I slam my truck into park
Swing open the door
And hit the ground before the door is fully open
I let the momentum shut the door for me

Here I stand
At dusk
In the empty, silent sunset
Scrounging the encroaching night to create.
Rending from the darkness, the light of imagination.

It’s Spring Cleanup Day
i.e. Trash Picking Night
Where I gather my next year of possibilities,
Where I can make something new
Out of what was left of last year

I hum an improvised out-of-tune,
“Something old
Something new
Something broken
Something blue
Something to love
Someone to love.”

Gloves are a necessity, leather; cut, but never stab resistant -
You may open a bag
But never leave a bigger mess than you started with.

The broken TV will become the next costume piece.
The old dolls; sad, one-armed, legless action figures will become delightful new monstrosities.
The rusty tools
Will build my next dreams…
And wood, Oh so much wood
Enough to salvage for the hodge podge machine that will sail into the next fantasy

There are enough clothes
To shield an entire shanty town,
Enough blankets to keep every animal warm
In the shelter down the road

These old photos have stories -
People in them
No less important because of their age.
Their wrinkles will now become another fold in my story.

Those cans of old paint
Will color my next experiment
Will add a tint of reality to tangible madness.

I don’t see waste -
I see the opportunities we were never allowed
I see the future in your past.
A chain from then to now,
Out on the front lawn
Bags full of history
Are asking me to read them

Sometimes I’m called the Junk Man,
Hanging onto things that should be forgotten
Buried; left to the past,
But, instead I take it all with me
Within me.
I’ll shine your tarnish into something beautiful
Just so you can see, in your reflection,
That you were beautiful all along
You just needed someone to care.

Having lost everything
I’ll still take anything
And anyone
My people are another I’ve picked,
Discarded by a careless consumer
Who could not see their splendor

The clouds begin to gather
But it has not started to rain yet
And I’m still going.

This road only has one way to go.
The only way there ever is to go.
Just keep moving forward
Never go back
Never stop
Just notice what is there
And take all you can use with you.

These discards, useless to their owners
Decided that they no longer had value
I can make them into anything.
I can find a use for anything
For anyone.
Their trash is a treasure
It still has value
I still have value.

No matter how many times I’ve been thrown away
I’ll still make something out of myself.

Finally, the rain begins to fall
Flowing through the rust holes in my truck
Scrambling to soak my pilfered obsessions
Washing all of our sins
Onto the pavement beneath my feet

I see you
Hiding there in the back
Pretending that you don’t exist
Shrinking into the shadows
Trying to get a voyeuristic view
Of what life looks like
Through Coke bottle rims
I see you
You exist
Come up to the front
Into the light
Come let us all see you
At least, your ‘ll see me better
Up here

Inspired by Vicki Acquah (Mama Oladeji)

God Save the Queen
Long live the King
Hail to the Chief
The Lord of all Lies

I dredged the swamp
For the bombs bursting in air
Oh, say can you see
That justice is blind
That we are all color blind
When all you can see is
The White Hot dawns early light
That might means right
Always fight with the Son at your back
And the darkness in your soul
But don’t be black?
That’s worth the bullets whizzing past
A soldier’s job is never done
Never won
A draft dodger’s never run
Never One
With the multiplicity of our multi-ethnicity
Of a nation of fools
That elects a derelict jester
Who taunts our puppet strings
Strikes the chords of the lamentations of our hearts
Heartless *******!
We are no longer whole
Just a sinking hole
A pit of despair
That stares back at us
Look up
Look down
Stay down
Lock down
Look out!
Here it comes
As above, so below
The devil’s in the details
That are reduced to black and whites
We are weapons of mass confusion
Taking aim
Hiding behind His Wall
To build a nation of prisoners
Too afraid to yell out our battle calls
To seek retribution for our disillusion
To clear up the noise pollution
And fall on our knees
To take a knee
Because we NEED
We are a world of truth benders
Rule breakers
Criminal instigators
Unforeseen fornicators
Ego MasterBaiters
Serial verbal defecators

We are nothing
No One
No where
Just present
At this moment in history
When we realized we ****** up
Hindsight was blind sided
Blinded by the light
Speckled with red, white, and bruises
Masks of shame
That we were complicit in our own downfall
The Fall of Man
The blood is on our hands
Be cause we did not stop
When we knew we could
Because we thought No, meant yes
And that she didn’t really mean it
And Boys will be boys
With their unruly lethal toys
That cuts through what was Right
And Left US divided

by Ryan P. Kinney

We are inter-generationally depressed
An entire army of kids sandwiched between being forced to grow up too soon and swimming in an ocean of adolescent nostalgia, Saturday morning cartoons, Toys R Us kids, music television and other things that don’t exist anymore

We spill out our depression into words, on pages, put it to music and lament and ***** and get it all out before we are swallowed by the same mouth that belts out our personal horrors.

