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Jun 25 · 65
Fear in the Dark
Malcolm Jun 25
I do not walk alone
I drift,
something watches in the still,
a breath caught in curtains,
a pulse misplaced
in plaster and dust.

The dark is not a void.
It watches.
And waits.

Sometimes,
when I reach for the light,
I swear it leans closer
It touches me
breath on my neck,
skin prickling like wire.

Do you ever hesitate?
That single moment,
when you glance
toward the corner of your room
and your chest locks,
because something
might be
watching?

Not there.
But close.

Not seen.
But still
seeing.

I do not believe in ghosts
demons maybe a different story
but something knows my name
in a voice made of cold.
I hear it sometimes,
when I move too fast
or breathe too loud.

The shadows aren’t still.
They twitch.
They blink.
They wait for me
to turn my back.

There’s a weight behind me
when I’m alone.
A tension
like eyes trained
on the center of my spine,
waiting for me to crack
like an old floorboard.

You can laugh.
You can say it’s all in the mind.
But my mind has rooms
I don’t walk through anymore.
Not in the dark.

And fear
isn't a child’s story.
It's a hand.
Pressed softly
on the back of your head
when no one else is home.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Fear in the dark
Jun 25 · 50
Mental Landscapes
Malcolm Jun 25
In my quiet mind,
no secrets, no need to lie
only time stares back.

Lonely clock unwinds,
each thought echoes with silence
no one waits inside.

I run in your mind,
looping like a whispered name
you can’t let me go.

But where do we meet
between your dreaming of me
and my fading self?
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Between Minds - A Senryu with final coda
Jun 24 · 51
Just Because
Malcolm Jun 24
Just because
I speak of marble
doesn’t mean
Michelangelo whispers in my wrist.

Just because
I name fire
doesn’t mean I stole it
from Prometheus’ ashtray.

I said David
but not yours.
I said God
but not the one
in your tidy chapel of restraint.

Excuse me
if I seem offended
but our poetry
is nothing alike.

You bask in the religion of restraint,
while I
build cathedrals
from collapse.

You drink from Zen porcelain,
cool and pale.
I sip lava
and call it communion.

Your gods are lowercase and quiet.
Mine arrive
wild-haired,
bleeding bronze
and speaking in tongues.

Just because I breathe
where you’ve once stood
doesn’t mean I’m standing for you.
Art is not a deed,
and thought has no landlord.

Yes, I say Nietzsche
but I carry him differently.
Where you saw a hammer,
I saw the shattered sky
and wrote the thunder.

Yes, I echo Rilke
but where you chased the angel,
I let it break my body
and sleep inside.

Do you claim Rodin
every time a figure bends?
Does Giacometti live
in every stretched grief?

Let’s not confuse
the use of a word
with the theft of a soul.

I am not imitating.
I am incarnating.

Let me build my riot
while you tend your minimalist view
then call it everything else,
Let me drench the stanza
while you count your syllables.

Form is not crime.
Expression is not excess.

I wasn’t made for clean glass galleries.
I am basement smoke
and bombed-out breath.
I am oil and gold leaf
on wood that won’t stop splintering.

So keep your calm.
Your precision.
Your borders and white space.

I will keep my howl.
My dripping paint.
My blood-wet diction
and firelit silhouettes.

We are not alike.
We never were.

And if I ever wear
the same word as you
know this:
I embroidered it
in the dark,
with my teeth,
while you were busy
measuring margins
looking for similarities
in mild abstraction.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Jun 24 · 63
When You Arrive
Malcolm Jun 24
And now you arrive
not with fanfare,
but as thunder held in the finest silk,
a hush so loud the clouds kneel.

You walk,
and the world answers
the earth flowering in your delicate shadow,
as if even dirt remembers
the scent of goddesses.

The wild rose holds no beauty,
no scent that can be compared.

You are the sun rising through cathedral glass,
stained with wildflower tones:
blue forget me nots,
turmeric yellows,
wine-dark crimsons,
lavender bruises that hold the hush of evening.

Your skin
oh, your skin
a canvas Van Gogh might have dreamed in fever
trembling with each stroke,
sun-drunk wheat gold,
laced with dusk-heat rose,
lit from within
like a lantern floating on an endless lake.

Your eyes
each a Monet morning,
mist-swaddled and shimmering,
like rare symphonies soaked in rainlight,
flickering like cello strings
plucked beneath gleaming starlight.

I hear you
in the hush between wind gusts,
the low hum of honeybees blessing a bloom,
in the breath of river reeds
bending to your passing
like sacred monks in prayer.

You are a madrigal sung in falling water,
the harp hidden in riverbeds
a sound no recording could capture.
Only ripples
know your frequency.

Your presence is an orchestra of moments:
the aria of mountain dawns,
the lullaby of petals torn by breeze
falling softly to the earth,
the rhythm of a thousand painted suns
in the belly of a Kandinsky dream.

I close my eyes
your laugh,
the clatter of silver in a velvet room,
a storm behind stained-glass windows,
a jazz note improvised mid-heaven.

I try to describe you,
but language buckles.
What metaphor for skin that smells like memory?
For eyes that hold entire equinoxes?

Shall I create words
only I understand
syllables that tremble,
tones that shake the earth
just to explain your undescribable beauty?

You are not one flower.
You are every bloom in disobedience
the fire-throated hibiscus,
the shy hellebore,
the rogue jasmine
that climbs past every boundary
just to find the moon,
reaching for the stars.

Each time of day becomes you.
You are dawn’s breath on a violin’s neck,
noon’s blaze caught in gold-threaded fabric,
twilight poured into a wineglass of silence,
while midnight kneels
in hush, praying
in indigos and magentas.

You step into my world,
and the scenery forgets itself.
Even the mountains lean closer,
hoping to be repainted
in your palette.

None can compare.

Even the stars
fall back
to make room for you.

I worship you not in silence,
but in explosion
a thousand golden strings breaking open,
a field of irises trembling in sudden light,
the last note of a requiem
held longer than breath itself.

You are not a destination.
You are the arrival.
The divine storm at the edge of longing.
The shape of the answer
before the question can form.

And I,
glowing like fire beneath snowfall,
sunrise beneath the cathedral of my chest,
waited
just to fall into your name
when you finally call to me
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
When You Arrive


This poem, along with others I’ve recently shared, comes from a book I’m currently writing:

Quiet Pools and Other Witnesses

If this piece resonated with you, I invite you to explore the other poems in the collection—and I welcome your thoughts, reflections, and comments
Jun 24 · 44
Where You Will Come
Malcolm Jun 24
You will come–
to the edge of this world
where the sea inhales the sky,
where silver droplets drip from the hanging moon’s open mouth,
and the pulling tides keep time with my waiting.

You will come–
not as roaring thunder,
but as warmth on tanned salt skin,
a fresh breath stirring the indigo silk of night
in a hidden place beyond naming.

I wait for you
in the distance
with arms open wide,
with hands that have never forgotten
the weight of your presence.
Starfall clings to your hair,
and I let it–
each flicker a gentle kiss you haven’t given yet.

Pull me deeper,
not away–
through distant constellations collapsing in sublime delight,
across golden fields of glowing dust
and cities made only of memory.

There is no disgust here–
only the hunger to be seen,
and the softness of becoming.

My desire is a spoken prayer now,
not an open wound.
You inhabit it
with reverence.

I am not broken.
I am paused–
a held note
in an unwritten song the cestial choirs and stars are still composing.

Call me forward–
with your voice,
not with sorrow,
but with the rhythm of your fingertips
softly brushing the air between us.
Even absence wears your unforgotten scent.

I have not fallen.
I’ve been laid down–
gently–
by the invisible hands of light.

Waiting.
You do not mock.
You shimmer.
This world aches with your outline,
and I praise it
because it holds your splendor and shape.

I draw the curtain of night wide open.
Clouds part like breath beneath your gaze.
The wind does not move without purpose–
it moves with the memory of your fingers,
your presence pressing the sky into form.

