poem – Havoc and Consequence

FALLING INSIDE NOTHING

He let the ghost in and paid for the pleasure.
Allowed it to walk around his soul.
Dispensed with the hauntings of old.
And reclaimed such fresh bones to tingle.
An empty shell, nothing more.
The vast lake of indifference that stretches into tomorrow.
Freezing such sorrow.
And leaving sad footprints in the snow.
What deeds did the phantom choose?
With a body now willing and an absent soul.
It waited.
It waited and not in vain.
To find the will to love again.
For the empty souls are not always alone.
In the face of another, featureless and insane, haunted even the spirit.
Chained it down to cognitive reframe.
And banished the shadows from the eyes.
Tearing the absent heart, while the spectre burnt.
And melted into eternity.
Together. Alone. Deceased.

From the newly revised version of ‘LEVIATHAN: Of The Soul’

26/04/202616/04/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: ghost, grief, sea, soulTags: cognitive reframe, cold rebirth, emotional drowning, empty soul, eternal dissolution, frozen sorrow, ghost love, haunted connection, inner leviathan, poem, Poetry, spectral longing 5 Comments

THE CLOSING OF TIME

And when I woke, my eyes were blinded.
By a sight I could not see.
My heart had broken, and you reminded
me of all that could not be.

DISCOVER

St. Sebastian’s was an unusually large church for the neighbourhood. From a distance it towered over the roofs of Lower Berg in Trent County, its gothic spire spearing up into the heavens like a finger pointing to God. It nestled between the local community centre and the freedom park which swarmed around it like a coiled snake. Inside, steps echoed cavernously off the stone walls, clomping up to the rafters where the pigeons dwelled. It was like most churches, cold and inhospitable, yet cloaked in a hypocrisy of asking you to stay. And stay I did, for nearly two years. Two years of soul searching and looking for God under every pew and in each line of the bible. Yet it was only after a few months that the church walls began to shrink and close in on me, turning the space into a small box decorated with righteous words and divine lies. Little did I know how that would change.

I had moved from a small town called Twinsbrook, north of the city. Relocated by the bishop to the border diocese where St. Sebastian’s dwelled. I had loved my little church. Full of small-town problems and alive with change that could be seen, the change and growth that I had been a part of. The move to the city really had been a big fish from a little pond scenario, and if I had my way, I would not have moved at all. But we go where we are needed, and after the incident here at St. Sebastian’s, it was time for new blood and a fresh face. The bishop had been cagey about the move, though I had read all about it in the papers. The church is never truly transparent, and he made it seem that this was a huge opportunity for me, not the damage control that was really taking place.

I had my own doubts of course, but who is not riddled by worry and uncertainty. Even those in God’s profession. It was not just the move to the city that bothered me, or leaving my little church and the lives I had touched that troubled my spirit. It was this dark feeling that had settled in my bones, like a cloud had come across my life and threatened not just rain, but a great flood to wash everything away. The great flood that drowned the unrighteous and rebooted the planet. Was I to sink or swim.

From the newly revised version of ‘The Gospel of No One’

19/04/202619/04/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: church, fiction, holy, religionTags: church, divine doubt, faith and fear, fiction, gothic church setting, hidden confessions, inner revelation, modern scripture, poem, Poetry, religious fiction, sacred mystery, spiritual awakening, theological storytelling 3 Comments

VIOLENCE IN THE NOTHING

This skin is a deterrent.
All signs flash no further.
I want you to know that my blood is not for spilling.
Havoc reigns inside of me.
Punching bruises internally.
The screams of the desperate drowned in the misery of inaction.
Mea culpa.
Again, once more, over and over.
The oil and tar of hate clog every pore.
The blood boils to a heat only Satan knows.
I would slit your throat to free those words of reciprocity,
But nothing.
You give me nothing but silence and space.
Things I have in abundance.
Walk it back, take me down.
Pull me out of orbit.
Your supernova, your black star.
The pebble in your shoe once more.

