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

Allow the undoing

Paradise falls, as we bury the feathers.
A crumbling collection of corroded attempts.
The remains of Babel mixed with the tears of God.
Never for me, only by your design.
Crafted out of an ego that you can never resign.
You lay siege on me with it.
Tapping at my glass heart.
Rapping into my bloody soul.
The storm around bellows.
Shaking the fragile shelves where I placed our love.
Like water in a vase, the love flows over.
Shaken by the ground swell and anger.
The sloshing an slashing make way.
Like a parade of sad elephants from your mouth.
Unravelling the red.
Undoing the gold.
I sit without a crown, without a king or queen by this side.
Eating the apples so justly plucked.
Watching it all swarm and swell.
Rip and rampage through it all.
Watching Rome burn and the walls fall.
Smiling, like mockingbirds in the dawn.
Allowing the earth to suck the air away from me.
Knowing this is truly a beginning.
Seeing the light once more reflected in tomorrow’s song.

06/05/202206/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: crown, debris, tomorrowTags: art, birds, crown, destruction, earth, fall, god, gold, king, poem, Poetry, queen, rome, tomorrow 4 Comments

Checkers and chess

How to topple the king who wears the crown so royally.
Moments and magnesium fill the place of diamonds and gems.
Wrapped in much fool’s gold.
And the crown heaves down, rubbing red and raw.
Check
A life long-lived with much regret.
Check.
How you turn on the heels and fled.
To learn a life in which to lead, we watch while others succeed.
Little eyes through holes in fences.
A voyeuristic violation into their little galaxies.
That swirl and sway like the black in the white.
Changing from dismay into delight.
And you take this horse by the reigns, and lead me through the forest.
Through the clearing of my ill begotten ways.
Out of the woods, out of the storm.
Peppering poppies that fill my lungs with such poisonous perspective.
And show me.
That I had been asleep all this time.

09/02/202226/11/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: chess, kings, treasureTags: art, board games, checkers, chess, crown, diamonds, drugs, flowers, king, life, poem, Poetry, poison, poppies, queen, woods Leave a comment

As the city sleeps

Still waiting for the big revelation.
Be prepared for anything, but do you still believe?
Dreaming of big distractions and carbon copied lives.
Left with diamond headaches and pills to make you sleep.
Don’t sleep, dream. Let it in.
Kick start that desire that you are just as good as God.
Good as gold even. Counting zeros on a monthly slide.
A king or queen of comedy.
Hanging on the end of the line.
Hanging onto anything.
Smear the sugar on your lips and catch the bees.
Be prepared for the sting, decompress and sing.
Close your eyes as your tongue lolls over.
Cityscapes and supernovas.
Mercury swinging in to shift the traffic.
Allowing you to arrive more easily.
Computered to your destination.
Yet missing your arrival.
Sleep another day away.
Swimming in medicated decay.
Remember to set that alarm to wake the city.
Not even giving the dead a rest.

03/07/202102/07/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: city, drugsTags: city, comedy, computer, diamonds, digital, drugs, king, modern, poem, Poetry, queen, science, sleep, travel, work 5 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