Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
I stood again where my breath vanished
on the edge of speaking
the air too still to carry even grief.
Around me, the world held its posture,
like it too awaited a reply
that would not come.

No flame descended, no tremor rose,
only the pressure of unbroken silence
folding itself around the questions
I hadn’t yet learned to stop asking.

Somewhere above, thought gathered
in a form I dared not name.
Not presence. Not absence.
But something in between,
watching itself through me.

I opened my mouth,
but what escaped me was not prayer, nor song
only the echo of unspent meaning,
a voice shaped more by question
than knowledge.

There are rooms in the soul
where even memory is forbidden.
In those, I build altars of fallen breath,
stacking each exhale like stone
to bear the weight of waiting.

If this is faith,
it does not comfort.
It requires no belief.
Only that I return each day
and listen for what I know isn't there.

Still, I do.
Not because I expect the silence to break,
but because I am part of its shape now
a line in its unwritten sentence,
the soft space between words
curled at the edge of speech.
02 August 2025
Between The Words
Copyright Malcolm Gladwin
A follow on poem to 'In the Sunroom (Suicide)"  (1)
writ many years later...
~For MWK~
<>
A stray thought. a burring burrowing, thorny tawny:

A wish, yet to get, but vetted for each of us.

This within, this redoubt, a contemplative oasis,
my indoor poet's nookery rookery sanctuary
each one, each is, deserves, all, one such,
a place holy filled, with lice and dirt of a life,
strained and trained for emission and transmission
of the best of the worst, and the triumphant emergent commission of
our individualized most excellent fresh best

where crumbs of apple crisp pie solidify, vanilla bean ice cream
melt offsets the oven heated warmth, and from this interactive
contrasts combative,
a poem pie reborn, newly disguised, familiar words,
yet unheard and before this very never,
went unspoken and now goes forth
svelte and unbroken

rhymes of yore, forgot from a before, but making up the walls
of the here and now,
a sunroom to spread out the lit lights of egress and entrance,
of fire door no exits that now are chiseled closed,
lock in, lock up, and somehow, one, stills to learn from
the stilling quiet solitude.
to penetrate the prostrate kneeling grinning grief,
how to expel and spell the words
that grant
relief

visit my sunroom, though no fiction.
the sun rays *******, create the friction
of that which cannot ever be withered nor contained,
and your mouth opens wide and a poem birthed and delivered,
a pastiche paste composted of truth and dreams of fiction,
with a shrug, a smile, a satisfaction extracted extraordinary,
you garner moments of satisfaction but the cloud cover returns,
and the process of sunrise exposition recommences,
and one revisits the elemental sequencing of
all the predecessor pain, but this time,

for gain, for gain,
<>

written this sabbath Saturday
12:38am EST
Sat Aug 2
2025
in the sunroom,
on Shelter Island
It was destiny.
Our steps were in unison.
We both knew the dance.
beneath the cindering sky
a storm surge pummels

and plumes
onto broken grey stones

waves
in black rages

rip away the skin
of the day

you are shattered
and dragged further

and further from the strand
on a distance cliff

the lighthouse pitches flicks
and is finally lost

black chemical blood
sludges your veins

slowing your heart
fear feeds loneliness

ocean whole
you are swallowed

and sinking the darker down
breathe in the cold silence

peace
peace  
peace
  
be with you
A strange pattern for
writing has came
to me lately.
The skeletons of
poems form when I
lie down for a nap.
Sleep always calls,
and bones want to
dance and grow skin.
Lilacs bloom, and I feel
the inner thigh of
eternity, soft and wet.

I can't get any rest.
I have to jot down the
notes or they turn
to ashes and blow away
Or, they are buried deep in
mud and slumber,
impossible to dig up.

I sleep with a notebook and
pen, as I drift off,
I whisper to the tortured
bones,
don't cry, and try not to worry.
I'll bring you to life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwmDj1yF6LA
Here is a link to my YouTube channel where I do my poetry.  I just put up a video of a poetry reading I did at the Mason City Public Library.
My books, Seedy Town Blues Collected Poems, It's Just a Hop, Skip, and a Jump to the Madhouse, and Sleep Always Calls, are available on Amazon.
Woman ignite yourself
burn in untamed desire
for the fever that breaks
into flames
pure essence of
lust awareness
that sits below the
root of the spine
You came here to
be wanton
to be entangled
in the mud of wild love
you are a gold
lotus spreading
across the divide
show yourself
and watch the world heal...
tip toes to an imaginary line
drawn in the sand,
speaks in shadows,

tenderness, raw and sharp.

raised by wolves
she chews to the bone.

kiss the wind
my love is gone.
I fell in love with the North Woods
where snow and I dissolved
seeping in between the cobblestones
with belonging.
They held my secrets
and ancient history,
like forbidden sorcery
only the earth can practice.
I imagine my name whispered by velveteen moss,
stubbornly clinging
to old row house bricks with defiant faith.
But I'm just remnants of a ghost there,
my own heart haunted.
So I tried to love the ocean,
but she kept getting in her own way,
with her non-committal sway,
and everything that stayed
was tide-pool shallow.
I tried to love foreign lands,
wrap myself in different tongues -
Alpine lace was never warm enough.  
Exiled to the desert,
I floated like a feather,
fallen from a crow
who never learned that she could sing.
I've retreated to the mountains,
where the stone walls and I
have become kindred,
torn between the pulling chain
of a heart that longs to love
and no longer believes.
The man on the moon, you see
He has a few friends

He's perfect and broken
And is kind to no ends

I believe he is lonely
Floating gently in the sky

Even if you whisper him your secrets
He'll never tell you why

His pain is unmatched
Yet he's beautiful all the same

Even when he looks at perfect stars
He casts them no blame

And I find it comforting
Looking to him at night

For he taught me even in dark
There is a way to find some light
Inspiration; the quote "but without the dark, we'd never see the stars"
Next page