Flowers offered from swans

I woke to find the absence heavy in the air.
Ghosts murmuring while the birds still slept.
Fragipan moments speckling my soul.
The beekeepers and dream shapers always on spinning wheels..
Pulling and pushing at this world.
Coating our eyelids with ashes and honey.
My mother’s requiem now gathers the dust of days.
Marched over like a military parade.
All smiles and weeping.
All promised pain.
The fragile state of existence buckles.
Shattering and reforming the world, and each day, anew.
We pull at the ribbons, tightening to shut.
Closing the wound which spills out dragons and butterflies.
This heart cannot hurt forever.
It will not continue to beat infinitely.
Down to the riverbed, pollute the waters with regret.
Cough out the loss and the bones of pain.
Fill the void once more with flowers.
Go on again.

29/05/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, flowers, lossTags: art, death, flowers, future, ghosts, hurt, loss, magic, military, mother, pain, poem, Poetry, swans 5 Comments

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

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

Justified defender

Always uncertain, lulled by the sense of apologetic adjusting.
Words percolate in my mouth.
Hissing and firing unreasons in my mind.
Benign to you.
Inflammatory to me.
My sensibilities caught once more in a straightjacket.
Why do I struggle to speak what’s inside.
When I know you’ll love me still.
These thoughts, born still from being transcendental.
Cared and caring of your own thin skin.
But with your over-functioning and unrelenting.
I risk receiving hands washed clean and silence.
Placing you pedestalled, I swallow once more these contusions.
For fear of reprisal.
Of objectivity.
Of abandonment.

07/05/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: abadnonment, mad, wordsTags: abadnonment, art, compromise, defending, dialogue, mad, maddening, poem, Poetry, speak, straighjacket, talk, words, writing 10 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

Abscence unavenged

Uncovering eyes and wavering temperance.
Tremors still reside in the soul.
In memories which shake for answers.
Alone in the nervousness.
Deliberate is god’s deliberating.
Cold, as those stones of Solomon.
With an unapologetic turn of phrase.
I’m forced to consider this new reality.
Whilst piratical angels sweep and scour.
Rushing for tiny fragments of humility.
All bones and belief.
Remains of a life cut short, yet painfully endured.
The moments grow out of my fingertips.
Time calcified in nails which scrape once more at existence.
And I lay down in such silence.
Remembering those who no longer populate this realm.
Those who breathe new atmospheres.
Tinged with golden saccharine.
I see the castle and insomnia.
And usher in absence asphyxiation, lost again of all control.

27/04/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, lonely, lossTags: angels, art, asphyxiation, bones, diamonds, existence, god, gold, lonely, loss, lost, poem, Poetry, soul, time 7 Comments

Controlled dispersion

Amplify the conditions which shudder to a close.
Quiet, there’s a holocaust coming my way.
Promises tumble as angels fumble.
To find words that god will understand.
My soul a stone.
Cast into the world like an island.
Washed by the waters of circumstance.
Porous enough to allow the trust in.
Mixing in the blood like milk.
Time wasted and squeezed from acidic holy fruit.
Burning away my hope.
You pick into my mind, to sift through broken imagination.
To find my light. To find a key.
Maybe it would be easier to set aflame.
Burn out the pain.
And let it be.

22/04/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: flames, fruit, holyTags: acid, angels, art, fire, flame, fruit, holocaust, holy, milk, poem, Poetry 7 Comments

Alchemical spring

A breath so light it fogs upon emerald leaves.
The bringer of rain tumbles the tears and drinks again.
Within the stork, beneath the bark.
Rivers of life speed through the revival.
Like an opening hymn, the flowers unfurl.
Baring their covered need towards the sun.
Dazzling the dangerously bored by their beauty.
Hunting the light to breathe.
The frost still settles.
The ground still hardens.
And the pain of winter still burns upon remembrance.
Yet the wind and the movement of the world forces a change.
Spinning into the future as all still struggle to survive.

