.

Eyes
once torches,
now jars of fog.
Dreams rot faster
in this catalogue.

And still it hums
the stall, the street,
with coins that clink
and boots that beat.
Souls
unstitched
in stalls of shame,
each cut a prayer
without a name.

The heart
oh God, that fragile crime
now skewered,
oozing
beet-red rhyme.

It once held hymns.
It once held grace.
Now it sells for less
than a hollow face.

What’s beauty?
What’s form?
What’s breath to a knife?
What’s hunger but theft
disguised as life?

Reverence? Gone.
Devotion? Flayed.
The altar’s now
a butcher’s blade.

No psalms.
No sacred lull.
Only meat,
and the market’s pull.

He sings decay
a hymn of ache,
as crowds buy flesh
and morals break.

The stars won’t blink.
They’ve seen this play.
Where bones are stock,
and gods decay.

Hooks sway like ghosts
in post-mortem sleep
no tears for the sold,
no cries for the keep.

We sell,
we chew,
we grin,
we choke
on the sins we bought
but never spoke.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
THE PEDLAR’S CHANT “We sold the soul, but kept the meat.”
I’ll ask the gods to take my ears,
When they’re drowned in mournful cries.
And when they’ve seen too much suffering,
And too much pain, I’ll ask that they take my eyes.

Then to the gods, I’ll give my voice,
For it squeaks impotent here on earth.
Next cruel gods, I give my soul,
Though it’s found badly damaged,
And of little worth.

So I call to the gods, and I call out to Man.
For virtue! For justice! For calm.
To the wind I attend, and with the wind I wait,
But I’ve found that the gods have all long gone…
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