Havoc and Consequence

CALM & THE CHAOS

Washed over by the waves of tomorrow.
Rubbed raw by the days that have slipped from memory.
The storm before the calm.
The poison in the cure.
Breathe it in, like a lunar vapour.
Giving gravity to centred states of tranquillity.
The air sucked from the moon’s orbit.
Breath exhaled from Jesus back in time.
I watched myself fall.
At first, I think I pushed.
Over and over it tumbled, fighting at nothing and everything.
One hand on control, the other making waves through the heavy air.
Where does my sanctuary lie?
Outside of me still?
In God’s eye?
There is chaos in my calm as I turn the world down.
The calm in the life that rushes through like a headache grey.
Pausing to feel a hurt, that’s meant to ache.
There is no time to sit in stillness and save the soul from decay.
But there is no time, like now.

12/01/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: chaos, moon, peaceTags: air, breath, calm, chaos, god, heachache, jesus, lunar, moon, peace, tomorrow, yesterday 12 Comments

SORRIES NEVER SAID

Searched in this heart, I follow the straight line.
Directing back into the grey of time.
My memory now is hazy, but I arrive.
Twenty years late, like the light from the sun.
My mouth full of apologies, but finally.
Though fleeting and brilliant, a cosmic tear unleashed.
This air of history penetrates my memory.
Coughing up mea culpa for the first time.
I was once miles away from here, distant and cold.
Now I bury myself in your pain and sorrow.
Washing it over me like milky holy water.
Suffering inside of you, kissing away the pain.
My fingertips reach out and find your afflicted heart.
I pull it close and whisper, only for your soul to hear.
Je suis désolé de ce que j’ignorais.
Mais que je comprends maintenant parfaitement.

04/01/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: apology, heart, timeTags: apology, emotion, heart, holy, memory, past, poem, Poetry, sorry, time Leave a comment

DEATH DESERVES A WITNESS

Quietly, lay me down.
Shutting out the light until the fears vibrate.
Onlookers shuffle, whispering like the clergy.
Greasy eyed and apathetic.
Coughing on incense and strings of my childhood.
God strokes me into calmness.
Tenderly, like a plant struggling to grow.
Needing the care.
I whisper grace and slit the throat.
Letting the eyes glimmer in the dying light.
The ghosts shudder at the demise.
Fluttering ethereal remembering eyes.
The air turns foul, and I gasp into life.
Sucking in sweet alpine air.
Death spirits away such needless past.
Life offers such beautiful future.
Words tiptoe across my skin like those across a gravestone.
They fade in your light.
And you blink away the past.
Taking my hand.

26/11/202526/11/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: darkness, death, ghostTags: darkness, death, ghosts, light, memory, poem, Poetry, spirituality, transformation 10 Comments

THE WIND

The wind that howls, is the one that kills.
Blowing through these bones, coming down the hills.
Picking up like the devil’s breath.
It runs amok and hurries my death.
For thou not fragile as a dying tree.
Or small, or weak and feathery.
The wind that howls is beyond my control.
It fans your flames that are burning my soul.

31/10/202529/10/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: fire, religion, weatherTags: burning, death, fire, flames, heretic, poem, Poetry, religion, wind 4 Comments

TERMS IN MY SURRENDER

Collapsed with the dying world.
Lost now in the ever after.
Drowning and flying, all at once.
They took my mum away.
Replacing her with ghosts.
They silenced the love that drummed in this soul.
Forcing me to swallow the lonely.
I divorce myself from this happening.
Flare this latent strain of apathy.
To all that needed me.
With a reserved look and accusing stare.
I wake the wolf that dwells within.
Breaking the angels, cut the wings.
I wallow in the pool of pity.
Sentenced to time with nothing but my mind,
and deep regret.

29/10/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: ghost, lost, sadTags: angels, apathy, death, depression, ghost, lost, poem, Poetry, surrender, wolf 2 Comments

PROFESSIONAL TRAUMA

Grasping into the air, coming up empty.
Reaching for the diamonds that you scatter.
Peppering oily words that lodge in my teeth.
My scull exhales.
I Blink.
You’re gone.
My house sits quietly.
The storm in the stillness, awaiting the break.
An internal collapse has rendered my soul paralysed.
A need to function, a call in the dark.
The wolf of the world howls in reply.
Teasing and taunting from my fingertips.
These dusty eyes are washed in my sea of overwhelm.
I breathe once more underwater.
Picking out the thorn buried deep in my side.
For I must go on, we must reach towards the light.
Though to drown in the sparks and spray of history, would sanctify my relevance.
I shudder, and weep.
For I too, still long to be complete.

