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 1 Comment

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

Oblivion

Everything arranged, just fades away.
Washed by a black sea.
The shiver into nothingness.
While eyes above watch.
Grief picks its place.
Planting rotten flowers that scratch the eyes.
I Move away from everything I knew.
Death coming in with the tide.
Staining my ankles and heart.
Taking what is most precious out with its salty inhale.
Sorrow settles in.
Showing up, now hope has lost its way.

21/02/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, sadness, seaTags: black, death, grief, grieg, grieving, ocean, poem, Poetry, sad, sadness, sea, sorrow, tide 15 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

Forever might never come

Somewhere someone is dying.
A last word stuttering from lips.
Visions imprint on eyelids.
Forever.
The tins of the past stack up.
Filling space in your mind as they rust.
Tumbling from the attic like heavy Christmas decorations.
Some shiny, others cut where the edges hurt still.
Somewhere a soul is born.
Breathing it’s first breath as a mother shivers.
All this while the earths spins in continuum.
Caring not for the specs aboard.
Now, that is all that matters.
The imprints of gold beneath your feet.
As you make your own journey.
A destination in mind.
A port of departure behind.
But now, as the wind blows through you like a ghost.
And your skin turns towards the sun like a plant.
Now is what truly matters.
Who knows when the world will stop spinning.
Or when we cartwheel off into space and nothingness.

10/01/202310/01/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: age, future, travelTags: birth, death, earth, future, gold, journey, now, past, poem, Poetry, space, time, travel 4 Comments

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

Lazarus

The memories had settled, like a layer of dust.
The sediment of life.
All quiet, only snow making a descent to disturb the spirit.
Time washing their feet.
Soaking it in like a golden virus.
Lining the lungs with platinum.
So easy to remain unmoved.
To close the eyes and drift away.
For the birds to lift the life out through the window.
But it was there still.
The pebble in the mind.
The needle in the side.
A notion of incomplete.
A spot of milk on the sideboard of the soul.
The eyelids flutter dustily.
The mouth parts slowly like the red sea.
A miracle come in to being, of a body that moves with hope.
Of a yearning to do, what it still does not know.
Lifting out of the dream.
To do what it was put here to do.
A completion, before it moves on.
And knows what it does not yet know.

17/12/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: dreams, life, soulTags: art, death, dreams, dust, gold, Lazarus, life, living, poem, Poetry, resurrection, snow, soul, spirit 4 Comments

Loveless collision

A little, then more.
Nothing is ever enough.
In this world, where hate is king.
He’s an angel of sadness.
Watching it all from space.
Seeing molecules and indifference collide.
What remains, what took him away.
Stained with pain and cruelty.
Reigning like unlucky stars in our eyes.
Walking it back in photonic blackness.
We only leave the ground for a minute.
To spin on the atoms.
And feast, on the junk of these hearts.
With mercury in our eyes.

07/12/202224/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, hurt, spaceTags: angel, anger, art, cruelty, death, hate, hearts, hurt, king, pain, poem, Poetry, science, skull, space, stars, watching 1 Comment

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

Little wounded wing

Little wounded wing.
You never knew how dangerous it could be.
Flying through life as you were.
Hoping others, like you, wanted to sing.

Little spark of light.
No one told you how maddening it would be.
Existing how you are, so special.
The rules never showed you how to fight.

Life it took a hold and stained.
Into your feathers and soul it pained,
you to see how this world really was, behind the lies.
Through maligned and deceitful eyes.
After wandering your many trails, deserving of fairness and love.
The world is dark and mattered.
Cruel and harsh and tattered.
To a creature who sees the good in everyone from above.

Little broken heart.
We all told you how not to cry.
No one cares for water spent.
The gulf between us now so far apart.

Hey little dying bird.
You told yourself in the end.
The only thing that was missing, was love.
And love was the only thing they no longer heard.

19/11/202222/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: birds, change, deathTags: bird, birds, change, crying, dark, death, despair, feathers, hope, life, poem, Poetry, tough, wings 4 Comments

Death of the heart

Through hollowed tears that paint the walls.
Cries a thought, uttered more in lament than desperation.
The lights fading.
A love abating.
The prayer for a heart on the edge of nothing.
What demons and ghosts stole it away.
Which angels plucked it from the earth.
Has god really written the last passage in its tale.
Or has the other heart deserved a second chance?
These questions lick at the mind of fate.
While others close their eyes to possibilities.
They lost the beat, the rhythm of love.
Those roots that went deep, tangled and clogged with mud.
Twisted with happenstance and rode the whispered jokes of time.
All beneath the silent wings, and bells ringing out a new era.
While eucalyptus air fills the lungs.
And we cough up the oil of yesterday.
For heaven can wait, while paradise before us blooms.

