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Malcolm Mar 12
https://youtu.be/7Nr5B_xcbMg

We need no intro

These ******* wanna act like they don’t see the game,
Blind to the system,
they livin’ inside of a chains,
They got you distracted with the money,
cars and the fame,
who ya blame ?
But I see the ones pullin’ strings in the back of the frame,
calling your name,
ain't that a shame.
They poison the food an water,
they be lacin’ the sky with the fumes,
Twistin’ the news so the truth is erased from the room, Kaboom
Tellin’ you lies while they tighten the noose on your neck,
ah ha the terrorist in your head ?
******* control you through fear and a check, check check one two then what you gonna do, while government putting the screws in you
History’s twisted, they shift it,
they bury the fact,
never lacking attacking ******* keep macking,
They censor the rebels with the decimal with the decibels and never let real ones react in fact,
They keep us divided, ignitin’ the fire of hate,
trying to make you brake,
sneering, what's fake
******* be smilin’ while sealin’ our fate, no debate
They taxin’ your breath,
got you workin’ from cradle to grave,
Promise you freedom but keep you a government slave.
They poison your mind,
while they shackle your body in chains,
******* in power just laughin’,
they playin’ these games.
They burn all the books, they been twistin’ the history page,
Drownin’ the facts in a system that’s built like a cage.
They tell you to trust in the rules that they break,
But ******* got secrets they never explain.
They start up the wars, then they send you to die in their name,
While they countin’ their money and watchin’ you drown in the flames.
Every election’s a trick,
it’s a show,
it’s a play,
Same ******* be smilin’ while diggin’ your graves
They keep you distracted with *******, with dollars and pills,
Hopin’ you never wake up, to the system they built.
They censor the voices who tell you the truth,
******* be scared when we step in the booth.
They own all the money, the banks, and the land,
They killin’ the culture and takin’ the brand.
They tell you it’s safe, but they lyin’ instead,
Feedin’ you cancer, then taxin’ the dead.
They floodin’ the hood with the dope and the guns,
Then fillin’ the prisons with daughters and sons.
They teachin’ you not to be strong or be bold,
They want you obedient, easy to mold.
These ******* be watchin’ your every **** move,
Tappin’ your phone,
got a bug in the room.
The drones, politicians,
they using’ machines,
They pushin’ the scripts and they sellin’ you dreams.
They trackin’ your steps through the chip in your hand,
Controllin’ the world with a digital scan.
They keepin’ you poor while they printin’ the cash,
Takin’ your house and they kickin’ your ***.
They tell you to follow,
to listen,
obey,
But real ******* ain’t livin’ that way.
We see through the smoke,
we can tell it’s a lie,

We ready for war—ain’t no fear in our eyes.
Copyright ©️ January 2025
Malcolm Gladwin
Song: Truth
Lyrics: Malcolm Gladwin
January 2025
Malcolm Jun 25
Often I stand on life’s sidelines,
thinking – real calm, real clear:
I couldn’t give two *****,
’cause without a doubt,
you’d just want more…
and I ain’t about to give three or four.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025

Put that in your pipe an smoke it !
Malcolm Mar 12
Before you sleep my beautiful one,
Don't let sleep be jealous of your beauty,
Let us walk hand in hand down to the ocean,
Let the moonlight guide our way to the shore.

Let passion be a journey into love's depth,
As we walk, let night air consume us,
As the heavens spark with soft, gentle light.
Let the stars bathe us in their bright aura.

I want to hear the silence of each footprint
As we walk across the golden sand.
Your breath is of sweet delight.
Oh my love, hold my hand tight;
Never let it go as we walk in the shadow of the moon.

You spark and ignite every inch of my desire!
Let's stop for a minute and watch the ocean.
The time is upon us, let us absorb the moment.

The stars in the sky call your name softly,
And the sands dance on your perfect feet.
What stillness in the enormous heavens,
And what whispers of harmony we share.

In this timeless moment, I pull you close,
Your soft locks of hair through my hand,
Never have I felt such fleeting thrills!
Every desire crying loudly in silent echoes.

The night feels more lovely than the day;
It writes in a forbidden language of its own,
Eternal words through silent speech
The infinite name of Love!

You are my only lover, my fire burns for you!
You are my full and every desire!
Let us become one and hold each other.
The nights are dark, but our hour is everlasting!
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
August 2024
Malcolm Mar 22
Beamed up,
strapped down,
cold metal, sharp light
alien hands, no ****,
send me back.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Malcolm Apr 30
The sky bruises at the edges
violet veins bursting through the silence
like old wounds speaking.
Not blood, but memory
spilled across the firmament.

Distance is a color,
you just never noticed.
It hums in plum shadows on her cheek,
in amethyst regrets curled in the corners of old letters,
in the sigh of a cigarette smoke ghosting
toward someone who isn't there.

Color makes the world turn
not gravity, not time,
but the way rust stains a prayer on an iron gate,
how saffron screams from a monk’s robe
while the lavender dusk swallows the sun whole
without apology.

But black
black is something else.
It doesn’t turn.
It doesn’t beg.
It absorbs.

It’s the silence
between stars.
The unspoken between lovers.
The last thing your father’s eyes held
before he sank.

