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A warm wind touched my face.
I walked out into the open space,
I saw a blurry, fading horizon.
Somewhere, you are,
I am here, after a sleepless night,
Writing another reflection,
Tired like an empty battery.

I do not like the masks that shout.
The fight over who is right.
I do not want an analysis.
I touch the bark of the tree,
I hug the birch with my arms.
I see its white pages,
Written with irregular lines,
Torn, fluttering in the wind,
Which I cannot read.

Her eyes look straight into me,
They understand –
How well they understand me.
The rustle of leaves lessens the tension.
Autumn will come soon,
The summer wind whispers to me:
This country, this language,
These people, these doubts.

This is not blind luck,
This is your blessing,
Purple, rainy months, a fleshy heart,
Falling hair, joy when relief comes,
Crying into a pillow –
So as not to disturb another’s dreaming
About the so-called reality.

Bare feet touch the ground.
I tread carefully on the edge of worlds,
To be both here and there
With my integrity.
I am everything and nothing.
I am gestures, epilepsy,
The belief that I see human thoughts,
Inconsistent with what they say.

Blue, sun, and somewhere you.
How good that you stayed.
When everyone was saying:
She is different,
She talks to ghosts.
You stayed, showing me
Your true face.
Jazzy nights filled with romance
                      and glassy dreams !
Buildings lit beneath a sleepy sky
             of smudge coal gray
His hand gently placed in mine,
a breath away from me
he sits,
           sailor of my fantasies, ardor of my beating heart...  

A sailboat retires for the night
                      on the dock over quiet waters
inside the cafe, music plays softly
                                    like sensual summer winds
He gifts me a smile,
                                       and stars appear,
                                sending light into mine !  

Velvet time,            layered moments
                 filled with enfolding bliss
                              We share one kiss  !    
Truth be told,
he is the soulmate I longed for all my life
I am lost in love's hammock,
                        rocked by his slow candor,
I feel loved, clothed in fleece...  

Jazzy nights filled with perfume
                               and a budding slow romance
The saxophone plays on ....  
we speaking softly to each other,  
                               through silent glances.
Before breath bore names,
the earth turned in the still without question.
Leaves trembled for no reason.
The black birds an swallow had no history.

Light fell on everything equally,
not as grace or punishment.
Time wore no crown yet.
Peace had not been tested.

Then came the man.

Not loud. Not cruel
just there, within the silence.
With eyes that broke surface,
and thoughts sharp as branches.

He touched the fruitless trees.
He stared until meaning formed.
He brought language to leaves.
He brought weight to wind.

The stillness knew it changed.

Now every calm hides tension.
Every breeze masks direction.
Rain lands like small verdicts.
Even stones avoid memory.

Birds scatter from shadow first.
Then ask if it follows.
A figure remains half-glimpsed
man-shaped, not entirely man.

The garden still pretends peace.
But roots twitch underneath boots.
Black soil absorbs too much.
Nothing forgets being watched.

He never speaks aloud now.
He walks behind tall hedges.
He waits where light bends.
Even the dusk leans away.

Something has been broken permanently.

When night arrives too fast,
the sky pretends not knowing.
Stars blink with unsure purpose.
The moon declines all witness.

Somewhere a man is watching.
Somewhere a thought is bleeding.
Knowledge stains without a wound.
And snow will come again

then melt before becoming real.

This is how it happens:
Every cycle loses something small.
The garden returns in pieces.
The birds return, not trusting.

No god opens the gate.
No fire lights the altar.
No hand blesses the silence.
Only the man remains—waiting.

His presence rewrites the rules.

He was not evil arriving.
He was potential remembering itself.
He was question before answer.
He was shadow before object.

Now even spring fears becoming.
Even summer waits for loss.
Each return grows more distant.
Each silence, less complete.

And the rain still falls
without anger, without warmth.
It has learned from man
how to arrive indifferent.
05 August 2025
Where the Knowing Walks
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
.
asks the one in the $9 Craigslist chair,
legs crossed like a philosopher
mid-way through a YouTube binge
on dark matter
and dopamine fasting.


He thinks it’s profound.
It’s not.
It’s a shrug in a trench coat.
A crisis dressed up in code.
An old fear wearing digital cologne.

If this is a simulation—
what the **** are we simulating?

Heartbreak?
Minimum wage despair?
The number of times I check my phone
hoping it’s her?

Is it
a stress test for gods,
a beta for consciousness,
a joke?

Because if someone coded this—
they should be fired.
Or worshipped.
Or sued.

Where’s the patch notes,
the exit key,
the server room in the sky?

Where’s the moment it glitches
and someone finally says,
“Oops, our bad—
you weren’t meant to feel
all of that.”

You talk about the veil of illusion
but you still cry in parking lots.
You still ghost your therapist.
You still love people
who don’t text back.

