Holy Water

Trickle how the water comes.
Softly how those moments numb.
That drip of more, that addict within.
Stalls the change as reduction begins.
A thought, so sharp, it cuts my soul.
And leaves a bleeding anxious hole.
Stuff it up with sterile sympathy.
Your knee jerk blanket atrophy.
Born from your most humble place.
Yet rests uneasy in this space.
That trickle of love begins to vanish.
You dab my lips with bitter anguish.
And pull on strings that dangle there.
Beneath the tears, beneath the prayers.
Though within me roars the unfair state.
Of caught between this shifting hate.
The tectonic rasps of that indifference.
Reduces this voice to insignificance.
So I lick the drops upon the floor.
Savouring each and those before.
Hoping the flood will come again.
And wash hope through me like heroin.

18/04/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: holy, love, waterTags: divine, flood, holy, hope, love, poem, Poetry, relationship, water, weather 3 Comments

Setting fire to the sun

Eclipsed once more by the absence.
An illuminating vision expected in confident appearance.
The shape of ghosts.
The sound of nothing.
Pulled and plummeted by the gravity of grief which once was abandoned.
Like truth from a liar, it surprises then diminishes.
It’s the truth to know which bone to break, which leg to chew.
What pound of flesh must answer to.
That greater god, that watchful eye.
Orbiting Saturn as I look to loose this home.
This hurt.
Peal a psalm from my face, and see the holy terror.
That staring into loss, like staring at the sun.
Pointless yet devotional.
Beyond any understanding.
Out of habit, out of desperation.
Slash the skin, spill the solar system from within.
Somewhere, out there to find you.
Casting out tear-stained ropes.
To rescue the lost.

13/02/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: holy, space, sunTags: god, grief, holy, hurt, looking, loss, poem, Poetry, rescue, satrun, saved, solar, space, sun, system, writing 5 Comments

We die in the dark

She knew of course, the dying light.
The creeping shadows.
The bleeding white.
Her soul had threatened her many a time.
A world turned a sunder.
Bleached by holy turpentine.
She had a choice, before her now.
A heaving heart.
A thankless vow.
To go forth strong, one more contradiction.
That the path be easy.
A mind drowned in benediction.
What halo had burned away the pain.
Of apologetic compromises.
Swallowing such shame.
So she bore her bones and looked to the sky.
She prayed for mercy.
Just another gentle crucify.

20/07/202320/07/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: dark, death, holyTags: art, darkness, death, dying, ending, god, holy, light, mantra, poem, Poetry, prayer, vow 4 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

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

Diagnosis

All this bubbling inside my veins.
Feels like angels spitting in my brain.
A feverish swoon overtakes me now.
The silent prayer and misplaced vow.
That swirl and flick of the finger of god.
Dilutes this blood to something odd.
More like a lick from roaming devils.
Who cough and sniff, and silently revel.
This outbreak which defies prognoses.
And nudges for spiritual diagnoses.
For though my body and mind is sick.
Inside the soul this illness licks.
And leaves me now mere bread and wine.
My soul and spirit, drenched in turpentine.

09/11/202220/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: holy, religion, virusTags: art, christ, communion, devil, diagnose, god, holy, jesus, poem, poery, prayer, virus, wine Leave a comment

Drenched in departure

Through wanderings of a hallowed heart.
Untie the science while the rain comes.
Let the silence smother you.
Or little taps of life, crash on your skin.
Blanketing this world in a quiet monsoon.
Layering and prevailing over all before.
Let it seep into those muddy bones.
Washing everything.
Purify and personifying a state of being.
Fresh like holy water.
Stinging the sins like acid.
Drown and choke underneath those silent waters.
A vast tide that you wash over me.
Those days that were always numbered.
The borrowed time and delicious decay.
How sour those words met my mouth.
When I asked you to leave.
Tying my tongue into confused states.
Separate systems and traumatic time zones.
A flight into a new world.
Where the clouds coughed around me.
And the skylarks sung our demise.
God raining down sad tears.
That had been building for some time.

27/04/202220/03/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: goodbye, hurt, seasTags: birds, bones, cry, departure, flight, heartache, holy, hurt, monsoon, ocean, poem, Poetry, rain, raining, sad, sea, seperate, storm, tears, time, timezone, travel, water Leave a comment

Sinners in church

All I feel, is the blood underneath.
The red torrent that flows the same.
In a look that turns away.
Reaffirms the shame.
Can we be sinners if inside all is pure?
Skin and bone, flesh from him.
Bread that sticks in my throat.
We are sinners in the house of mother earth.
We are angels beneath the floors of hell.
These tears that fell when the walls collapsed.
As the shadows were expelled.
Are the isotopes of God.
Realigning in our cells.
So this sin, I am thankful for.
A difference from the past, pulled from Neolithic teeth.
We are sinners and miscreants.
All the same under the eyes of the blind divine.
Which in turn, makes us holy.

17/01/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: church, sin, spiritualTags: art, beauty, blood, bone, churches, divine, earth, evil, good, holy, house, mother-earth, poem, Poetry, pure, saint, sin, sinner, skin, stained glass 4 Comments