And violet
that hesitant echo of black
is distance turning its head away
just before the goodbye.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
APRIL 2025
Violets
Malcolm Apr 29
I loved you when I shouldn't have.
Didn’t plan to—never intended—
you were good enough
for those
blunt-edged
Tuesdays and
broken-glass Thursdays
you know,
those days you said
“Can you come over?”
and I
stupidly
always said
“Sure.”
(What’s my name?)
Not yours.
Never yours.

I didn’t want to fall,
but I did.
Even while we were
tangled in
half-closed lies and
barely buried truths.
It’s funny
how we ache for the poison
that already lives in our veins.
How I saw
from the start
we were chemicals
unstable,
volatile,
clinging to a rusted shelf
waiting to break.

I was strong.
You were sinking.
You dragged me down
while I taught you to rise.
I showed you
how to see.
But it was never
my job
to make you
a ******* lighthouse.

And that
that was where
I ******* lost it.

I should’ve stuck to the plan:
2 hours of escape,
3 hours of noise,
no more.
Tuesdays.
Thursdays.
Send you home
to your shadow world.
But no.
I carried you
into music,
into meaning,
into books that bled your name
on every page.
You said forever.
I said
nothing is.

And still
you walked.
You left.
But not a ******* day goes by
where my name
doesn’t haunt
your spine
like a ghost.

We were more
than you’ll ever know.
More than I’ll ever find again.
But I’ve made
friends
with silence.
I’ve married the ache,
swallowed the ending,
stitched it
into the back of my ribs.

You say you left
to find yourself.
*******.
You found yourself
in my hands.
And you wanted
to show the ones who broke you
how tall you stood.
But you forgot
who taught you to walk.

The cost
was everything.
And you?
You walk easy
because you were handed it all.
Took it.
Wore it.
Forgot it.

I wasn’t perfect
but with me,
you were real.
You were raw.
And now?
You hide.
You live a ******* lie,
afraid of being touched
by anything true again.
Because you know who you are.
You tasted truth.
And now you rot
in its shadow.

Do the crows in your skull
peck memories into migraines?
Do you flinch
at the echo of “us”?
I don’t mind.

I walk.
Alone.
With that little fluffy gift.
Not crying.
Not reaching.
Not breaking.
Not needing.
If I had one more day
fine.
If I had a hundred years
fine.
Because none of them
include
you.

You,
who swallowed me
from the inside.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
VOLATILE
APRIL 2025
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
Malcolm Mar 12
Listen to War With Myself - Malcolm Gladwin by Malcolm Gladwin on #SoundCloud

https://on.soundcloud.com/rWsh6UA9FXEgY8Nh7


Shadows keep creeping in deep,
Battling demons,
misleading my reason,
they scream in the dark when I sleep
Drowning in echoes,
the voices are vicious,
they slither,
they tighten,
they reap,
Falling in cycles,
I struggle for silence, the war in my mind cuts too deep
Trapped in a cage of regret
Chained to the burdens I never forget
Poisonous venom,
it runs through my veins,
Lies in my ear keep appearing, they steer me, they whisper, they pull and restrain
War with myself, and I’m caught in the fire, still burning, refusing to break,
Lost in the fight
Nowhere to hide,
when I hide I'm blind
I been waging this war,
but I’m losing myself,
every battle keeps dragging me down
Every step that I take is a weight on my chest, and my soul is still trapped underground
I been waging this war, but I’m losing myself, every battle keeps dragging me down
Every step that I take is a weight on my chest, and my soul is still trapped underground
Falling but never let go,
Wrestling doubt while I’m counting the cuts that been carving their way through my soul
Locked in a prison of thoughts,
I’ve been caught in the cycle,
the damage unfolds
Carrying burdens in vain, but the pain is the fuel for the battles I hold
Wounds that I hide in my flesh,
Cutting me deeper with every regret,
Drowning in silence,
I scream without sound
Falling in spirals,
survival is vital, but all of the weight pulls me down,
War with myself, and I’m lost in the shadow, the fight isn’t over, I drown
Stuck in the past
Nothing will last
Fear is a ghost in my head,
Looking for answers, but all that I find is the weight of the words that I’ve bled
Falling through nightmares,
I fight with the silence, the echoes, they push me instead
Building a kingdom of wisdom, but burning it down every night till it’s dead
Sick of the cycle, it stays
Sick of the war that keeps dragging my name
Sick of the mirror that breaks when I stare
Fading to black while my past keeps attacking, the weight of it hangs in the air
War with myself, and I fight till my knuckles are shattered and blood stains the ground
Nowhere to run
Nowhere but down
I been waging this war, but I’m losing myself, every battle keeps dragging me down
Every step that I take is a weight on my chest, and my soul is still trapped underground
I been waging this war, but I’m losing myself, every battle keeps dragging me down
Every step that I take is a weight on my chest, and my soul is still trapped underground
Maybe the fire was fate
Maybe the pain was the lesson I needed to sharpen the blade that I take
Maybe the war isn’t something to fear but the reason I’m built to create
Maybe the battle inside is the spark that can push me to open the gate
Maybe the past isn’t gone
Maybe the weight is what made me this strong
Maybe the chaos is where I belong
Maybe the war isn’t over, but now I can see that I’m more than the wrong
Maybe the voices don’t own me, they showed me the struggle was worth it to climb
Still standing tall
Ready to fight
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
January 2025
War with myself
All rights reserved
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 May 2
We live on stolen soil
****-stained by pride,
blood-branded by flags,
and haunted by the ghosts of truth we buried beneath capitalism.