15/10/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: diamonds, life, lightTags: air, diamonds, hands, live, ocean, poem, Poetry, reaching, trauma 5 Comments

IMPOSSIBLE

Carry these truths away, don’t bring them home.
Bury them deep inside my bones.
Fallen on ears so deaf and blind.
Refusing to allow the real inside.
So, you carry them, bury them, haul them away.
Set them on fire, to make me stay.
Ashes now, with smiles content.
The only way, that you relent.
I’ve seen your ghost, rush through my soul.
Staining lies and leaving holes.
That ache and bleed and drain my love.
Taking this heart to the skies above.

28/09/202528/09/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: lost, love, truthTags: argue, death, heart, hurt, IMPOSSBILE, lies, love, poem, Poetry, soul, truth 8 Comments

Weeds

A vacancy of care, this blanket cast over a life which moves all too quickly towards a known unknown.
Deep in the garden of this soul, dwells more things than time can offer adequate explanation.
Some things lurk in the shadows; others posture in the light.
The precious illusions of a healthy robust system, veils the knife’s edge of ever-threatening entropy.
So much here is living, so much here is dead already.
The deceased help the others in their spiritual rot. Bringing circles to life, which go round and round.
You came here and stood, while the grasses and the flowers tickled your feet.
Always barefoot in my garden, letting me smell your skin.
Wanting to slip within and feel more comfortable.
You took away those insecurities, wondering at the fruit and vine. You spent time, amongst my flowers and didn’t shy from the weeds.
Weeds, they do not thrive in happy conditions; they struggle and push; fighting for their place.
I let them flourish now but capping them at times, so they do not block out the light.
They are just as precious as the roses, and the gladioli; opposite ugly. The nasty side of my soul.
A garden begins from tiny seeds and a little hope. I watered it with the tears and sweat of a life forced upon broken shoulders. Maintained and cared for by the fairies, that took me away.
Walled away from the other plots, so as not to copy their design.
We grew too big for the space, going up and down into sky and soil. Seeking the light, and comforted by the dark. For in the dark, we aren’t a part of the outside world.
When you came, when you lifted the gate; the birds began to sing.
When you left, the flowers began to die.
But you did come, and you had stayed. Loving the weeds and the flowers as the same.
Now I must shake off the soil and decide what to plant next.

23/07/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: flowers, garden, lifeTags: care, chaos, dark, death, entropy, flower, garden, gardening, growth, life, light, poem, Poetry, seeds, skin, weeds 12 Comments

black silhouette with black birds flying

NEVER BE HERE

Mind and muscle try to escape gravity.
Standing too soon.
Trying to lift off into the unknown.
Far away from here.
Hanging onto nothing but indecision.
You close your eyes to the jet stream, and that fear of falling.
You feel it now in your veins.
Coursing through the difference like a teenager.
Struggling for understanding.
But they could never see. They would never know.
Eager to cover you in un-precious stones.
Which is why you must leave.
To sail on the solar winds that taste of honey.
Forget the palatableness of decay.
For a distant shore will feel sweeter.
Then this rocky edge of adolescence.

10/07/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: escape, fears, flightTags: disappear, escape, falling, fear, flying, freedom, poem, Poetry, veins, youth 7 Comments

THIS BREATH HAS YOUR NAME

No weight.
No pain.
No feeling of truth or feeling what it takes.
Deep a long time ago, I smiled on through.
Heart in the air, eyes all untrue.
Now the shadows close in, splintering the heart.
Falling to pieces, back at the start.
All Heavy.
All pain.
All of this happening, again and again.
I remember you there, living and free.
Soul like the sunshine, endless like the sea.
Yet stolen away, your memory crashes my shore.
Like an old dying wreck, rotten forever more.
Trapped.
Free.
Screaming a hope, no one can see.
A future unfurls, blooms like a bud.
Bloodied by a thorn, hidden in the rub.
We’ll shake out the beauty, the fragrance of life.
For what dies in autumn, comes back when it is right.

