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

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

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

Bleeding air

Wait for this dust to settle.
A hurt that’s wrapped tightly in a bandage.
Squeezed into numbness.
You asked me here, you want me to stay.
But to remain means deserting me.
Leaving myself alone to drift into space.
You handle my heart so divinely.
Picking off the dirt that reminds me of my past.
Scars that taught me not to break.
To catch you, half a world away; lost in the fog of tomorrow.
Cancelling time zones as the tock and the tick irritate.
And your kiss, inebriates it all.
This Atmosphere changes everything.
Up here, I cannot see the fall.

26/10/202222/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: blood, space, travelTags: bleed, blood, distance, falling, flight, heart, heartache, hope, love, past, plane, poem, Poetry, space, timezones, tomorrow 4 Comments

Stars come out (to light our way)

Don’t take this from us.
As the heart hovers and throbs.
An unending passion that is born in the slightest smile.
And the most agonising cry.
Your words caved in as the world collapsed.
Ushering happiness and banishing the ghosts.
What worlds do we hope to die?
Which ruins threaten to drag us down?
You meet me on the dock, that inches out into space.
Into time, dappled in joy and the yet to become.
Like a swirling candied apple planet in our hands.
And we dip our feet into stars.
Watching it all from above.
This sudden shudder and retract.
Of a past that wishes to bury itself.
In a book so eager to close.
The whisper in my ear as, the night fades, is you.
Promising me tomorrow.
As dawn washes into my eyes.

22/10/202218/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: night, space, starsTags: books, ghosts, hands, happy, hope, journey, joy, light, poem, Poetry, ruins, smile, space, stars, swa, way, wishes, worlds 4 Comments

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

Hope against Hope

The blood settles, as if time holds its breath.
Cupped in a hush, frightened to flow.
The rest awaits.
A shuffle in the mind.
The attic of the body, like a restless Dorian Gray.
When the eyes reveal the true horror of the ordinary.
A Day, much like yesterday.
Comfort swallows, the needed search forever longing.
Secure and safe.
How else do we move, if not shaken from the spot.
The mountain beckons, a summit that seems never conquerable.
A defeatist voice that echoes in your ears.
Humming its way through your muscles, reversed intent.
Until a swing of the pendulum, a signal fire of age.
Of time wasted, sand spilling from your hands.
Dust in the blood.
Your time is now, it was actually then.
We enjoy the blessing every day, to start again.

15/10/202215/10/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: blood, body, hopeTags: art, blood, body, change, climb, comfort, escape, hope, hurt, light, loss, mind, mountain, poem, Poetry, safe, time, voices Leave a comment

Toujours en fuite? / Still on the run

Vous souvenez-vous, quand vous étiez jeune?
Les battements de coeur dans un infini.
Une seconde sur les lèvres de Dieu.
Pouvez-vous sentir la forêt?
Es-tu fuyant?
Disparu dans les arbres.
Quelle partie d’entre vous ne dort jamais?
Pour toujours rêver dans un monde où règnent les cauchemars.
Portez votre couronne.
Asseyez-vous, et lavez-vous dans les larmes cosmiques.

/

Do you remember, when you were young?
The heartbeats in an infinity.
One second on the lips of God.
Can you smell the forest?
Are you fleeing?
Disappeared in the trees.
What part of you never sleeps?
To always dream in a world where nightmares reign.
Wear your crown.
Sit down and wash yourself in cosmic tears.

05/10/202218/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: crown, escape, woodsTags: art, away, cosmic, crying, escape, forest, god, heartbeat, hope, independance, poem, Poetry, running, self, tears, trees 4 Comments

Salvus erit

A coldness there.
Darkness, placing a hand on my skin.
These eyes close, transportation to a familiar place.
Touching me, the lonely.
Wanting to make an everlasting connection.
It swamps my lungs, and cradles me in arms of hollow bones.
Comfort in this awful place.
A room where I chose what fits, what goes where.
The ghosts mingle and float with intent.
Then a call, a gentle pull.
Like a vein slipping across a bone in motion.
The sounds of the desert, a shofar calling.
It’s triumphant song barrelling over my eyes.
Calling me like a flame.
God needn’t reside in the hand that pulled me out.
Nor in the eyes of the person offering hope.
For they are  the same, they are myself.
Smiling and pulling on the little red thread.
Lighting the way forward with tiny sparks.
Saving me from the depths once more.

