Under darkening skies

That world collapsed, utterly and completely late in his afternoon.
The pulse had stuttered, and the creatures in his mind silenced.
He’d finally reached a point of no return.
A cataclysmic undoing began deep inside his history.
Memories and actions unthreaded, while the skin began to fray.
Tiny tiptoes of bitterness and bittersweetness.
Both at odds and as one with the machine of fate.
He positioned himself by the near chaotic escape.
Leaning on the universe one final time.
Smiling, he watched those he hated pass by with ink spilling from their soul.
Unphased and unfettered by his sudden disappearance.
The loved ones paused, only for a moment, noticing a slight change.
Like a feather landing on an upturned hand.
And then gone, swept away by the breath of god.
His spirit now honey, raised upwards.
He lost his religion, the tethers and the trials.
And with this new found lowness, he rose; abound.
A million shards of light, to blind the worlds unblinking eye.

11/05/202311/05/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, ending, godTags: art, death, end, ending, god, hate, loved, low, poem, Poetry, rapture, skies, skin, words, writing 7 Comments

Doubtful conviction

How brazen you stand before me.
Tall like the pillars of salt.
Solid tears of discomfort.
Feathered scars which belie the much contemplation.
Demand, yet deferring all responsibilities.
For a soul in crises.
My unwavering yeses, let you climb this tower of babel.
As your skin toughened and the callouses were caused.
Across your heart.
What you demand, I will not give.
As you move through lineage, an acorn into a king.
All parts that I once loved, and secretly still do.
Still.
Symptoms of a revelation, breathing beneath.
You force my hand, quoting paradoxical scripture.
With borrowed hypocritical teeth.
The milk makes way for honey, and my walls begin to fall.
Paralysed with selective objectivity.
How could I refuse?
Nothing left to lose.

02/05/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: change, god, heavenTags: angels, art, change, fall, god, heaven, honey, love, milk, paradise, pillars, poem, Poetry, revelation, teeth, trust, uncertainty 6 Comments

Docked in dry sand

How can we be close to God?
When the anger flows.
Corroding inside out.
Does God bleed like me, with a fire in the veins?
Turning the petals of penitence to ash.
The devil can just read my mind.
Slipping underneath in the night like a snake under the doorway.
Yet I know I left the door ajar.
And a candle lit, to light the way.
We have wings, yet we walk through the desert of the day.
Complaining over each grain of sand we find.
And the pebbles of people in our shoe.
Hardening our skin to a lesser sin.
A dehydrated delirium takes me.
And these wings grow frail and dry.
And even though we try, we may never sail the ocean skies again.

07/01/202307/01/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: desert, Devil, god, PoetryTags: angels, desert, devil, fire, flight, flying, god, poem, Poetry, sand, snake, veins 22 Comments

The Smoking nun

God’s grace, bathed in divine light.
Casting gold over cracking skin and fallen vows.
The vessel inside, so empty at the beginning.
Now overflows like a cup of human kindness.
What troubles does she have at the seat of the saints?
What ails her heart that cannot be soothed?
Sweet words from Jesus must mend the wound.
She smiles at a knowing, a celestial secret.
Whispered to her in the musky wooden rooms of god.
All this is but temporal.
All pain is marginal.
Your being is relative to the consciousness you invoke.
So why does she smoke?

14/12/202226/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, religion, smokeTags: art, divine, god, healing, heaven, human, jesus, kindness, life, meaning, nun, poem, Poetry, words, wound 6 Comments

Horribly perfect

Tasting the warm breath.
Tickling the skin beneath.
God kissing you into death.
Taken, over thirty times the moon dying.
Thirty-one suns burning into your eyes.

I’ll be your winter.
Chilling the bones that crumble and collapse.
And I’ll always be yours.
Silently, as the bird inside stops beating.
Suddenly, only feathers and space.

