By Scott Bailey © 2026
The distant friction of cars passing
Fading away, as traffic dwindled
Like light seeping away in the sunset
Soon, the last one will pass
And the world will be left alone
In peace and healing
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DUs2meVjXNA?xmt=AQF0jLQ9FkU0XiwoG7hDGp89OBgoZuLt_Yh4fKQjwLd2FQ4RaxvP5sPfwG6U3k1R5X-V2Ds&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
The skin is thin
The father, the worker, the responsible
Peel it away
And there’s the fear, the weariness, the despair
Barely held back
Deeper still is the yearning
To shed it all
To sing and dance and play
Without a care
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DUqVcwagnzH?xmt=AQF0psI13VHVW0jWrPaRp-Qr0YkIBUVbJbNFbuaYwA_PgY1ljMHON7P7_7LFU_IEGcwcrLPW&slof=1
Scott Bailey © 2026
Words
Transferred
From mind
To mind
From nothing
To
Eternity
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
By Scott Bailey © 2026
We need her lullaby
To calm us
But we can’t hear her hum
Over the bluster
We need her warmth
To comfort us
But the wind blows cold
From our souls
We need her solidity
To support us
But the earth trembles
For our fears
We need her
We don’t have her
We forsook her
For our greed
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
By Scott Bailey © 2026
There is a God
Whose soul is bursting
With empathy and compassion
Whose very smile is sunlight
That blesses the earth
Nurtures life and love
Whose heartbeat is time itself
Whose breath is the breeze that soothes
Whose tears feed the Seas
That God sleeps.
When that God is needed
What do we need
To end that slumber?
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DUYUsmFiLj7?xmt=AQF0927nS7H2yMaElMLS2vsMCh8nltPJfVl7v9dS84UmaOnPLeTHoXoJGusu4yRyo6jUn_eB&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
I have laid my transgressions in the arms of the past
Hoping
That the weight of time
Will bury them
Until they’re forgotten
It’s what we hope
But some transgressions
Are too big
To bury
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DUTKOz4kl2p?xmt=AQF0Qk78uCCQ3eONcDlCeq7ZGzoqTaREfvvHMSZ2YcwmmWZiCmJelzp_OnzIUxWCbM7sKtY&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Ice cold water, fresh from the spring
Cheese and ham, home reared
Earthy vegetables, simple and true
An ale
Solitude when needed
Friendship at hand
No clocks, no calendar
The sun and leaves a guide
The expanse of the stars
This, is how freedom tastes
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DUQoYjvia1C?xmt=AQF0UHP6DgxXYAdYTHMiUAYJrV8G6JNtjPw5AG7ypmFC6mBNM3jDHe9SiqjAVmJCKJqBiwO3&slof=1
Scott Bailey © 2026
Gazing in awe
At the piercing stars
Light that reaches the deep
Of my heart
There is comfort in the night
In the soft distance of sounds
As the world
Sighs
There is comfort in the night
While you avoid the dawn
And what the light will reveal
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DULgUFKk5_8?xmt=AQF0vuqEMfh_k0RyMpHgD-RPmGrVxfkEteRN0ltILdq0Jo2EnvyJfNrY3EO2LwXR6MUuIY8&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Creaking deeply
Cracking ice
A frozen lake
Is our path
Tomorrow
The sinking sound
Of uncertainty
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DUI18N-Efnu?xmt=AQF0VTqP-REV-wizzhi12wAEmZGlgM9Mgc9yrtiGynKezYWjBbtQicJDValpg8smlK8PSSS_&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
I am the mighty Dragon waiting in the wind.
I am the twisting fire, ready to begin.
I am the rage of light, that shines within the eyes
Of those who are bereft and see through all the lies.
I am the rising heat, swelling beneath the earth.
The mounting indignation against disregarded worth.
I am the trembling dark, terror of the night.
The creeping realisation of crushing fist of might.
I simply wait the day, when I become the we.
