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)