Our guidance counselors and after school specials
(and other things that don’t exist anymore)
Always asked us, “You want to talk about it?”
Then we “grow” up and find out no one really wanted to know. The question was rhetorical.

We worry that we don’t exist anymore.
Are not important enough to exist

So, we talk to ourselves
And repeat it to incarcerated audiences already crying out
While we bleed on the mic

by Ryan P. Kinney

Door swings open.
A familiar red, white, and blue figure glides through.
No one looks up from their drink.

Nods at the bartender and sits down.”

“Leave the bottle.”
“It won’t do any good anyways.”

“You know the part they never tell anyone about this job- The piles of dead kids…”
“Adults, you can usually excuse as having put themselves into some sort of dangerous situation. That if they really thought about what they were doing or where they were going they probably could have avoided this whole mess”

Chugs the bottles. Nods for another

“The fastest man alive and I still can’t be two places at once.”
“Remember that magic guy who turned everyone into kids for a day awhile back.
You know how many kids died just from lack of supervision”

“Truth?
Justice?
Those are pretty abstract concepts when you’re handing someone’s charred toddler back to them.
It doesn’t matter that you saved 20 more.
This one hurt the most.”

Stars blankly at his full bottle

“What kind of world would I bring my kid into?”

by Ryan P. Kinney

“Daddy, Why is your porch stuff gone?”
Because the people who own this building don’t have any soul
“My Sunday school says everyone has a soul.”
Son, there’s a difference between having a soul and having soul.
-Same word-Different meaning
Having soul means being able to see beauty
And some people just can’t see

by Ryan P. Kinney
Assembled from works by J.M. Romig and Chuck Joy

I glance out of my driver’s side window
and see a boy
trudging miserably down an expanse of windswept prairie
big sky, maybe one persistent contrail up there
establishing the general era, airplanes fly
People, still, do not

a road crosses this windswept prairie
a dirt path really with twin ruts
a boy came walking up that road many years ago
homesick from summer camp
he couldn’t be without his mother

If time is fluid, like the oceans
then maybe I’m glancing over as a wave breaks
I couldn’t tell you how many times
I made that journey on foot
my heels throbbing, my legs begging to be broken
my hitchhiker’s thumb, had given up all hope at that point

Later a teenager passed in the other direction
his essence radiating awkwardness
this long haired kid,
just turned thirteen
wore hand me down boots that are too big for his feet,
ripped jeans, and a bookbag slung across his shoulder
in the dying days of July
whispering under his breath
maybe reciting poetry
or telling himself a story
running fast, he couldn’t wait for his bright future

I think about giving him a ride
to wherever I may be going
where more drive than ride
some have stopped driving, for various reasons
some lose the ability to drive before they pass

but then I remember all the lessons I’ve learned
from time-travel movies
the one universal rule being not to meddle with the past
something about a butterfly’s wings flapping in Beijing
and a tsunami in New Orleans
so, instead I honk my horn
and the traffic light turns green

I watch the boy,
who might have been in some distant past,
look on with curious anger as the car passes
for a moment
then returns to the story already in progress

not much traffic on this path anymore
but yesterday a guy came by riding a Segway
said he was on the way to visit his mother’s grave
said she died a pioneer to this lonely country

he grows tinier and tinier
in my rear view mirror
no longer even special
here in the middle of nowhere
until he is yesterday again

Assembled and Edited by Ryan P. Kinney
From works by JM Romig and Lennart Lundh

The photographs
They lie
in a folder in a drawer
in a second-hand store.
They are a collage of poorly taken polaroids
All assembled before the Manor Woods formal,
Disheveled,
but for her hand on his arm
and her sister's slight separation
from man and wife.

She is the stranger in the waiting room
with fingers knotted in prayer
or tedium -
held together by masking tape and pushpins
on a well-loved corkboard

The husband
He is a fragile scarecrow
filled with crumpled up first drafts
of love notes
kicked through cobwebs that linger
in the long forgotten corners
of old classrooms.

He abuses his wife in the marriage bed,
her willing sister in the woods,
needing one for the power she gives,
wanting the other for what he takes,
longing to be set on fire.

The wife
She needs her husband to feed
the sense of self he's changed in her.
Ignorant, she wants her sister
for comfort when crying's done,

She is an island of kindling -
bits and pieces
of broken bottles, crumpled-up newspaper
and other things tossed out
into the ocean
forced to swim, wet
and freezing, forever gathering,
to form a huddled mass of leftovers

The sister
She is a tightly sealed mason jar
full of captive fireflies,
pillbugs, caterpillars and moss
and not enough air holes in the lid.