03/10/202203/10/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: hope, light, lonelyTags: art, darkness, desert, flames, ghosts, god, hope, hurt, light, lonely, lonilness, music, pain, poem, Poetry, pull, spark, vein 1 Comment

The Girl with the torn garden

It hurt to breathe in.
The cuts in her lungs, little origami slices.
Stung and hung like bloody stars against the grey sky.
To weep, was to be weak.
The voice echoed from a childhood memory.
Tangled in the box of her mind like Christmas decorations.
The machine whirled into robotic life.
Its own circadian rhythm forcing all to breathe in and out in unison.
Rings banished, symbols of love and connection threatened.
No god here.
Empty souls shuffled into pale suits.
And children forbidden to smile.
The anaesthetic now killing everything inside.
Feelings of escape being buried alive.
She came across a memory, shiny like the Christmas star.
Dusty too after much forgetting.
Falling from the oak tree, while the summer sun glistened it’s caramel.
A thump, and pain. That reaching for breath that struggled to come.
The world dancing, blurred into psychotropic haze.
Until she burst through the surface of pain, and gulped fresh air.
The gold was in the overcoming, and the gentle rub on her back.
Spreading like ivy.
From someone who had already gone.
Swallowing fresh razors she breathed in once more.
Hugging that memory.
Strength coursing through her bloodstream to her lion heart.
Meeting them again, or making them proud.
The fork before her was beautiful and beckoning.

14/09/202214/09/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: garden, pain, sunTags: art, breathe, family, garden, gold, hope, hospital, lungs, poem, poems, Razor, rings, strength, sun, tree 7 Comments

A Once before and yet to be

Words were meaningless then.
Arrows and honey lost in the storm.
Traveling so far, just to find a home.
I gave everything I had away.
With broken bones I crawled.
Like octopi coming out of the sea.
A starfish, growing back.
My world is not littered with diamonds.
Those words, once so meaningless, do not sparkle still.
But they do feather my nest.
A poet, a teller of stories.
Some long, others gone.
But sadly, and shockingly.
My own tale of loss and redemption.
Yet it echoes deeply into my other worlds.
And rings out in a life yet lived.

10/09/202210/09/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: octopus, stories, timeTags: diamonds, future, hope, loss, octopi, poem, poet, Poetry, redemption, sea, starfish, stories, tales, time 1 Comment

Days of correction

We wait for you, as the heavens fall.
As the skin begins to be pulled from our bones.
The sea foam swallows.
Thunder follows.
And all around the sparks flicker.
We wait for you to catch up.
The lead in your blood to bleed out.
A correction, an alteration.
A mind frame recalibration.
I wait for you, till the end of time.
Modifying what was placed inside your DNA.
The world is ending, and time hangs like a necklace.
Heavy and beautiful around your neck.
You need to move faster.
Evolve and leave the husk of darkness resigned,
to a space only the ghosts will welcome.
We are in the age of correction.
A simple state of detection.
Of knowing what to take, and what to leave behind.

24/08/202215/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, change, timeTags: angel, beauty, bones, change, correction, dna, hope, light, motivation, necklace, poem, Poetry, sparks, time Leave a comment

Falling on a bruise

Engulfed in sweet delicious fires.
The needling and licking of moments in time.
Spread out and traversing dimensions.
That lead me ever closer to home.
It shook us momentarily.
A pain that marched along the spine.
Crumbling each vertebrae.
Making its way to the heart.
A fall for the nine thousandth time.
Crumbling the scabs not yet healed.
A rise, for the nine thousand and one.
The bruise, disappearing in the dark that surrounds.
It all felt distant.
Told perhaps, by someone else.
Yet lonely births space and freedom.
And the marshes and reeds whispered an awakening.
The pain, transformed to knowledge.
The bruise, fading in light of a new dawn.

31/07/202231/07/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: bruise, change, hopeTags: art, bruise, change, dark, dawn, hope, light, pain, poem, Poetry, tomorrow Leave a comment

Sending myself flowers

When the universe rests, and slumbers in my mind.
And all around me is still.
I take this chance to apologise.
For who I have become. For who I wanted to be.
An apology for me.
Within these cracks and slithers of my soul.
That remain unfettered to moral decay.
I brush the hurt away.
And send myself flowers.
Hoping to turn over those leaves, and find you there.