No one owns this land
but we all die trying to claim it.
White blames Black.
Black blames White.
Distraction, deflection,
while the real ******* villains
sign contracts with the Devil
in corner offices with panoramic views
of the cities they’re starving.

They hide
in plain ******* sight
drinking $900 whiskey,
while your grandma chooses
between heat and insulin.

The system is not broken
it’s built this way.
Crime? That’s survival in a jungle
where the lions drive Range Rovers
and the hyenas run for Parliament.

Education?
They teach us how to kneel.
Skills?
Only if they serve the machine.
Energy?
Sold to foreign devils
while we eat cold soup in the dark.
Infrastructure?
Rotting bridges like our hope
hollow, rusted, sagging
under the weight of hypocrisy.

Unemployment?
That’s a feature, not a flaw.
Keep them hungry,
keep them angry,
but never too united.

And politicians?
******* pigs in silk suits.
They don’t serve us
we serve them.
They gorge on lies,
******* out policies
that choke the poor
while their children fly first class to Swiss schools.

They smile on screens,
preach peace and progress,
but behind closed doors
they're circle-jerking over oil rights
and who's getting the next cut
of your grandmother’s pension.

You want change?
Then stop tweeting.
Burn something.
Make fear your language,
like they taught you.
Not because violence is noble
but because nothing else works.

Once, tyrants feared truth.
Now, they own it.
Twist it.
Broadcast it.
And call it "news."
ah that's Fake News - ******* idiot
They made lies the air we breathe,
so now we choke on fiction
and call it freedom.

They convinced us
we’re enemies
color-coded,
class-divided,
tribalized,
distracted.

Mean­while,
the world burns
and the arsonists auction off the ashes.

This isn’t society.
This is a farm.
We are cattle.
Fattened on fear,
milked for labor,
then slaughtered for profit.
Our children inherit nothing
but debt, war, trauma,
and a planet rigged to implode.

And still we smile.
Still we say “please.”
Still we wave the flag
while standing in line for our own ******* execution.

We tell each other "Love wins."
We post peace signs.
Meanwhile,
a man somewhere is choking his wife
because the rent’s late
and the rage has nowhere else to go.

We say "sorry"
like it scrubs away the scars.
But sorry doesn't fix broken teeth.
Or burned cities.
Or empty stomachs.
Or shattered dreams.

You want revolution?
Then stop hoping.
Start haunting.
Make the halls of power tremble
with your footsteps.
Make corruption scream
before it dies.

Because this isn’t about politics.
This is about survival.
This is about soul.
About taking back
what we were never even allowed to imagine.

Imagine a world
where a liar in a suit gets dragged
instead of promoted.
Bang!
Where corruption ends with consequence.
Bang!
Where justice isn’t a concept
it’s a ******* blade,
Bang!
Who's next in line !
Deceive this country
Deceive these people
Bang!
Who is next in line !
No time for incompetent, liars and thieves ! Because we have something for those politics
Bang!
Who is next in line !

No more praying.
No more petitions.
No more playing nice with demons
who smile better than saints.

This is our fire.
This is our scream.
We built this hell
and now,
we burn it the **** down,
We only get one life
Why shouldnt it be our best life !
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
Please don't share or take it other than a vent of frustration at a broken system that drain the life blood
Malcolm Mar 12
Welcome, dear soul, to the fiery embrace,
Where pleasure and sin find their rightful place.
Forget what you’ve heard, the lies they’ve spread
Hell’s not torment; it’s where life’s truly led.

Lust and desire aren’t vices to shame,
They’re art forms perfected in passion’s flame.
A dance of bodies, a feast of the flesh,
In Hell, these pleasures are always fresh.

Heaven may promise a cloud and a harp,
But its paradise is tepid, stale, and sharp.
No touch, no taste, no thrill of the chase
Just hymns on repeat in a sterile space.

Gluttony’s king in this molten domain,
With endless banquets and wine that won’t wane.
Greed’s not a crime but a game we adore
Dive into gold, there’s always more.

Envy and wrath? They fuel our fun,
Competitive flames under the devil’s sun.
Pride? Oh darling, we’ve mastered the art,
In Hell, self-love is the beating heart.

And let’s not forget our master below,
Lucifer, charming, with a radiant glow.
No ruler of chains, but a host with finesse,
Inviting you in with a wink and a jest.

Meanwhile in Heaven, they whisper and pray,
Clinging to halos that tarnish each day.
What do they do? Does anyone know?
All we’ve heard is “harps” and a dull golden glow.

Angels pretend it’s the place to reside,
But secretly sneak to our wild side.
Gabriel sings at our endless soirees,
While cherubs peek through Hell’s fiery haze.