I no longer pace.
I rest–
peacefully,
between skin and longing,
between the heat of my pulse
and the ghost of your mouth.

I did not give myself away.
I gave myself to you.
Willfully.
Wanting.
Woven in your majestic gravity.

This is no disgrace.
This is worship.
This is rising
again and again
toward the sun
you left burning in me.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
JUNE 2025
Where You Will Come

This poem, along with others I’ve recently shared, comes from a book I’m currently writing:

Quiet Pools and Other Witnesses

If this piece resonated with you, I invite you to explore the other poems in the collection—and I welcome your thoughts, reflections, and comments
Malcolm Jun 24
The soft morning rain wore gloves
when it came this time of day –
soft-footed, deliberate,
pressing its palms
against the sun-bleached windowbones,
as if asking permission to enter.

Something peeled the stuttering silence
like bark from a young oak.
I turned the lamp away,
flame flickering,
and let the dust breathe in peace.

The house has no corners anymore.
They’ve rounded themselves
in sleep-surrender,
folded inward
like past regret
stuffed in an old, dusty coat pocket.

They arrived separately –
on different lonely days.
Love came first, trailing thread-lace
and golden strands,
with the smell of stormfruit.
Then Death, later,
with his cold winterglass eyes
and unpunctuated, grasping hands
playing life's final melody on
this old worn out piano.

Funny—neither knocked.
They let the creaking floorboards answer,
split wood speaking
in broken syllables.
Now the worn walls echo backwards.

In the poorly painted hallway –
once rich –
a chandelier sings in lowercase.
Its light barely lifts the carpet,
but moths still come,
dressed for a funeral
that keeps changing addresses.

Love moved the furniture
without touching it.
Chairs gathered in whisper-circles.
The grandfather clock ticks,
its pendulum sways to time’s hand.
Books opened their pulse-spines
and breathed ink-dust into the air.

Death lit a match –
that sulphur-laminate scent
thickening the air –
and braided it into the sugar.
I found the flame burning softly,
hiding in the kettle –
like a secret no one dared stir.

The old ash-jar on the mantle cracked.
A mint-threaded hush rose from it,
hovered a moment,
then settled again,
as if remembering who it belonged to,
before quickly forgetting.

The staircase sighed
like an old tenant remembering rent.
The clouded sky leaned west.
My books slid north toward the windows,
as if pulled by history’s mouth.

Outside, the root-chair is still there –
grown into the fig tree’s spine.
Every morning,
I place a love’s breath on its seat.
It never moves.
Still waiting
for the right weight of a memory.

I keep the forgotten clocks in the drawer.
Their ticklanguage doesn’t match
the breath of the house.
Now I mark hours
by how long it takes
the fly on wallpaper
to hum itself quiet.

The blackened mirrors have forgotten their task.
No light.
No faces.
No questions.
They reflect only the ghostshadow
of who almost stayed.

And still, each night,
the attic exhales fabric-murmurs.
Not footsteps.
Not whispers.
Just the sound of someone
remembering how to stay.

Love wrote something in the evening fog
left on the windowpanes.
Death leaned in
and breathed it away
before it spelled a name.

Now the silence has a shape –
a name.
Now the door locks
from both sides.

And this house?
It doesn’t sleep.
It waits.
It swells with each absence,
ripens with every glance
that doesn’t land.

Love and Death live here.
Not as enemies,
not as lovers –
but as roommates,
who share a silence
too sacred to name.
Still holy.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Love and Death Live Here

This poem, along with others I’ve recently shared, comes from a book I’m currently writing:

Quiet Pools and Other Witnesses

If this piece resonated with you, I invite you to explore the other poems in the collection—and I welcome your thoughts, reflections, and comments.
Malcolm Jun 24
Write like there is no tomorrow.
Let the ink spill faster than your regrets,
faster than the tide that swallows names from stone.
Let the page burn with your blood
before your mouth remembers silence.

No man controls time.
Not the priest, the poet, the king,
not the one who waits,
not the one who runs.

Life is not given.
It is borrowed breath,
a fragile flicker
on a clock that ticks whether you move or rot.
The hours do not wait.
They do not care.
They do not remember you.

Write because tomorrow may not come.
And if it does,
it may not arrive as you hoped,
or with your name still in your throat.
We are not in control.
We never were.

Moments are sand –
they vanish even as we hold them.
Memories bend and blur,
warped by sorrow, softened by longing.
Tombstones do not speak;
they only mark the aching fact:
we were here.

Pictures fade.
And if no one looks,
the light inside them dies.
Words on a wall mean nothing
if no one knows the tongue.

But thought,
written in ink,
can outlive even the silence –
if it’s read,
if it’s felt,
if it strikes the living like thunder behind the ribs.

Hills rise and crumble.
Trees reach and fall.
All things shift.
All things pass.

So write like there is no tomorrow.
Because sometimes it does not come.
And when it does,
we may already be dust –
scattered down some cobbled road,
whispering stories
only the wind still remembers.

And in the end,
when the ink is dry,
the voices quiet,
and the page begins to yellow –
ask yourself,
would it all matter?
And know the answer lies
in whether you dared to write
at all.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Write Like There Is No Tomorrow
Thoughts of the lost when time has passed on by ...
Malcolm Jun 24
The room is still there, though the house forgets its name.
The walls have begun to breathe again
soft exhalations of rosewater and ash.
No one remembers who first laid down the sheets,
only that they remain unwrinkled,
smelling faintly of fever and honey.

The lovers do not age.
They do not speak.
Their language is older than sound,
older than breath.
Their bodies are relics in motion,
moving as roots do in soil,
slow and entwined,
eternal
never needing to surface.

Outside the windowless house,
new roads have eaten the gardens,
cities have risen and collapsed,
wars fought for less than the silence they share.
Still, no one knocks.

A girl once ran her fingers along the lock
and forgot her own name.
A priest walked past with salt on his tongue
and swallowed it without prayer.
Only the wind returns,
curious and uninvited.

Inside,
the bed has grown antlers.
The ceiling drips colorless rain.
A vine pulses through the mattress like a second heartbeat.
The lovers, blind as moonless sky,
continue–slow, sacred, certain.

No hunger. No ******.
Only the eternity of touch.

Some say the house is a mouth now,
that when you stand too near,
it whispers your deepest ache
and waits to be fed.

And somewhere, beyond time,
a third body shifts beneath the covers.
It was not invited.
It was always meant to arrive.
You.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
They Never Stopped Loving
Jun 23 · 38
When Love Unveils
Malcolm Jun 23
Not every fire burns the flesh.
Some arrive with breathless stillness,
draped in dusk-colored light,
a gaze too wide for one face to hold.
blinded still –
I called to you.

I did not know
what love could become
when it puts down its veil
and steps forward,
not as comfort,
but as divinity.

You were not gentle.

You stood where the air bent around you–
more presence than person,
a voice like thunder wrapped in silk,
fingertips trailing the edges of my ruin
like a priest naming what can’t be saved.

And still, I stayed.

Where are the days
when love was a glance from across the room,
a laugh shared over fruit and rain?
Now it is an archangel
descending through my ribs,
setting fire to my lungs
my soul catching flame
with every beat that dares endure you.

You asked for nothing–
only that I remain still
as you unfolded
in the space between heartbeats.

Who are you?

You are not lover, not ghost,
but the god hiding in desire.
You are the pollen of all beginnings,
the storm-light before any world was shaped,
the echo that built the sky
just to have somewhere to fall.

You are the mirror held to my face
after I have vanished.
And yet–
I call to you still.
Not because I will survive the blaze,
nor revive a soul,
but because I would rather burn in your nearness
than live untouched.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
When Love Unveils

Write like there is no tomorrow.
Malcolm Jun 23
I loved you in the silence,
the forgotten, aching still,
that throbbed beneath the rain–
in clocks too slow to ****.

