freedom – Havoc and Consequence

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

BEAUTIFUL MEMORY POISONING

God, suffocate me for another time.
Wait until it all turns black.
He wrote my number in his book.
Circled like I’m circling.
Suffering another day.
Wiping away new decay.
Then there’s a crack in the window.
A jar in the door.
Fresh pine air and the taste of Christmas.
Seven again, seven always.
Arrested in comfort under the Christmas lights.
Catching a smile of surprise and joy.
Hung on to a face that explodes in love.
That blanket of nostalgia covers me.
My mother’s hands, pulls it tight to keep the cold out.
But her hands are just as icy.
And the image starts to crack.
God, pulls me out and rips me apart.
Splinters the pieces of the past.
Until they float away on a warm ocean breeze.
Brought in by unseen atmospheric chaos.
And upper realm havoc.

19/06/2024 by Mark Ryan Categories: christmas, god, memoryTags: air, chaos, christmas, escape, freedom, god, havoc, memory, nostalgia, ocean, poem, Poetry, tree 5 Comments

Aviate my liberator

Smother, suffer, succumb.
Lying in the snow drifts of my mind.
Covered in nothing and everything,
The weight of the world in it’s translucent sky.
Pushing down like an avalanche on me.
This is the truck stop of those dreams.
A terminus for the lonely, eager to get away.
I climb aboard my own tiger.
Push through the fog of souls who cling to that static.
Saving up for someday, though someday will never be.
Sprint, spring, survive.
Bursting out of the undergrowth, away from the desert.
Shaking the sand and the sadness from my existential shoe.
Everything will be okay.
I never had it all this time.
As the hand of the clock smacks my skin.
Bruising and bursting the flesh to find a way inside.
Reminders crawling underneath of a now, of a moment.
Which is all we really have.
I hold my breath, count to ten.
Throw away the screens and keep only what is needed.
Place soil in my pockets, so I’m closer to the ground.
Tears in my eyes, so the sea swells inside me.
A return to a place which spat out these bones.
The womb of the world, ground and the sky.
Strung up between the two, as the old me dies.

13/04/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: escape, life, snowTags: art, desert, escape, freedom, jungle, lonely, people, poem, Poetry, sky, souls, tiger, truck 3 Comments

F(L)inch

The air is alive, black on blue.
A multitude of ravens, seizing the world.
Magpie eyes on anything that shimmers.
You unfurl and follow. Placing the ties that bind.
Half asleep, half blind to predicament.
But something murmurs. Something calls.
An unfinished business that followed from before.
Each step, eyes down.
Stepping out from a dream, feeling the floor.
A product of now, naked and true.
Let the feathers unfold, and roll into a climb.
Un-flinch. SkyWest. Un-crooked.
Drop the grey.
The waiting in line.
And sing, distant and near.
A song so many wish to know sincere.
Eyes closed, breathing in the new air.
And let your colours paint the sky.
Wiping across a new dawn.
And darkening their sheltered lives.

01/02/202305/02/2023 by Mark Ryan Categories: birds, freedom, skyTags: art, away, birds, escape, finch, flying, freedom, poem, Poetry, sky, wings 4 Comments

Turbulent cosmic swells

Caught and spun, little one.
With moon dust charcoal delirium.
Pulled down, in gravity’s smile.
Replaced with apathetic juveniles.
Scream out, and shut down.
They still laugh, at the tears of a clown.
For you it rains, transitional pain.
A disappearing all over again.
But what if you survived it?
And what if you changed?
What if your revived it?
Cosmically rearranged.
Skywards hopeful, shooting free.
In sweet delicious wild lunacy.
Fragile youth fades in the blink of earth’s eyes.
But your stars remain, in your own private sky.

25/06/202209/05/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: age, stars, timeTags: age, aging, art, clown, dust, earth, freedom, galaxy, gravity, moon, poem, Poetry, rhyming, smile, space, stars 6 Comments

I Want to see the ghost

Never let me go.
The skin falling away, sucked at by mortality.
Surrounded by naysayers and sad eyes.
And all was black.
When the light began to prick apart the void.
A voice echoed.
Thundering down the halls in my soul.
It shook the dust from my memory.
Yet smelt of only yesterday and frangipani blooms.
The ones you insisted on, to mask the death that lingered.
A sorrow set the sparrow inside free it seems.
Clattering against the door, then out into the exhales of god.
You cannot kill a dream you say.
As I stand, entrenched and elated.
Seeing you there, a ghost on the threshold.
Not asking to remain in the cold and the darkness.
But to draw me out into the light.
You always pushed me on.
I want to peel back the pale ribs.
And let you take me on, inside and out.
Licking the walls of defiance, beating the death that they thought prevailed.
With those who won’t believe, they don’t have the eyes to see.
Or even contemplate the beautiful dream.
That is you and I.
In the seen, unseen.