You bleed,
you ache,
you spiral—
whether you’re made of atoms
or ******* pixels.

Your god wears headphones.
Your sacred text is a Stack Overflow thread.
Your heaven is a loading screen.
Your hell is just
Monday.

You pray in 1080p
to a silent DevOps deity
who hasn’t pushed an update
since the Bronze Age.

This isn’t philosophy.
It’s cosplay for cowards.
It’s a way to sound deep
without touching dirt.
Without risking faith.
Without changing anything.

Because if it’s a sim,
you don’t have to care.
If it’s a sim,
you don’t have to try.

You can just sit there,
scrolling.
Wondering if the fire
is ray-traced.

But here, the only questions that matter:
Does it hurt?
Do you love?
Can you lose?

Because if the answer is yes
you’re in it.
Whatever it is.
Simulation or not.
I have no objections to simulation theory.
The idea doesn’t offend me, challenge me, or keep me up at night.
But the way people use it—
to avoid meaning, to dodge responsibility, to slap a silicon face on old human questions—
that’s the rot I came to scrape out.

If the theory inspires you to live with more wonder, more purpose, more curiosity?
Good.
But if it’s just your newest excuse to sit in the dark
and call it depth—
I wrote this for you

—-

I don’t object to simulation theory.
I object to what it’s become.

I object to the way it’s wielded—
not as a lens,
but as a crutch.
Not to elevate wonder,
but to escape consequence.

A lazy man’s metaphysics,
an atheist’s afterlife without stakes,
a Redditor’s way of sounding like they’ve read Plato
without ever having to bleed like him.



I don’t mind if this is code.
But code doesn’t absolve you.

The simulation doesn’t change the taste of grief.
Doesn’t mute your mother’s voice.
Doesn’t make your failures less yours.

If you’re still broke,
still starving for affection,
still clinging to a memory that won’t call back—
then congratulations:
it’s real enough.

The texture of suffering is not theoretical.



And yet I see you,
parading this theory around
like a get-out-of-meaning-free card.

You want the permission to disengage.
You want the illusion of knowing
so you never have to act.

You wear this idea like armor,
but inside it, you’re hollow.
You never went to war.
You just cosplayed philosophy
and called it courage.



Let’s be honest—
most of you don’t care if it’s real or not.
You just don’t want to feel stupid
for wasting your life.

So you slap a label on it.
You say it’s all a sim.
As if that makes your apathy profound.



But if this really is a simulation,
the insult isn’t that it’s fake.
It’s that you wasted your one shot
to matter inside it.



I don’t care what this is made of.
I care what you are made of.

And if all you can do is point at the veil
and call it interesting—
you’re not asking a question.
You’re just running from an answer.
Nobody warned me
about the sound of skeleton laughter,
ribcages shaking like bells,
airless chuckles cracking the hot night,
slipping through the closet slats
into my skull.

It was fine with just Meg:
supermodel cheekbones,
a jaw that could steal my name.
We shared the closet,
my jackets brushing her collarbone.
"your flesh prison
can't wear that many anyway."

Then came her sister,
then another,
until nine of them
rattled teacups at 2 A.M.,
dripping through the floorboards.
My shirts fled to the hall.
I dream of thunder
that silences their bones.

They call it a ****** of crows -
but what waits in the dark,
rattling its teeth
for the last of you,
is a plague of skeletons.
Sixteen,
skin baked with brine and chlorine,
Top 40 hissing in my Walkman.

The girl found me first,
barefoot on the sandy trail,
tears spilling, pointing back to the sea.
A jellyfish sting, she couldn’t say it,
just clung to my leg like kelp.

Her mother rose from the dunes,
black bikini, tan lines,
two beach bags gnawing her wrists.
coconut oil, salt, chipped Jackie O shades.
She sighed, called the girl dramatic,
drifted home on scraping sandals.

Their world leaked into ours,
adjacent green bungalow
with fronds rattling like bones,
oranges sagging into white fuzz,
ATV ruts torn through the yard.
Rob polishing his Camaro,
coughing through pollen and Skoal,
swearing he saw a gator the size of a boat
slide into the canal at dusk.

She’d wander up, black bikini,
thighs shining,
shadow falling across my pool chair.
“Hey, you see my kid?” she’d ask,
leaning close,
the scent of Coppertone
and Marlboro Gold
fogging my thoughts.

I’d shift polite, church-boy manners,
“No, ma’am,”
She’d smile
at the clumsy hormones
rising off me
like steam.

Nights were bonfires,
oranges softening to flies,
Rob coughing in his driveway
while the pool light hummed and flickered.
Her shadow swam on the walls,
slick as the gator sliding into dusk.
There once was a bee
who was blown out to sea
by a disastrous gust of wind,
And though she was scared-
for beach life, unprepared-
the Patrón tasted better than gin.
She doesn't even miss honey.
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