05/06/202505/06/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: flower, hope, oceanTags: bloom, breath, death, flowers, freedom, hope, life, living, poem, Poetry, sea, weight 3 Comments

neon blue rings like Saturn against blackness

Silence & Light

Between the moments.
Straddling the sigh.
The light there in your eyes.
What seeps into the space between.
Bookended against love and needful things.
What must I give, to receive.
This alchemy on the tempering waves of now.
In the dwindling darkness of despair.
My ego tried to take me there.
To a place where I need not change.
A gloomy existence of languished dead dreams.
But light split the seams.
Silently breaking a new dawn.
Whispering forever.

04/06/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: change, darkness, lightTags: Alchemy, black, change, dark, darkness, gloomy, gold, light, lightness, poem, Poetry, silence, time 6 Comments

skeleton in a filed with flowers growing through (painting)

Trespass

With such vulnerability, invites a trample uponess.
A doormat heart and soul.
What systems are in place which assuages this overthinking.
The flux between sun and moon.
Deliver me soon and unspool my wondering mind.
For it lingers in the doubt and the weeds.
Growing like sycamore sentiments which climb to the sky.
Bursting the clouds with their ignorant distrust.
Lay me down in the cool peaceful meadows of your kindness.
Wash me once more with tears and understanding.
I know not how I became covered in dust and dirt.
A hatred for self and suspicion of all.
Maybe the fall before, when my heart was pedestaled and annihilated.
Perhaps it grew back broken.
A bone and an organ riddled with weakness.
But grown back from nothing all the same.

02/05/202502/05/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: heart, tree, trustTags: broken, clouds, distrust, heart, hurt, kindness, moon, poem, Poetry, sky, soul, sun, tears, trees, trespass, trust 3 Comments

TEARS IN THE CHRYSALIS

Who knew the fury in that silent smile?
Little iceberg teeth bitten by the frost of circumstance.
Does she look to the sky, hurrying the rain to fall?
To wash away the paint on her wedding dress;
the coal in her brain or the handcuffs around her heart?
What song does she hum along to, that drifts in her world?
Staining the air around her.
Cloaking her against ill intent.
Like a red string around the wrist.
Drawn free from the granite and the prehistoric amber.
The carbon colouring in her eyes that repeats.
All tears mass-produced.
At the sight of the grey shadow in her distant future.
The lonely cry of wolf sent, to scare away the butterflies.

17/04/202517/04/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: butterfly, escape, futureTags: amber, butterfly, dress, future, lonely, loss, poem, Poetry, prehistoric, red, smile, wedding, wolf 9 Comments

Second Guessing

Disappearing now.
The time came suddenly, like a Monday morning.
Calling you, as a long lost friend.
You took a hold of the avalanche and held your breath.
Erasing all in a brilliance of white and gold.
No more tomorrow thinking.
Or second guessing.
Passing now into something else.
Not man made.
Between interstellar space, and home.
It was so easy to dive in, to dive through the dark this time.
Not like before, when you tried. When you failed.
And the water froze you like heartache.
A new terrain looms in your eyes.
This escape is now your land.
No longer the mistress or mister, the sister or ghost that you tried to figure out.
Your god.
Take the keys and say goodbye once more to the floor which once pulled you.
An inconvenient gravity.
Breathe in, and out again like holy oxygen.
Disappear and explore.
Once more.

11/03/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: escape, explore, god, goldTags: adventure, beginning, disappear, escape, explore, god, gold, gone, gravity, light, poem, Poetry, space Leave a comment

Kill The Moon

How dare you illuminate and steal my 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.

