Ghost

You’d come to stay.
Lifting away emotional boxes heavy with sorrow.
A wreckage of circumstance and bits of dead skin.
Tumbling from shared DNA.
You’d come to stay.
Unfogging the glasses that looked towards tomorrow.
As the walls caved in around us.
Brick dust and reality coating our lungs.
You moved it aside, a place for everything.
And every heart in its right place.
Having been torn away.
You took my hand and calmed my heartbeat.
The shiver was from the cold, nothing more.
Sweet words melted into this moment.
You said you’d stay.
All things fixed, you’d come to find it.
The reason for our pain.
It vanished of course, upon seeing you again.
A visitor hanging there like a family secret.
Precious and ours only.
Praying together, staying forever.
You’d come to stay.
That was what you say.
In my head.

17/05/202317/05/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, ghost, griefTags: art, crazy, death, ghost, grief, loss, mental, mind, poem, Poetry, stay, touch, writing 9 Comments

Under darkening skies

That world collapsed, utterly and completely late in his afternoon.
The pulse had stuttered, and the creatures in his mind silenced.
He’d finally reached a point of no return.
A cataclysmic undoing began deep inside his history.
Memories and actions unthreaded, while the skin began to fray.
Tiny tiptoes of bitterness and bittersweetness.
Both at odds and as one with the machine of fate.
He positioned himself by the near chaotic escape.
Leaning on the universe one final time.
Smiling, he watched those he hated pass by with ink spilling from their soul.
Unphased and unfettered by his sudden disappearance.
The loved ones paused, only for a moment, noticing a slight change.
Like a feather landing on an upturned hand.
And then gone, swept away by the breath of god.
His spirit now honey, raised upwards.
He lost his religion, the tethers and the trials.
And with this new found lowness, he rose; abound.
A million shards of light, to blind the worlds unblinking eye.

11/05/202311/05/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, ending, godTags: art, death, end, ending, god, hate, loved, low, poem, Poetry, rapture, skies, skin, words, writing 7 Comments

Justified defender

Always uncertain, lulled by the sense of apologetic adjusting.
Words percolate in my mouth.
Hissing and firing unreasons in my mind.
Benign to you.
Inflammatory to me.
My sensibilities caught once more in a straightjacket.
Why do I struggle to speak what’s inside.
When I know you’ll love me still.
These thoughts, born still from being transcendental.
Cared and caring of your own thin skin.
But with your over-functioning and unrelenting.
I risk receiving hands washed clean and silence.
Placing you pedestalled, I swallow once more these contusions.
For fear of reprisal.
Of objectivity.
Of abandonment.

07/05/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: abadnonment, mad, wordsTags: abadnonment, art, compromise, defending, dialogue, mad, maddening, poem, Poetry, speak, straighjacket, talk, words, writing 10 Comments

Particular illusions

A result of you burning our bed.
I lie on the cool grass and watch out for comets.
Racing from Olympus to Paradise.
I pulled off the ropes and entanglements.
Escaping with my life, but not my soul.
Now these clouds that cover the milky way.
Blotting out the moon.
Are really the smoke from the ashes of our home.
Yet suddenly you appear, covered in moon dust.
With starlight diamonds in your eyes.
And you take my hand, and tip the sky over.
Shaking out the stars.
Promising me treasure to be found from our ruins.
Blinding me with Midas light.

14/05/202201/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: heaven, moon, treasureTags: art, clouds, fire, galaxy, heaven, heavens, hurt, light, love, moon, olympus, photography, poem, Poetry, sky, treasure, universe, weather, writing 16 Comments

Go slowly

The second guessing, the never knowing.
Framing the mistakes we make.
Blessed with an ability to undo me.
Take me down, feel your way.
Leave nothing on this body to explore.
Don’t sit there motionless because you know the answer.
Discover.
Over and over again.
This skeleton underneath.
This heart that beats.
A sweat that runs for you.
Mind your step as you flee the room.
(Please wait while I undress).
[Re-dress.]
Address your intent.
We all want to play in traffic, but this is serious now.
Break me like a three year old would.
Love me like you were meant to.
Hold it all in your hands.
For I’ve come from the land of gold.
Such precious illusions for you.
As I hold my breath.

