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

Keep a light on

Those juggernauts cry to a halt.
Bearing the machines of our love, they slowly die.
Not a collide or a collapse.
I wanted to see it for myself.
To take pictures of that ruinous pageant.
The end came before the goodbye.
Lost in the arms of another.
Eyes forced shut by the glitter in the tears.
Your pain cascaded into mine.
Fading through the line, stretched over distance.
Crawling from the wreckage, I promise to keep a light.
Burning long into the night, and my own car on the road.
Blazing into the dark, offering you hope in the distance.
Where you hide all of our feelings.

20/08/202214/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: fire, flames, hurtTags: art, burn, car, collide, crash, dark, distance, end, fear, fire, glitter, hurt, light, love, night, poem, Poetry, road, tears Leave a comment

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

A Broken version

These roots, once wrapped up in cotton.
Fade and break to a summer forgotten.
They twist and scorn in a marauders bed.
Feasting on lies within that head.
And wake tomorrow black and rotten.

02/03/202211/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: dark, death, fearsTags: age, art, bed, black, death, dementia, end, forgotten, haunt, light, man, mental health, Old, poem, Poetry, roots, rotten, summer 1 Comment

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

Haemoglobin

Through your bloodstream I do course.
Eating your oxygen and exploring you from within.
Until the time you breathe your last.
Picking me out with razor blades and intent.
Smearing me across the wall.
To be transfused to heaven.
Expelled to the hell without you.
A crimson coat of apathy.
Because my love suffocated.
From the inside out.

15/09/202109/08/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: blood, body, hurtTags: art, blood, body, death, end, heaven, hell, love, poem, Poetry, Razor, red 8 Comments

The Great nothing

Eventually it all dissolves into nothing.
A heart full like a crowded house.
Junk filling up each cupboard.
The brain full of Christmas decorations.
Which have long ago lost their sparkle.
It weighs down upon a soul that was born to fly.
Clipping the wings and keeping it upon the earth.
The flightless bird of an evolved life.
Beneath the feathers and failures, the bones will break.
Fossilized then crumbled, in the rough hands of god.
Blown into dust, cast out into the cosmos.
It all fades into the great big nothing.
Little spots on time, that do not register our existence.
Like flies on a windshield.
Butterflies on steering wheels.
Irritating beauty that falls apart in frailty.
We all go back to where we belong.
Unknown and empty.
Shooting up black fireworks.
Into the oily blank space of our sky.

28/07/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: end, life, spaceTags: art, black, blank, empty, end, fireworks, heart, house, junk, life, nothing, poem, Poetry, space 9 Comments

A Slow disease

This is the image of dying bird.
The one you hold in your heart.
Born to fly but kept caged and fed.
Not knowing anymore if it’s already dead.

05/03/202105/03/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: birds, death, diseaseTags: art, birds, cage, death, end, feeding, heart, image, poem, Poetry 3 Comments

The Empress

Though she sank into that crystal gloom.
Where memories dwell and history hangs.
She smiled, not to the departure.
Or the trauma she would never know.
But to herself.
For though her life was diminishing.
Fogging up her eyes and silently singing lullabies.
She had chosen the means, the time and the space.
She was the ruler of this small endeavour.
All on her own terms.
Absent of the eyes, or the tongues that criticised.
Or the tiny push.
She controlled the moment that quivered in her soft small hands.
Only she knew how it was to end.
An Empress of her own demise.

28/07/2020 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, Poetry, suicide, waterTags: art, death, demise, empress, end, gone, grave, lake, poem, Poetry, princess, queen, suicide, water 15 Comments

Wish the end

Simple words say more in silence.
Like the break between heartbeats.
Like waves hitting the sand.
To swim or drown in your fiery light.
You cover your eyes with intent.
Stealing the beauty away.
Keep us trapped.
Keep us safe.
Locked into your skin like DNA.
Longing after life’s mystery.
Build the pyre from your bones and burn me inside out.
Collapsing into your cells.
A martyr for your majesty.
Burning the past away, leaving only the gold.
Tasting sweat and love with each gulp of air.
The salt from your waves.
Here is where you’ll find me.
Here is where I wish to end.

28/05/2020 by Mark Ryan Categories: body, love, PoetryTags: art, beach, burn, death, dna, end, fire, heartbeats, life, light, love, lust, ocean, poem, Poetry, salt, sea, sweat, waves 13 Comments