14/04/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: hatred, hurt, satanTags: black star, boiling blood, bruises, deterrent, havoc, orbit, poem, Poetry, reciprocity, silence, supernova, tar 14 Comments

SWALLOWING TOMORROW STARS

Who reads a smiling poet’s words?
Ones that bridge the chasm from heartache to heaven.
Do you care to wash in the tears of the lonely?
Or splash yourself in city rain, dirty from the walk of life.
These moments we catch and keep.
Lock inside where the heartbeats remind us, we are still existing.
Coveting and creating.
Moving and replacing like tectonic continents of sorrow and elation.
Self-serving commotion in a noisy crowd of others.
Screaming to be heard and praying to be forgotten.
Who wants to read a dead girl’s dreams?
Slashed away like the wrist on a foggy November.
Or trapped in amber to survive generations.
We are the pendulum kids, swinging from north to south.
Mouth and eyes open to catch it all and swallow as we fly by.
With tears in our eyes; not knowing if their happy ones or sad.

10/04/202609/04/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: space, stars, tomorrowTags: chasm dreaming, city rain ache, emotional tectonics, forgotten voices, heart‑echo existence, lonely tears, November fog grief, pendulum youth, poem, Poetry, restless creation, sorrow continents, stars, tomorrow 2 Comments

WE COME IN PIECES

I wander up from my youth.
Into this skin.
This life I now reside within.
Piled upon bones, this memory of time.
My bark of remembrance cracks.
Splinters out a sap.
You were there at the beginning.
Siphoning stars and melancholy.
You’ll be there at the end.
Counting the receipts.
Adding up to the most magic number.
Sit me down by the stream and watch our lives drift by.
Baking under that hellish sun.
Pull the fingernails from my hands and spirit my soul off to another land.
Fold me into your wings of resurgence.
Build me up for another day.
I came to you in pieces.
Forged from hands as light as feathers.
You weigh me down, you make me fly.
You count the eyelashes while I sleep.
You creep under my skin each day.
Legoing out a body and mind.
One that leans towards you like a plant to the sun.
Photosynthesising your love from your light.
Every part, every cell.
Each atom is stacked in your favour.
Circles and squares, and pieces of you.
Building up a dream.

From the newly revised version of ‘Echoes in Space‘

29/03/202626/03/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: change, love, spaceTags: poem, Poetry, poe, cosmic intimacy, emotional rebirth, fragmented self, love and reconstruction, metaphysical connection, inner transformation, celestial imagery, vulnerability and devotion, poetic introspection 10 Comments

BLUE ASCENSION

Disillusionment swaddled around my eyes.
A protective mask to keep the innards in innocence.
Free radicals tiptoe out of my cells, creating fireworks and chaos.
Raining in my heart like sulphur.
I watch you shimmer in all colours.
My headache grey hums and heaves.
A step in your direction, allows this unmistakable feeling of regret,
to wash over me like wasted chances.
I wish I were like you.
I wish I had that jesus energy, vingered will and clarity.
Though faults falter my feet with sticky disregard.
I stumbled into something wonderous.
An electric blue, something new and smothered in deliverance.
My era of self-respect.
An abandonment to self-pity, mortarium’s of paralysed longing.
A revolution rising within, as empires of unloved fall.

09/03/202609/03/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: change, chaos, colourTags: awakening, catharsis, emotional healing, identity, inner revolution, introspection, personal growth, poem, Poetry, rebirth, reflective writinG, resilience, self‑discovery, transformation, Vulnerability 8 Comments

INVITED EROSION

You wanted to dig in deep.
Down through stone and bone.
Excavate the soul from the marrow.
What was found was empty like ghosts.
You tried to tie this mind to your own.
Through the storm and spray.
What blooms then decays, you came up empty.
For I am a ship that’s lost at sea.
When you shake the salt from your wound.
And when morning resumes.
You may find this heart opening towards the sun.
When you lick inside this shell.
Turn this pain to love with your fingered alchemy.
I’ll know then you deserve it.
And I’ll no longer reserve it.
Solely for my own survival.
For every river is drawn to the waiting oceans.
Surrendering something but becoming also.