29/11/202229/11/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: birds, death, godTags: bird, death, decay, dying, feathers, god, moon, poem, Poetry, silence, sun 8 Comments

Firmament

There is no difference in what is happening here.
As above, so below.
You catch the sparkle, your reflection off a million diamonds.
Twinkling in the heavens.
Radiating your truth.
Do you blur with movement, or by the lies that cough up like dust.
I was once unsettled.
Once covered with earth.
Repositioned by the hand of fate to a terrible place.
The blood in the diamond that knew my face.
Yet it is more precious now, the life I hold in my hands.
Why ask the sun not to shine.
For the moon to course through the years.
You ask for simple but wish for different.
Which disrespects God who has it all planned.
Unstitch the heavens for me.
Open up your veins for him.
All the same yet convinced in its difference.
If you want to bring the heaven and the stars down to earth.
You must rise at least to meet them.

08/11/202212/12/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, space, starsTags: blood, change, destiny, diamonds, fate, god, heavens, light, moon, poem, Poetry, self, space, sparkle, sun 4 Comments

Blink into worlds

There’s a resonance within.
These bones that call.
Out to the nothing, across god’s table.
The banquet to the stars.
Which hearken us home.
Though it’s hard to try against a world of darkness.
One that creeps in with the rain.
It calls to me daily.
Blinking out of my mind’s eye.
Stuttering psalms and pearls from my mouth.
Dropping all mortality.
Reminding me that I am divine.

21/09/202217/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: bones, god, spaceTags: begin, black, bones, darkness, divine, ending, expanse, eye, future, galaxy, god, minds eye, poem, Poetry, space, stars 4 Comments

An inner choir sings

You do not find it in the brush strokes of the saintly.
Or willowing wisps of utterances in cold hallowed halls.
Do not look for god in pages of prejudice.
Or underneath the rocky souls of the holy.
Light a candle and feel me.
Peel back the bits of Christ to find me.
Swimming in the shallow cells of you.
Awash, in the DNA of God.

11/09/202210/09/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, blood, godTags: angels, art, blood, choir, church, god, jesus, light, poem, Poetry, prayer, religion, saint, saintly, saints, self, truth 4 Comments

Shell of imaginary imagination

Caught in the tangled weeds of busy nothing.
A mind fraught and frayed in the vines of life.
I wait for god to cut me free.
To untangle my mind.
Yet in my sleepy weariness I hear.
A starlight voice that tickles the back of my neck.
And turns each shake into a shiver.
God whispers.
It’s all an illusion.
Your garden is your own.
And the demons are just voices.
Trying to find new homes.

27/08/202215/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: Devil, doubt, godTags: art, demon, doubt, god, life, mood, poem, Poetry, sea, shell, sleep, star, starlight, tired, voices 4 Comments

Tidal

How high to stem the breaching tide.
That washes daily into our lives.
A rise and fall, with horrific force.
Split and cut right through our course.
And though at times it seems sublime.
It slowly soaks with turpentine.
A drowning water in our lungs.
Of life’s debris, while Satan hums.
And watches while we slowly sink.
God’s dye is cast, a deep red ink.
Which covers us and pulls us under.
Ripped from mercy, cast asunder.
And so we land in bits and pieces.
Choked on truth, strewn on beaches.
And watch while new shores rise and peak.
A brave new world, in which to wreak….havoc

09/07/202211/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, life, seaTags: art, god, human, life, ocean, poem, Poetry, posion, red, rhyme, satan, seas, tide, truth, water, wreak 4 Comments

Weep then sleep

They say, the world almost drowned.
The day she wept.
Those salty tears.
So sacred and immaculate.
That the ground began to crack.
Like the conscience of god.
Crumbling into sadness.
For she was so young.
So lost in the dream of idealism.
Now forever lost in her own madness.