So step through the gates and leave guilt behind,
In Hell, you’re free to indulge the mind.
Heaven can keep its rigid façade
Down here, we honor the lives you’ve led flawed.

Eternity’s waiting, the flames softly roar,
Welcome to Hell, your new, thrilling decor
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
December 2024
Welcome to hell
Malcolm Apr 4
I hope you’re awake.
The world is breaking.
We don’t want comfort
we want peace.

They say you made us.
Then why does hunger
wear your name?
Why do your children
sleep in the cold?

We ask for quiet.
You answer with silence.
We sing to the sky,
but no echo returns.

Did you craft this grief?
The pain we hold?
Or did we give you shape
to carry the blame?

We argue, we fight,
we fall for belief
but no hand lifts us
when we fall.

Your name lives in laws,
in fire,
in war.
If you wrote the book,
why let it burn?

No crown.
No wings.
No final word.
Just hearts breaking
in the dark.

Still, the bombs fall.
The children weep.
The oceans rise.
And hope thins.

Are you still watching,
or did you turn away
before the smoke rose?

I used to pray.
Now I reflect.
If you are real,
then why the silence?

PS:
We need a miracle.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
Letter to heaven
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
Malcolm Mar 12
What is poetry but a history of the human heart,
its joys and aches woven through time,
a thread of truth spun by countless hands.
All poets speak the same language,
wrestling with the same restless spirits:
fear, love, death, longing, adventure, failure.
We are seekers of what lies beneath,
hunters of shadows and light.

The pleasure of rhythm,
the echoes of sound—
words that feel more
and mean better.
We stretch them across the silence,
carry them from the known
to the uncharted,
wild, unhinged,
and alive.

Oh, how we long to hold poetry in our marrow,
to store every verse,
each fleeting line,
this romance with time.
We write for ourselves,
yet always for strangers,
hoping they find pieces of themselves
in the fragments of our truths.

Why do you read my words?
When your gaze is indifferent to me,
do you stay because they hold something real?
Do you feel comfort
or hear connection
in the quiet rhythm of the page,
as your eyes trace the spaces between lines?

Or is it because we love poetry
more than we love ourselves?
Because it sits uniquely,
where silence was—
a placeholder for longing.
These words,
small as they are,
stretch farther than the edges of this page.

When you saw the title, did it call you?
Did it offer a whisper, a welcome,
a taste of something untasted,
a key to a door of simple lines?
How did two words pull you near—
two words that opened
the depths of this moment,
this offering,
this memory of the human heart?
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
September 2024
Malcolm Mar 12
I walk.
I walk with grace.
I walk with grace and care.
I walk with grace and care, unseen.
Who am I, though rarely noticed?

I speak.
I speak with kindness.
I speak with kindness and truth.
I speak with kindness, truth, and respect.
Who am I, though often forgotten?

I stand.
I stand for justice.
I stand for justice and peace.
I stand for justice, peace, and love.
Who am I, though not perfect?

The answer you seek
Is what you create.
A decent human waits unseen.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
December 2024
Malcolm Jun 25
Thy hollow eyes like haunted lanterns blaze.
In silence dost thou bear thy soul's unrest,
While madness cloaks thee in a shadowed haze.

Did sirens draw thee with their viper’s breath,
To drown thee in a brine of love and fear?
Or didst thou dream too close the verge of death,
And wake to find no guiding angels near?

I knew thee once all fire, fierce and fair,
Thy voice a flame that sang in measured grace.
Now wand’ring winds do toss thy golden hair,
And chaos paints strange sorrow on thy face.

Yet rise, O Muse, from ash and bitter rain
Let verse restore thy light, and break thy chain.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
What plague afflicts thy breast - A Shakespearean Sonnet

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

Malcolm Gladwin : A Sonnet
Collection of Original English and Shakespearean Sonnets

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 Jul 17
Oh wise poet, tell me something that is true...

In life, there are two certainties:
“Death comes for all of us,
and every man pays taxes.”

There is no greater truth than this...
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
What the Poets Know
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
Malcolm Jun 30
I climbed out from under my own noise,
the static of too many selves
all speaking at once.
I just wanted silence,
or at least
a glimpse of something real
beyond this glassy, shifting mask I wear.

For a moment,
I thought I found it
I felt light,
untethered,
soaring past the reach of what they made me.
But I flew too far,
and forgot my own wings were stitched with lies.

My eyes
yes, they opened.
But they looked inward and saw only fog.
My mind
it turned, it turned,
but always into walls.

I still hear them
when the night softens
and sleep forgets to close the door.
The voices,
not cruel—just certain.
And that certainty cuts.

I pretended to know why I keep breathing.
Told people there’s a plan,
that I’ve got it sorted.
That’s the performance.
That’s the whole show.

And when I say I’m wise,
what I mean is
I’m tired of being wrong
so I’ve learned to speak
in riddles.

I’m not anchored.
I’m not grounded.
I’m a feeling in search of a name,
a boat without a harbor,
tossed in the ache of old waves.

I once thought the wind would save me.
But even that
whispers like them now:
"Where do you think you're going?"

They told me the climb would make me whole,
but I lost pieces with every pull.
Each truth I reached turned into smoke,
and every promise
just a joke.