16/04/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: life, seasons, winterTags: art, frost, life, plants, poem, Poetry, rain, rains, seasons, spring, sunlight, tree, winter 6 Comments

Aviate my liberator

Smother, suffer, succumb.
Lying in the snow drifts of my mind.
Covered in nothing and everything,
The weight of the world in it’s translucent sky.
Pushing down like an avalanche on me.
This is the truck stop of those dreams.
A terminus for the lonely, eager to get away.
I climb aboard my own tiger.
Push through the fog of souls who cling to that static.
Saving up for someday, though someday will never be.
Sprint, spring, survive.
Bursting out of the undergrowth, away from the desert.
Shaking the sand and the sadness from my existential shoe.
Everything will be okay.
I never had it all this time.
As the hand of the clock smacks my skin.
Bruising and bursting the flesh to find a way inside.
Reminders crawling underneath of a now, of a moment.
Which is all we really have.
I hold my breath, count to ten.
Throw away the screens and keep only what is needed.
Place soil in my pockets, so I’m closer to the ground.
Tears in my eyes, so the sea swells inside me.
A return to a place which spat out these bones.
The womb of the world, ground and the sky.
Strung up between the two, as the old me dies.

13/04/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: escape, life, snowTags: art, desert, escape, freedom, jungle, lonely, people, poem, Poetry, sky, souls, tiger, truck 3 Comments

Innocent lies

A hook on the tongue.
Blood in the sun.
Innocent lies, seen in dying eyes.
The meat now rots.
In minds forgot.
Shaping souls which ghosts uphold.
Can’t you see the shape of time.
Can’t you release what was mine.
Hearts vibrate, as the world deliberates.
And your skin will stain.
While guilt remains.
Consequence beyond, (sigh) as heaven responds.

09/04/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: ghosts, lies, rhymeTags: art, ghosts, heaven, lies, poem, Poetry, poison, rhyme, skin, space 6 Comments

Don’t scare the horses

As quiet as the night shouts.
Inside all is chaos.
I looked for you, in all the usual memories.
At the end of every line.
But the phone was dead.
These ribs are my prison.
The ghosts scream from within.
Fighting to get out, while I keep them trapped.
They hear my heartbeat, they know the sorrow that speaks.
Shhhh, do not talk out loud.
The voices say over and over.
A mangled multitude vying to be heard.
But none are the ones I wish to hear.
For I search and scour.
Wandering through the inky night while the page stays blank.
I cannot find you.
I cannot ease the absence.
As I upturn all and shout at the devil.
Sending the birds and brave skywards.

05/04/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: alone, death, fearsTags: alone, art, birds, death, end, ghosts, lonely, poem, Poetry, strange, sun, voices 11 Comments

Decaying orbit

A Void that aches into eternity.
This need to fill the expanding space.
Silenced by the angels, who hush their lips.
And shake their heads.
Nothing really matters, as the skin drifts away.
My soul, pulled away from bone.
Coughing over the cosmos.
Settles now on strange new terrain.
Melted by time and burnt by the suns which swallow.
Pick out the dead from between my nails.
While shaking into fear and excitement once more.
Bathe in the sound of something unknown.
This broken galaxy which continues to dance.
To music no one will ever hear.

31/03/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: change, galaxy, spaceTags: angels, art, body, change, death, light, orbit, poem, Poetry, soul, space, sun 5 Comments

The Sound of sirens

The world is round, the world is round.
Grip a hold, secure yourself.
Flowers bloom in these bones.
A bedding of chalk and soul.
Humming on this planet.
Ringing in the ears.
A silence of absence.
You, no longer in the atmosphere.
Broken, that miracle was not enough.
Heaving as we go, waiting for the buildings to crumble.
For the moon to fall.
Surely, this is the apocalypse.
This noise, this pain.
Must be the end of the world?
Cut out the plants from my skin.
The decay from my eyes.
That taste of death from a last kiss.
And set alight to this terrain.
Where sirens only indicate another wave of chaos.
As I crawl through my current calamity.

12/03/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, fire, flowersTags: art, atmosphere, chaos, crawl, death, decay, end, flames, flowers, loss, plants, poem, Poetry, sadness, world 3 Comments

Dusty comets

Lost compass, sliding off a map.
The ends of the world, as the world ends.
Jettisoning everything of surplus.
Keeping only what is sacred.
What is precious.
I leave a trail, across the sky like a distant dream.
Exploded into nothing, vanished as the night rolls over.
Yet locked in the DNA that rains down.
Are memories and fragments of this soul.
Particles of god and echoes of love.
Like you I am no longer.
And without you, I am nothing once more.

