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Gently cross over the wooden bridge
You have places to go
The bridge has to be there for every passer-by
Dawn to dusk, weathered, not yet to dust
Into the forest deep,
where the rivers rumble and roar
and sing lullabies
it is a conversation
between


rain and roof
stream and stones
snow and silence
wind and wing
the unfurling yellow flower and the slightest crack in the pavement


it is a conversation
between


mystery and wonder
and it must always be so
In our unfinished garden,
warm stones resting atop one another,
forming a wobbly tower,
trying to connect with a true light.

Above the smoky air, faltering steps,
can I see the true shape of your struggles?
Does a malicious gnome
shape my projections?
He topples our confidence.

Do we know if we still want the same?

Your anesthetic drops,
drunk in secret behind smiles.
Your cruelty is a sarcastic, sober blow,
breaking down fleeting joy.

I long for stillness,
for a day without wrinkles.
Why do we argue for first place?
I lost to our demons, invisible enemies.
I heal my fading certainty,
Last night, I dreamt of a well,
repeating my thoughts.

Without context, we are lost,
surrounded by thick walls built by rifts.
We are still impatient for closeness.
We grapple with a weight of assumptions.

Seeing the tower of wobbly stones,
I don’t want to let go of your hands
trusting, warmly kind,
like a promise of endless green,
in our unfinished garden.
Zen
I can't run like you
I'll walk instead
even at my leisurely pace
I'll not be late
I wake,

To Heaven’s tears

Dripping down...

Their gentle potter-patter

Kiss the earth--

God’s promises:

To make,

All things new again;

Right.
His words twisted the corners
so right curved into left,
and truth bent sideways,
making me believe
I was going the wrong way.
Hedgerows grew tall,
and thick with argument,
until they swallowed the gas lampposts,
turning pathways into shadows.
I walked blind and barefoot
through the thick of it,
earth damp, worn thin as my breath.
Was I supposed to find the center?
Was there ever an exit?
There was no map,
just whispers in the leaves,
and his voice,
ringing in my ears,
a compass spinning
from asking too many questions,
and doubt,
folded into my own pocket.
My soul became blistered
from chasing after ghosts of
wanted apologies,
so I kissed the ivy,
hoping the walls would soften.
but they spiraled,
a boa constrictor handcuffing my legs.
I took a sharp turn,
desperate,
crawling on my belly,
a soldier avoiding fire,
fingertips clawing into the red clay,
and found the center,
where a red lip-sticked mirror stood,
half cracked, words still whole:
"you're not the one who's lost"
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
I'm fading with the light.
My shadow takes flight
naked unseen from sight
'til full moon midnight.
In your wake,
In your silence,
a subtle soundtrack
swarms my head.

The melody of beeping monitors,
The rhythm of knuckles on bed rails,
And the verses, pitched in pain.

They only grow louder, still.

But, grabbing at the void
for any last sound of you,
I hear the wind rushing by
as the world just keeps turning,
I hear the cackling of atoms
that never stopped their motion,
I hear the grass strands
rudely displacing your plot’s dirt,
And reality itself popping
as it rips apart at the seams.

Truth is, I thought I’d feel silent without you,
But it’s grown louder, still.
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