03/03/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: moon, pain, spaceTags: death, kill, moon, murder, orbit, pain, poem, Poetry, space 11 Comments

MOTHER

Out of the dark, like a Pisces rising.
The ship of salvation on this sanctified horizon.
Oh mother, why do those tears of glass never shatter?
Who wipes away those beads when the world turns over?
We hum the hymns in a frantic manner.
Coughing up rosaries like pearls from the sea.
Yet a pain in your heart vibrates underfoot.
Quaking the earth and displacing my faith.
Not in you, oh mother, the salvation in my sadness.
But in a world I find as sticky as tar, and dark as oil.
Resistant to your holy water.
Tis such vanity I make your image so beautiful.
Mirroring the love I have for my mother of body.
The one I share cells with.
Divine DNA.
So I roll my eyes back and taste the pain away.
Losing your son, finding another.
As impotent as God to intervene in fate.
And I pray and kiss your blessed feet.
Giving up the holy image in my mind.
Loving you for the first time.
As someone who I always knew.

28/01/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: holy, mother, religionTags: blessed, faith, god, holy, jesus, loss, mary, mother, poem, prayer, religion, son Leave a comment

REMNANTS OF NO TOMORROW

I stood there waiting, next to a dream.
Thick inky memories puffed up over the sky.
Placing the thought of you, heavy like a stone.
Into my stream of consciousness once again.
Nothing leads to nothing.
It vanishes because it no longer can.
It never was.
And slowly ran, into the depths like a slumbering ghost.
Yet my heart is lapped at by the tide and water lilies.
Each one opening up to the sky, blinding me.
Waiting for the rains, wanting the tears from above.
The fragrance covers the air.
The moment squeezes my heart.
Wrenching the faith and love out through every pour.
I reach across the sea of sorrow and pull you towards;
A dying man.
A crying man.
Something longing for both an end, and a beginning.
I dream away this dream and settle once more to sleep.
Once again, under a blanket of sorrow.

14/01/202514/01/2025 by Mark Ryan Categories: dreams, loss, oceanTags: crying, dream, dreams, dying, flowers, gone, loss, ocean, poem, Poetry, sea, sleep, sorrow, water lillies 2 Comments

EXHAUST(ed)

Incendiary thoughts split the matter.
Like an explosion on the moon.
Silently you dissect me.
You’re the knife, I’m the spoon.
Think well and think it quickly.
Such traits of a well-oiled liar.
Now my corpse attracts the flies.
Where there’s smoke, there’s always fire.
In the ashes, truth is scattered.
Whispers echo in the gloom.
Every secret, every shatter.
Finds its place within the tomb.

29/12/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, fire, liesTags: corpse, death, exhausted, fire, lies, poem, Poetry, rhyme, secret, smoke, tomb 4 Comments

ATOMIC EMPTINESS

Ghostly shivers rattle through the soul.
A search for meaning in the void.
Empty of everything bar ghosts.
They hover.
They linger.
They settle silently on each finger.
Nipping and pecking down to the bone.
Each whisper is to fix thyself.
Every cold breath points towards a salvation.
But no way, the chemicals combine.
They halt and offer delicious sublime.
Escape.
The haunting asphyxiates.
Choking the death out of me.
Bringing a new life.
Fogging over my eyes always shut.
And scraping back the eyelids to life.
Inside, these isotopes rebel.
Overthrow and repel the dying dawn.
Of sallow emptiness.
Of sad goodbyes and loneliness.
For the sol burns in my soul again.
And banishes all spirits.
I remain, better than ever.

06/12/202406/12/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: eyes, ghost, soulTags: atoms, ghost, heart, isotopes, lost, meaning, salvation, soul, void, whisper 2 Comments

RUDIMENTARY EMBRYONIC

Soul from sole.
Rock from the mountain of God.
Set in motion ever presently, yet a million miles ago.
I sat in time, floating in all that was the same.
The cosmic tears that flooded me.
Were the same as those you tasted.
Scorch away this skin.
Let this blood flow and evaporate the ortho-cyclen.
Speed the cycle, and speed around the moon.
I’m coming soon.

27/11/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: body, soul, sunTags: begin, birth, god, moon, poem, Poetry, skin, soul, sun 3 Comments

Sirens

Like a ship lost at sea.
Suffering in circumstance.
Battling the waves.
The tempest explodes and soaks each bone.
Weighted already by lack and distrust.
Yet in the surf the song swells.
A calling, rippling over the wounds.
Run away, if you were to listen closely.
But the beauty forgoes all sense of reason.
What was really meant for you and I?
Seems fallen from the perfect sky.
And dances now in the sea, for we; crying into ecstasy.
They touch us deep and lick the skin.
An immodest turn that welcomes the watchers.
Hungry eyes devouring each weakness.
Humility is placed in dirty pockets.
Like an apple, in the mouth of the fallen.
These sirens call, with whispers and smoke.
Consuming the threads of morals, which catch in their throats.
They will have their way and destroy all before them.
Collapsing in a sweet undoing.
As we fall to the bottom of the sea.
And they retreat, to shadows and forest of opportunity.
Silence there, and nothing more.