16/11/202222/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, death, fateTags: angels, art, chance, death, demons, doover, fate, ghosts, god, heart, heaven, light, love, poem, Poetry, prayer, wings 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

Fought

What did they tell you about this future?
While the TV played on and you half listened.
This heart you mangled and molded.
These flowers died a long time ago.
Who is to blame?
Distance. Family.
Your fake departure, when your heart wasn’t in it.
Made all too easy for you.
Red letter days and disappointments. Plastic friends.
Those that melt in the heat while the kitchen burns.
Who dries your eyes now?
Lazarus lies, housewives. Shopping that ego.
Choking on the need to be right.
All those lies have now been tagged.
Selfish. Self-aware. Convenient amnesia.
All built on your version of events.
Apologies now that are forbidden.
Poisonous to the tongue.
Under rug sweeping.
These broken pieces of a person you once knew.
Only you.
As you blur once more into everybody else.

08/10/202218/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: argue, argument, hurtTags: amnesia, argue, argument, art, battle, blame, death, ego, fight, heart, hurt, poem, Poetry, selfish, tv, war 2 Comments

Death in Longing – Part II

He moved away the furniture.
And closed the windows and blinds.
Shutting out the world completely.
Dark visions now peppering his mind.

As the blood pooled on the kitchen table.
And the wallpaper pealed over to see.
What had started in love and tenderness.
Was now silenced from its desperate plea.

The face stared back with a knowing.
The cut lip spilling secrets and shame.
So he threw over it the yellow tablecloth.
And cried while he whispered their name.

Then he fled out into the world again.
This had not been the first nor be the last.
Yet this one had dug in much deeper.
And he swore now, it must remain in the past.

18/09/202218/09/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, gold, hurtTags: art, death, devil, escape, flee, gold, golden, hurt, kitchen, poem, Poetry, trauma, visions Leave a comment

Death in Longing – Part I

It came, not in the darkness.
But by a light I willingly placed.
A devil may come in many guises.
And his was a most handsome face.

The flowers died upon arrival.
I did not look or care to see.
How the birds flew out and yonder.
All fleeing the threat unknown to me.

Love was what was offered.
Unconditional, placed at the door.
Hungry was the being who entered.
Devouring lonely souls, longing for more.

The cuts came as sweet as honey.
And the bruises bloomed like spring violets.
The blood seeped, yet I felt nothing.
Unaccustomed and deaf to such violence.

18/09/202218/09/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, Devil, loveTags: art, birds, darkness, death, devil, flowers, hurt, light, love, pain, poem, Poetry, rhyme, violence Leave a comment

Kill the moon

How dare you illuminate and steal this heart.
You glisten there with your tide of treachery.
Luring many to the edges.
My heart was strong, yet you broke it apart.
Forcing the pieces to drift in their gravitless state.
You are a thief and a liar.
For the light you shine is not your own.
Stolen and reflected from the sun.
One that gives much warmth and life.
You are cold and capricious.
Showing different faces to all below.
Keeping your dark side at bay until it’s too late.
I wish to break free, to kill you completely.
Or at least break away from your orbit.

31/08/202215/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: moon, pain, spaceTags: art, death, galaxy, hurt, kill, lost, moon, murder, orbit, pain, poem, Poetry, space, sun, thief 2 Comments

Black box

The block box held a human heart.
Clothed in bone and skin.
And within, through poked out holes.
It watched the world come and go.
Locked away for their own safety.
Hidden from sight to save the pain.
For love had ruined him time and again.
Threatening and early grave.
It hides a world you would not want.
Nor a state you would ever wish to be.
The eyes, maddened, would bore a hole.
The heart, saddened, choked off from love.
Source of its life.
The black box sits in the corner.
The insides slowly rotting.
But the mind, never forgotting.
The one that put him there to begin with.
And the one who would join him there in the end.

27/08/202230/08/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: dark, death, sadTags: art, black, coffin, dark, death, ending, heart, hurt, insane, life, mad, pain, poem, Poetry, sad 1 Comment

Gonna get burned

You’re the one who comes between us.
Coughing out your IQ.
Slipping your hand behind the couch of the night.
Always slipping away.
Leaving me choking on spent haemoglobin.
My mind is wild and my eyes are wide.
But they scarcely see you.
The black bruise of loneliness settles all around.
Weightless and bare.
In the dark, it all looks the same.
Then you set this all on fire.
Warming your hands by the great destruction.
Casting on gasoline comments of indifference.
These words from you are vulgar.
Yet I thank you for your time.
Breathing them in and setting up homes for them inside of me.
Precious fragile fragments of attention.
Your racing heart surprises, it brings me back.
Brings me down.
Simmering into something else.
I come back to you again in little pieces.
Littering your soul.