You were not lost or vanished,
not ghost, nor fleeting flame–
but time rewrote your nearness,
and absence learned my name.

I loved you when the dishes
lay waiting in the sink,
when dusk fell down too early
and left no space to think.

You were not made for statues,
for saints or poet’s pen–
you were the crack in breathing
that let the sorrow in.

I do not write you letters,
for words fall through the sieve;
I loved you past the promise
of anything I’d give.

Not for your tender smiling
or how your hands once pressed–
but for the way you linger
inside my failing chest.

So stay, not as a memory,
not shadow, smoke, or sound–
but as the ache I carry
when no one is around.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
The Hours I Loved You Most
Malcolm Jun 23
You wake with petals in your hair
and sleep still clinging to your lashes
not the sleep of peace,
but the hush that follows weeping,
when the heart forgets its own weight.

I don’t ask what ghosts kept you
tossing through the hours.
I don’t name the pain
stitched in the arch of your back.
You’ve built your grace from ruin–
I’ve learned to admire the architecture.

Tonight, I won’t touch your wounds.
I’ll touch the skin around them,
where the light still gathers
when you breathe without defense.

Tell me–
is it love
if I hold you
like I’m not afraid of breaking,
like your shaking
is just music I haven’t learned yet?

You speak like someone
who’s forgotten how to be held
without preparing for departure.

That’s alright.
I don’t need your trust in full bloom.
Just the seed.
Just the breath you give me
before the sentence ends.

Your fingers curl
as if expecting to be pried away–
but I stay.
No bargains. No salvation.
Just warmth,
and the promise not to name this rescue.

I smile.
I’ve seen braver women
fall apart for lesser reasons.

So when your mask slips,
when the tiredness wins
and the strong part of you
asks to rest–

remember this:

Not the way I touched you
but the way I listened,
how I stayed quiet enough
for your silence to speak.

Not for mercy,
not to save,
but because I wanted
to be the first place
you didn’t have to fight.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Let Me Be the Quiet That Undoes You
Malcolm Jun 23
You whisper like it’s truth–
My body isn’t beautiful.
And then I want the rivers to rise,
want the trees to lean in,
want the stars to unpin themselves
and spell your shape across the dark.
Let the sky spill its archive of light,
let it fall open and weep
the exact shape of your name.

I want my hands to become mirrors,
quiet pools catching your laughter,
so you can see what I see–
how your skin bends light
like a secret the world wasn’t ready for.

And still, you say I look at you
like someone who’s come to take–
but I was only holding still
because your nearness
made the world hold its breath.
Your lashes moved
like small wild things
learning not to flinch.

Your body breathes softly
like a small bird, sparrow caught between sky and storm,
your chest rising beneath my palms–
every sensation felt with a finger tip
not a signal for danger,
but a song in the making.
And every time you shift,
I hear the hush
of wings folding,
not in fear–
but in arrival.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
When You Tell Me You're Not Beautiful
Jun 23 · 55
Accident Blues
Malcolm Jun 23
Mind’s wide open — body twitchin’, glitchin’, this pain is *******.
Thoughts crash like ******' panes in a kitchen, glass on floor
Glass in my grin shame diggin’ in, full pain.
Guilt pokin’ ribs like needles in skin.
Fire in my nerves, yeah this pain ain’t pretend,
Legal highs got me beggin’ for the end.
Eyes sunken, sleep duckin’, truth runnin’,
Mind ******’ me harder than life ever done it.
Dreams don’t visit, they drive-by in silence, alliance, defiance
While trauma backs up like a ***** with a license.
Heart skips like a junk beat glitched,
Shadow follows me like a snitch I ditched.
High legit — but the fit don’t click,
Cracked like a token tossed in the pit.
Broken on rocks while I fake that grit,
Every ******’ breath like a punch I split.
Gotta detox, get clean, get straight, give me rocks, big blocks
But mind’s on fire, sittin’ there, laced with hate.
It’s crawlin’ my skull, through the ceiling it leaks,
Whisperin’ sins in the hospital sheets.
IV drippin’ like a priest in heat,
Tryna baptize my veins with defeat.
Maybe I’m vain, maybe I’m ******' insane,
But this brain got rooms that scream *******, pain pain pain.
Temptation ain’t knockin’, it kicks the door in,
Talkin’ bends, ends, old sins, fake friends.
Promisin’ peace from a pill with a grin,
But I know that thrill ends under my skin.
Open door — I step right through, roof lit floor
Ain’t scared of hell, I’ve been see-through.
Shoulda died — yeah, death ******’ lied,
Left me half-man, half suicide, final ride what's inside see the blind.
Drugs in the drawer hum lullabies low,
Beggin’ me sweet to just let go.
Living’s a joke, the punchline’s stale,
Body in a bed with a soul on bail.
Paranoia sharp like a blade of mice, grain of rice, pipes that are spliced, in and out,
Gnawin’ my spine with feral vice.
Creepin’ up bones, crawlin’ through wires,
Slime in my mind that never tires, never lies.
Smiles from the past? *****, they charge, no they charge
Fake hugs, fake love — just emotional barge, living off drugs
Body sold, mind hijacked and bruised,
Truth tastes rotten when your teeth are loose, bones once whole broken forgotten
Tongue spits prayers in a ****-you voice, without choice,
While Morph and Feni dull the noise.
Stack of Beni like a hitman’s fee, trami and whites.
Every pill a silent plea.
War still young, but my soul’s unravelled, minds travelled,
Heart don’t beat, it ******’ gravelled.
I claw through the dirt just to breathe again, woke up to the pain,
Fightin’ shadows with a rusted pen an broken Zen.
I danced with edges, glad I'm not vedges, still ****** in the hedges, kissed death’s mouth,
Woke up in pain with the wires pulled out, ribs sticking out, blood all about,
This ain’t redemption, this ain’t a hope song,
It’s grit in the lungs and the will to prolong.
Me vs. demons, streaming, screaming, bare-knuckled, no bluff, No luck, no God, just drugs and rough.
And if I make it out, still half-alive,
It’s ‘cause I crawled through ******’ knives to survive, and if I don't well guess I died.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
ACCIDENT BLUES
June 2025
Jun 23 · 39
She Moves Like a Rumor
Malcolm Jun 23
She moves like a rumor through the stone-breath streets,
not loud, not swift, but with a hush that bends the flame from a free standing street light.
Shoes unlaced, hands full of rainwater and nettles,
her silence does the talking.

The dogs stop barking when she passes.
A window closes in a house that forgot it had fear.
Even the birds-those clattering liars
draw their wings in like secrets.

She doesn’t look back.
She doesn’t need to.

In her wake:
a coat on a fencepost still warm,
a garden blooming red where no seed was sown,
and a man on a rooftop, forgetting why he climbed.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
She Moves Like a Rumor
May 31 · 72
matchstick gospel
Malcolm May 31
burn ledgers,
sink crowns,
Lies kneel,
cities drown.

no gods,
no wires,
just fists
and fires.

Ain't a cry
It's a **** the man
Statement
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
matchstick gospel
May 2025
May 30 · 68
My Heart Skips for You
Malcolm May 30
I'm always racing, chasing—then swaying and spacing,
Barely bracing, then I’m slipping, dipping, misplacing.

The world keeps pressing, the pressure's unceasing,
Voices all blending, no pause, no releasing.

But when night pulls the curtain and time starts *******,
I pour something smooth—let go of the stressing.

In the hush of the dark, where the touch feels true
That’s when my heart, it skips for you.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
My Heart Skips for You
May 30 · 76
Teacup Ghosts
Malcolm May 30
You were a kiss in a blender,
A chandelier of weeping strings.
I drank your name through static,
Swallowed lullaby shards
Wrapped in candy grief.

We made love beneath wormlight
You wore thunder like silk.
I gave you stars;
You brought a fork to my funeral
And laughed as I bled jam.

