Category: Poetry

Paradigm Shift

I’m not an ice-block or wasted teardrop,
mooching around your Long Island Iced Tea.
I’m not chasing dreams, dreaming of Jeannie,
won’t slow for one more whistle stop.
I’ve never bridged sighs, I don’t island hop,
or tasted the free airs of Heaney.
Nor held a heart that, like some Houdini,
didn’t vanish with barbaric yawp.
I have set no flame within love’s hearth
to burn that shantytown down.
At night I am king, come morning uncrowned.
I walk in as Luke, march out as Darth.
Rivers are rivers, regardless of flow–
O, stone, be not so; O, stone, be not so.

Ryan Stone

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48

Pulling Back the Sheet

It started as a scribble
in my yearbook
and ended
with an apology,
of sorts:
I wish I’d been more,
held your hand
when it mattered

and even
when it didn’t.

Ink lasts longer
than schoolyard dreams,
wilted
before their bloom.
Notes we wrote
lend breath
to ghosts,

long after
pens fall still.

In this cold place
I see your face
as it was behind the gym,
where your lips
once tasted

of blackberries
and sunshine.

Ryan Stone

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72

Days

Sometimes she’s wildfire, burning through the night;
some days she’s a winter storm, ice and fury unleashed.

Sometimes she’s a shadow, neither fully here or really there;
some days she’s untamable, wild as rolling seas.

Sometimes I hold her close, as the world starts coming undone;
some days we fit together and I feel that I belong.

Ryan Stone

Click here for audio

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62

Self-portrait

And these are my failings:
a wild smile always leads my mind
to the kiss hiding behind it
and sometimes to plot
the shortest route there.

Did I say sometimes? I lie a bit, too.
And I tend to zone out to small-talk –
there are enough idle words
in the world.

And I can’t warm to people,
despite how I try.
I’m lying again – I don’t try at all.
I’d much rather hide
with Lana Del Rey,
alone in the dark
drinking vodka,

ignoring that night
in my fourteenth year
when my father got drunk,
made me drive his ute home –
the soft bump and loud bark,
the crimson accusation,
coagulating on his tyre
next morning.

Ryan Stone

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Written for National Poetry Month 2016 @ The Music In It – Failures

First published in Poppy Road Review, May 2016.

107

Adrift

The last leaves are golden,
most have already flown. Branches
hang bare beneath ashen skies.
Not so different from when you climbed,
hand over slow hand, waging a war
inside your young mind. One leaf
breaks free, hangs on a moment,
before leaping into the maelstrom.
I imagine a short fall,
sharp jerk and silence;
but it’s only a leaf and spirals away,
no note to mark its passing.

– Ryan Stone

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67

Death in Suburbia

Sometime past lunch
when the housework is done
a translucent lady
sheds her husk. In her mirror
the tricksy sun cajoles
grey to gold, teases
with wistful strokes.

Like a vodka-chased pill
she slides down a rabbit hole
until soft fingers feel
almost like strangers.
With a methodical parting
and functional probing,
she dies another small death.

Ryan Stone

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68

The Weight

One drunken night, he lay on the coach road
and she lay beside him. He pictured a truck
descending–wobbling around corners,
gaining momentum. They spoke about crushes,

first kisses. He told her of an older woman
who’d stolen a thing he couldn’t replace.
He tried to describe the weight of lost things.
She listened until he stopped,
until I stopped

hiding behind he. I felt small,
watching the cosmos churn
while I lay on the coach road
one summer night,
speaking of big things
and nothing.

Ryan Stone

first published at Algebra of Owls, November 2016

Republished for dVerse poetics – Poems That Could Save Your Life – this friendship saved mine.

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62

I’ll not tread lightly

Remember school days and how we would play
like there was no tomorrow?
Now the castles we made
are the price we must pay
or flounder in oceans of sorrow.

Roaming wild and free, building houses in trees
as worlds waltzed to discordant tunes–
like a zephyr through grass,
gilded summer days passed,
left us flayed under Cheshire moons.

Wooden sword fights and valiant knights,
pirates, the Pan and his Bell,
faded from dreams,
rowed ungentle streams,
to where the real monsters dwell.

I’ve climbed faraway trees, seen fair Honah-Lee,
never never thought I’d grow old.
Now the pied piper calls —
as the last curtain falls,
leafless, I’ll trip into the wold.

Ryan Stone

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