23/02/202623/02/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: ocean, storm, sunTags: Alchemy, connection, desire, Elemental, emotional-excavation, erosion, intimacy, longing, mythic, ocean, oceans, poem, Poetry, river, seas, sensual, ship, surrender, tide, transformation, Vulnerability 5 Comments

A DESCENT

Once fused, now torn apart.
Meddling with the senses.
Ripped out of heaven.
Carved into stone.
You’re the sweet scent of death to me.
Down, at the bottom of this hidden heart.
Playing once more my pagan precision.
From head to between rib cages.
Little black stones.
Tucked between each vertebrae.
Shining when the moon appears.
Blooming in your blue possession.
Such magical decay.
Your approach to love.
Caressing and consuming.
Abandoning and left for dead.

09/02/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: death, heart, moonTags: bloom, death, decay, descent, heart, hurt, love, moon, poem, Poetry 8 Comments

THE INCESSANT HUMMING OF INDIFFERENCE

Again, again it comes.
Like a fog rolling through the bones.
The spectre of despondence.
Kiss me gently to lure beyond the overwhelm.
An evil bloomed deep within.
Long ago, when the marrow was fusing.
Pockets of little daisies, poisonous reminders of mortality.
When it all ends, when the judgements fall.
What separates the life from one lived?
Too long the accustomed thoughts of apathy have prevailed.
Followed me from childhood.
When the toys were smashed, when the protectors abandoned.
When the expectations came with their sticky bulldoze.
What if I were my future?
Those lives you hoped for, yet did nothing to uphold.
Who separates the child from the man?
These parameters find their place, and force a rejection.
Of engagement, of evolution.
A soul, inside a man; with eyes of a child.
And a heart decomposing from the start.

02/02/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: body, death, lifeTags: bored, CHOLDHOOD, death, evolution, indifference, judgements, LIVES, poem, Poetry, REJECTION, toys 3 Comments

SMASHED LIKE A DEITY

A beating heart that wants you.
But doesn’t trust the condition.
You separate the light from me.
Distilling my soul to darkness.
My mind, taken by ghosts.
Stolen by this circumstance.
Yet I’m here still, in time.
Watching your eyes glass in indifference.
A cheek turned to god, a palm raised to cheek.
Punching the love out me.
Yet the molassed affection remains.
Clogged to my soul.
Settled under my skin.
Refusing to be washed away by tears.

24/01/202624/01/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: god, heart, hurtTags: clinging, darkening, deity, distilling, enduring, fracturing, haunting, heart, hollowing, hurt, lingering, love, poem, Poetry, unraveling 12 Comments

ELEMENTAL

On phosphorus ground you take me, into the night.
Divorcing my monogamy of self.
With you, all alive like dying stars.
Illuminating into nothing.
Burning and swallowing all of me.
This frontier of the forgotten, threatens when the eyes close.
When you move too close, too distant.
Alone in my shell, safety slips around me.
You crack me open and dip your fingers inside.
My horrors have no place to hide.
You’re bringing out the Taliban in me.
Shedding reason and sanity.
Making way for acceptable losses.
This humming of you through my veil of safeguarding.
It strikes into what is most precious.
Sinking my soul like Atlantis.
All from a look, from a touch, from a hurt.
A word gently spoken but spun in insolation.
Travels across blood red skies and finds me.
Needles into me like your wicked spite.
At first glowing like a love so curious.
Then fading into the bruise of knowing.

19/01/2026 by Mark Ryan Categories: heartache, horror, loveTags: bruise, Cosmic Descent, Dark Intimacy, Elemental, EmotionalUnraveling, forgotten, horrors, InnerStorm, phosphorus, poem, Poetry, PsychicHeat, veil, Vulnerability 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 12 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