too much coffee, too little sleep, a love of words…
Clock hands circle lethargically. Heels
clack, a distant speaker hisses –
muted, surreal.
I shift on a green vinyl chair, eyes
trace an arc from clock to window.
Outside, a succubus sun
kisses children at play.
At my father’s bedside, both of us
wish I wasn’t. I despise myself
for watching the minutes, and him
for teaching me to. Broken
conversations keep awkward vigil
for something long dead.
Ryan Stone
I wake a full hour early
for the rare gift
of a walk in the woods
with my father.
He is a silent giant
among misty ghost gums.
I tell him, Watch!
See how fast I can run.
He doesn’t yell when I trip
and fall, but lifts me
with unfamiliar,
calloused hands.
At the end of the trail
I study my grazes—jagged
and bloody. He tells me
he’s leaving my mum.
On the walk home
I gaze at the gum trees
and fragmented clouds, thinking
they should look different somehow.
Ryan Stone
first published at Poetry Nook, 1st place Week 185
From this bridge of sighs
They watch the chasm sunder
Here, where dreaming ends
Ryan Stone
Adrift in deep space,
an astronaut lost, no wind
to feather still sails.
Oblivious world
uncaring turns, in silence
as oxygen fails.
Ryan Stone
She tells me her pain is a squall,
sudden and vicious, like a flash
storm whipping in from Bass Strait
to batter King Island.
Do you remember our Island, Garth?
Her doctors build shelters; nurses
batten hatches, but this tempest
won’t blow over. She says her pain is a vulture now,
circling the desert on threadbare wings.
A glass of water if you please, Garth?
With beak and claw, it slashes and rips
nerve endings, drinks color from her eyes.
The pain is no longer squall or vulture,
she whispers, but a flutter of pages.
One last story before bed, dear Garth?
I don’t tell her that I’m her grandson—
not her brother Garth, stolen by war.
She’s a thin sheet stretched over an empty
bed; a gull’s cry on the wind.
– Ryan Stone
first published by Eunoia Review, June 2019
Fleeting
In bed
their tattoos met
and bled.
Ink-kissed
lovers, knowing
their tryst,
night-born
would live to die
with dawn.
Ryan Stone
After all the years, the heart-shaped
promises, a Ponts des Arts love lock
one Spring, it has come now to this —
a sterile room, too-small-for-two bed,
plastic flowers, faint urine smell.
Standing bedside, she strokes and hums,
remembers a warm night by the sea.
The setting sun kisses white hair
golden. Tremors become twitches,
become silence.
Ryan Stone
Pitch black,
careening down
a track
in vain
before a dark
freight train
blasts past.
Underneath, peace
at last.
Ryan Stone
Her kiss
at dawn is what
I miss
the most –
as day break sings
a ghost
refrain:
love dims to dust
and pain.
Ryan Stone
On a Monday I met her, but should’ve known better-
moon days bode ill for new friends.
Lunar sea tides with light and dark sides
make Monday trysts wane to weak ends.
Aphelion eyes, dark hair and toned thighs
presaged a blue moon ascending.
With a wink and a gun, she blocked out the sun
in total eclipse, never-ending.
Said, taking my hand: you’ve the look of a man
who’d rather not sleep ’til he’s dead.
I refuse to work harder or pay for my Prada,
let’s dance with the Devil instead.
We ran for a time on a dream and a dime,
both stolen and hard to sustain.
At the trail’s grim end, a posse of men
machine-gunned love’s final refrain.
Ryan Stone
First published at Poetry Nook, May 2017.
days of stone 