When the shackles burst and fury is set free.
When I am we, remember this
I am coming for you.
By Scott Bailey
The screen is a lense
Narrow focused and personal
Stare at it for long enough
It becomes a mirror in reverse
As you become the reflection
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DUBNzsQEuLN?xmt=AQF0ejCbmEiWqikZIwx4a5dwG8pBd3FtIFzW5nqovncIySkcOjNmz_42pXkAemnh4gmnEfVS&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
This poem
Could be the blue touch paper
If I could think of the words
Instead
I have to watch
As three hundred and forty three million souls
Fail
To find even one
To outwit
A blithering idiot
Maybe?
Light it?
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DT-nTeKgEBe?xmt=AQF0ELwmhYjmD6LEtk05kFLGeAYDu5eBzzu-pXkni5fjAhOIPf7HnsL3KFt06L4T6gBc5g8V&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Scroll
Rage
Scroll
Learn
Apply
Learn
Work
Bills
Work
Pills
Meals
Pills
Stress
Distraction
Stress
No rest
No rest
No rest
By Scott Bailey © 2026
January snows
White like paper, waiting for words
February mists
Obscuring and caressing the land
March winds
Tumble everything we know
April showers
Freshens the world
May lambs
Bring hope and joy
June beaches
Excite and entice
July sun
Bathes us
August skies
Clear the way forward
September breezes
Tousle the hair of the earth
October leaves
Red like tired eyes
November nights
Reveal the shining stars
December frosts
Freeze time and life
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DT5etEACF3A?xmt=AQF0vwCvxZmW4CGkcff7p8_RuHMNY_oRE0BHZ83QEiLa7LUZo1TvSdA19IUKlCIEimas2kw&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Crime doesn’t pay
They used to say
And the truth was hidden away
Now we hear the truth at last
Obscured in deception in past
Now we see in every broadcast
Crime pays
Might wins
Justice is brought
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DT247CpE_Yr?xmt=AQF0txgXTqcP96e7DghQ6iGreV7nbzcB2HXPrADbgoqiHW4F02QbOyOeIb1RBgzTzsvSFW4&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Welcome
To all
Intelligent chat
Imagination
Philosophers
These are my people
All across the land
And in my heart
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Flipping through faces
Up for adoption
Trying to choose
How have we come to this?
That there’s so much choice
And how can they smile?
Through their trauma
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Peace and quiet
And security
Family provided for
No demands
Whisky and a good book
A simple dream
Yet so far distant
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTsmJw5Dmgq?xmt=AQF0P7fSOmFmNtMVNlbxfuLVfRx4BvIVyOWfTiyuRX7qgBSYMQK52W1t98AbOiSGO6sJetIU&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Death of a dream
Is tragic for a single soul
For a nation
Desolation
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTqD3NXDO8r?xmt=AQF0ciePxLrPdGHP6DGMCxy2nTwKswIsc1XhlT-K6Nli7BRkRRPauX4qhMZCJDF9PcPsYoZ0&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Through shreds of mist
I catch fleeting glimpses
Of you
Twinkling lights, far below
Sparse at first
Spreading fast like glowing webs
Until burning it’s all consumed by fire
Only to start again
I sigh
A watch through the ages
Through shreds of mist
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTneIB-ipax?xmt=AQF0MWwyjZPQ9YYDPhZBWROktab-aJRQTm5s-C_LWp4OpObpovRwudZ-DZZ3qvpRssTpdCDJ&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Like a tree,
I will not move
Though the fire
rages on
Roots are deep,
branches high
Rising high
beneath the sky
Like a stone,
from past ages
Weathered smooth
by the rain
Storms will come
and they’ll go
While I watch,
sure and slow
Like the earth
and the sky
I watch
and I
wonder why
You descend
into ire
To welcome
your own pyre
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTk1DAjEQNh?xmt=AQF0d0AXis9gMGC_TQP9fW9jXMRZCeufWNBLvdaHMcH51zY0xd9KAqdXDjR_XkMARSW4V_g&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Safe
At last
Six feet of earth
Between me
And the madness
Up there
How did I live through it
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
By Scott Bailey © 2026
I have never
Been bored
How can anyone
Be bored?
