Ghost

You’d come to stay.
Lifting away emotional boxes heavy with sorrow.
A wreckage of circumstance and bits of dead skin.
Tumbling from shared DNA.
You’d come to stay.
Unfogging the glasses that looked towards tomorrow.
As the walls caved in around us.
Brick dust and reality coating our lungs.
You moved it aside, a place for everything.
And every heart in its right place.
Having been torn away.
You took my hand and calmed my heartbeat.
The shiver was from the cold, nothing more.
Sweet words melted into this moment.
You said you’d stay.
All things fixed, you’d come to find it.
The reason for our pain.
It vanished of course, upon seeing you again.
A visitor hanging there like a family secret.
Precious and ours only.
Praying together, staying forever.
You’d come to stay.
That was what you say.
In my head.

17/05/202317/05/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, ghost, griefTags: art, crazy, death, ghost, grief, loss, mental, mind, poem, Poetry, stay, touch, writing 9 Comments

There there

I taste the powder on your skin.
The remains of the moon and ash of my soul.
Obliterated by the look in your eyes.
The ability to cut me deep.
And tumble my tiny empire.
In spite of everything, there’s still the stars.
And they sparkle now.
Hung up to light my way.
Swallowing galaxies like fireflies.
Tumbling in the dark.
I watch these words as they spirit from your mouth.
Driving new ghosts, to new ends.
Staking claims to old wounds.
Rubbed now with salt from my tears.
Collapsed into years, and habits that can’t be shook.
So let me cover you once more in feathers.
Taken from the bed we shared.
Whilst you kiss the air, and us, goodbye.
I watch you fly, deep into the inky night.
Disappearing into the gloom, like my hope.
Untouchable, all too soon.

09/06/202209/06/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: ghost, moon, skyTags: art, bed, black, fly, ghosts, goodbye, hurt, ink, lips, moon, night, poem, Poetry, powder, sky, sleep, stars 9 Comments

Are you there?

Pretty memories slip inside these veins.
Washing you through my blood stream.
You lay over me, thick and heavy.
While I sleep and when I wake.
I hoped to crumble you out of my heart.
Yet you clung on like cancer.
Haunting me.
You evaporate the time when you shook me away.
Dipping our past in acid to burn off the unflattering.
Now you come to me with selective amnesia.
Telling me you love me still.
I smell the alkaloid tinge to those words.
A bruised motive lies underneath.
You were there all along, but failed to hold me.
To reach out when I fell.
When the dogs ripped apart my soul.
Are you there always, watching me?
What did you feel when I cried in the dark.
When the little razor drifted across each wrist like storm clouds.
Would you have moved to mop up the red rain?
Or are you only there for the summer time?
When the shadows are your own making.

19/05/202219/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: clouds, ghost, summerTags: art, clouds, drugs, ghost, happy, haunt, heart, poem, Poetry, sky, storm, summer, sun, sunny, sunshine, veins 2 Comments

Pay the ghost

This is what you wanted.
He breathes into my soul.
Sticky air, heavy with the smell of formaldehyde.
Little deers of delight spring into life.
Galloping from my heart to my head.
If only he knew. If only I showed him how.
It is so freeing, no longer living with regret.
Letting the cosmic dance go on without you.
There is still time.
He whispers sweetly, thinking I still cared.
Thinking that what was once, had never shifted.
But inside, it had all died.
Blooms had bruised and fallen to the ground.
The flower water, stagnant now like a swamp of untouched issues.
I smiled a smile that told him nothing.
Letting him think he’d won.
Letting the shadow swallow me once again.
Death hurrying in case I grew new gills.
But it was true, this was what I wanted.
He just never understood, for he could not see.
Trapped in the spectral realm of transcendental adherence.
That this was no longer an ending.
But a beautiful beginning.

01/05/202201/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, fate, ghostTags: art, beginning, bruise, death, decay, dying, end, fate, flower, ghost, poem, Poetry, whisper 5 Comments

Inside a landslide

Confined and contracted.
Shivering inside a wall that closes in.
You hate it, but you want it.
This is what you asked for.
The quiet falling of silence and time.
Alone with only those voices.
Ringing like bells inside your skull.
Trying hard to forget.
Drowning in regret.
Stuffed inside with gum leaves and liquorice.
Padded and weak.
The future runs across like mercury.
Slipping off your skin that sheds.
Wanting it all to be real, to be over.
Hoping for a climate crises in your veins.
You wished them dead.
Instead, they fed on truth and sincerity.
Hungry are these ghosts.
Licking at such empty souls.
Trapped inside the fall of your ancient Rome.