17/10/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: myth, oceanTags: greek, love, luringocean, myth, regret, sadness, siresn, song, weakness 4 Comments

A DISPERSAL OF NATURAL LONGING

Patient and drawn.
Folding in on itself like a bud.
The fools follow the sun-drenched sky.
Bleeding into azure and altered states.
And still it waits.
Buried underneath itself with bones and bewilderment.
Biding time, or disappearing.
Only it knows.
The wind shakes the senses.
Flowing through like ghosts.
Shivering into consequence.
The moon sprouts in the sky.
Delivering wildness and chaos.
Even the stable must bend and sway.
Giving way to momentary derailment.
Liberation now proceeds defiance.
Yet it will come.
Against the others, against the trappings.
Words and stares which batter and bruise.
Into the night it drifts, it creeps.
Surveying survival.
Nothing now, or ever, to lose.

25/09/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: moon, night, owlTags: bones, buried, defiance, flight, night, owl, poem, Poetry, sky 12 Comments

Dying Day

Down in the marrow.
Deep in the bone.
Devils and gods, are looking for homes.
Behind every thought.
Nestled in a lie.
The Light of creation is trying to fly.
Slip out of the house.
And down an overgrown path.
Deep in the forests, where untainted angels laugh.
You’ll see once again,.
A stripped away realm.
Buzzing with dreams among chestnuts and elms.
Take off the world.
That drenches your soul.
Disappear here and grow happy and old.
And I will tell tales,
Of who you once were.
It’ll frighten the children if spoken in whisper.
For the ghosts of you,
Is all that remains.
Your skeleton now dances in light without chains.

30/08/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: end, fairy tales, treeTags: devils, dying, escape, fairytales, forest, god, life, myth, Old, pixie, poem, Poetry, spirit, tale, trees 8 Comments

THE LIGHTWORKERS TOIL

Oceans pass overhead.
The cool touch of expanse.
Little pockets of air, like kisses from a ghost.
The light shimmers and spreads.
Banishing the dark which will always retreat.
To caves of hopelessness and congratulations.
Searching, you’ll find the spark.
Little stars in hearts that move and hum.
The light from the great beyond.
Dripped out of golden sides of stillness.
This is a blessing from me.
Bringing the quiet urgency of care and respite.
It brushes over your soul like words from god.
Tender on your tired.
Nighttime will still bring the howls of hollow blackness.
But like the moon rising.
The light is ever present, hidden in treasures.
Reveal, rejoice and recount how it shifts such beings.
Closer to the end, back around again.
To genesis, the delicious destruction.
A new vein growing, each and every day.

20/08/202420/08/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, hope, lightTags: darkness, everyday, ghost, god, hope, joy, life, light, moon, poem, Poetry, sun, treasure, words 6 Comments

Ignore Ignited Flame

The Eyes are frayed, and turned skyward.
Mindful barricades broken.
What house is this, with no walls but only ceiling.
My wings feel clipped.
My heart aches.
Exhausted, yet still of service.
I feel the punch of every word.
That verbal violence that destroys my shadow.
Poisons my soul.
Let me retreat, let me slumber.
Up into that castle on the hill.
Back into youth and childhood.
Surrounded by solace and sanctuary.
And a mother’s love.
I burn down the present, as God licks her lips.
Waiting to bring the flood.
And with the coming disasters, I fuel this paranoia.
Knowing it was there already.
A box with a snake.
A razor in an apple.
A word rushed into saying, and never repeated.
As I thank this once exploited self, I patch the brick and mortar.
The skin, out from under.
And go on, living while the storm howls all around.
But never inside.

07/08/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: fire, future, homeTags: castle, fire, future, god, home, house, life, love, memory, pain, poem, Poetry, sleep, slumber, storm, violence, walls 7 Comments