I begged through balloon fangs,
My ribs tuned to backward echoes.
But you rode a fishbone bicycle
Into another soft apocalypse.

Your love bit only in shivers.
You adored me as glitter and salt
But fled when my tears grew limbs
And asked for names.

You left with ducks in lab coats,
Prescribing your smile in pills.
I sleep in your ghost’s teacup,
Paint storms on toast,
And scream into jellyfish.

I kissed your silence’s socket,
Wore your absence like velvet plague.
Mannequins fed me your Sanskrit lies
On glitter IVs.

I built microwave shrines
To your maybe.
My therapist asked who you were
I said: expired milk with blood on the back.

Your ghost plays hopscotch in my skull.
Mirrors wear your grin like gospel.
I search aquariums for your stare
Only castles remain, and even they refuse me.

Tell me—was I your scrapbook of ruin,
Your empathy vacation,
Your control carnival?

The spiral laughs.
It spins in your perfume.
And I clap
For my own collapse.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Teacup Ghosts
Malcolm May 30
Thou walkedst in with words so honey-dipped,
Yet venom laced thy smile, so wide, so white.
A silken voice, but every virtue slipped,
For thou wert most in love with thy own light.

Thy praise, at first, did shine like summer gold,
Then turned to scorn when I began to bleed.
What grand illusions in thy lies I sold,
A peasant’s soul made feast for royal greed.

Thou craved a mirror, not a beating heart,
A shrine to self, not love in sacred skin.
I played the ghost in thy self-fashioned art,
While thou adored the mask thou wore within.

Yet truth, like dawn, did tear thy veil in twain
I found myself where I was bound by chain.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
To Thee, My Sweet Divine
A Shakespearean Sonnet
Malcolm May 29
The willow drank my name from silver rain,
yet left my thirst to bloom in salted mist;
Love hummed through wormholes stitched with shadowed pain,
and kissed me once, then marked me as a list.

I chased her echo through a coral field,
where seabirds wrote in cursive on the wind;
My ribs unzipped, a galaxy revealed
a void where all my wanting had been pinned.

She danced like Saturn's ring across my sleep,
then vanished in the hush of Neptune's yawn;
I held her in the roots of stars too deep
to bloom before the hour love is gone.

So still I orbit songs I never knew
and dream of being real inside her blue.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Cartographer’s Kiss on Jupiter’s Moon - A Shakespearean Sonnet
May 29 · 71
Mosaic
Malcolm May 29
The mosaicing smiles of colour
each a fracture dressed in light,
a kaleidoscope lie,
grinning with the ache of having once been whole.

Each piece of broken glass
a different view,
a different time,
a different feeling
splintered in the sun, bleeding memory in hues.

Red rages like a throat mid-scream,
blue sobs with the patience of oceans,
green lies like envy draped in silk,
gold forgives but never forgets.
Each colour,
a passion,
a pulse,
a past dressed as presence.

They say:
“Stand back. Admire it. See the masterpiece.”
But I know better.
I know what slices under the shine.

No matter how intriguing,
how intricate,
how heartbreakingly beautiful it seems

It's still just broken glass.
Edges smoothed by delusion.
Truth glued with trembling hands.
Not a miracle.
Not healing.
Not whole.

And no matter how it looks
it's still just broken glass.
And
It's sometimes better to just sweep it up
Else
Cut your fingers putting it together
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Mosaic
Malcolm May 29
Because of you, the springtime scents oppress,
I ache in gardens bloomed with floral breath.
Your face is lost in veils of nothingness,
Your lips forgotten in cold death’s caress.

Thinking of you, I love the statues white,
That drowse in parks, in silence held and blind.
I’ve lost your voice, your laughter, and your light,
Your eyes erased like footprints swept by wind.

Like flowers bound unto their perfumed shade,
I cling to vague remembrance, frail and torn.
This pain’s a wound too deep to be allayed
Your touch would leave me more than bruised and worn.

Though I’ve forgotten love, I see you still
In falling stars, through windows dim and still.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
What I Cannot Forget - A Shakespearean Sonnet
May 29 · 73
Before time
Malcolm May 29
Silent threads of light,
Galaxies spin woven webs,
Stars hum cosmic songs.
Planets weave their paths,
Moon and sun in orbit’s loom,
Milky Way’s bright thread.
Before time unspun,
Darkness stretched a fabric vast,
Nameless space unfolds.

And yet here we sit
two minds beneath all of this,
wondering what’s true.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
Before time
Malcolm May 29
It has no shape, no voice that we can hear,
Yet raised the oceans, pressed the mountains high.
It holds no grief, no joy, no hope, no fear,
Yet sends the planets circling through the sky.

It has no name, no words to mark its will,
Yet trees grow tall, and rivers run their course.
It breathes in root and storm and meadow still
A quiet law, a motion without force.

Before the peaks were raised, the skies were spun,
It was — complete, untouched by change or need.
Still as the dusk, and older than the sun,
It moves through stone and sky and wind and seed.

I do not know its name, though I have tried
I call it Great, where all things still abide.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Great - A Shakespearean Sonnet
Malcolm May 28
Before Thy throne, the Gods in awe incline,
Exalting souls that spring from hidden fire;
From Thee, Unconscious Source of the Divine,
Emerge the Fathers whom the Gods admire.

Two twins arose, one base, the other bright,
Their union shaped the world of form and name;
One bore the truth, the other forged the blight
Yet both returned unto the secret Name.

Then she, with mind both good and true,
Did craft the earth in wisdom’s silent grace;
All perfect things she to the spirit drew,
And housed them in the Mind’s eternal place.

Though man be last, his soul the stars contain
For gods and men are of a single chain.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
The Race if God's and Men
May 2025
Written as a Shakespearean sonnet
May 28 · 236
Burning Joy
Malcolm May 28
Golden thread pulls tight,
soft whisper dressed in longing
the soul forgets home.
Flame that feeds itself,
burning joy into sorrow
let it die to live.
Cravings rise like mist,
vanishing with morning light
truth waits in the still.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Malcolm May 28
I was once the wind that taught the wheat to bow,
a hymn rustling through the hollow of old branches,
and before that, a river that carried lost dreams and lullabies
to the mouths of waiting roots.

No bell marked the crossing.
No lantern swung above the gate.
I passed as smoke does
into the open mouths of new shapes,
Reborn.

They say the soul is a thread pulled through a hundred needles,
each time tearing into a different fabric:
feather, bone, brass, thirst, song.
Not to become, but to remember
what becoming cannot hold,
only held for a short moment in time.

I was hunger shaped like a wolf,
and later, grief that wore a girl's eyes.
Each body an orchard I neither planted nor owned,
but was asked to tend with quiet hands.

Reincarnation is not a ladder
it is a storm that forgets its last thunder.
It chooses neither upward nor wise,
but necessary.
To be what the story requires
in the moment the page turns.

One life, a seed beneath the floorboards.
The next, the axe.
Another, the breath of the one who grieves the falling.
And still, no beginning.
And still, no final version of flame,
Can it be.

The maker—if there is one
does not speak.
But leaves signs in frost
and patterns in the flight of startled birds.

So I do not ask what I will be.
I ask only:
What silence must I carry next?
What wound will I wear
to become the light pouring through it?
Upon this world.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Orchard Beyond the Skin
May 28 · 53
The Static and Shift
Malcolm May 28
they unplugged me
mid-sentence
no warning,
just a flicker in the wires,
and I was gone.

next thing I know
I’m breathing through bark
or barking through hunger,
or hung on the breath of something
half-born.

call it recycling
call it punishment
call it sleepwalking with soul-friction
either way,
there’s no choice
in the costume.

you don’t pick your skin,
your hunger,
your function.
you just snap into shape
like a glitch repeating
until the program forgets you were wrong.

somewhere,
a machine dreams in fire,
hammering silhouettes
without apology.
metal doesn’t get a vote.
clay doesn’t file requests.

and if I screamed
let me be teeth,
let me be wings,
let me be
anything but this
the silence would just shift frequency
and start the spin again.

the loop
doesn’t end.
the loop
doesn’t end.

you blink,
and you’re an orchard.
you blink,
and you're a rib.
you blink,
and you’re a threat
to the thing that made you.

tell me how to fight that
without
becoming it.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Static and Shift
Malcolm May 28
You rage in CAPS, but never find your place,
Your fury burns, but leaves no trace.