05/03/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: soul, space, starsTags: art, comets, death, decay, end, fire, love, night, poem, Poetry, soul, space 13 Comments

Hyperventilate

The twitch of an eyelid.
I could hear it in your veins.
Powdered desperation to exonerate.
To manifest.
Disintegrate.
Lacquer up the wings to make the exit harder.
Push on towards the climb.
I hold your hand and whisper.
The only way out, is through.
Breathing stutters, shifts and surges.
Gaining momentum for ascending the gates of heaven.
Crashing through walls put in place by god.
Take the air in my lungs and strength in my blood.
The words that swirl in my stomach.
Burn them all for fuel, and escape.
Don’t look back and don’t forget us.
Shake off the coils of concern.
This is an expected state of hyperventilation.
Dislodged dyspnea.
A panic and a consequence to this sudden departure.
Rush.Fear.Dread.
A reduced state of being, seeing you leave.

28/02/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, death, departureTags: angels, art, body, breathing, death, departure, drugs, escape, forget, hurt, lungs, memory, pain, poem, Poetry 6 Comments

Falling back down to earth

Opening eyes that weigh like destiny.
The light snaking across my pupils.
Dilated and deliberate.
Here again, in the now.
Shaking the dream which clings like reality.
A sudden realisation that it is.
Where have you gone?
Ghost-covered and longing.
Needing you more than ever.
I cup your spirit into my arms.
Breathing empty air and memories that I pluck from yesterday.
Maybe longer back, when the drugs hadn’t taken hold.
You, smiling at everything.
Lost in nothing, yet all so important.
We peel you back onto our lives.
Hoping you transfer.
Coat and remain, like precious DNA.
Hoping, against hope, that you can stay.

24/02/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, death, dnaTags: angel, art, death, dna, drugs, earth, grief, hope, loss, love, poem, Poetry, remain 10 Comments

Shadows on your eyelids

Scraping away the amnesia.
The skim of a time longed to be forgotten.
Yet not a distant past, but a painful present.
Gifting nothing but sorrow.
The lights have begun to fade.
Twinkling and dimming as if being submerged.
The chalky depths capture you now.
Tiptoeing you towards your apocalypse.
Towards our regret and loss.
If only we could drown the weight around you.
That poor thing that sinks in teeth as fragile as salvation.
Weak as the gap between us now.
Yet these acts of love pepper the sky.
Like dying stars that fill your eyes.
Shuttering and flashing,
Remembering a time when you were winning.
Tomorrow looms now like the Nullarbor.
Endless and lonely, threatening such unknown.
It sets into your bones and destroys your reason.
A tsunami to wash away dust and life.
The hand now clasps for hope and healing.
Pulling away just empty feathers.

05/02/202305/02/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, grief, hopeTags: art, death, desert, fragile, grief, hope, loss, medication, nullabor, pain, poem, Poetry, present, time, tomorrow, winning 19 Comments

F(L)inch

The air is alive, black on blue.
A multitude of ravens, seizing the world.
Magpie eyes on anything that shimmers.
You unfurl and follow. Placing the ties that bind.
Half asleep, half blind to predicament.
But something murmurs. Something calls.
An unfinished business that followed from before.
Each step, eyes down.
Stepping out from a dream, feeling the floor.
A product of now, naked and true.
Let the feathers unfold, and roll into a climb.
Un-flinch. SkyWest. Un-crooked.
Drop the grey.
The waiting in line.
And sing, distant and near.
A song so many wish to know sincere.
Eyes closed, breathing in the new air.
And let your colours paint the sky.
Wiping across a new dawn.
And darkening their sheltered lives.

 

01/02/202305/02/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: birds, freedom, skyTags: art, away, birds, escape, finch, flying, freedom, poem, Poetry, sky, wings 4 Comments

Beauty

Now it holds me, now it speaks.
Crumbling the skin away to see what’s underneath.
Cupid kill me, cupid teach.
Beyond the heavens, with the devil at my feet.
I want to heal you, I want to kiss.
To consume the time that threatens abyss.
For in this moment your beauty lies.
Inside my heart, my hands and eyes.

29/01/202313/01/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: beauty, kiss, loveTags: abyss, art, healing, heaven, kissingkiss, love, poem, Poetry 5 Comments

Hope under skin

What process is this?
Little daggers of ice, piercing a beating heart.
Oh mother Mary won’t you help.
Sweep away the pain and apocalypse.
Drive out the devil and chalky residue of consequence.
Time collects now, not in a bottle.
But in the carboard bowls, slightly full.
Mostly struggling.
Preparing for the collapse.
We pray it all away, but still it flows.
Coming in with the tide and with trauma.
Maybe we need holy water.
To wash.
To burn.
Stinging the sins and the scene away.
Raising our Lazarus once more.

