Rescued by the enemy

Truth hidden in a liar.
Like drowning petals.
Pearls covered in dirt.
Beauty sunken to unfathomable depths.
Those eyes are like black ponds.
Revealing nothing, reflecting all.
Does this light shine back?
Does it tweeze anything from your hidden soul.
You have our love now trapped.
Stored away and silent.
Vanished for all the world not to see.
I know that goodness lies inside your shell.
A bravery that can rise above the fog of this war.
Yet it is impotent and quiet.
Buried in the sand of time passed.
Like those ever-elusive weapons of mass destruction.
It cannot be found.
But I know it’s there, next to your beating heart.
The sea lion awaiting the time to roar.
And break through the waves of this pain.

03/12/202224/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: love, war, waterTags: animals, art, fight, lion, love, ocean, poem, Poetry, relationship, sea, time, war, weapons Leave a comment

Recapture

The silent soul who wades this world.
With brittle bones and sad inclinations.
Arrives at a place in a memory.
Strung up with words that bind.
Does he fall deeper into the despair of an age?
Of that turning sun that snatches all that lay in his hands?
Or does he shift, arch his back to the march of time.
Following from the front, the best laid plans?
A flag in hand, and a mouth shut.
Marching to a funeral beat.
A soldier in a war of change.
Corrupting from within.

17/10/202219/09/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: age, sad, warTags: age, death, despair, fight, following, fool, guns, hope, poem, Poetry, sadness, solider, sun, time, war, world 1 Comment

Tomorrow, when the war is over

Beyond this place of darkness.
That covers us like oil.
Beyond my biggest weakness.
Far past the pain and toil.
A light will come on like surprise.
As the weapons start to rust.
And shades of love will cover those eyes.
While the agony fades to dust.

03/11/202107/10/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: love, peace, warTags: care, change, crime, darkness, dove, eyes, guns, hope, love, pain, peace, poem, Poetry, rhyme, rust, time, tomorrow, war, weapons 2 Comments

Distant thunders

The Glittering eternity of the night sky.
Finding heaven as a reference point.
Powdered divinity dusting my soul.
The glowing ebbs of long dying embers
When the fires swept through, it stole all.
Finding hurt as its oxygen.
A great engine of pain.
But my fortress could not be burned.
At it’s centre, a well of strength.
Plumbed by the depths of my existence.
My being.
The only reason, is you.
Why I walk the earth and breathe air once recycled.
Brought to me by northward currents.
The smell of eucalyptus and heat.
Entering my eyes and skin.
Reimaging the smudge of a memory.
The red smeared mark of you.
You.
The reason I battle forth.
Carry on in your unending war on love.
Though these wounds we bleed cry red tears.
I know you will be there at the final fall.
Soaking everything away with love.

06/10/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: fight, hope, warTags: art, battle, being, divine, fighting, fire, hurt, love, pain, poem, Poetry, sky, space, stars, survival, tears, war, wreckage Leave a comment

Tender, the grass of war

A bloody dust covers the eyes of the onlookers.
The voyeurs of life’s sad pageant.
Cattled and rattled they sing the song of war.
A sweet lullaby to mark their intent.
The flag sticks in a body not long departed.
Stretched and lined like the marks of policies.
The bow broke and spilled them into the trenches.
Dirtied their bones and wet the bed.
What cared for them as their moon-skulls broke?
Separated out into the dark sea of regret.
Scaring away the tigers.
Cutting out and counting down.
Piece by piece we cut away the fabric of life.
Stitched into a patchwork of redesign.
Peace and thoughts maligned.
Meet me in the sandbox, the playground, the gulf.
Help me destroy the things I do not understand.
Recess, regress. God bless this mess.
A boy lost in a man’s disappearing world.

18/07/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: fight, war, youthTags: art, battle, blood, bombs, bones, conflict, drones, fight, flag, poem, Poetry, PTSD, refugee, terrorism, trenches, war, WW2, youth 6 Comments

Indignities of war

Now the world sounds better without you.
The sound of rust and avoidance.
And the chatter of indifference.
A pin of change, held in thy hand.
Explosions in their eyes, are merely the dying stars of hope.
As they drop bombs on everything you see.
All that once glittered was sold.
Packaged and peeled like your skin on the cross.
And we taste the regret each day.
And we forget each pain and stay,
Locked in a world of static.
Explaining each miracle away.
It once felt like home.
Until the sands rose and the waters melted.
And we looked once more in the back of our skulls.
Picking away at you on the roof of our mouths.
The tourniquets we place over the lands now fray.
The crumble and crack of reason.
The pain is the only thing we’re happy to hear.
As we martyr those who walk your walk.
And silence those, with that familiar talk.
Of love.

14/07/202112/07/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: jesus, love, warTags: ariplane, art, bombs, change, cross, crucifiction, home, hope, hurt, jesus, land, martyr, miracle, pain, poem, Poetry, sky, strike, war 6 Comments

Nuclear

Empty and scorched. Your fingerprints all around me.
The metal heart buckles as it burns.
A hollowed out feeling.
A holocaust beginning.
That day you left, the skies got dark.
Which substance feeds this pain?
Gasoline for despair, welled in the pit of truth.
Nuclear burns and white light.
The spreading pain of a headache that never fades.
Brought on by crying deep into the night.
The day masked in the dark. A perpetual darkness.
Here, nothing grows.
Inside the husk, no flowers will bloom again.
This skin is toxic.
This mind now rotten.
And empty shade of loss.

10/05/202110/05/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: hurt, pain, warTags: bomb, day, heartache, holocaust, hurt, light, lost, nuclear, pain, poem, Poetry Leave a comment