13/07/202211/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: eternity, flowers, soulTags: apology, art, books, brush, change, fiction, flowers, hope, leaves, love, poems, Poetry, soul, world Leave a comment

Glitter in the cement

It thronged and thumped, vibrating in the earth.
Echoing the stamps of dinosaurs long since departed.
Within and captured, like watching eyes, it waited for the moment.
For the fall of the moon.
The death of the sun.
A complete blackness that inked all over, choking out life.
It needed to be hidden, it waited to be revealed.
The power that dwelt inside could only ignite by the fuse of a fall.
The complete shattering of a heart, life and mind.
It began to sparkle.
Breathed upon by the lips of such angels.
Pulsed and sparked.
Vibrating through like the whispers of a distant time.
It turned the gravestones to dust.
Set the ravens a flight.
Filled the veins once more with milk and honey.
It lived in you, all along.
Always knowing how to win, when to begin.
To never banish the darkness.
But instead, to transform it to light.

08/07/202208/07/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: light, miracle, strengthTags: angels, art, darkness, dinosaur, hope, light, moon, motivation, overcome, poem, Poetry, power, prayer, rock, strength, try 6 Comments

Hold it all in

Cocooned in a love that had died.
Brought to life once more in this time.
In a moment, connected not by space or matter.
But by the golden dance of hope and perseverance.
I’m on the verge of ecstasy again.
So I swallow it down, keep it all in.
The smile I suffocate with my lips.
Breathing in the heady acceleration of this future.
Trapping it in amber.
No words come from you, yet I hear your voice.
Within, spinning spiderwebs of trust and delicate touches.
Heaving my ribs to make way for the love.
Expanding.
Melting this iceberg.
Though this moment won’t last.
As I feel the morning rays creep over the windowpane.
Threatening today.
And tomorrow you my choose to go away.
Now is all that matters.
It feels, as I collapse into forever.
Washed in your eyes, the drenching of starry hazel plumes.
Making me divine.
So I keep you in time, trapped like beauty.
Forever.
Mine.

06/06/202206/06/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: future, happy, loveTags: care, dream]sun, forever, future, happy, hope, kiss, lips, love, poem, Poetry, time Leave a comment

Majesty and the mystery

Stolen time which seeps out of blackness.
Returned like pearls to the sea.
All we know, we have forgotten.
Clearing the realms for wonders to birth.
We close our eyes and catch the breath that escapes.
The Sustaining mist of God.
As this mind coughs up havoc, with its mystery of the unknown.
That pulls with a gravity to the dark and tragic.
God cradles us in feathery hope.
Kissing promise once more into our blood.
Gravitating away from grief.
Running water of certainty in our blood.
For we never truly know what exists.
Beyond the curtain of our eyelids.

20/04/202220/03/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: faith, god, hopeTags: change, dark, darkness, faith, feather, god, gravity, hope, light, pearls, poem, Poetry, space 5 Comments

Spirited

You see?
All of this remains.
Before. Behind. Way after.
The crucible cracks and splutters in its creation.
Offering golden wings in which to ascend.
Where will those heavy wings take us.
On that lunar breeze which blows from the lips of god.
A substituted living now folds into the ocean.
This blessing of cotton wraps around my eyes.
Yet still I see.
If I wait for you, what dies in my veins?
If I go now, will you remain?
The hesitation catches me like asthma.
Your love pollutes my body like oxygen.
Fixing me to rise only when your lungs heave.
At times we are at a distance.
Calling half a world away.
Yet still I remain, waiting for you to see.
Waiting and believing.
That love in your eyes.

13/04/202220/03/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, flight, loveTags: angels, blood, delay, eyes, flight, god, grows, growth, hope, love, pain, poem, Poetry, sprout, time, veins, waiting, wings Leave a comment

Ascend

What have you done?
Today, this life; where have you gone?
Which angry root did you pull out?
What weak bone did you break?
What flood turned to drought?
Which love to an ache.
You may forget everything in the end.
As time shuffles by, and souls begin to bend.
But you have each moment, each second in the sun.
A little tiny diamond, reserved for each one.
To pick up today, and more the day after.
A small little treasure, like happiness and laughter.
So forget the mould and oil that covers you like gloom.
And go out and discover, shoot for the moon.

