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

A LONELINESS OF LOVE

Walking the world in cotton wool eyes.
Your skin in mine, pulling and pushing.
All I want to be is home.
Now walls are filled, yet memories bare.
Photographs peel and scream happiness.
Yet this house is silent.
The flowers call, placing a spell upon us.
Out of the woods, a deer upon a beach.
Optimistic voices signalling no more rain.
But a feeling murmurs.
A tempesteral undercurrent.
I’m a killer whale trapped in your wave.
Calling out for deeper waters.
As the green turns to blue.
A call goes out, with deeper vibrations.
No sound, but the wind.

10/01/202410/01/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: beach, lonely, loveTags: eyes, hurt, joy, killer whale, loev, lonely, memories, photographs, poem, Poetry, storm, wander, waves 8 Comments

Pull in destruction

Watching the world as the sun descends.
Closing my soul at my grave again.
You are the light on which I feed.
And you are the force that pulls me underneath.

Your smile gets trapped there inside my heart.
A choke of the moment in which to start.
The slow destruction, a dismantling fall.
Love is the reason we live at all.

Blame never scratched into your eyes.
This is my own collapse.
My own demise.

06/08/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: crash, graves, loveTags: art, collapse, endingpainpoetry, fall, falling, hurt, love, lovers, poem 6 Comments

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.

29/05/202303/10/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, flowers, lossTags: art, death, flowers, future, ghosts, hurt, loss, magic, military, mother, pain, poem, Poetry, swans 7 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

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

Grief

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
…and tomorrow threatens.

24/10/202224/10/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: grief, loss, painTags: ache, art, bereavement, blood, gone, grief, hurt, hurting, loss, missing, pain, painful, poem, Poetry, sorrow 6 Comments

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 2 Comments

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

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

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

Maddening loop

When the clothes of life don’t fit us right.
All the world hums in a headache grey.
I wish for it all to fade away.
To drown in the peace of a miracle.
Or to sleep in the air of reframe.
But life is wanton, and but an ocean of torment.
And pain is the reservoir that keeps refilling.
Washing over me, again and again

03/09/202215/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: depression, life, painTags: art, clothes, depression, grey, headache, hurt, loop, lost, mad, maddening, ocean, pain, poem, Poetry, rain, sea, waves 4 Comments

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

Bully

Never ready, aching like a muscle in the heat.
Tired and silent, hoping for it to pass on by.
To float through like dreams of change.
Holding my breath.
Catching my heart.
It always comes, they always do.
Those feelings of love that split my cells.
Love. Love. Love.
Even when solitary sense surrounds.
It doubles down.
Attacking where I’m weakest.
You know how to make me feel.
Punching the darkness out of me.
Leaving halos around my heart.
You come on with your disease.
Spreading like an immunity that I will never possess.
Tasting the trauma of before, I hesitate to move.
Watching while the soul dances the dance.
Bones that break with ease, cannot protect a heart that bleeds.
For you, seep on through.
Forcing me to love you once more.

30/08/202230/08/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: disease, love, soulTags: art, attack, blood, bully, disease, feelings, heart, hurt, immune, love, poem, Poetry, punch, soul, soulmate 4 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

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

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

Black box

Reaching for you as earth says its goodbye.
What is this thing that takes flight.
Soaring through uncharted and terror drenched clouds.
As I look for monsters out the window.
If this plane were to fall from the sky.
Tear into the ground.
This thing wrapped in meaning.
Would it leave a hole in my heart?
Would it turn me to dust?
A fallen bird needing to fly, this thing called love.

03/08/202213/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: birds, flying, hurtTags: bird, clouds, flight, flying, heart, hurt, love, monsters, plane, poem, Poetry, skies, surreal, terror 6 Comments

Best not to think about it

[You can close your eyes] He said this as the dark clouds above converged.
The smell in the rain had shifted.
[But it won’t change anything] He knew now that all they had was each other.
He pulled them in closer to him.
[Put your arms around me and hear my heart] It drummed and thumped.
Banging against his own ribs.
[I can’t cry, does that make this less real?] They asked him, their eyes damp but still.
They had such beautiful eyes.
[I think it makes it better that you don’t] His own eyes on the verge of cascade.
Pain, grief and surrender balanced on his own interior ledge.
[You know I love you though?] They turned away slightly, ashamed in the honesty.
The words looking for a shadow to hide inside of.
[I know you did once] He replied, wishing for the sun to burn all this away.
The darkness now clawing at them both with wicked intent.
[Once much less than now] They gripped on stronger, finding the muscles contract.
Feeling the soul within slosh to a gratitude that had been frozen.
[I love you more than love] He said, knowing it sounded stupid.
He could not explain how he felt, words seemed useless.
[But this is the goodbye] Such power in the ending, the fall of Rome.
No treasure to be found in the rubble, just dust and damaged bones.
[You think it’s over, that’s why it never will be] Not here, not now they thought.
We are more than this material world.
[So be strong, and be you] He prayed they wouldn’t let go of him.
But pull apart they did and must.
[Best not to think about it right?] And with that, death came on swift wings.
Yet the light can never die.

