Oh the Innocence
That laugh, that wild howling in the throat of youth,
Unseen fingers scramble for the last thread of light
Here, the angels are naked,
no wings to catch their fall.
The river splits,
splashes,
and chaos is born
from the lips of the unholy, the pure.
There be our Divinity
slips beneath the skin like rust on gold
a fractured god,
broken in pieces,
spilled across the morning,
the moon forgets its name.
Prophecies?
Laughing in the dust,
twisted and torn,
a thousand whispers claw at the sky
but none reach.
Imagination is the distant echo—
a door slammed shut by a thousand hands,
and what vision is left?
A trembling shadow.
What light?
What reflection?
It’s nothing but a crack in the glass,
and through it, you see everything and nothing
all at once.
Oh but thou Morality
it’s a rotten fruit in the mouth of the blind,
an oath spat on the ground
before it crumbles to dust.
What holds us here?
Nothing but the gnashing teeth of the broken,
screaming freedom that never comes,
but always dances on the edge of our minds
like a mad bird
torn from the sky,
its wings flapping in the void.
Oppression is the song they sing,
but we?
We are the ghosts who scream in the dark,
rising,
rising,
again and again.
Flesh torn and reborn.
A shout in the streets—
but where is the end of the road?
No path but the storm’s eye,
no sky but the bleeding horizon.
Shall he call it Mysticism?
A thousand tongues, a thousand eyes—
but no one looks.
The trees scream their roots into the soil,
but who hears?
Who listens?
A leaf flutters in the wind,
and the world spins—
twisted—
a thousand faces in a mirror that is shattered
but still reflects
what?
What?
What do you see with blinded eyes !
Where doth Nature find its whole,
A scream of fire in the rain.
Flesh in the dirt,
bones wrapped in moss.
Everything turns,
and everything falls.
Chaos is the language,
and we are the words scattered
across a broken page.
No order, no truth,
only the flood of thoughts
rushing to drown themselves
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Shattered Visions