I once believed the sky would catch me
a soul too cracked to feel the scratch,
but falling taught what is flight disguised
the stars don’t speak
they only shine.

My silence grew its own sharp teeth,
it gnawed my sleep, it bit beneath.
I smiled in rooms,
I couldn’t stay,
then vanished softly,
day by day.

There’s a hush where my name should be,
a space between the ‘you’ and ‘me.’
I’ve become a ghost with lungs and skin,
forever locked in where I’ve been.

And still they call,
those quiet screams,
the ones that echo through my dreams.
Not demons, no–
just echoes made,
from every truth
I’ve thrown away!

I walked so far to not be me,
but found myself in every fleeting minute,
in shadows cast,
in windows cracked,
no matter where, I still come back.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Malcolm Jun 25
They say a painting hangs in silence,
but listen closer.
There’s breath in the pigment,
ache in the line.
Each stroke: a fingertip pressed to time
a plea,
a promise,
a person,
or a price.

Da Vinci’s Mona wasn’t for you.
Klimt’s lovers weren’t thinking of your ache.
Picasso broke forms, not hearts,
and yet we all see ourselves in his fractures.
Van Gogh painted stars
not to claim the sky,
but to survive it.

Caravaggio lit his sinners with holy fire,
while Vermeer captured silence
as if it were a form of prayer.
Frida poured pain like molasses onto linen.
Turner wept storms into colour.
O'Keeffe painted the body
without apology.
Chagall made lovers float
because gravity was too dull for love.

What madness, then,
to say a moment
is yours
because the pose feels familiar?
Because you too saw two figures beneath a tree?
As if love and death
are trademarks,
as if a cherub in the clouds
belongs to one man’s hand.

No two said, “you stole my sun,”
though they all painted it.
No master shouted theft
when another touched sorrow
with the same red.

The artist owns not the subject,
but the sweat.
The trembling hand.
The night stared down with doubt.
The day it was finally finished.
And more sacred still
every moment
they toiled,
half-blind with longing,
to make something
that might be
beautiful.

And here’s the irony:
today’s loudest mouths
the self-appointed guards of “originality”
pen their spare lines with surgical caution,
write in whispers
to avoid the radar of truth.
Minimal not by craft,
but by fear
fear of artificial detection,
the same that bleeds through
minimal lines.

Yet the quiet hypocrisy shows
in the empty space between their words,
the absence of soul where colour should be.
For the difference is this:

One form dares the test.
The other
hides from it,
until they meet.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
When Love Met Canvas - aka - I Bet you think this song is about you ! Lol
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 Jul 10
she's asleep
and I’m not.
my arm’s around her waist,
my face buried in the space where her neck curves soft.
it smells like us—like skin, heat, the night that hasn’t fully left.
I don’t want to move.
not because I’m tired
because I’m afraid the moment will slip.

her back breathes against me, slow.
that rhythm I’d follow into the dark if I had to.
there’s light starting to break in through the blinds,
drawing gold across her spine,
the little arch above her hips,
where I kissed her last before we drifted.

her skin—God,
it’s warm like the world never is.
smooth, like it was poured over bone just for me.
her shoulder, her collarbone,
the ***** of her chest against mine.
I know every part of her,
but still I look.
every **** time.

there’s this bruise on her thigh.
a mark I left.
not from hurt—
from want.
from holding her like I was starving.
because sometimes I am.

her lips are parted,
just a little.
like she’s whispering to the room without saying anything.
her hair’s all over the pillow—wild, tangled, beautiful.
I remember how I gripped it.
how she looked back at me like nothing else mattered.
how she took me—no fear, no pause.
that fire in her…
nothing else burns like that.

but now?
now she’s calm.
like a storm that passed but left the warmth behind.
her fingers twitch a little,
then slide over my hand.
she finds me even in sleep.
every time.

I don’t speak.
I don’t need to.
this quiet is louder than anything else.
just me and her.
no one watching.
no masks.
no pretending.

she stirs.
presses herself back into me.
and I pull her closer
like I’ll never get enough.

her body fits mine
like we built each other out of all the broken pieces that finally made sense.

outside, the world is already starting its noise.
but in here?
it’s still us.
just me and her,
and this space we made
out of heat and breath
and something I’ll never find anywhere else.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
When Morning finds Us
Malcolm 4d
When the Moon Refused the Sea
I found the night beneath my nails,
black with the silence of undone prayers.
The stars were dull coins in a wishing jar
that no god ever shook.

I planted laughter in the soil
but nothing bloomed
except a vine of sighs
and the soft decay of maybe.

The wind spoke in riddles I once knew,
before language bled from my mouth
like wine from a cracked chalice.
Now even my dreams stutter
in dialects of ash.

A mirror broke inside me
the day the moon refused the sea
left the tide to curl like smoke
and the shore to whisper, “wait.”

Where are the ones who used to sing
with oil lamps lit in their ribs?
Where are the dancers
who knew how to bleed into rhythm
and still rise?

Tonight, I carry a lantern of salt.
It burns only for those
who have loved something
that could not love them back.