27/03/202227/03/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, escape, ghostTags: art, care, death, defy, escape, eyes, flight, flowers, freedom, ghost, god, love, poem, Poetry, ribs 10 Comments

Soar & subside

Falling down the waterfall, shaken out of grace.
Sliding, spiraling and collapsing. Leaving nothing but a trace.
Tumbling down speedily, in disgust from your eyes.
Crawling out of this bitter, purgening demise.
Escaping into nothingness, fleeing into dreams.
Tasting the fruit of freedom. Splitting from the seams.
Moving now a certain way, to expand these wings.
Unfurling fraying feathers, precious aerodynamic things.
Falling once again, from ledges beyond time.
Saying goodbye to shadows, and the ghosts that haunt this mind.
Realisation of collapse, braking bark from the knowledge tree.
Not a sad solitary boat of sand, on your egotistical sea.
I fully bow out, take my leave now and resign.
Plunging into tomorrow knowing, I must fall to begin the climb.

08/01/202207/01/2022 by Mark Ryan Categories: escape, fight, freedomTags: art, birds, boat, chane, dreams, escape, feathers, flying, freedom, hurt, lonely, poem, Poetry, rhyming, sad, soar, time 6 Comments

Intertwine

The after-burn of lust sees your soul coil around me.
Tunnelling my desperate thoughts up into the sky.
It is a beautiful flowered prison that I daren’t shake free.
A circled decision giving me reasons not to cry.

27/12/202123/12/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: heaven, love, soulTags: art, circle, coil, flowers, free, freedom, happy, heaven, love, lust, poem, Poetry, prison, sky, soul 2 Comments

Ontogenesis

Eyes emptying themselves of pain.
Little pearls etched on skin.
Human rain.
I honoured my feelings.
(God knows this)
He watched as I stood for love and truth.
But my survival was determined partly by chance events.
The sound of distant drums that called to me.
The paradox of being set free.
And trapped by circumstance.
As you turned away, I turned to you.
It was all I could, to catch my breath.
Like a swimmer turning their head.
The words landing like bombs on my heart.
The silent words, that you never spoke.
Just letting me depart.
Now I breathe deeper.
With this dignity to drape across my soul.
In the quiet solitude I find it fits me well.
Cocooning my deeds.
That will burst forth.
Freeing this butterfly, from its spider’s web.

31/08/2021 by Mark Ryan Categories: butterfly, escape, loveTags: butterfly, escape, evolve, free, freedom, growth, hurt, lost, love, ocean, poem, Poetry, sea, strenght, strong Leave a comment

Freedom found you

Illuminated, the folds of heaven.
Bitten torn feathers.
With plucked thorns from our skulls.
That you and me.
Bittersweet.
Red, like the veins of a tree in autumn.
Washed in golden light.
Drunk with sacred hymns that sing in your bones.
I see the lotus bloom in your eyes.
I want to hear your temple sing.
These snow covered aspects, higher.
Above the shelf we cannot reach.
Tickled by the zephyr underneath.
No longer the caged bird that sings.
But the sparrow that stole the sky.

24/08/202003/09/2020 by Mark Ryan Categories: heaven, love, skyTags: angels, art, birds, feathers, freedom, gold, heaven, hymns, kiss, light, love, music, poem, skin, skull, song, wings 15 Comments

Seems forever lost?

We do not fade when you close your eyes.
Etched in stone, carved in lies.
Beneath those words please sympathise.
Something starts, when something dies.

And though it seems we’re miles apart
I commit to god for the pain to depart.
When megaliths fall, freedom starts.
And so will heal, your blackened heart.

08/09/201908/09/2019 by Mark Ryan Categories: eyes, freedom, heart, lies, PoetryTags: active, art, change, darkness, death, departure, dies, eyes, freedom, heart, hurt, lies, lost, megaliths, pain, poem, Poetry, rhyme, start 4 Comments