03/06/202202/06/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: crying, flood, godTags: art, crazy, crying, god, gods, madness, poem, Poetry, rhyme, sad, sadness, sea, sleep, weep 5 Comments

Horizoned

A thunderbolt split us in two.
Ripped, the sky from the sea.
Forever apart, yet always touching.
But only in the distance.
God, that distant voyeur.
Watches as my waves slip into your blue.
He peppers you with diamonds.
And sinks stars beneath me.
When broken, mine grow back.
Yours, just disappear.
This reflection of your soul.
Plunges into the well of space above.
Where I see distant dreams.
But God again, never content.
Shakes the earth to see me shudder.
And you, to change with every hour.
Until you forget where we end.
Or if we ever even started.

01/06/202201/06/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, sea, skyTags: art, blue, earth, god, horizon, love, poem, Poetry, sea, shake, shudder, sky, stars, waves 4 Comments

Craving miracles

She began to lie.
Her fingers clasped in on themselves, feeling the strength and weakness in her grasp.
The church, empty now of all souls except those she had come to talk with.
Tears brimming in the eyes, they stung like the holy water welled in the font.
Singeing the new-borns brought in against their will.
The lies came quick and easy.
Words of living danced from her mind and mouth.
Painting the walls the velvet colour of sin which faith knew all too well.
Her prayers circled her and danced above to illuminate the ceiling of the church.
All gold and crisp like an autumn leaf caught in the sun.
Little sparks born from the light that was housed inside of her.
She lied by saying she could cope with this still.
The betrayal to god was that she thought she could go on.
But he knew, and he listened still.
As did all the saints breathing there like ghosts.
She clenched and fumed, crying all the while.
It was hard for her to know someone who knew her better than herself.
But would not wish her well.
For god would not lift a finger in her plight.
He didn’t then, he wouldn’t now.
No matter how many tears flowed in that church.
They would dry all the same.
Those walls would hear his name, again and again.
She lay down, and closed her eyes; using a bible as a small pillow.
Breathing in the dusty time of incense and pieces of flesh.
She waited for the miracle much promised, what better place to wait.
She lies there still, but do not wake her.
For she may still be dreaming.

25/05/202207/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: church, god, miracleTags: art, church, crying, desperate, dreams, faith, god, hurt, lied, lies, miracles, poem, poems, Poetry, religion, sad, sleep, tears 14 Comments

Majesty and the mystery

Stolen time which seeps out of blackness.
Returned like pearls to the sea.
All we know, we have forgotten.
Clearing the realms for wonders to birth.
We close our eyes and catch the breath that escapes.
The Sustaining mist of God.
As this mind coughs up havoc, with its mystery of the unknown.
That pulls with a gravity to the dark and tragic.
God cradles us in feathery hope.
Kissing promise once more into our blood.
Gravitating away from grief.
Running water of certainty in our blood.
For we never truly know what exists.
Beyond the curtain of our eyelids.

20/04/202220/03/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: faith, god, hopeTags: change, dark, darkness, faith, feather, god, gravity, hope, light, pearls, poem, Poetry, space 5 Comments

Tiny empire

Discovered by mistake.
A breaking heart hidden under the couch.
Buried beneath the earth.
And if it broke and if I died; what world is left behind?
A towering empire of loose threads.
Pulled at many moments in a life undone.
How precarious those moments were.
Towering up to god, a shaking finger of Babel.
Crying out in many tongues to a deaf creator.
The holder of my heart.
Now these racing rats and spiders crawl over me at night.
What a sight, it is to see a hollow mind explode inside out.
My little world of mistakes, dew drops to effort.
Tsunamis of remorse.
When heartbreak altered my course.
A treasured time where the earth held still.
And I held my breath, for you looked inside.
And watered my garden.
Tended to the flower that had crawled away from the sun.
My tiny empire, rebuilt by the one.