And still
I walk toward morning.
Barefoot.
Unbelieving.
But burning all the same.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
When the Moon Refused the Sea
Malcolm Jul 16
Sunlight kisses
Morning dew
Shadows stretch
Whispers through blue

Raindrops linger
Branches sway
Insects hum
Time slips away

Footsteps echo
Dreams fade
Gravel cracks
Night hugs shade

Hearts wilt
Eyes close
Memory stays
Silence softly flows
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
When the Quiet Comes
Malcolm Apr 4
I stopped it
right there
in my mind
between one tear
and the next blink.
The world cracked still.
Like God forgot the script.
Like clocks
finally choked on their lies.

And I walked
barefoot,
through the frozen ache of light
curling like fog around a laugh
you almost had.

I tasted
the rain before it hit the ground,
let it linger on my tongue
like the names I never said.
Kissed the steam
off your coffee cup
and whispered secrets
to the dust motes in your room
they listened better than people ever did,
I held your smell in my nose,
drowning in each scent.

A hummingbird mid-flap,
stuck between flight and forever
I kissed it too.
Soft as ambition
dying in a cold city.

I held a flower
for a thousand years.
It never withered.
My hand did.

I found love
locked in the way your lip curled
right before goodbye.
I held that moment
until my own heart cracked
like glass under memory.

You think stopping time heals?
No.
It just slows the pain
to a crawl
so you can savor it.

I walked through lovers
like churches.
Empty.
Sacred.
Haunted by prayers
no one answers anymore.
I touched your cheek,
and you didn’t flinch.
First time.
Last time.
Every time.

I bent over my younger self
still full of fire and delusion.
Didn’t wake him.
Didn’t warn him.
He needed the fall.
We always need the fall.

If I lived forever,
I’d write poems on comet tails
and stitch stars
into the silence.
But I’d still miss you.
Every hour.
Of every never-ending day.

Time isn’t the enemy
it’s the proof
we ever mattered.

But still
in that breathless hush
where nothing moved
I kissed the sky,
held the world in my palm,
and told it:

“Stay here.
Don’t move.
Just let me feel
everything
before it’s gone.”
in the moment
forever.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
April 2025
When Time Held Its Breath for Me
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
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
Malcolm 11h
Tears don’t always fall.
They drift in the mind
like satellites
loosed from orbit,
slow-motion signals
across the blackroom of time.
Not grief,
but gravity remembering.

Love isn’t a moment
it’s a constellation
burned into the hands of an oaken clock and every breath,
a frequency that keeps pulsing
long after touch has stilled.

You never forget the day they vanished, the shape they left behind
an imprint in the air and universe
like heat after lightning,
like a silhouette scorched
into the filmstrip of your soul.

Some things pass in a second
But memory?
Memory is spacetime’s rebel.
It lingers longer than a moment itself
It's a glitch in the hourglass,
a clock that refuses
to stop ticking
even when the hands are gone
it still chimes.

They may have drifted
maybe forgotten from time to time ,
maybe just changed shapes
but when you reach inside
you still see their face
in reflections,
hear their voice
in the background static
of late-night silence.

We carry them:
in bloodline-chords,
in laughlines carved from shared jokes,
in arguments we still finish
alone.

Moments become galaxies
in the afterglow
brightbursts we revisit in an instance
when everything else fades.
Time dissolves,
but memory is ours to keep
memory is a stardust archivist.
It is our catalog of love lost and found
in the particles
we breathe without knowing.

And so we orbit one another forever
even when apart,
family and loved ones remain
a constellation-map
etched in soul-skin.

The world moves forward,
but the hands of time on some clocks refuse to reset.
Because we were built to feel
to remember,
to carry love
beyond the math of minutes and moments.

And when the universe forgets
we don’t because love lives in our hearts forever

We gather the remnants,
build temples from echoes,
and stand together
in the gravity
of what once was,
holding it all until the day memory fold us together
again
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
Where Memory outlives Time
Malcolm Jul 14
Where Noise Can't Reach
Some believed I was a citadel
stone-walled, serene,
a monument untouched by storm.
Others glimpsed the fissures,
the tremble in my foundation
just before collapse.
But no one dared to knock,
to test if the halls echoed hollow.
They never knew
I didn’t run from people.
I ran from the famine
of being surrounded
yet starved of connection.

The inner silence I chose
was not empty,
but sacred
a chapel carved
from the marrow of self-preservation.
bright coloured mosaics
clouded dull
Because the loudest loneliness
sits beside laughter
that forgets your name.

I watched the world’s masquerade
faces polished like glass,
eyes glinting with absence.
Their words were confetti
bright, falling fast,
never meant to stay
blown by a simple breeze.

So I built my retreat
from quieter things:
dust, breath,
the pulse beneath thought.
I wrapped myself in stillness
stitched from nights that never asked
why I wept without tears,
my loneliness in the dark.

I remember warmth
like sunlight on skin
too long kept from morning.
I remember hands
that felt like promises
before they slipped into memory.
But I also remember
how a touch can vanish
even while it holds you.

Now, I live
in the space between collisions
where no one knocks,
no one shouts,
where the world forgets
and I remember
without bleeding.

