by Ryan P. Kinney

What’s the sound of a man breaking?
Is it that slow drip drip echo of depression?
The wind rushing through the hole in your chest

Is it silent like the nights of empty beds;
Sleeping abandoned and reaching for nothing?
Just hoping for anyone to drown out the cacophony of one

Is it the metal crunch, glass break of the head-on collision with the guardrail
After drinking your dinner alone again?
Is it the slow babbling brook trickle of blood and tears blinding, burning your eyes?
The wail of an overgrown, overdue infant
The squishy mush trampled beneath your feet

Is it the sound of rolling eyes?
The “not again”s
The “are you over it, yet”s
The “*******, you’ll never understand”
“Please, someone ******* understand.”
Is it the patronizing coos?
It is the sound of the words you can never say?
Never WILL say

Is it the sound of the wrong question?
“Are you ok?”
With the wrong answer every time
The ringing of the church bells
Some long dead “Here Comes the Bride” confessional
Melding with the hangman’s funeral dirge war cry of the apocalypse

Some lifeless musician strumming OUR song in the wrong key at the wrong time
out of tune
Upon your hermit’s rib-cave harpsicord
Played by DJ HeyZues
Creator of all
Knower of none
Who died for your spins

Is it the sound of the lighting sizzle ripping through your veins?
The dubstep beat beat tantric jungle crescendo
Filling that whole with ******
The sound of waves crashing upon the shore of the most ragged jagged shredded bitter pill you’ll ever have to force down past that acidic lump in your throat

Is it knuckle cracking bone on the cinder block wall behind your bathroom mirror?
Is it the chip-chop, swish-swish on the executioner’s-butcher’s block?
Is it the gasp at the ****** of your favorite book you never wanted to read again?

A broken man sounds like nothing
You have ever heard
Will ever hear

And
         Neither
                        Did
                               She

(do I like it?)
by Ryan P. Kinney

And now, I’m 3 minutes overdue
When I came in underdue
And Underpaid
And under-******
But, boy am I ******
In the head
With a bullet
Straight to the heart
Of the matter
What’s the matter?
It’s just that there’s all this matter
And space
Empty Space
With no time
Know what I mean
You could be mean
But I choose love
Because in all the space
And all the time
It’s all that matters









                                                                             It’s not my sound, man.
                                                                                         It’s not my noise.

I’ve been told that I am part of the Millennial generation. I never liked being called that. I’m right on that line between Millennial and the previous generation. In high school I was told I was part of Gen X; the last class of X. As a comic nerd, I always thought this was much cooler. Like it was some kinda superpower to be the last kids to know what the world was like before the Internet; to know how to do things without it. I feel like some supervillain stole our power and knocked the generation line back as Millennials got older. They made us in-betweeners part of something we are not; stuck us somewhere we could never belong. When I hear Millennial I think millennium: those who grew up on the other side of Y2K. I graduated in 2000. I was already a man before there was a second millennium.

by Ryan P. Kinney

SMACK
The hand hits hot across my face
I am sniveling, crying, shrinking
POW!
You are not a man. You are weak.
The words never come from her mouth
But streak across her fists
Lay buried in between layers of her spoken words
BLAMMO!
I don’t love you. I don’t trust you.
You were never good enough
Never strong enough
Never what I needed when I needed it
I’m done with you
You are worthless
Pathetic
  CLICK CLICK
I pick up the knife
I will ******* **** you

Instead, I just close the mirror
Shut the door
And stay right where I am

By Ryan P. Kinney
A Jigsaw poem adapted from quotes taken at the 50th Anniversary Hessler Street Fair Poetry Competition Judging; Cleveland, OH 5/11/19

A snake crawls about his bleached skull.
Frosted night pales the moon.
(lets dive into his dreams. Will this dead man tell us his tales of madness and delight?)
Mysterious, smoky eyes look back at me.
The very breath of time
A deep breathe for those unafraid to leave the sun behind
It’s just a matter of time. We all fall down.
Quarterly tides that lift my spirit
The truth changes with the promise that nothing can ever remain the same.

Rhymes out of time
Where I can see the truth in each brush stroke.
What would I do with such knowledge, but to ask for more
There ain’t ever going to be a perfect audience
His book will never be bargain basement; overstock.
I’ll never live that long
Poetry isn’t produce
Almost nobody is looking to buy local.

He is part of the people who chose to be lost
Parents often struggle to teach their children how to choose.
Millennials are the forgotten ones
A generation that has no tolerance for *******
He figured it out long ago
He was a captain without a ship.
Burned the ship to save the crew

His tactics had not matured.
He wailed, “I want to feed my mind beauty.”
“I could eat up the kisses you lay on me each day.”
“Chocolate love can correct a lot of mistakes…”
“I need to eat healthier.”

The music rocks me with desolation
Microphone to inform underground
In the morning, still angry with power
I stop and ponder at what I thought was the immaculate conception.
Unshattered crystal can be torn between love me and love me not.
Anywhere is better than the empty side of your bed.

What is the consensus on nonabusive drunks?
The woman with medicine in her voice, she wanted to heal him
However, He was a dog not easily brought to heel.
The salt of the Earth tastes different than the kind Morton makes.