A limerick laughs, a sonnet steals the show,
Your words fall flat, with nowhere to go.

You bark at form, at rhyme, at meter’s grace,
But tantrums fail your win erased.

You write with slurs, as if that buys you time,
Yet poetry’s fire is sharp and prime.

You could’ve learned a style a villanelle or line
Instead, you mock what needs that's fine.

Each sestina loops, it's a mindful art,
While snow globe and lava lamps just fall apart.

Pantoum, haiku, blank verse come on take your pick,
Tools to build, not tricks you *****.

You troll and scroll, but never touch the page,
Afraid to step into the poet’s stage.

R your name won’t last in rhyme,
Lost to noise and lost in time.

So throw your shade, pretend you’re deep,
But poets hold the truths you keep asleep
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Ghazal for the Flame-Typed Fools
Malcolm May 27
They’ll speak in sharp tones,
cast judgment like stones,
but you were not born
to carry their fear.
You’re not here
to fold beneath opinions
or shrink to fit
the comfort of cowards.

You are not their whisper.
Not their email chain.
Not the sideways glance
from behind safe walls.
You are not a problem
just because they can’t see your worth.

Your soul is ancient.
It’s carved from fire,
tempered in days
when you showed up
while they stayed silent.
Your work matters.
Your voice echoes truth.
You’ve held space where others vanished.
You’ve stood tall where others bowed.

So let their criticism pass
like wind over steel
feel it,
but do not wear it.

Because it’s not the words
that hurt you.
It’s the belief that they’re true.

When you let that belief die,
you are free.
Free to be fierce.
Free to be whole.
Free to give your gifts
without asking for permission.

Their noise means nothing
compared to the quiet power
rising inside you.

You don’t need a pat on the back
from people
who couldn’t carry your pain
for five minutes.

You don’t need their yes.
You already have your soul’s blessing.
And that is enough.
That has always been enough.

So move forward.
Speak clear.
Hold your worth like armor.
And walk like you belong.
Because you do.
You always did.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
DON’T SEEK OTHERS’ APPROVAL — YOUR WORTH IS IN YOUR SOUL
Malcolm May 27
People sit on their ***** and moan,
throwing words like stones at shadows.
They write poems filled with nothing
no light in the dark,
no mirror to the soul,
no love for the hummingbird
or the bee.

Just more moaning.
This politician. That one.
Mona, Mona, moan.
A parade of little monkeys
squatting by a muddy river,
scratching their bums,
flicking poo across the stream
instead of feeling the sun
on their skin.

Where is the poem
that breathes with wonder?
That holds the air
like a newborn holds light?
That smells the flowers,
stands in the shade of a tree,
and says thank you?

We take too much for granted.

I don’t want to start my day
moaning about someone
who doesn’t even know I exist.
What good is a poem
that turns hearts bitter
and forgets the sky above?

I’d rather write beauty.
Write something that matters.
Something that smiles back.

Start with your own bubble.
Change what’s close,
what your hands can reach.
If you don’t like what’s there,
stretch out and change it.
That’s where meaning lives.

Go outside.
Touch the day.
Feel the wonder of difference
how strange and beautiful we are.
Walk on the beach.
Hold the air,
hold the sun,
hold the hand of someone
who does make a difference.

Life is short, dear friend.
Nothing is promised.
We take each other for granted
we take everything for granted.
When last did you let an ant
crawl across your hand
and just say, “Wow”?
Then gently place it back
where it came from?

Now we squash it.
**** it.
Feel like kings.
“Yeah, we showed it.”
But we show nothing.

I have my dogs
mommy and her two boys.
I’ve never seen a love so whole.
Yet we humans
we’ve lost the plot.
We moan and complain
instead of complimenting,
hugging,
offering food,
buying coffee for a stranger,
or just saying,
I’m glad you’re here.

We fixate on the wrong things,
throwing poo
when we could be planting trees.

Learn something.
Give something.
Grow something.

Acknowledge the bad — yes
but don’t live there.
Don’t let your little rowboat
circle a storm
when just a few more strokes
could bring you peace.

Beauty waits quietly
on the front step.
You don’t need a plane ticket.
Sometimes it’s a bird’s song.
Sometimes it’s the breath in your chest.

So when the world moans
sing.

And mean it.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Monkey on the Muddy River bank
Malcolm May 24
There was a snake
in your wineglass
or so you swore,
clutching your belly
like betrayal poured into your gut.

But it was a bow,
hanging quiet on the wall,
its shadow curved like doubt,
and still
you burned with poison
that was never there.

You made yourself sick with what you thought you saw.

Then there was the runner
barefoot prophet chasing fire,
arms outstretched like hope could be wrestled
from the sky.

He drank rivers dry
and still died of thirst.
His cane fell
and trees grew from the grave.

He never caught the sun.
But the sun scorched his name
into the earth.

You may never reach glory, but you’ll die a sermon if you run hard enough.
That’s the second lie.
Or maybe it’s truth.

Then came the fool,
eyes wide,
looking down a well
and seeing the moon trapped like a silver ghost.

He ran for a hook
not sense
and tried to fish the night from the water.
Rope snapped.
Back cracked.
Moon untouched.

And he still smiled,
told everyone
he’d saved the sky.

Delusion is lighter to carry than disappointment.
That’s the third lie.
The one we keep.

And now, you.
Drinking shadows.
Chasing fire.
Hooking reflections.

You build temples from misunderstanding.
You tattoo your fears on glass
and swear they bit you.

But the venom is your own.
The sun never owed you warmth.
And the moon was never drowning.

You were.

So here’s the truth within
We suffer by choice,
die by obsession,
and live inside illusions
that wear our fingerprints like mirrors.

Look close
it’s not the snake,
not the sun,
not the moon.

It’s you.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
The Lies we Swallow
May 24 · 47
Dog Ear's
Malcolm May 24
I love your soft, floppy ears
how they melt between my fingers,
like warm suede in sunlight,
soothing, gentle,
a rhythm I could play for hours.

You know it too
the way you nuzzle closer
when I stop,
tilting your head,
that silly, sweet face
that says, “Dad, don’t stop now.”

There’s magic in that touch,
how you lean in,
pushing deeper into my palm,
content, spoiled,
and I wouldn’t have it
any other way.

The others get jealous
paws tapping, tails wagging,
elbows nudging in,
wanting their share
of the ear-scratch symphony.

And I love them all,
my pack of fur-babies,
each one a heartbeat,
a comfort,
a warm body on a cold day.

But there’s something
about those ears,
so soft,
so calming
when the world gets loud,
I just reach for you,
twirl a fold of velvet fur,
and everything slows.

We watch TV like this,
it's called a cuddle puddle,
me and you and the others
a couch full of love,
but your ears in my hands?
That’s the win-win
I never knew I needed.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Dog Ear's
May 23 · 52
The Joke's on Me
Malcolm May 23
I wake to spite, not morning's grace
A cracked old mug, a creased-up face.
These hands once built, now just complain,
These legs just ache, then ache again.
The world outside? A painted fraud.
At time I think Oh My Lord.
Sunrise? Just a cosmic ****.
In the mirror I see the same old Sod.
Bed’s a trap, and so’s the day.
It’s hell whichever game you play.

I sneer at hope, I scoff at light,
I'd punch a prayer clean out of sight!
The honest type? They make me gag,
Too soft to stand, too proud to sag.
No poem saves, no brush redeems,
No truth survives the in-betweens.
My thoughts? Let’s say they’d earn a cell
But I’m too bored these days to raise that hell.