Not lonely
just carved into solitude,
a sculpture of what survived.
Not cold
just hidden
where noise can’t reach
and silence finally listens back.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
Where Noise Can’t Reach
Malcolm Jun 25
When I was green, the heavens oft did frown,
With tempests dark, yet sometimes pierced by gold.
My garden, scarr’d by rain that beat it down,
Bore naught of fruit its gentle womb might hold.

Lo, autumn cometh with her solemn tread,
And I must seek my grove, now left forlorn.
The yield I ought have gatherèd lies dead
By briny tides to grave and shadow borne.

In soil thus sick, by salt and sorrow marred,
What hidden balm could nurse a seedling’s breath?
May blossoms dreamt in sleep the frost discard?
Or must all bloom be choked by time and death?

An inward fiend grows glutted on my pain,
It drinks my heart and sings in tones profane.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Where Nothing Grows

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

Malcolm Gladwin : A Sonnet
Collection of Original English and Shakespearean Sonnets

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 28
Words come from the distant deep,
where silence hums and secrets sleep.
Thoughts that flicker, wild or meek,
drip like rain from the soul's dark beak.

They rise from marrow, not from air,
from bloodied dreams or whispered prayer.
Sometimes steep, a summit scream,
sometimes soft as a lullaby dream.

They ride on crows with razored wings,
or butterflies with silver strings.
Some arrive like axe-blade sighs,
some as tears in a child’s wide eyes.

They are born beneath the skin,
in quiet wars we hold within.
Lines crawl out through open scars,
stanzas shaped like fallen stars.

Married in unison — pulse and page,
they outlive time, they outgrow age.
A poem doesn’t end — it loops, it plays,
it’s sung through moonlight and firelit days.

Words don’t rot, they bloom and bite,
etched in ink or screamed at night.
They are rivers of chocolate, or ******-red,
they live when we are long past dead.

So write — with truth, with flame, with breath,
for poems cheat both time and death.
They touch the places no one sees,
they plant forever in the breeze.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
June 2025
Where Poems Are Born
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 Mar 13
Tonight,
the river is
not water
but song,
its body unraveled silk,
golden-threaded murmurs,
spilling, spiraling,
drowning the hush
of the land in hymn,
in motion,
in breath.

Every ripple
a hand stretched toward dawn,
every hush
a heartbeat echoing through the soil,
unfastening morning
like a clasp at the throat of time.

Her body
Like a unwritten scripture,
Beauty beyond comparison
shifting verses,
shifting
a road carved by the hands
of the unseen,
soft fire licking the bellies
of unturned stones,
reed-thin prayers drift on high
rising to sky.

Each echoed note
A musical masterpiece
of her body a light sound-spun  through incantation,
whispering secrets to the root-veined hush,
where silence folds into bloom,
In a secret garden
known to none .

The wind
smears its fingerprints across the sky,
stains the horizon with blue spun from memory,
bows its head in reverence
to the aching dawn.

The wheat hums.
The river sighs.

Somewhere,
a blade of grass bends and sings.

Somewhere,
the breath of lovers writes
its own psalm in the dust-kissed hush
of a bridge where names,
hands, mouths, moments,
are carved into forever.

And oh, the clouds
burning alabaster, forgotten ghosts
exhale light,
let golden thread unspool in restless rivulets,
let carefully crafted prisms scatter
across the trembling skin of the world.

Making lines across the earth.

Every unturned stone
a story.

Every tree
a violin swaying and bowing to the wind.

Every feather and wing
unfolding like an unread letter,
written in the ink of all things unsaid.

Here,
even time drips honey
through the curve of the earth,
even the stars
are just myths waiting to be remembered,
even the sea
ancient, unsleeping mother
knows the melody of our unspoken longing.

The river opens
not like a wound
but like a mouth learning the first syllable of joy,
like a child pressed against the chest of the universe,
like hands unthreading the knots of night,
like your name,
unspoken yet known
in the hush of the wind.

And in this moment
where light devours shadow,
where the earth hums in the language of gold,
where the sun unstitches the silence of forgotten fields

we are not lost.

We are
becoming.

Something  
      greater,  

           that will find itself  
                within  
                     itself.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025
Where the River Becomes Light
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 Jul 14
Whisper, and the Stars Forget You
Who listens now,
when a voice breaks the silence like a wing through frost?
Not the flame-eyed watchers above
they burn too bright to bend.

If one touched me,
even with gentled hand,
I’d vanish
a moth stunned by the pulse of a god's breath.

What we name beautiful
is the mouth of the storm smiling,
just before it swallows the field.

We tremble
not at the scream,
but at the hush that comes
before it chooses not to strike.

Every seraph is a wound in light.
Every halo, a blade.
Still, I call.
Not for mercy,
but recognition.

You, bone-feathered keepers of silence,
what are you now
but echoes wrapped in ancient dust?

Bring me no visions.
Bring me the cloak you wore
when you walked with the blind boy,
feet ***** from the road,
laughter like something nearly human.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
Whisper, and the Stars Forget You
Malcolm Jul 17
And in the hush where jasmine drifts,
your breath slows time, your fingers lift
the velvet trace of all we’ve known
a golden thread through dusk we’ve sewn.

