I wish I had some sweet lullaby to sing to you
Oh, my little boy, I wish I could tell you that everything will be ok
But, I have no rhythm of peace
No harmony to soothe the demons in this world
I can’t tell you that this world is a happy place
And that you will always find what you seek
I can’t even tell you that I will always be here

The world will not always be kind to you
Your heart will be broken
Someone is going to hurt you
The older I get
The more I doubt
The more I learn
The less I know

All I can tell you, is that while I’m here
I’ll lend my broken body to the fight
Help fend off those who would let their darkness swallow your light
And just hope, that my demons are stronger than theirs

No, my son, I have no lullaby for you
This world never gave me a song I could dance to
Only battles with the air while the tainted notes assaulted me
I will not be able to sing for you
All I can offer you, is my war weary arms
And another broken heart

I hurt

Cutting “help” into his arm

I hurt
Somebody please notice me
Understand, care
Without me having to spell it out for you
In blood drenched script

Don’t let me ignore you
Confront me
Make me see that I am not as alone as I feel
My memories are my scarlet letters

My body is a temple,
But nothing is sacred
I’m trying to scream for help
But there’s no room in my lungs
I’ve filled them with too much of the world’s poison

Do it now
Keep going
Never stop (repeat)

**** the consequences
Don’t slow down
Live fully in every minute
Expect everyone else to
Hold them to impossible standards

So much to do
So many ideas
No time
Who sleeps anyways?

This energy builds and destructs
Explodes into my life in a rash of impulses and hurt feelings
My mouth ****** off more people
Get kicked out of another bar
Alienate another friend
Write more checks that bounce before the ink is dry

I am stuck in a prison of abstract ideas,
And overpowering emotions.
A random coagulation of quickly scrawled,
Half formed ideas
Spewing from unimaginable imaginary conversations
With people that never existed
Scribbled incoherently with no regard for structure or form.
Then reedit, again and again,
Until the nonsense is decipherable to normal people.

I am afraid of stopping
Of being too slow
Terrified of complacency

Get happy
Sad
Angry
Don’t give anyone a second to catch up
Moods change with each tick of the clock

ADHD…Nah.
I can focus
Hyper-focus, intently
So much so that I forget to eat, sleep, breathe
Forget that time and the world exists

Was this what Picasso was like
As he obsessed over a canvas
Or ******* as he whipped paint across the floor
Chain smoking his life through his fingertips
Casting the spent matches into the paint

I can’t stop once the adrenaline starts
My head is a toxic chemical soup
The only antidote is a massive rush of endorphins
If you catch what I mean

Here’s all this information
I’m going to keep bombarding you with it
Make something out of it
If I’m satisfied
Maybe I’ll stop
(I won’t)

Grow Up

Grow up!
People have been telling me this since I should’ve still been a boy
At 14, I got my first job,
Partially convinced that growing up meant get the hell away from my parents
And absolutely certain that if I didn’t
One of us would be dead

For 14 years, I played the adult game
Got the 9-5
(They never tell you that it’s rarely as convenient as 9am-5pm)
Earned my keep
Took a wife, a mortgage, and an expanding waistline

It became who I was
I worked hard
I fixed my house
I ****** my wife
(Well, as much as any married man should routinely do so)

But secretly, the boy in me cried out
On the weekends I smashed TVs
And torched Barbie dolls
I kept my toys in the closet
And my comic books in heaps

Then somewhere, my wife decided
The charade wasn’t enough
I wasn’t man enough
And

She was right

I got sick of the monotony of a large racist black man berating me
Treating me like one of his seven illegitimate children
I’d comment on the irony of the stereotype
But those same people screaming grow up
Would be quick to label me the racist
More than anything,
I got sick of being a man
I demanded my freedom
I wanted my childhood back

Back to school I went
The toys marched out of the closet
And the comic books were worn like bandanas protruding from my back pocket
(You know, before it was cool)

Four years in, and once again
They want me to grow up again
******, I tried that
Even gave it a go a few years ago
It didn’t work out so well

Give me a book,
An inspired teacher,
Something to play with,
And tell me to learn
I sure as **** will

But, the moment you want to pay me for that knowledge
Lock me down in your pay scale
I will lose all interest

Give me a task
Something with any ideal greater than monetary compensation
I will give you every bit of my broken and battle-hardened body
And, more importantly,
Every piece of the mind of a man trying to relearn what it meant to be a child

I’m 31 now
Just over the cusp of when “contemporary” wisdom tells you
You’re done being a kid
Hell, I even have a son of my own

Another semester is ending
And recess is being called in
I find myself in financial distress
With no other means of survival
Other than to return to wearing the man mask

All I want to do is learn,
And grow
Just not up

Mother, can you please tell me,
Do I really have to grow up?