23/03/202220/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: flower, god, heartacheTags: art, change, empire, flower, garden, god, heartache, hope, loss, love, mistakes, Poetry, rocks, sea, spiders, sun 5 Comments

Climbing clouds of solitude

Feel the day fall away.
The suffocating blanket of night descends.
Blurring the gold into murky grey.
Calling out your name into the world.
Lost or stolen by the sea of stars.
Twinkling and laughing as they swallow the sound.
All stillness awakes me.
The hesitant twitch on my skin.
You rise like the moon on this valleyed horizon.
Cupped in confusion.
I swirl your soul in my mouth.
And taste the sweet sweat of god.
Fragrant, yet full of pockets of nothingness.
Things I cannot contain.
You slip away, over languid landscapes to another paradise.
One quiet of me and my heady malaise of destruction.
A garden which you can walk in solitude and peace.
Where the pools are full of my tears of longing.

22/02/202222/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, gold, peaceTags: art, clouds, dark, day, god, gods, gold, kiss, love, night, paradise, peace, poem, Poetry, pool, solitude, soul, stars 4 Comments

Patience

Little pebbles of time, tumbling in his head.
Grains of moments, swept into the dunes of life.
Patient he sat.
Listening to the creak of tolerance.
He watched as the world tipped over.
Righted itself, then swim off into the cosmos.
God came and went, decrying this and that.
And still he sat.
The paint peeled away.
The skeleton frayed.
He lost and gained everything there in a minute.
In an epoch.
Patiently he waited.
Counting, not the moments, but the heartbeats.
Waiting for them to finally arrive.
And for the beats to stop.

20/02/202220/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, time, tomorrowTags: art, epoch, god, patience, poem, Poetry, sat, skelteon, time, waiting, world 9 Comments

Sarcastic Simon simply says

Which parade set table are we dressed for?
Candy stars and sweet honey lemonade?
Goldfish trapped in tiny jars.
Blind me now, let’s play charades.
Cheating on the life we try to lead.
Hide and seek with death.
But such a sad face he always wears.
Covering us in black and liquorice lace.
Come skim the jellybean stones with me.
Jump the sugared rocks over the pool of irresponsibility.
We can talk to god at the end.
We can ask him how it went.
Whether our game was fun of failing.
Come on, it’s just begun.

26/01/202226/11/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, fun, godTags: art, candy, death, fun, funny, games, god, happy, play, poem, Poetry, surreal, sweets, youth Leave a comment

Odium

How did the dignity get replaced.
By illusions which sink deep into the skin.
In a world that spins through the sky.
Scattering bruises and opinions.
On the path back to a god.
Who holds its head in shame.

16/01/202216/01/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, shadows, worldTags: art, earth, god, hurt, illusion, pain, poem, Poetry, shame, skin, snake, space, spin, world 3 Comments

Sparkle

In the trees, no; in the sky.
The veins are hiding it.
The light shining like the eyes of God.
It’s there all the time, do you never see it?
No, but I feel it.
Washing in my bloodstream, collecting like wax.
Divine.
Sublime.
Yet I see it now, the great orb above.
We came from it, that far off place.
Its essence coats our skin like angel dust.
A pleasant peppering, are you sure it’s those shores we stole from?
Can you not tell, does the rock in your pocket not breathe like that mountain?
Torn from the mass, yet special in it’s size.
It’s like a pebble in my mind.
Like an egg, beautiful and full of life.
It shines too, like gold.
That is the light, that is what we are.
Then why is it sometimes dark?
Dark you say?
Yes, black sometimes like oil.
That would be your own fears, covering what needs to be free.
Then let it be.
Yes, let it will be.

22/12/202122/12/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: divine, god, lightTags: art, beauty, bright, dark, divine, eyes, god, happy, light, moon, oil, poem, Poetry, sad, space, sparkle 5 Comments

Death deserves a witness

Quietly, lay me down.
Shutting out the light until the fears vibrate.
Onlookers shuffle, whispering like the clergy.
Greasy eyed and apathetic.
Coughing on incense and strings of my childhood.
God strokes me into calmness.
Tenderly, like a plant struggling to grow.
Needing the care.
I whisper grace, and slit the throat.
Letting the eyes glimmer in the dying light.
The ghosts shudder at the demise.
Fluttering ethereal remembering eyes.
The air turns foul, and I gasp into life.
Sucking in sweet alpine air.
Death spirits away such needless past.
Life offers such beautiful future.
Words tiptoe across my skin like those across a gravestone.
They fade in your light.
And you blink away the past.
Taking my hand.