Eyes closed, hearts bound in scented air,
where love is found, and stays, and dares.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
Whispers
Malcolm Mar 18
Who am i really?
I wear the masks they whisper about,  
Words spoken in the hush of broken corridors,  
Light bringers or public enemy number one,  
black for the night, white for the oath,  
red when the wires scream.  
I walk unseen through the veins of the world,  
The shape shifter that walks amongst the wolves and sheep,  
a pulse, a fracture, a glitch in the circuit.  
I am the ghost that never stays dead,  
Messiah that rises time and time again,  
They call me a keyboard cowboy,  
I know the dark because I had to.  
You don’t track a predator by standing in the sun,  
wolves don't just knock on the door,  
Don't you know,  
They lurk,  
I hunt,  
Crosshairs,
Fire
Dead!

I have stood with the blue team  
steel-*****, firewalled, watching the abyss watch back,  
Jedi.  
While worms nawwd at the core, trying to eat through the system.  
I have moved with the red team  
silent hands, slipstream body,  
a wraith in the blind spots of giants.  
Drilling our way through the earth to come out on the other side,  
to see what's unseen,  
to hear the unspoken,  
to find the hairline cracks in the impenetrable,  
I have drowned in the purple dusk  
where order and rebellion  
collapse into static and bones,  
Where community communication finds comfort.  

Tell me—who owns the truth?  
Tell me—who decides the crime?  
Tell me—how do you catch what doesn't exist?  

They call me villain.  
Ghost. Phantom. A shadow that never asks permission.  
Digits flash—unauthorized.  
Vaults unsealed—malicious intent.  
Secrets peeled raw—classified breach.  
Knowledge is what I seek—raw unfiltered.  
I rupture the systems of those worthy,  
a howl in the wires,  
a storm that does not obey.  
And yet—  
they never ask why the lock was picked,  
What was behind the door.  

They call me guardian.  
Sentinel. A shield made of wreckage.  
They call me protector  
when I patch the cracks before the flood.  
But no one asks how I learned to swim in the dark,  
Even when you lose your soul to save others.  

They call me enigma, breaker, builder, ruiner, redeemer,  
a paradox in a world made of glass, fibres that stretch the boundaries of the earth,  
I see the fractures  
the vulnerabilities, the rusted locks,  
the way everything is breakable  
if you know where to press,  
Some call it crime.  
Some call it sight.  
Some call it inevitable.  

I am silence in a world that never stops screaming.  
I am lightning crashing through the wall.  
I am the unseen weight tipping the scale.  
Sneaking in and gone before you know it.  
Footprints on the floor?  
Fingerprints?  
I doubt it.  

And still, I ask myself  
Who the **** am I?  
Just a shadow?  
Or truth
Copyright Malcolm
March 2025
Who am I
Malcolm 1d
Haiku 1 - Better Mad than Wet

Anger keeps me dry
golden showers lack respect
then trickle downhill.

Moral of story : better to be ******* than ****** on

Haiku 2 - Light a ******* Match

Breath like rotting pride,
they speak **** and expect thanks.
please light matches next time.

Moral of the story : when someone talks **** , just light a match

Haiku 3 - Morning Regrets

Man sleeps itchy ***,
wakes to find his finger’s stink
morning shame unfolds.

Moral of the story: Scratch wisely — what you don’t see can still smell.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
July 2025
Take it or leave it
Malcolm Mar 12
Solitary spark,
Threaded through fate’s silent loom,
Veiled in silver dusk.

Held in fleeting dream,
Breath and hunger gild its chains,
Flesh, a borrowed home.

Gossamer unwinds,
Light unlaces night’s embrace,
Echoes drift like mist.

Nothing fades, but folds,
Rivers cradle their own gaze,
Waves return to sea.

Form, a fleeting name,
Time’s light touch reshapes and molds,
Yet I still remain.

This is how it is and how it has always been - Always ...
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
January 2025
Woven in Whispers
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 Mar 12
A flash of light,
sharp, broken glass underfoot,
her smile
captive, electric, a god's cruel gift
glows in the fog,
flickers, trembles,
an untamed star
lost in the city's steel veins.
But what is beauty if it drips from the mouth of ghosts,
whispering her name in silence?

She stands,
a flame scattered across the concrete sky
softer than any dream that burns the soul,
wilder than what we pretend to touch.
Do you remember how her voice shivers through you,
cracked vinyl spinning memories,
dust, decay, and heat?
Gods do not look this way;
they cower behind the scent of burning roses.

Her fingers wrap around the world,
each movement violent with grace,
but I see the dark beneath
that sweetness,
and I wonder if love is the rope
she ties around herself
or the knife she drives through the hearts
of the lost.

Her laugh is a fracture in time,
a moment too pure,
too much,
that I swallow whole
like acid, burning my throat.
What do we call that
when nothing left feels real?
When her eyes turn,
and the night begins again—
silent, dark,
and heavy as broken wings?

But I cannot forget
the way her spirit
ignited the ruins of me
one smile, one movement,
a blaze too fierce to die,
too pure to touch without ruin.

Do you remember the sky when she passed
how it bent
and bled for her?

And yet, she is gone.
She always was.
An illusion,
a creation of something I cannot hold.
But God, how she burned.
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
March 2025

— The End —