When standing in your sand I feel glass shards cutting into my feet.
Punctured with track marks from an older compass, lifting rose buds through the empty pores.
A life made from the finest threads of silk; gossamer quickly torn asunder.
I don’t want to die at the hands of someone else’s creation. I create my own life
Will she bet hers or mine?

They call me a murderer, but all I’ve killed is a lie.
Undeterred by my hacking
Cutting never worked.
They cut her open, replaced broken parts
She lived, in fact she thrived
While I will remain my shape.

Burial lands are for the living.
The largest human hole ever dug.
Where she could rust in piece with friends and we could finally let go.
There is holiness there in those subtle, dark places

Be bold she whispered, scribbled on the pages of her soul
Follow your wandering heart.

Each aware of the wings blooming ****** and wet; from the other’s shoulders
Flower crowns are essential.
Bathing in sweet feral rain
Pine sap running through his veins
Dining on nature’s primal fruits
While we lie among the roots

The change that never came
At least as a zombie I don't feel my mind rotting
Imagine ******* out bits of dark matter into an open sewer through the center of the city
Our baptism by fire, need not be theirs.

Original quotes from Ryan P. Kinney, Lori Ann Kusterbeck, Barbara Marie Minney, anitakeys, Lorianne Arwood, Audamatik, Jeremy Jusek, Ralph Pittman, Valentine Ventura,Casey Krysztofik, Kevin F. Smith, Kelly Hambly, Diane Ferri, Michael Ceraolo, Maeve Kroeger, Ariel Alexander Fiore, Hannah Gates, Georgia Reash, Eli Hawkins, Shivla Shikwana, Frank Thomas Rosen, Rob Smith, Tam Polzer, Elizabeth Burnette, Julie Ursem Marchand, Nancy Brady, Christine Donofrio, Cat Russell, Keith Allison, Sara Minges, Joan Perkins, Aubrey Crosbey, Tim Richards, Jill Lange, Ashley Pacholewski, Krystal Evans, John Burroughs, Renee Sanders, Azriel Johnson

Assembled by Eli Williams and Ryan P. Kinney
From works by Lennart Lundh, Gabriella Ercolani, Vicki Acquah, Ayla Atash, Russ Vidrick, Chuck Joy
Additional original content by Eli Williams and Ryan P. Kinney

Some future digger after truth,
alien or human, kneeling with
trowel and brush at this grave,
will note in clear, careful script
the wonder that a people would
be so deliberate with the smallest
of their gods' creatures,
and so careless of themselves.

They walked upon the new Earth
Like they did on the Old
Tugging along their gravel hearts
On freshly laid asphalt
Their eyes slowly
Moving towards the new sky
The clouds, like curtains, unfolded
Their feet freshly cleansed of old
Traditions and assumptions that they
would never make it to this great moment
But no one knew what was past
That port of no return
The ship sailed away,
Faded out of view
The lights one by one dim
The music softens
The actors bow,

Bewildered is the conscience of a dancer
whose unified self wishes to remain true
to a lover,
to family,
a social circle.
Yet a facet of the face must make love
to the masses;
each hungry audience that idolizes the mask,
she slowly exposes.

Another layer chipped away like
Hardened clay
The people here aspire to be
Nothing more than alive
The lives of the New World
In the hands of strangers
Coexisting within each other
For fear of never existing again
This is their lifeline, their blood
They are all in this repopulation
Together

They are husband and wife, or lovers.
They are childhood sweethearts
become best friends against adversity.
Or supplicants, praying for tomorrow.

But when your empty heart is weighed
"what are you really worth?"

I am vapor
An ethereal mist that permeates through all people
Unknown that I have infected them
That my heaviness weighs on their soul

You stand here, asking me,
“What do I want?”

I want to be light
Free,
Not a particle that jams up people’s souls
But something that invigorates them

She presses her hand to the bulletproof safety glass
And meekly whispers,
“Well, what do they say?”

They say I shouldn’t be so tired
They say I should get a job
They say I should get off this couch
They say I shouldn’t be a blob

They say I should feel,
Live
Create
His hands move wildly in the air
Miming a paint brush; a hammer
A tool of destruction; creation
He weaves his hands as though he is dancing to his own genesis


Simple and intense
As the splattered paint on a Jackson ******* canvas

we see others as they are
we see ourselves at every age
and all at once

Assembled by Ryan P. Kinney
From works by Russ Vidrick, Dan Rourke, Joe Roarty, Tanya Pilumeli, Terry Provost, Brian Matheny, Joe Roarty, Bob Wilson
Additional content from Saga of the Swamp Thing vol. 1
Additional original content by Ryan P. Kinney

The devil checked in at noon
And asked us
What is the sleep of reason?
The devil is a wicked man and wears a suit and tie.

In the eyes of your maker
You should be ashamed
To look your Maker in the eyes

Yes, you must stand naked. We all must

I see the perverts.
I see them on the corner.
I see them in the dark.
There's nothing a pervert won't do for pleasure.
They want to be weird.
That's how they do it.

Taste the salt on your tongue.
Salt of the earth
The ****** that made you and touches everything you made
Give us our daily lust. In **** we trust

...And God teaches the cricket how to play his music.
In a world gone wrong, won't you hear my song...
Live in vain or live in shame.
A dead man's hand, a mad man's brain...living off the lighting in his veins
What a wealthy country, but no one’s coming to pay my bail.