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I sprinkled cinnamon outside my door,
whispered to the frames,
"only let in warmth,
keep their laughter outside
in the cold, where all things mournful
belong".
I wrap myself in a fisherman's cardigan,
Making clay out of tear-dried salt
and this divine earth that raised me.
I hear them jeering while I'm carving
all these stones with blistered hands,
Chisels rusted - they spent too long
curled, sleeping, unused in the moss.
They say I'm just shaping rocks
in silence,
for a game nobody wants to play,
a forlorn girl
trying to conjure gold
in a foundation poured strong enough
to hold a coliseum,
its rotunda gleaming with hand stacked dreams.
I have to believe,
if you just... keep... building,
someday, someone will see.
Even if the beauty is found
in a solitary, once lovely column
...when it's ancient.
When it's crumbling.
I set at the edge of the bed
with a blue floral spread

waiting

for the sun to blush
the sky

as the minute hand on the wall clock
quivers

the ice bucket
sweats

and breakfast  

will be soon
but is it really breakfast

if you haven't slept
Cool breeze on my skin
Night drifts in to fill the room
Comfort to my dreams
A broken heart is–

a poet's greatest treasure.
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 come
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.
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