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Agnes de Lods Mar 12
I store measured meanings
all definitions neatly arranged in drawers,
to calm the mind and heart.

I see with human eyes,  
carefully tracing the pulse of the planet.
In this apparent chaos, a strict order reigns.

In the cycles of the nightly day and daily night,
the same thoughts come to me like wistful friends,
longing to bridge micro and macro scales,
to merge into oneness.

Waiting in line for health,
I heard that time is relative.
What insightful words
shift meaning
in different contexts.

Trees, animals, human beings—
Each one perceives the flow of time
through a different lens…

If I were a butterfly
its three weeks would be my entire life.
How sad it is that
I cannot truly appreciate
a single second of a butterfly’s day.
Its rhythm moves beyond my awareness.

To people, Eternity is a never-ending story
of unrecognized fields of unknown space.
To ethereal, thoughtful giants
just a fleeting instant,
the blink of the universe
across the slender strait.

I can whisper or scream,
cry, laugh,
or remain silent for years,
but on a grander scale,
it will be nothing more than
a dainty breath of spring wind.

So please don’t be upset with me
that I can’t feel the same as you do now.
To you,
this is the endless painful abyss.
To me,
it’s just a passing memory
of deep night vanishing
into a new dawn of becoming.
Malcolm Mar 12
If you knew the hourglass had cracked,
and every grain was sliding fast,
would you sit and watch it empty,
or flip it over, make time last?

Would you call the ones who left you,
just to mend what once was torn?
Or leave the past like shattered mirrors,
reflecting ghosts that feel unborn?

Would you chase the distant skyline,
feet on fire, lungs alive?
Or breathe in slow, just hold the moment,
watch the sun dissolve and thrive?

Would you stand upon a mountain,
feel the earth beneath your weight?
Or walk the streets you’ve always known,
before they whisper you too late?

Would you spend it making laughter,
dancing reckless in the rain?
Or write your name in ink and blood,
so something of you might remain?

Would you teach your children wisdom,
leave them lessons carved in stone?
Or hold them close and say much less,
let love be felt and not just known?

Would you dare confess the secrets,
that you’ve buried, deep and raw?
Or take them with you, locked inside,
a vault no living soul can draw?

Would you fight to stretch the seconds,
bargain hard to stay alive?
Or bow your head and face the darkness,
knowing all things must arrive?

If tomorrow lost its promise,
and the road turned thin and steep,
would you run, or would you rest?
Would you wake, or would you sleep?
Copyright ©️ Malcolm Gladwin
February 2025
The Last  (Or Less)
Malcolm Mar 11
Bone-silted river bleeds backward,
tide-swallowed and unspooled,
coffin-seamed decades slouch against a cindered skyline—
time, a lichen-laced beast, starved-thin and echo-lost,
chewing the wax-dripped minutes that slip like marrow through dusk.

Iron-tasting hours blister against frost-scabbed bones,
flesh-stitched days unravel, splinter-throated and root-bound,
where clock-hands wilt, tendon-thin and grave-damp,
melting into brine-brittle pools beneath sun-scoured echoes.

Fog-clot visions smear across the moth-blurred dawn,
where hours, once ember-warmed, now lurch husk-heavy,
drift-staggered through hollow-gnawed winter’s crooked teeth,
grinding time into dust, whispering hearth-ruined lullabies.

Mildewed seconds slouch in the tomb-hushed lull,
glass-limbed and unspooled, a slow-rotting memory,
half-woken, slipping between the cracks of lichen-laced skin—
and here I remain,
splintering beneath time’s indifferent weight.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
February 2025
Wax-Dripped Memory

This was written to embody the surreal, fragmented decay of time, warping and collapsing in on itself like Dali’s melting clocks. It's meant to twist and turn making memory feel both infinite and eroding at once.

If you don't know the painting I'm referring to you need to perhaps google it to understand this poem
Malcolm Mar 11
Fingertip reaches—rose glass-fractured sky,
but the world keeps turning, indifferent, blind.
We watch, we wait, we sift through the fallen ashes—
searching for warmth in a fire long gone.

Ghosts of wanting drift through the ebb,
feet sinking in time’s marrow-thick river.
Clawing at the hilltop, slipping, gasping—
but do we climb or just fall slower?

Love hums then shatters,
echoes down corridors we dare not tread.
The oaken river swallows its dead,
birds fall southward, wings brittle with regret.

Winter comes for all—darkness too.
Light flickers, just out of reach,
a mirage for the desperate, the reckless,
those who still run, still chase, still bleed.

But what if the answers unravel the mind?
What if understanding breaks us instead?
What if we lose ourselves,
seeking someone else to make us whole?

Is life’s significance just a joke told in passing,
laughter drowned in the howl of the void?
If misery loves company,
why do so many stand alone?
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Wanderers on the Edge
Immortality Mar 11
What’s meant stays,  
quiet and sure.  
  
True love waits,  
even when we turn away.  
  
What isn’t ours  
slips,  
like water,  
gone before we know it.
....sun will rise tomorrow
Celestial Mar 11
In astonishment, I watch a spark.
Around it, a light is growing.
Once thought to be lost in the dark.

I nurture the small flame.
Feeling my last chance flowing.
It won't end the same.

Reminiscent of the one before,
Soon rises the bloom of the fire.
Though it threatens to roar even more.
There is a new beginning.
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