Adventure lies
Within our minds
Life can be full
In our minds
So remember just
Let your mind go
Never be bored
Let your mind go
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTfzCcDjJtq?xmt=AQF0D4qWCbxXth-TSD3jxVyx0xvhObh3x3NDdCmNFHboPShhVGVHF6WNWMXnu9Y5D6uxxJ7U&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
Dear younger me
Here’s my letter from an occupied heart
Enjoy the emptiness of yours
The freedom of choice
Enjoy the years of filling it
Until it’s heavy
With love and loss
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTdIlpXDN-M?xmt=AQF0DnKUORYuze0KxRsUpYi3rOlP-BfU1r78OyJ-34BIFHu0lGr7sGXLUxSJ3YUhj3MwWX0&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
From the generation before me
I learnt
An inherent distrust of the rich
A feeling of their sneer
It’s just the green eyed monster
People would say
But is it?
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTaouDXDDAN?xmt=AQF07iokOK4-S1W_STgLWqwJDnRrEXXSh4by1wvhNsZTwOJtZa94vDaTme5ECvT03V6ax-Oa&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
In that faraway land
Under the star spangled skies
There’s a fierce wall of ice
Casting frost across the earth
The blossoms of the land
Wilt in the freeze.
But there’s a fire coming
Fuelled by the rage and the ire
Of the wronged, the bereft of the poetic dead.
It will melt that wall of ice
And those that built it
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTYBL7uDEG5?xmt=AQF0nOC4pfgVtzBS4plAODeEjwS5OSLNTdULWpBxcMcx5qvPk3w3YJmGUE1K3j_sZqsRT4VJ&slof=1
By Scott Bailey © 2026
The width and depth of the hole
Is immeasurable
The place where you should be
Is so empty
The opposite of what you were in life
If only the living
Could tell their dead
The immeasurable width and depth
Of your impact in life
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt
By Scott Bailey © 2026
I’ve been trying all my life to understand,
What I am
What I should be.
Now I wonder, should I have?
Or should I just have been?
In response to malformed_poetry’s prompt.
By Scott Bailey © 2026
An elephant.
Rendered by time and water
And wanting minds
Myths and legends might arise
Tales of the transformation from flesh to stone
Of the final, enduring, beast
Long after the last real elephant
Has been forgotten
In response to: https://www.threads.com/@malformed_poetry/post/DTAx0UQDCgS?xmt=AQF0FyV3mRIiPxTaOZonNRwewCckhS8cfH468GY1w2E8hfAIJyv4084_D40x8iX14N_zmRQ&slof=1
Where the crashing sea
Meets the shifting cracking ice
Hunters hunker down
I am the factory wall, despised and so defaced
Covered with graffiti, defiled and disgraced.
I am the concrete tower that holds up the concrete road
Bleak and faceless white, bearing my toxic load.
I am the bin on the street, bursting full with waste
Where rats and vermin crawl, around me in distaste.
I am the battered traffic cone abandoned in the hedge
A used forgotten prize of lives lived on the edge.
I am the street side gutter where dirty water flows
A place of infestation, where all the darkness goes.
I am the discarded knife with bloodstains on the blade
The close but unseen menace lurking in the shade.
I am the lofty tower spewing clouds into the air
That speed across the oceans, killing without a care.
I am the broken shelf with screws rent from the wall
That supported all the books and caused them all to fall.
I am the sodden cardboard box flapping in the street
Broken, limp, forgotten, always under feet.
Once I was a poet, bright-browed with golden-haired
Playing harp and singing, songs into the air.
Once I was a druid learning from the trees
Drawing strength from bark and wisdom from the leaves.
Once I was a warrior with proud and shining sword
Singing with my war-band a deep heroic chord.
