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

Reveal

The suffering of fools.
With each new day they add their stain.
A clogging to the air that you breathe.
Beneath the end, that’s where they’ll find you.
So strong and complete.
Underneath.
You want it all so badly.
This revelation to tomorrow.
To be remembered and loved for the skeleton inside.
As you bathe in a bath of bleach.
And rinse your soul with turpentine.
Uproot the dirt and the dark that keeps you hidden.
That keeps you displayed for a world of passer-by’s.
This great reveal, behind the curtain.
Under the skin.
Is the world you live in.

15/10/202218/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: body, dark, strengthTags: art, bones, dark, empowerment, fake, hidden, motivation, paint, poem, Poetry, portrait, reveal, self, soul, strength, tomorrow, underneath 2 Comments

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

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

Her-metic

Maybe it was all too much.
This veil pulls me down.
This earth pushes me up.
Bones as thin as china.
Will as strong as Russia.
What religion should I wear?
Which god was I trying to please?
Watch me as this orthodox trips into sunlight.
Unbuckled and strewn about like papers on a desk.
Write my name on everything you see.
For I shall own it.
My signature, worth a thousand jewels.
But then maybe, I shall fade away.
Fall into the shadow of time like a sphinx in the sand.
Riddling into my demise and my own lunacy.
Special to only but myself.
A fading queen of the ancients.
A housewife dead beneath a carpet.
Speak well of me while you eat my bread.
Drink the milk I give and choke on the thoughts I offer.
And forget me not.
For I was there at your beginning.
And will silently watch you dissolve.
A woman. A soul.
Veiled and precious.
Swirling poison in my mouth.

12/03/202217/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: strength, trapped, womanTags: art, china, death, egypt, god, history, lunacy, milk, poem, Poetry, religion, russia, sphinx, strength, tradition, veil, woman 5 Comments

Indemnity

Stay was a word that hung in the air.
Everything else was torn down, packed and registered.
Brought out of the vault to tally up.
Staying meant deserting.
It was something they could not understand.
The pieces of a life quietened.
Dormant dreams that may never awake.
I need a love that’s stronger.
Was all that could be mustered.
From a breath that was losing air and strength.
‘Then never think of me.’
Closing their eyes to a mounting disaster.
One that came in with the rain.
That day I left.
Impossible words ringing in ears
Ones that had heard such sweetness before.
Closing doors that would never again be opened.
Shutting the windows to suffocate the memories.
The price we pay to save ourselves, when our worth is so low.
Once thought so precious.
Pales compared to the devil, who sits in the shadows.
Tallying up our souls.

28/11/202128/11/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: Devil, gold, goodbyeTags: art, depart, devil, disaster, goodbye, leaving, love, money, poem, Poetry, price, rich, riches, stay, strength Leave a comment

You’ll see

You will see, said the little whisper.
The sound within.
A distant whimper.
From the voice inside the cracking skull.
The quiet reasoning.
The heart’s strong hull.
That sails beyond a galaxy.
Down here on earth.
In complexity.
These defiant words did manifest.
Into action.
And I must confess.
That I was able to walk away.
From all that trauma.
And sad decay.
And close the book of you and me.
A tired old tale.
Which you will see.

24/04/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: PoetryTags: book, change, cry, ending, escape, eyes, flowers, galaxy, hope, love, manifest, poem, Poetry, rhyme, skull, sky, stars, story, strength, voices Leave a comment

Dislocate

This life, that fear of loving.
Of believing what is all around here.
A junction in your bones, fragile and misdirected.
Second hand bodies that fall like sad embarrassed eyes.
Only when the lights are out.
These fears call out your name.
Swim into your dreams and pollutes this bloodstream.
Who touched that velvet treasure?
You take rib, and scream a pleasure.
I feel the truth like each vertebrae.
You dislocate.
You propagate a new feeling within me.
A love so tender and tasty, it reeks of construction.
Of chaos and completion.
Slid off the bone of life.
All the noise seems to fade away.
To a coffin quiet existence that allows me to hear the future.
While you cover this love in salt for protection.
And I hold your bones in mine.
Counting the path of your spine.
Silently whispering to the angels a thanks.
For returning what once was ours.

26/11/2019 by Mark Ryan Categories: angels, bones, love, PoetryTags: angels, art, biology, blackandwhite, blood, body, bones, happy, heaven, love, poem, Poetry, spine, strength, thanks, treasure, vertebrae 5 Comments