22/04/202222/04/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: ghost, gravity, hurtTags: fall, ghost, ghosts, gravity, gum, landslide, lies, pain, poem, Poetry, rome, soul, sweets, truth 3 Comments

I Want to see the ghost

Never let me go.
The skin falling away, sucked at by mortality.
Surrounded by naysayers and sad eyes.
And all was black.
When the light began to prick apart the void.
A voice echoed.
Thundering down the halls in my soul.
It shook the dust from my memory.
Yet smelt of only yesterday and frangipani blooms.
The ones you insisted on, to mask the death that lingered.
A sorrow set the sparrow inside free it seems.
Clattering against the door, then out into the exhales of god.
You cannot kill a dream you say.
As I stand, entrenched and elated.
Seeing you there, a ghost on the threshold.
Not asking to remain in the cold and the darkness.
But to draw me out into the light.
You always pushed me on.
I want to peel back the pale ribs.
And let you take me on, inside and out.
Licking the walls of defiance, beating the death that they thought prevailed.
With those who won’t believe, they don’t have the eyes to see.
Or even contemplate the beautiful dream.
That is you and I.
In the seen, unseen.

27/03/202227/03/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, escape, ghostTags: art, care, death, defy, escape, eyes, flight, flowers, freedom, ghost, god, love, poem, Poetry, ribs 10 Comments

Fright night

All year round he kept to himself.
Quiet and content, like a book on a shelf.
It was Halloween though when the tables turned.
And in his head, those thoughts had churned.
To live it up, go mad and wild.
To put on costumes, like any other child.
He loved that night when he fitted in.
And wasn’t shamed or drenched in sin.
He could go out and talk to others.
His friends, his mum and all his brothers.
Accepted him and played for ages.
Some souls to flick through his dusty pages.
It was Halloween he loved and longed for.
The skulls and sweets; and dismembered gore.
He felt alive and loved the freedom.
That came with the scares of the creepy season.
For that was the time he loved the most.
For poor old Charlie was such a lonely ghost.

30/10/202125/10/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: ghost, halloween, lonelyTags: art, death, dressup, ghost, halloween, haunt, lonely, poem, rhyme, sad 2 Comments

The Hawthorne Project (out now)

The neighborhood of west Hawthorne Drive in quiet Greenfield Wisconsin is filled with dark stories and darker rumors. There’s the haunting by a faceless creature. They’ve all seen it. They’ve all experienced its presence. On the one hand, it seems to desire the life of mortals, on the other, it befriends a small boy. It both mocks and assists. Runs away and stands face-to-faceless face.

And not to mention the mysterious death of the street’s namesake, Jim Hawthorne. His strange and reclusive widow peers from behind her drawn curtains, rarely leaving her home, but to walk her little dog or tend her manicured gardens… yet she’s not one for giving up any of the cul-de-sac’s secrets.

But in the days leading up to Halloween, events take a more sinister turn, including strange visitations, an eerie violet haze in the sky, attempting murder, breaking-and-entering, and multiple police check-ins… until not one of the residents can deny: something or someone is here to stay.

Featured authors:

• River Dixon
• Chisto Healy
• Tristan Drue Rogers & Sarah Anne Rogers
• Lou Rasmus
• Mark Ryan
• Mark Towse
• Joshua Marsella
• Darren Diarmuid
• Robert Birkhofer
• Jeremiah Fox

OUT NOW

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Goodreads
Amazon
LULU

 

28/10/202128/10/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: fiction, ghost, horrorTags: America, books, creepy, death, family, fear, fiction, ghosts, horror, native american, neighbor, neighbour, saga, scary 10 Comments

Readying recovery

Trying to find lucidity.
Cupping thoughts in my hands.
Fallen from my eyes.
Lost treasure.
Stolen preciousness.
The soul acting like a window.
Allowing them inside to steal, to rearrange.
Feeling lost, yet knowing where I’m trapped.
Ghosts lay upon my skin.
Licking at the wounds.
Drinking them all in.
The moments and memories.
Webs of pain strung up by circumstance.
When was I ever allowed to breathe.
To feel the sun on my skin.
Without the chill from a passing cloud of consequence.
Must we break free from the circle.
Or does it allow us to begin again.
Lighter than before, once all demons are dropped.
Lifting to the sky where we once belonged.

12/10/202112/10/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: ghost, hurt, recoveryTags: angel, angels, anguish, change, flying, ghosts, hope, hurt, pain, poem, poems, Poetry, recovery, sky, weather 6 Comments

Lurk

Malcontent to stop me dreaming.
A bitter play that keeps revealing.
Scenes upon a static stage.
The macabre heart for this new age.
For doubt replaces it’s bloody setting.
A pumping organ that keeps forgetting.
That you lurk inside this hazy past.
A haunting ghost that always lasts.
And wades on through our murky trauma.
Pining for a love that former,
took the place you now reside.
And kills this love that I tried to hide.

31/03/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: creepy, dreams, ghostTags: art, blood, creepy, heart, jealous, killing, love, play, poem, poetry, red, rhyme, rhyming, stage, theatre, trauma 3 Comments