10/08/202213/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: fire, flames, heartacheTags: art, blood, bruise, burn, dark, death, drugs, fire, flames, heart, hurt, IQ, lonely, lonliness, love, night, Old, poem, Poetry, sky, spark 11 Comments

Watching

Place the blame, again and again.
Languished yet molten.
Repeated reframes.
You melt the words into my soul.
A watching raven.
Fleeing the cold.
Of your frozen heart, lodged in time.
Refusing to die.
Refuted such crimes.
This is your Valhalla, your watchful mount.
Where I’m nailed to a cross.
Impossible to surmount.
Like those black raven eyes, you carve into my heart.
Waiting to walk my apocalypse.
Waiting for the dark.
But let the ink, snuff out all the hope.
Tend to my gallows.
With turpentine and rope.
For in the dark I’ll move, as all cats look the same.
And spark up a supernova.
Of our love, flared out in your name.
The dark will intensely turn from black into white.
Your soul will be cleansed.
By diamonds and this might.
Then only God will watch, as we crumble into the sky.
Into a blanket of feathers.
An eternal bed for you and I.

07/08/202207/08/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: birds, death, skyTags: art, birds, death, eyes, gallows, god, heart, jesus, poem, Poetry, raven, rhyme, rope, sky, soul, watching 3 Comments

Leave us where we lay

His heart, now the colour of his wife.
Ashen grey and broken.
The urn smashed, scattering them both across the clouds.
Little flecks of life stuck on the window of the world.
As the volcanoes rumbled and the gods groaned.
Down they both came in the rains.
Licked up by the wood spirits and the humans below.
Pooling in the heart of the world.
Cells and shells, finding the seabed of the soul.
Undulating to the sound of time.
Those tears of the gods which fell in this passing.
Are drunk only by the sinners, like sweet wine.

23/07/202212/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, gods, rainTags: art, ash, clouds, death, drunk, god, gods, heart, humans, loss, mountains, olympus, poem, Poetry, rain, sea, sinners, skeleton, soull, spirits, tears, time, volcanoe, wine 4 Comments

Champagne after a funeral

How fast things change.
A moment, caught between the movement of an eyelid.
The disintegration of life.
Forcing me in that space to grow up too soon.
The safety, dispersing like clouds.
As the flocks descended.
Earth shifted.
Moments and memories placed now into glass jars.
I steal myself away from the perpetual motion of this life.
Retreat to the bottom of my garden.
Where the weeping willow silently sheds no tears.
But dapples me in shadows.
The soil is disturbed, much like my soul.
Yet buried beneath, little treasures are hidden.
Broken china and a pocket watch which never tells the right time.
I can hear the wind.
It calls and hurries like a ghost.
Your voice echoes, a tear from childhood.
Where I was safe in four walls and your presence.
A Christmas morning.
Perches now in my mind like a raven on a grave.
Tinned sweets and snow, Jesus born on straw and beneath a star.
As I tear at sparkling wrapped boxes.
Put down by loving hands.
I lay yellow tinsel on the grave of this shift of life.
And remember not what was printed in those itchy leaflets.
But what was written on my heart.
Words to fill up my soul, clouding out the sun.
As your ghost now hovers over me.
I drink you in, like champagne and pain.

03/07/202203/07/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: christmas, funeral, ghostsTags: art, champagne, christmas, clouds, death, drink, fate, funeral, ghost, ghosts, jesus, poem, Poetry, presents, time, tree, weeping 8 Comments

Retreat

I cannot go outside.
They will not see.
I lock the doors and turn the world down.
Set the moon to wake me, so I can dance in the dark.
They cannot know, they should not look.
I came to disappear discretely.
The void is my own.
Yet a consequence is not from a lack.
The love and respect weighs me down more than you will ever know.
But I have to go, I have to depart.
Sailing out on silent ships that leave you all in fog.
Not a death, not a dim.
A recapturing, of self.
Until I’m stronger to hold back the waves of the world.
Stronger, to survive the sun.

18/06/202208/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: moon, ocean, seasTags: dark, deaprt, death, departure, escape, fog, life, light, moon, ocean, poem, Poetry, retreat, sea, travel, world 12 Comments

A formidable heartbeat

When the light is snuffed.
By the hand of God.
A recklessness washes within.
Out of the black oozes defiance, and a new religion.
A sense of purpose on ledges and lives.
As quiet as the devil is, and as loud as god.
Your own voice rattled and hums.
Can you denounce the logic which spreads like honey across your mind?
Swallow it down, the nasty taste of tolerance.
And set fire to the warning that came in on a fresh breeze.
Who knows where it has been.
Who knows what it has seen.
You know your own beyond the world of your eyelids.
And deep within your solitary ravine.
The slush and sway of the overwhelm.
A world urging you to stay.

13/06/202215/06/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, Devil, religionTags: art, black, change, death, devil, ending, fire, god, honey, mind, morbid, poem, Poetry, religion, tolerance, wind, world Leave a comment