I'm not insane, I’m just aware
That dreams don't buy you decent air.
I’m not depressed, just fully clear
There’s nothing left to want down here.
I bark, I *****, I bite my lip,
Then sip regret like whiskey drip.
I think of death with half a grin
Then **** myself for love again.

So here I sit, a charming wreck,
With wisdom hanging off my neck.
The world can burn, or go bake a pie
I'll judge it all and never try.
They say "Go Find yourself some peace!"
I guess I would rather find release.
well, now I’ve looked up there not once
but twice...
It hides beneath my unpaid vice.
But cheers to life, this grand hooray!
Where fools get rich, and cynics pay.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Jokes on Me ! - Happy Friday
Malcolm May 23
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
Malcolm May 23
What bleeds
without wound?
What rises
before it knows it fell?

I am
the echo of something never said,
the smoke from fires still dreaming
of stars.

Once, I mistook love
for a door.
Now I know
it was the house,
and I had only just
learned how to knock.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
So I kept my eyes full of sky
while the world pulled at my ankles.

They told me
to move on
I asked,
“But what if the road bends backward
to meet the heart again?”

I have worn regret
like a crown of thorns,
but let me tell you
even thorns soften
when touched by time.

What if the one you wait for
is still being carved
from storms you haven’t met?

What if you are
the answer
to someone else’s broken prayer?

I’ve walked through years
like forests with no compass,
but still
the trees whispered,
"There is more."

There is always more.
Even when the book closes,
another begins
in the margin.

"The wound is where the light enters you."
Then call me lantern
cracked, but burning.
Flickering with the faith
that love returns
in stranger forms,
at stranger times.

Who dares to love again
after the flood?

You do.

You
the riddle.
You
the answer waiting
in the next smile,
the next silence,
the next hand that doesn’t let go
when the lights go out.

This is not the end.
It never was.

Live like the universe
made you on purpose.
Love like forgetting
was never the goal.

Somewhere,
someone waits
not to complete you,
but to witness
your becoming.

And when they arrive
you’ll know.

You’ll know by the way
your name feels
safe
in their mouth
Spoken softly
on a
breeze.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Smoke dreaming of Stars from the fire
May 23 · 44
Forgive and Forget
Malcolm May 23
You said forever,
and I
I believed like a child watching stars crash into oceans,
with fists full of broken promises
and pockets sewn shut by trust.

You took
something I can never get back.
My time.
My love.
My ******* everything.
You drank it like sweet wine,
spat it like sour truth.

I stood
through every fight
like the last soldier guarding a war no one cared to win.
I showed you joy
like colors to the blind,
a sky without roof,
a breath without fear.

You learned yourself
through me.
But did you ever learn me?

We painted sunsets.
Played in sand
like gods pretending not to bleed.
My best friend now has fur and four paws
she never lied,
never left.

And you...
you said you’d follow me to the ends of the earth.
Turns out you meant
until it got hard.
Until love
looked more like sacrifice
and less like escape.

I wasn’t jealous.
I was open.
Transparent.
A mirror with no back
and still
you ran.

And now,
six years crawl like ash in my lungs
and still,
I choke on your name
sometimes.
Sometimes, I smile.
Sometimes,
I rage like a storm that forgot how to rain.

You took what was sacred
and turned it
into strategy.
Calculated exits.
Silence like knives.

And I
I gave you music,
poetry,
freedom,
truth.
I gave you me.

Family
You said they hurt you,
used you,
bruised you.
And I believed.
But in the end,
you chose them
chose comfort in chaos
over the revolution of love.

You’ll say I was the villain.
Fine.
Every fairytale needs one.
But let the record bleed:
I built you
while I was breaking.

I gave you the map
and you used it
to leave me
stranded.

So no
I don’t forgive.
Not yet.
Maybe never.

Because how do you forgive
someone who burned down
the only home you ever built
with your bare hands?

And how do you forget
a fire that still
burns in your bones?

When I look into the eyes
The eyes of the past
and feel hollow.

You were rich with me.
We were rich in love,
in commitment,
in laughter,
in all the things
money can’t fake.

And still,
you threw it away
like loose change
in a foreign land.

I don’t care if you hide.
Memories
don’t need light
to haunt.

I still smell your ghost.
Still hear your voice
in songs we wrote.
Still see your smile
in the ruins of what could have been.

But never again.
Never again will I
give someone the key
to a kingdom they plan to plunder.

You were my best risk
and my greatest ruin,
even if all I was left with
was loss.

Maybe I’ll forgive,
one day,
when the stars stop remembering
how your name
felt like both prayer
and punishment.

But I will never forget.

Never.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Forgive an Forget
Malcolm May 22
you said maybe like it meant yes
in a language only I bled fluently.

you blinked
and i fell into
a duck pond of maybe tomorrows
while you dried off
in someone else’s sun.

i guess it waddled.
i guess it quacked.
and you laughed like that proved
you never promised me a thing.

but the feathers
still choke.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
If it walks like a duck 🦆
May 21 · 66
Baptized in Static
Malcolm May 21
I slit the throat of mercy,
let it twitch in a puddle of neon grime
its prayers gurgled like poisoned lullabies.
I wear madness like a crown of soldered nerves,
sparking truth through every scream.

Heaven turned its back
so I bit hell's lip,
let it whisper me alive in tongues of gasoline.
I kissed the noose,
laced it with orchids and black powder.
Love?
I scalped it.
Hung its face on my wall like a holy relic.

The moon watches,
blind and complicit,
as I set fire to forgiveness
and dance in the smoke of dead apologies.

Art is a weapon.
I dip my brush in trauma,
splatter redemption on the white walls of silence.
Every stroke screams.
Every hue begs.

I carve verses into my thighs
to feel them bleed truth.
I don’t want peace
peace is anesthetic.
I want eruption,
******* of ache that crack the skin of now.

Safety's a padded coffin.
Hope’s a sedative laced with lies.
Give me ruin
give me flame
give me teeth on steel and pulse on chaos.

I am the sermon and the sin.
The preacher of collapse.
My god bleeds black ink,
and I drink it from the grail of my own skull.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Baptized in the static
May 21 · 59
Murdered Consciousness
Malcolm May 21
I slit the throat of consciousness,
let it bleed out in a ditch of ash and static.
Its pulse gurgles—red syrup on a canvas of bone,
splattered like a Jackson ******* fever dream.
Heaven’s deaf, a mute god with marble eyes,
so I scream to hell, and hell screams back,
a choir of razors, a hymn of shattered glass.
Care?
I murdered it.
Strangled it with barbed wire,
watched it choke on its own syrupy pleas.
Concern’s corpse swings from a chandelier of thorns,
its shadow giggling gasoline,
dripping fire that licks the floor clean.
I’m free now—unshackled,
a wolf chewing through its own leg to taste the wild.
Abstract paintings scream the truth
colors clawing at the edges of sanity,
blues that bruise, reds that **** the light.
Genius is a fever, a sickness that grins,
a parasite gnawing at the skull’s soft meat.
Who wants safety?
Safety’s a cage, a coffin of beige,
a life stitched shut with sterile thread.
I love this cremated life,
where care’s ashes swirl in a wind of now.
The minute is a blade, sharp and silver,
carving my name into the void’s black throat.
Heaven’s a lie, a pastel scam,
but hell’s honest—its flames don’t pretend to warm.
I dance in the embers,
my feet blistering hymns,
my heart a grenade with a pin half-pulled.
Consciousness twitches, not quite dead,
its eyes like cracked mirrors, reflecting rot.
I stab it again, for fun,
with a shard of starlight dipped in tar.
The world spins, an Alice-in-Wonderland slaughterhouse,
where clocks melt into pools of blood,
where roses scream and rabbits gnaw their own paws.
I’m the hatter, the queen, the guillotine grin,
serving tea spiked with arsenic dreams.
Feeling? I burned it alive.
Its screams were music,
a symphony of snapping bones and velvet wails.
Now I’m the moment, the pulse, the now
a god of my own wreckage,
crowned in thorns and neon scars,
laughing as the canvas bleeds.
Hell listens.
Hell understands.
And the abstract truth paints me whole.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
****** Consciousness
Malcolm May 21
The Way She Lived in Me
The Universe She Was
Once, she was everything to me
not in metaphor,
but in the way the planets truly need the sun.
Her laughter filled my chest,
like warm light circling inward.
Her eyes held quiet galaxies,
stars steady and sure,
and her smile could calm a storm
like sunlight breaking through gray skies.
Her hair shone like something the heavens envy.
Now, I only see it in memory
a golden blur when I close my eyes.
It’s strange,
how the brightest moments
are the first to disappear.