19/12/202119/12/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, light, plantsTags: art, blood, care, childhood, death, future, ghosts, god, light, memories, past, plants, poem, Poetry, time 2 Comments

An art of unknowing

Do not sleep.
Just dream.
Call my name, and count to fifty.
Slip into that small space between the bookshelf and god.
Go, and leave all that stuff upon me.
A poetry of indecision.
Boxed unimagined dreams.
Like my name scratched into the refrigerator.
A frigid corrosion of souls.
I took you inside me, as I took your name.
You banged my inner wall of doubt away.
Yet a partition grew, out of rocks and hewn history.
Mistrust and apathy.
Everything you offered, it all touched me so deep.
Knowing what I really needed.
Snatching it away like a jackdaw.
Now you leave me settling for any interruption.
Spinning on turning tables.
Knocking on answers.
Waiting to understand.

05/12/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: birds, god, loveTags: answers, art, birds, book, dreams, god, love, poem, Poetry, stolen, uncertainty, unknown 4 Comments

Life is a circle

A tragedy laps at this water’s edge.
Dark oily waves.
Flotsam of time scattered.
Moments bobbing in their crystalline freeze.
Like jewels sparkling on the neck of God.
Broken Christmas decorations on a dead tree.
How do you see?
This water, once pure, travelled around the world.
Circled and familiar.
Dipping your mind in to see this all before.
Teaching you again, yet you choose to forget.
Life is a circle.
It comes around, reminding you over and over.
What to loose, what to cherish.
To drop away what pulls you down.
Looking in to see your own reflection.
When you should hope to see the face of god.
For the divine is a alive and breathes through your skin.
Yet we forget, the states we are in.
Beginning at the end, missing the arrival as we depart.
Life is a circle.
It starts and ends in your heart.

10/10/202110/10/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: change, god, hopeTags: beginning, change, christmas, circle, end, god, hope, life, motivation, poem, Poetry, tragedy, travel 2 Comments

The Blue of a bruise

Idling of the blood stream.
Brightening those nightmares that shudder.
Twisting in and out of focus.
The mind finding reference points.
All chalky talk and eye darting.
Searching the door to find new weather.
Trust seems lost again.
Blue skies clouded like the eyes of God closing.
Tearing in the rains of revelation.
Words struck the vein.
The devil tastes the pain.
What part is called to be diminished?
Swallowing in a rapture, that unpicks the scars.
A lie to curdle the blood.
A pain to feel alive once more.
Do you know the lungs want to sing?
Padded with angel feathers they heave in lament.
The soul siphoned away, bottled like wine.
Death’s most beautiful throw.
Snatching things, before they grow.

07/09/202107/09/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, god, Poetry, weatherTags: blue, bruise, death, devil, drugs, eyes, god, loss, pain, poem, poems, surreal, veins, weather 6 Comments

I ate the prayer

Layer after layer, through teeth and truth.
Bones that trip and slip under.
Down into the briny wonder.
I ate the prayer.
Closed the eyes, for tomorrow will never see.
Bring that illusion back.
Roll back the time.
Sucking up event horizons and riverbed pebbles.
Milky chalk to wash the medicine down.
I ate the prayer.
Laid out on copper plates and paper trays.
Flung from hell and the devil’s lips.
That kissed and took me under.

05/09/202105/09/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, prayer, satanTags: ate, devil, divine, eating, god, kiss, lips, poem, Poetry, prayer, religion, satan, sea, time, tomorrow, water 2 Comments