03/04/202202/04/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: change, hope, moonTags: bones, change, diamond, hope, inpsire, moon, motivation, poem, Poetry, rhyme, rocket, soul, space, strong, sun, time, tomorrow, treasure, weak 6 Comments

Everything (सर्वेषां स्वस्तिर्भवतु ।)

When the world wind weeps around you.
May the universe dry your eyes.
And happiness make you smile once more.
Sarvesham Svastir Bhavatu.
I cannot keep you safe from the conflict.
Or the wars within you.
But I offer you peace, from that of which I’ve known.
Sarveśām Shāntir Bhavatu.
You are taken from the mountain,.
You come in pieces.
And I too, but together we are more than less.
Sarveśām Pūrnam Bhavatu.
And if you fall, I will not catch you.
But I will watch as you rise again.
And applaud your strength, with an outstretched heart.
Sarveśām Maṇgalam Bhavatu.
We are but pieces.
Love is the is the whole.
Versions of the same form, spun from the same gold.

26/03/202220/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, church, divineTags: angels, form, god, gold, hope, life, light, love, mantra, mountain, poem, Poetry, prayer, reborn, tears, war 1 Comment

Tiny empire

Discovered by mistake.
A breaking heart hidden under the couch.
Buried beneath the earth.
And if it broke and if I died; what world is left behind?
A towering empire of loose threads.
Pulled at many moments in a life undone.
How precarious those moments were.
Towering up to god, a shaking finger of Babel.
Crying out in many tongues to a deaf creator.
The holder of my heart.
Now these racing rats and spiders crawl over me at night.
What a sight, it is to see a hollow mind explode inside out.
My little world of mistakes, dew drops to effort.
Tsunamis of remorse.
When heartbreak altered my course.
A treasured time where the earth held still.
And I held my breath, for you looked inside.
And watered my garden.
Tended to the flower that had crawled away from the sun.
My tiny empire, rebuilt by the one.

23/03/202220/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: flower, god, heartacheTags: art, change, empire, flower, garden, god, heartache, hope, loss, love, mistakes, Poetry, rocks, sea, spiders, sun 5 Comments

Abiding to the calls of an immutable fate

Wiping smiles that smear.
Sticky and iridescent on this soul.
Spun up in a tangled web of dreams.
Ones that glowed in the ashes.
Tumbling embers.
The moonlight and sunlight trapped.
Sparkling like forever diamonds of wonder.
We place ourselves in the centre of this covenant.
A vessel, a conduit of hope.
Where you crack and splinter.
The gold of our love drips in and fuses shut.
That Japanese way, all smiles and bowing.
Head towing, heart directed towards the seventh heaven.
Cupped in our hands.
Precious, fragile.
Determined, defiant; as strong as religion.
You kiss, I receive.
I slip inside that familiar soul.
Rearranging the furniture within.
A place to rest bones and desires that flutter like butterflies.
Ones that freshly taste the air of life.
Dipped in tears of God.
So that they fly forever.

11/02/202211/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: hope, kiss, lightTags: art, butterfly, dreams, eternal, fate, god, hope, kiss, light, love, moon, poem, Poetry, soul, strong, tears Leave a comment

Spume or solidify

Is it so hard to stay with me forever?
Or tear the hearts that fuse and tether.
Like an animal tied to a stake.
I circle around and shiver and shake.
So choose it now, and choose together.
A bursting wonder, to weld or sever.

02/02/202226/11/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: eternity, hope, timeTags: animals, art, bubbles, eternity, forever, hope, love, poem, Poetry, relationship, shake, trust, waves, wonder 2 Comments

Love is also hope

Breaths coming, like exhales from heaven.
Lapping at me like the tide of eternity.
I watch you dream.
Capturing the stillness, frozen in ice.
Long have we climbed.
Battling ourselves and the elements.
Shouting into the wind.
Now all around is still.
Silent like the first snow.
I taste you like that snowflake on my tongue.
Tasting of winter, and childhood memories of safety.
You whisper out, calling me into your dream.
Puffs of words escaping your precious lips.
Cracked open like an oyster.
The white hurries.
Ghosts vanish.
And you tell me, this was never a dream.

21/01/202221/01/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: dreams, hope, loveTags: art, care, dreams, frozen, ghosts, hope, ice, lips, love, poem, Poetry, snow, winter 4 Comments