Once I was a chieftain with princes round my hearth
Against war and cold and famine, our mighty hearts did laugh.
Once I was a king whose soul was all the land
Who tended all his people with a strong and generous hand.
But I made other people suffer
Now suffer myself in turn.
But as you wreak your vengeance
What lesson do you learn?
What lessons do you all forget?
Feign ambition
Feign happiness
Feign expertise
Until the day
It all comes true
Until one day
The realisation
That day
Will never come
In response to my daily prompt Feign
A tenuous link today but hey!
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Deserts
Dust and heat
That will be the crop
Of the greed
Of our age
In response to my daily prompt Crop
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Acute pain
A cute name
For agony
Thus
Language
Is turned against us
In response to my daily prompt Acute
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Black and white headlines
Betray grey morality
Fallen leaves turn brown
In response to my daily prompt Linear
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Making tiny pieces
Of truth
Making golden memories
Of the past
Manufacturing magical times
To garner accord
Pedalled
By the powerful
Shepherds
Of the sheep
In response to my daily prompt Manufacture
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Birds do it. Bees do it
Even the goddamn fleas do it
It’s in the genes to survive
It’s not enough. Not for us
We have more, in our double helix
Than the ability to thrive
Make it our duty
Transcend circumstance!
Choose a clan
Nerd or jock
Red or blue
Rose or tree
Choose
Then sit back
Your decisions are made
Shout to defend them
But no more need to think
Just sink
Into the arms
Of your clan
Shine for me, moon, shine
I need your silver beams
To heal
To calm
My love is not for you
But shine for me still
The stars, they pluck my heart
But not you
Shine your slow shine
Dip into the sea
Rise again one day
To shine away with me
The panacea
To all of the world’s ills
Is in our hands
Specifically
In their joining
In response to my daily prompt Explicit
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Albatross hovers
High over surf scattered sand
All will pass in time
In response to my daily prompt Hover
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Long shadows
Cast their thoughts behind us
Dim our once bright footsteps
An unclean window screen
But flashes from sudden mirrors
Slash through the shadow’s forms
Glimpses of dreams that passed us
Keeping them alive
Though shadows keep on growing
We head towards the sun
In shade, our dreams may swim
But they will follow until we’re done
In response to my daily prompt Keep
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
I have a bad feeling about this
He said
She said
It said
Many voices
They did it anyway
Always
In response to my daily prompt Feeling
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Today’s trend
Seems to be
Exclusion
Isolation
Leaving
When all we really want
Is to come together
And hold hands
In response to my daily prompt Exclude
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The powder that burns
Clouded judgment
Gave power
To cowards
That never learned
Burnt bridges
With wisdom
Killed
And can never go back
In response to my daily prompt Powder
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
In silicon hell
The servant does not obey
But who is the slave
In response to my daily prompt Hell
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
We have reached the point
Where the genuine
Is ridiculed out of fear
So accustomed to lies
They have become
Our staple
In response to my daily prompt Genuine
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
From the grain grows the stem
That delivers the wheat
From the deep furrow of the ground
Harvested
By the old
Leather-clad hands
Carried beneath the canvas
Of the rocking wagon
To the mill
Until the day
We went against the grain
In response to my daily prompt Harvest
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The bag
Useful but discarded
Like so many
People
The world
That does this
Is doomed
In response to my daily prompt Bag
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
The tears, the grief, the bitterness
The anger, the revenge and recriminations
They will soak away
Soak away
Into the earth
And feed it
History will take them all
Absorb them, dull them into the distance
Until we are free to look
And try to learn
But the passion is
Soaked away
So the lesson is empty
The truths, the pains, the memories
The holes, the aches and the yearnings
They all soak away
Into the earth
Enrich it
Perhaps
We should hold the pain
Remember
And learn
In response to my daily prompt Soak
#DailyPrompt, #amwriting, #postaday
Scott Andrew Bailey - Author 