05/03/202211/02/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: love, sex, skeletonTags: angel, art, body, clothes, discover, gold, heart, love, poem, poems, Poetry, sex, skeleton, sketch, writing 2 Comments

Beached

This picture of you, drawn out of such a moment in time.
Chiselled out of the clouds and into my eye.
I reached inside of myself, only to find you there.
Setting up a place for us.
A home, deep within the fathoms of my uncertainty.
Placing sticks and rugs over deep old wounds.
Silently you swell.
Sweetly you settle.
Patching holes and broken pieces of the past.
I radiate out a pulse, searching for something to slip away into.
But I’m strung up in your willowed reaches.
Your horizoned heart.
Your memory beaches.
Ultimately I relinquish and peel off my skin.
The fuselage of fear splinters away and we brace for impact.
Washing ashore of this Elysium dream.

19/02/202220/01/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: beach, life, loveTags: beach, crash, eye, kiss, light, love, memories, ocean, plane, poem, Poetry, sea, soul, water, willow, writing 3 Comments

Cosmic resolution

Lost to everyone but myself.
As I stream through the cosmos.
Touching the stars with my fingertips.
Pausing by the swirling galaxies which shine.
Like glistening pools of diamonds.
Would I find you here?
Carved out of something seen by no-one but God.
You speak words of another time and place.
Resting softly in my head like feathers from the future.
Teasing from above like angels dropping thunderbolts.
All around but absent.
Could I lose you there?
In that place only you and I know of.
Cut in half if you begin to forget.
Faded in the half light of a dawn you once promised.
Erasing the earth like a solar eclipse.
Yet I feel you, on this night.
In this skin that’s cratered like the lunar surface.
And I touch the place you once kissed me.
Believing once more in ghosts.

15/12/202107/10/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: love, space, starsTags: art, cosmos, earth, galaxy, hands, kiss, love, poem, Poetry, relationship, space, stars, universe, writing 8 Comments

Wichita eyes

In the night they burn.
Fireflies trapped in an amber jar.
Smelling the sand on my skin.
The dust-bowl offerings to a world of plenty.
Wichita eyes follow me.
Bar stamped and ready.
Hovering over something entirely.
Waiting to be consumed.
Where do you go now motel boy?
Burning holes through my skin.
Somersaulting in and turning my blood to milk.
The day fades away, blackening the eyelids of the young.
The eyes always ready.
Waiting for tomorrow.

21/01/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: eyes, self, travelTags: America, art, blackandwhite, desert, eyes, guy, motel, night, photography, poem, Poetry, skin, world, writing 6 Comments

Dissolve

On my fingertips, dancing like a tiger.
The tip of my tongue, growling like a beast.
Naming you, shaming you and falling under.
My fingertips now tingle.
Blood and sweat dripping down like melting galaxies.
You fold away the past, and dissolve the future.
Streaking my colours into a frantic version of now.
Washing away the grey.
This good life you prophesize, I want to know all about it.
As I swirl round and round in the delusional dream.
Fizzing and floating on falling stars, while I wave goodbye to the lonely.
These cells break down and collapse.
This earth shakes underneath.
A ballet of our isotopes, that merge and fall with each of your heartbeats.
I cling to you, for fear of disappearing completely.
Of wanting to be lost in you.
This sweet gigantic resolve, the chaotic dissolve of mergence.
As you love me, for me.

21/11/202021/11/2020 by Mark Ryan Categories: dance, love, scienceTags: art, ballet, blood, colour, dance, future, galaxy, love, paiting, past, poem, poems, Poetry, prophecy, relationship, science, soulmate, space, stars, tigers, trance, writing 6 Comments