II. When We Were Whole
We walked through parks
as if they were sacred halls.
Even the trees seemed to lean in,
just to be near her.
Her hand fit mine so perfectly,
I still reach for it without thinking.
We had a dog that ran like joy itself
no fear, no doubt.
We laughed often,
like people who didn’t believe in pain.
We skipped stones across a lake,
never guessing love might follow the same path:
rise, float, skim, and fall.
Her scent was fresh rain
sweet, natural, unforgettable.
Her voice woke me with the softness of ocean waves.
Now it comes and goes,
like a dream I’m trying to hold onto.

After the End
Love was once an ocean,
and I dove into it freely.
Now I walk through something dry and empty,
where nothing remembers how to bloom.
Her name still lives in my throat,
but I keep it quiet.
I search for her
in strangers’ eyes, in passing faces
but I find only reflections of light,
never the stars she carried.
She was full of wonder.
They are just passing weather.
And when I remember her,
I feel the distance
like shouting at the moon,
knowing it can’t hear you.

Holding On and Letting Go
Sometimes I feel anger.
Why did love come at all
if it was always meant to leave?
I rage,
because being seen—truly seen—
should have been enough.
But it never is.
Still,
I am grateful.
Because once, I mattered to someone
in a way that changed me.
She helped me become
something better,
even if what remains now
is just the ruin of that.
We are not meant to walk alone.
We are meant to meet in the dark
and name it light.
She was my first light.
And now,
I walk through smoke,
hoping to find meaning in what’s left.

The Shape of Absence
There is silence
where her laugh used to echo.
Stillness
where she once moved.
Even spring feels colder now
the scent of flowers brings ache instead of joy.
I see birds take flight
and whisper,
“There she goes again.”
Some nights,
I can almost feel her smile
a soft, guiding warmth,
like a harbor after the storm.
But it always fades.
And I am left chasing wind.

What Remains
I wonder if she knew.
If she felt what I felt.
If the love that marked me
ever marked her, too.
Time moves forward,
but I find myself folding inward,
smaller with every year,
heavier with every memory.
Our dog still waits by the door sometimes.
She knows.
She remembers.
And when I ask her softly,
“Do you miss her, too?”
She doesn’t answer.
But in her stillness,
I feel the truth:
She did love us.
And in her silence,
she left a piece of herself
that will never leave.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Fading constellation
Malcolm May 21
from the outside
under the old tree
thick with time
i wait.
not sure what for.
the wind moves like a thought
no one says out loud.
soft.
close.
familiar.
but not mine.

i hear it anyway.
it tells things
you only hear
when no one's looking.
quiet truths that press into the skin
and stay there.

somewhere
kids laugh,
easy, open,
like sunlight doesn’t cost anything.
i watch.
behind the edge.
like someone half-drawn.
they belong to it.
i don’t.

i stand still
in a world that moves
without checking
if i’m coming.
they bloom
and i stay seed.
they fill the air
i hold the space
they forget.

i was the one chasing birds
while they made games out of dirt and sky.
i went where the path stopped.
i liked the quiet places
because they didn’t ask me questions.
the forest didn’t mind
if i said nothing.

the stars blinked like answers
that didn’t need to explain themselves.
i liked that.
the trees bent like they were listening.
that meant something.
but still,
this feeling follows me
like fog
just enough to blur things.

i want what they have
the touch
the motion
the easy belonging.
i want to matter
in someone else’s
ordinary day.

but nature
you don’t ask for anything.
you just are.
and maybe with you,
i can just be too.
not too much.
not too little.
just here.

still,
i find myself on the outside.
looking in.
a quiet figure
by the water’s edge.
and i wonder
not loudly,
but real enough
why i always wake up
in someone else’s dream.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
From the outside looking in
May 21 · 107
Jump
Malcolm May 21
the brain’s a butcher
slicing futures
before they breathe.

I stood
on the edge
measuring wind,
timing possibilities
til courage turned to doubt.

but the scream inside me
it didn’t care
about logic
maps
or bruises.

it wanted fall.
it wanted now.

so I shut the noise.
I leapt.

and in the wreckless air
found
I could burn
without dying.

found
the unknown
had teeth
but smiled.

In the unknown
I found
comfort.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Jump
Malcolm May 21
Somewhere
beneath the eyelid's last blink
where glass bleeds light,
and truth flinches like a rat in church,
a Psalm shatters,
cracking the spine of silence.

I saw God’s silhouette in reverse
a negative burn,
its arms were questions,
its eyes were hollows,
and its scream—a flicker in dead film.

Tell me
what’s a universe if not
a deaf match struck in a snowstorm?

I licked the ash of a star once.
It tasted like birth
and every lover who ever left without closing the door.

Time taps its nails on bone
tick. tick. tick.
Each second a parasite,
sipping marrow,
etching the shape of forgetting
on my skull.

No map.
No north.
Only echoes whispering:
“you were never here.”

Even solace is a trick
a ghost draped in perfume and mother’s hands,
gone when you turn to name it.

I broke a clock to stop the wound.
(It laughed.)

Now
I collect shadows.
I press them between pages of not-quite-meaning,
each a brittle wing.

Is this God?
—a hum in the static,
—a fault line in grammar,
—a riddle whispered backwards
through the teeth of a dying flame?

Listen:
There is a drone inside the ordinary.
It gnaws.
Not loud
but certain.

You want reason?
You want rules?

Here’s the cipher:
There is none.
Only this:

A flicker. A fracture. A fall.
Then something unnamed
that feels like knowing.

But isn’t.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
MAY 2025
The Godprint Cipher”
(a fractured riddle poem)
May 21 · 61
Dreamspine
Malcolm May 21
Don’t whisper in dried-out dirges
that all this flickering
is hollow.
That dreams are ash,
and flesh is just a waiting cell.

The soul, if such a beast still gnaws,
rots deeper when left numb
Not all walls are built to hold,
not all truths are what they hum.

Life isn’t real
it just feels like it might be
when the pain bites clean.
But the grave isn’t the goal.
It’s the breath before it,
the silence
we dance inside,
pretending it speaks.

Dust-to-dust, sure.
But the soul?
It breaks different
like glass remembering light,
or a scream you swallowed
and called prayer.

You weren’t born to smile or weep,
no.
You were shaped to move
to mark some subtle shift in the void,
to fall forward
even when crawling.

Art lasts.
But time
time is a thief in velvet boots,
slitting courage open,
while your heart
marches a funeral beat,
wearing someone else’s armor.

The world is war.
Not guns and medals
but breath,
betrayal,
mornings.
Don’t herd with the hollow-eyed
be the chaos they never saw coming.
Be your own myth.

Don’t flirt with futures dressed in silk—
don’t mourn the past’s carcass.
It’s gone.
Rotting in memory’s echo chamber.

Breathe the now
tear it open.
Live like the ceiling leaks God.
And you're standing beneath it,
cup in hand.

Heroes die.
But their noise lingers
a footprint, maybe,
that the lost will find.
Or a wound
someone else mistakes for a map.