I am gone
Gone to find myself
Gone to find someone else
Gone to find that they are the same person

I want to be lost
So that I can remember what it meant to be found
I want to lose the chains of my past
And return to them with nostalgia

I want to know if the grass is truly greener
And the water any more blue
I want to discover that there are shades I never perceived

I just want to go
So that I can always be exactly where I am

You *******
Aka D.H.
by Ryan P. Kinney

You have potential
You have talent
So much so that it ****** me off to see you self-justify your own apathy
To make excuses why you are afraid to face the world.
To hear you give another reason why you are superior to the world in which you cower from.

You are capable of all that I have achieved.
We are only temporally separated.

I see a weak and pathetic child
Terrified of the changing world around you.
And while you are hobbled in hiding from this brave new world
You fester pretention
And waste your abilities
Getting more disillusioned and bitter as the days pass.

The world is not what you want.
It is not what you perceive.
So you cry about it.
And then pout
Saying, “I’m too good for it anyways.”
What could be more childish?

You lash out at your friends.
Attack their ideas and dreams
Because you’re so insecure of your own.
You are an intellectual bully.
I welcome new ideas.
While you attack them.

I am sick of hearing about my ego
It’s huge. It’s raging and throbbing.
It’s not just a metaphor. It is my ****.
My ego appreciates the attention

But, like the child throwing a tantrum
That you claim I am
You got what you want
Here we are, paying attention to you
And reacting to your ego

So go ahead, criticize me from your ivory tower of decaying domestic and psychological material.
Trying to kick your own dirt into our minds.

And my house, Its achievement is just as admirable as my college degree.
It may be a thing, a material, but the knowledge I gained in building my temple of self-worship is just as valuable as that I earned in college.
It is a superficial material possession, but it’s also a symbol.
It represents my journey, with steps I have taken that you will never imagine in your life.
My house is an art project, not just a shrine to my obvious American consumerism

Yes, it is a thing.
But then, so are you.
And one is far more impressive than the other.
One has had more life in it that the other.

Yes, I have stuff.
And I do lord my stuff over you,
As an example of the actions I’ve put behind my words.
I’ve worked,
While you’ve failed your days away.

I am a child that really enjoys his toys.
You are one who really enjoys telling others what they should do with theirs.
Jealous that you have none of your own.
You covet what I have.
You want what I have, but lack the determination it takes to get it.

You try to belittle my accomplishments and possessions.
Because you have so little of your own.
Grow up.

Your air of undeserved pride?
You’ve accomplished little.
I’ve accomplished little,
But my little is in comparison to the totality of my drive and desire.
And your little is sadly,
Only quantitative.

I use abstracts and circular logic
Because all of our existence is built upon fallible logic,
Perceptions of imaginations.
Life is circular.
It all repeats and falls in on itself.
I am sorry that you cannot see that my logic is a recognition of the balance in chaos.
The repeatability of all existence.
This has all happened before.
It will happen again.
Enjoy it and reassemble the time worn constituents of thought and experience into a perception of newness for you.

And here I am lecturing again.
Because you have so much to learn.
I have so much to learn.
It is not I who is so obstinate to new ideas that I reject all others
Simply because I think I am better than them

I do not think I am above or below you.
We stand on even planes.
It is called Earth.
Perhaps you should come back down here.
Step off your cloud.
Which, as soon as you realize is imaginary,
You will tumble from.

Join us here
We have so much to teach you.
Knowledge for knowledge’s sake.
Art for art’s sake.
Without the labels.

Who’s really superior?
Certainly not me.
You unbelievable *******.
So self-absorbed

You underestimate the tricks I have taught you, but do not hesitate to use them for yourself.
You are complicit in the crime of intellectual thievery.
And those tricks I’ve taught you
Which you dismiss so haphazardly,
Are nothing less than the sum total of my experience
The result of bleeding for life
Treat this knowledge with the respect it deserves

If I’m so morally repugnant then why do you still associate with me.
Because you are just as selfish and self-serving as me.
You’re just a weaker, chronologically repressed troll version of me.
Ryan, without the *****.

You have so little to flex your ego with
Oh sure, you have the mouth, but it means little in the face of your inaction.
The weight of words can only be felt when thrown by some action.
Stop wasting your time being useless.

You did say something in all your accusations that rang true.
I do fear being forgotten.
One day. Maybe I will stop fearing time so much.
One day I will wake up and realize that while I was fighting time
I filled it.
I gave it value, each minute of it.
Until then,
Enjoy the ride
And quit *******.

Pretty and Ugly words on paper
The Love Letter
Dear John Letter
Suicide Letter

The smile
The tears
That little scowl

You

Every little piece
Every scar
On your arms
In your heart
The ones I see in your eyes