26/01/202325/01/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: health, miracle, religionTags: art, health, healthcare, heart, holy, Lazarus, mary, miracle, mother, poem, Poetry, religion, water Leave a comment

Oasis swims

To walk the sands of time, to find the doorway to heaven.
Leaves me breathless.
You put your hands on this skin, and I succumb.
Unabated astral movements behind my eyes.
To know you from somewhere, is to feel you under my skin.
As my blood crashes down the sand dunes on the walls of my heart.
I left you, and found you there.
Waiting for me where the moon sinks.
Threatening never to return.
With honey wine still on your kiss, I will not function.
I slip into another consciousness.
Walking in a dream that quivers on god’s fingers.
Kiss me from dying, and wake me once more.
Let me disappear into your arms that comfort me.
Like a blanket against desert cold.
And I will wash these tears away in the pools of your eyes.
That offer such sweet safety swims.
To the desert floor.

25/01/202325/01/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: desert, eyes, kissTags: art, cold, comfort, desert, eyes, heart, kiss, oasis, poem, Poetry, swim, treasure, winds 6 Comments

Internal/central

This illuminating version.
Drifting.
Loving, only when the time is right.
When it’s uncalled for.
Who knew?
Who cared?
A scorched soul while the film played on.
And all roads led to the same.
Your heart curdled up tight.
Wearing out my mind.
Melting the plastic of the world we once inhabited.
Central now.
Gaining control of a need that was needed.
Crazy, only to know we were always driving.
Using our knees to steer.
Hoping to crash and burn.
In a beautiful all consuming fire.
So central to our survival.

22/01/202311/01/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: fire, life, loveTags: art, crash, crazy, fire, llove, love, poem, you Leave a comment

Extirpate

Shivering into this new world.
Of a day broken over me like the sunshine egg yolk of realisation.
That an absence now fills this room.
A void as cold as winter, that settles into these bones.
Reborn into a version of such violence and void that my head aches into grey.
And my heart, slips away; into adjustment.
You folded us into memory.
A slight of hand that speaks with a voice of your reasoning.
Echoing now in my ears.
And my tears will turn to chalk.
While the plants die all around me.
A fate that flutters on my lips, like butterflies trapped in conservatories.
Glancing at the world around, but smashing again and again against the glass.
Yet still you toil and dig at the weeds of my entanglement.
That curled around you like a summer’s blanket.
And you sheer, and slice.
Digging hard at my roots.
Killing me a thousand times over.
Scratched, aged and wretched.
Praying I rot away and turn into time.

04/01/202304/01/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: grief, hurt, winterTags: art, death, grief, loss, memory, pain, poem, Poetry, scream, skull, suffering, summer, trapped, winter 2 Comments

Subconsciously motivated to euphoria

Tell me more about this place where the flowers grow.
Darkness, you say, is but a dream spun in fractured states.
That has little place there.
These flowers, they sparkle like crystals under sunlit ponds.
Inviting us to dive for mislabeled treasure.
There was but a crack on my mind.
Nothing really, but would it matter?
If that fracture, grew worse and worse.
Not there you say, that place it heals.
Swaddling all in divine clouds of relief.
Keeping the broken pieces of the shell in place.
And the mind where it belongs.
What use of the heart then?
The heart it seems is praised.
Raised up high like a crown.
The land vibrates under soft understanding.
While love sews tapestries of tales, and memories together.
They are there too, you know they are waiting.
How could an angel not sit at the throne.
Heaven?
No, not yet. The safer place inside your soul.
Where you barely tred.
I don’t want to stain it all with coatings of yesterday.
These things will be washed away, only lessons remain.
Who can go?
All are welcome.
When can I leave?
You’ve already left.

31/12/202228/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, flowers, happyTags: angels, art, flowers, happy, heaven, joy, light, love, mind, poem, Poetry, safe, soulmate, sunshine, travel, wellness 6 Comments

A Dreadful something

Bridging across the expanse.
Brain before heart.
A dreadful something lurking in between.
We stumble, crawl, carry onward.
A fear in every step.
A freedom threatening.
The forest we left kept the darkness.
The sea to the north promising a drowning.
Loneliness our only company.
Hope our only guide.
Go forth and spit in the eye of Satan.
And love him for the barriers and trials.
Pray and wipe the spit away.
Keep stripping away the veils.
For the darkness and despair will not claim.
And he needs the most love, all the same.

28/12/202228/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: hope, satan, strengthTags: art, change, dark, darkness, devil, forest, hope, journey, monster, motivation, poem, Poetry, satan, sea, strength 4 Comments