24/07/202224/07/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: ending, goodbye, hurtTags: art, clouds, ending, goodbye, heart, hurt, leaving, material, pain, poem, Poetry, rain, ribs, world 6 Comments

Something thought eternal dies

It pulls you to the ground.
Rips inside you.
Plunging into your soul like skeleton hands.
That fear of a solitary future.
The stain of a nothing left behind.
In the absence of another.
You throw up your love onto new terrain.
Heavy now, with a new solo gravity.
The weight of the world.
The weight of a tear.
Crashing inside you.
An inky wave of resolve and refusal.
For your heart was sewn and stitched to another.
And now the wound is left to bleed into nothing.

17/06/202217/06/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: gravity, loneliness, lonely, painTags: art, future, gravity, heart, hurt, lonely, love, pain, passed, poem, Poetry, skeleton, soul, wave 1 Comment

There there

I taste the powder on your skin.
The remains of the moon and ash of my soul.
Obliterated by the look in your eyes.
The ability to cut me deep.
And tumble my tiny empire.
In spite of everything, there’s still the stars.
And they sparkle now.
Hung up to light my way.
Swallowing galaxies like fireflies.
Tumbling in the dark.
I watch these words as they spirit from your mouth.
Driving new ghosts, to new ends.
Staking claims to old wounds.
Rubbed now with salt from my tears.
Collapsed into years, and habits that can’t be shook.
So let me cover you once more in feathers.
Taken from the bed we shared.
Whilst you kiss the air, and us, goodbye.
I watch you fly, deep into the inky night.
Disappearing into the gloom, like my hope.
Untouchable, all too soon.

09/06/202209/06/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: ghost, moon, skyTags: art, bed, black, fly, ghosts, goodbye, hurt, ink, lips, moon, night, poem, Poetry, powder, sky, sleep, stars 9 Comments

Sovereign severity misplaced by an absence of form

Blood stained and bare.
My fingers smeared the colour of your lips.
Gripping, and clawing onto this love.
White knuckled, they’ve pulled at the loose threads.
Of a tragically imbalanced affection.
Unravelling the clothes of an emperor.
With an iron taste on the tongue.
And cold like the sun, I pull the feathers from my own wings.
Dropping them on the meandering path away from you.
Scratched by thorns, yet tied to the clouds.
Blinded by reason, and the light from surely an early death.
For the further I tread, the less I live.
Growing colder in your diminish glow.
And your indifference to our circumstance.

02/06/202202/06/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: clouds, departure, hurtTags: art, care, clouds, demise, emperor, hurt, king, lips, love, poem, Poetry, queen, roses, SOVEREIGN, threads Leave a comment

A Tragic discourse in a glorious demise

Tip the ghost honey, it likes to attract the bees.
Distracts from the different coloured tears.
That run on invisible cheeks.
Where were you when I needed you the most?
Negating our history and the whole of the 21^st century.
An incredible void, you chose not to cross.
The chasm left when you moved our luggage.
Years of mangled words and old Christmas ornaments.
Rolling around and cracking, fragile to touch.
Treasured with limitations.
With these thoughts, who needs enemies?
The echoes act like heroin.
Dipped in paraffin.
Taking me up.
Leading me to explode.
Covering you now in glitter and sad reflections.

28/05/202228/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: flames, flight, hurtTags: 21st century, art, bees, burn, christmas, drugs, flames, flying, ghost, glitter, heroin, honey, hurt, love, poem, Poetry, sad 4 Comments

Craving miracles

She began to lie.
Her fingers clasped in on themselves, feeling the strength and weakness in her grasp.
The church, empty now of all souls except those she had come to talk with.
Tears brimming in the eyes, they stung like the holy water welled in the font.
Singeing the new-borns brought in against their will.
The lies came quick and easy.
Words of living danced from her mind and mouth.
Painting the walls the velvet colour of sin which faith knew all too well.
Her prayers circled her and danced above to illuminate the ceiling of the church.
All gold and crisp like an autumn leaf caught in the sun.
Little sparks born from the light that was housed inside of her.
She lied by saying she could cope with this still.
The betrayal to god was that she thought she could go on.
But he knew, and he listened still.
As did all the saints breathing there like ghosts.
She clenched and fumed, crying all the while.
It was hard for her to know someone who knew her better than herself.
But would not wish her well.
For god would not lift a finger in her plight.
He didn’t then, he wouldn’t now.
No matter how many tears flowed in that church.
They would dry all the same.
Those walls would hear his name, again and again.
She lay down, and closed her eyes; using a bible as a small pillow.
Breathing in the dusty time of incense and pieces of flesh.
She waited for the miracle much promised, what better place to wait.
She lies there still, but do not wake her.
For she may still be dreaming.

25/05/202207/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: church, god, miracleTags: art, church, crying, desperate, dreams, faith, god, hurt, lied, lies, miracles, poem, poems, Poetry, religion, sad, sleep, tears 14 Comments