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Through our days, they come & go
Shadows all through afterglow,
Some make impact, some obtuse,
Hilariously, some are loose....
Occasionally, one you love
Soaring through the clouds, above....
Then, again.... the ones you hate
Grit your teeth and aggravate?
But best of all, there's those that laugh
Bust the gut enough to ****!!!
Them's the best, my errant friend,
They'll last you till.... the very end!

[email protected]
Joshin with my old sidekick, Don Bouchard.
Another character from another time.
Play it slow-
not for romance,
but because the strings are blistered,
and every note splits the sky
with fire.

Stroll through the panic,
it’s routine:
duct tape on the windows,
radio on low,
a list of missing birds
tacked to the wall
like fallen saints.

You said you'd carry me,
but the world’s gone grey,
and the olive tree’s
just smoke now.

There’s no audience left.
Just wind
and its thousand-watt warning.

Still, your spine curves to the rhythm
like a fever dream from Babylon,
hips like warning sirens,
ankles sunk in ash.

I want to understand
what we ruined,
but only at a pace I can stand,
only with eyes closed.

There was a time
we dressed like lovers.
Now it’s mylar blankets
and filtered masks.

We knew the promise;
we broke it anyway,
above it,
beneath it,
inside it.

Someone keeps whispering
about children,
as if hope still blooms
in poisoned soil.

Play it slow,
with bare hands if you must.
But don’t pretend this isn’t a requiem.
Don’t dress it up in velvet or vows.
Just let the music float
and burn,
like everything else.
SoCal climate: golden skies, ash in your lungs, beauty on fire.
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
Time, like dry sand,
Trickles between the fingers.
Substance-less it flows
As if the yesterdays
Had no more importance
Than the tomorrows?
As if the complexity
Of just, being,
Quantified the
Resultant meaningfulness,
Of the ebb and the flow?

For twixt the expanse
Of birth and death
Lies the pulsing vacuum
Of time, of being.

Indulgently,
It is ladled, consumed
With the importance
Of self.
In actuality
It emulates a flatulence,
A triviality,
A nothingness
Of ego,
A vanity!

For where
In these four-score,
Years of Life,
Or so,
Lies substance?
An actual achievement
Beyond that
Of self-indulgence?

Search the avenue
Of your
Halls of Conscience.....
Candidly,
With certitude
And with deep,
UTTER TRUTH!

And in all
Honesty,
Can you deny
This Great Void
As being, actually
Comprised,
Otherwise?

[email protected]
27 July 2025
Tic-toc sings the clock
Where's the meaning,
Does it stop?
Is it black or is it white
Filled with promise or of fright?
Why this quest of four score years
As indulgence perseveres?
Why compulsions grasp for more
Reveals why we slam the door?
Tic-toc sings the clock
Laughing now, to sadly mock!

Uncomfortable about this?
I'm not asking you to reveal anything but I am demanding that you search your soul with integrity.
This write is not about sunsets and daffodils, this is about your grit and the fire poetry instills in your heart!
M.
 Jul 27 Coleen Mzarriz
Maddy
I can find you in the dark
By touch
The blue eyes shine and glow
The music is soft rock
Cotton
Satin
Silk
With all the laughter
The Joy
The tears
Hoping for many more loving and lovely years
For your eyes only
I believe I have reached a point
of creative decline. Been on HP
since 2013. Close to 350 poems.
I may have thought and said
about all I have to offer.

Hard to come up with any real
original worthy material, the
old well might have run dry.
Or maybe my brain is growing
addled. That happens in our 80s.

In idle times I will still look in
on you all. I have enjoyed my
time here and made some fine
and talented writer and poet
friends. Thank you.

Adieu good and gentle people.
No illness or anything dire.
Just tired. I am thinking of
taking a pottery class.
 Jul 27 Coleen Mzarriz
lizie
i had fun today.
i smiled and meant it.
i laughed and it sung.
but now the day is over
it’s dark once more,
and i hate myself again.
Another gray trip to a small town.
At the bus stop:
an abandoned bicycle,
trembling in the rain,
waiting for someone,
who never came.

The coughing crowd,
getting on and off,
headed for the unknown.
Actors carrying
heavy bags of ugly food.

Out of the corner
of an invisible eye
snatches of words
drifting into a wrinkled world—
not the first, vivid green,
but the tired lettuce,
expired bananas—
a symbol of unreachable luxury.

Casual dialogues about angels and demons,
atheists and spiritual needs.
Random people battered by reality
rolling out a red carpet for their thoughts,
spoken aloud in the indifferent air,
small talk about kicking life—
an existential fight to survive.

The game downloaded
by an unfair fate.
Something put him, her, them
on this wrong level,
an extreme mode
the deepest discomfort.

Unfair purpose of pain.
For many,
not being loved is an aching way,
for others,
the lack of bread.

The multiple truths
closed in one small drop
of a rainy day without a name.
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