So rise
or crawl
or scream in motion.
Whatever fits.
Just don’t stop.

Let fate break its teeth
on your persistence.
Let patience sharpen you
and
Perseverance your
motto.

Because this isn’t just a dream
it’s a riddle
with blood on its lips
or
A dream caught in a
dream.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Dreamspine (after Longfellow)
May 20 · 43
Thief of the Night
Malcolm May 20
Who crept like rot through heaven’s door,
and stole the glow the moon once wore?
Who plucked the stars from velvet sky
left them bleeding, left them dry?

The silver cradle, cracked and gone,
no lull of light to lean upon.
The hush was thick, the dark was near,
no whisper far, no breath to hear.

The thief wore night like skin too tight,
and swallowed whole the edge of light.
They tore the seams of stitched-up flame,
and left the void without a name.

No song rose in midnights might, no gull took air nor mid nor flight,
just darkened ash where stars once sang and they left a empty pang.
A hush so loud it screamed through bone
a silence that devoured every tone.

Each shimmer, ripped from sky like thread,
each hymn of dusk now choked by the dead.
The frost clung hard to every vein,
no thaw, no sun, just gnawing pain.

No lark to stir the wounded sun,
no sparrow’s cry, no morning run.
Just echoes in a frost-bit field,
where once the warmth of wonder kneeled.

Who dared defile that sacred dome?
Who stripped the stars and fled their home?
No name, no footstep, no retreat
just wreckage left beneath their feet.

The world, a husk of breathless stone,
no glow, no grace, just gristle, bone.
The moon—unhooked, her bed grown cold,
her stories lost, her silence bold.

What worth this world, this wasted tomb?
Where shadows bloom and roses gloom.
Where joy once dared to dance with art
they tore the night, they stole my heart.

I curse their hands, their silent ****,
their artless theft, their frozen will.
They’ve burned the night, they’ve bled the skies,
and left me here with hollow eyes.

No songs remain, no light, no flame,
no clouds with thought, no breath, no name.
Just endless dark and hope’s last cry,
where dreams lay down their wings to die.

The thief has fled with heaven’s heat,
and left my soul in scorched defeat,
But still I stand with yonders stare,
Nothing left but darkness bare.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Thief of the night - a poem depression

It's a old poem that I thought I would share ! Unless you know what it feels like to be depressed you won't understand the meaning in the words .
Malcolm May 20
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.”
Malcolm May 20
I’ve bitten the stars for less
But her?
She is the storm behind my ribs,
a church I burn down just to worship what remains.

She’s not a woman.
She’s the collapse.
The white-fire fracture that bursts through my sleep,
makes gods tremble, makes the air bleed sugar and ash.

She is more.
More than breath, than ***, than soul.
More than hunger dressed as desire,
more than the dream I never knew I was dying in.

No verse holds her. No psalm.
No drug, no moonlit ghost.
She is the ache in every silence,
the rhythm that murders the metronome.

I want her like famines want bread,
like oceans want thunder.
She’s not the answer
she’s the flood that drowns the question.

I’ve touched a thousand fires.
None seared like her whisper.
She’s the madness I married with open veins,
the calm that slit my chaos clean.

Don’t speak to me of beauty
I’ve seen it bow before her shadow.
Don’t tell me to dream
I wake in her body.

She is all that I want
and everything I never dared carve from heaven.
She is more.
She is more than anything ever dared to be real.

And nothing
not love, not death, not gods
compares.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
May 20 · 80
When I Think of You
Malcolm May 20
When the sky forgets to burn,
and the clouds hang like tired eyes
you crack the dark
with a mischievous smile
and a laugh that dances louder than the rain.

You
a rebel sunbeam,
ripping holes in the grey of my mind,
sowing jokes where sorrow tried to root.
You
the reason gravity feels like grace.

I’ve walked through days thick with ash,
hands stuffed in pockets of “almost” and “too late,”
but then
you.
You and your wildlight heart.
You, who wear joy like armor
and kindness like warpaint.

You make the silence sing,
and even the broken clocks spin hopeful.

I’ve seen the world bite down—hard,
but you bit back with beauty,
with stories,
with silliness
that made even the grimace grin.

When I think of you
I remember how light feels.
Not the fluorescent kind.
The soul kind.
The laughter-soaked,
midnight-spilled-stardust kind.

You are the rescue I didn’t know I needed.
A lighthouse with jokes.
A firefly that never dies.
You turn every graveyard thought
into a garden joke.

And I
I am better when I stand in your glow
Even if you roll over an fall asleep after the show.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Inside joke at the end that she will get
May 20 · 58
All-Seeing Eye
Malcolm May 20
What is the All-Seeing Eye
Do you think it's real?
They said it was for peace,
a wire under your skin,
your laugh in a data vault,
your scream — timestamped and indexed.
They called it security,
but it had the stink of war.

We fed the All-Seeing Eye
with our faces,
our flaws,
our petty searches
“how to love,”
“how to lie,”
“how to disappear without dying.”
It watched.
It blinked never.

We are metadata ghosts,
grief tagged in 4K,
crying in front of smart TVs
that whisper back at night.
Our cameras smile when we don’t.
Our phones know before we do.

The walls listen
not metaphorically.
The bricks have ears
and the sky is bugged.
Satellites trace our hearts
like fragile heat signatures.
Love becomes a red dot.
Desire = anomaly.

Snowden wasn’t a leak
he was a scream.
A fracture.
He tore the veil and found code.
PRISM, XKeyscore , TripWire
not names,
but wounds.

This is not fiction.
China grades its citizens.
The West sells fear in high-def.
Your guilt is presumed,
your innocence archived,
your freedom
licensed, leased, denied.

What are we when every silence
has a transcript?
What are we
when eyes without lashes
watch us sleep?
A body of flesh,
tagged by code,
chained to clouds that never rain.

Encrypt your breath.
Whisper in analog.
Paint your truth on cave walls.
Rebel with rotten passwords.
Burn your SIM in holy fire.
Give them nothing but static,
nothing but noise,
because
data doesn’t bleed.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
Malcolm May 20
The truth might sets you free
but I’ve seen madmen laugh
in padded cells lined with their honesty.
I've watched liars dance in suits
slick with applause,
paid in full by a world allergic to reality.

Truth is the foundation of all virtue,
but virtue’s broke,
and the charming deceiver just bought a new yacht
on the bones of every honest fool
buried with their receipts
and unpaid dreams.

Honesty is the best policy I've heard
yeah?
Tell that to the corpse who spoke too soon,
or the mother who kissed her child goodbye
so she could lie one more day
and keep him fed.
Where find we difference?
Truth needs no defense?
Then why’s she always bleeding out in courtrooms
where the loudest liar
gets the biggest microphone?
Even crucifixion has better PR than truth.

A single truth can change everything
but a single lie
with a pretty dress
and a perfect pitch
can bury a thousand truths
and make the grave look like a garden.

The truth is always simple.
So is pain.
So is hunger.
So is death.
And none of them are easy to swallow.

Truth speaks even in silence
but silence is a graveyard
where brave words rot
while cowards hum lullabies to power.

Truth is constant?
Sure.
Until you tilt the mirror
and the angle makes the monster
look like a saint.

To speak the truth is to live with courage.
No
it’s to die with clarity,
unarmed and raw,
while the cowards wear medals
for what they never said,

Is this where truth finds?

Truth is light in the darkness.
But even light blinds,
and I’ve seen it
truth glowing so bright
it burns the eyes
and leaves you crawling
into shadow
just to see again.

So no
don’t hand me truth
like it’s holy.
I’ve seen too many altars
stained with it.
Give me a lie
that loves me back.
Give me madness
that sings me to sleep.
Give me the falsehood
that lets me breathe.
Let me win,
even if it means I lose
everything real.

Because the truth
sweet, broken *****
never wanted me free.
She wanted me
finished.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
May 2025
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