Without, she thinks, need,
she only wants her lover
and sister to be gone,
the family, hers alone.

The questions

I fear these things will die inside of me

and the child,
too, is a mason jar
Full of brightly colored
off-brand jellybeans
with a thick black question mark
painted on its face.

When all are found objects
to be used for reasons we hold alone,
what are the forms of ******,
and who is killing whom?

Let me tell you the thing that keeps me up at night
I’m manic
So I have a constant stream of vivid thoughts running infinite channels through my head at all times
What I fear most
What I am forced to watch in my head daily
Is losing those I love
Of again being that scared, alone, desperate little boy
Of being exiled once again to that slow drip drip sound echoing off the empty room of my vast universal mental prison

Every single day
Automatically
I run scenarios of my son’s death through my head
Every parent worries about their child
Most are paranoid of such
I have it played before my eyes in realistic detail
I am forced to continually watch the most tragic moments of my life on a big screen in my head
None of which have ever happened

Everyday, a different death
Just once I wish it would be me
Why can’t I protect him?
From myself?
And once again I reaffirm
That his end, will be mine

I have to close my eyes
And repeat this mantra
“It’s not real.”
“It never happened.”
Am I real?
What is the dream?
What is reality?

What I fear the most?
That one day I won’t wake up

Charity, you say
I should be grateful for a free meal
I earn a “living” wage
No longer a minimum wage peon
Thanks to my unpaid student debt
And yet, still
I eat from food banks

For my lunch break each day
No longer than 30 minutes
I watch others go out to eat
And I eat my PBnJ
That ****** congealed jelly falls mostly into the bag
And I decide it’s not worth the effort

Last night’s dinner:
Another cake or sugar-laden death note
Given graciously.
I just skipped dinner instead

Grateful, I should be
For a week’s worth of food
Only allowed to be rationed once a month

Variety is foreign to these faith-based organizations
Shelf life is king
Taste and nutrition are optional coincidences

Thanks to them I will never eat another raisin or can of tuna
I am sick of trying to make 2 lbs of ground turkey or a pack of hot dogs stretch two weeks
With 1 lb of rice

I’m grateful
I’m eating
My 5 year old is
Grateful all the way to my rising cholesterol, impending diabetes, and rotting teeth

I make too much for government sponsored insurance
And not enough to pay for what I need
I am the gap generation
Slammed into a stress walled coffin
Between homelessness and eternal devastating debt

Grateful
Because I am overweight and out of shape
Because I don’t look poor and starving
Because I “get” to sit all day behind a desk

All it took was 6 years of letting the government forever make me their indentured servant

Grateful,
That at least I’m not dead on the outside yet

Our love is not normal
**** all that nonsense
This is a tapestry of our real, filthy stories
This is our beautiful love

Love by the sweat of our brows and breaking on our backs

This is not innocent, sweet, romantic love
This is love with swear words, dirt, and bruises
Scabbed over wounds
And interwoven scars

Love is an Armageddon

Let’s fight my demons together
I hold the sword
You hold the faith
I’ll take the blows and you’ll feel them
You make me believe in what I’m doing

We are clad in the defective armor of past lovers
Who were not strong enough
Not brave enough
Not up to our challenge

It’s not the cliché: you and Me against the world
It’s us against and within the multiverses I (we) create, survive, live in
Some maniac deity randomly switching channels absent mindedly

There are no white flags
Just a constant (technicolor) marching crimson war banner
Beating  the aortic drums of passion
Against the stretched ribcage bars of a super nova nuclear reactor
Barely contained
Always on the verge of meltdown
Cooled only with your tender touch

Our romance is played on my fingertips
Like a jagged out of tune guitar
Angels wince and monsters dance along
To the throbbing carnal symphony

Like a rabid jackal screaming into the night
Like a mismoshed dubstep cacophony
You don’t know why it works
Never sure it will
But you can’t turn away
You like it too much

I want it painful and messy
Like rainbow mud: *****, sticky love
So I will remember to feel it
When we ask “Why the hell are we with each other?”
I want the answer to be so obviously
The only one left
“We love each other”

I promise you nothing less than the infinite multiverses of my manic imagination
You are the idol my every creation worships
This is the Phoenix burned to cinder
Rising from the ashes of our jumbled, mixed, scattered pieces
Spawns our golden child


And then she says, “Was that just a marriage proposal?”
“Honey, every word I say to you is.”

When you’re older, you can make your own choices
So many choices you wish you didn’t have to make

Like choosing between dinner or gas in your car
The toy for your child or a pair of shoes without holes
Between a stiff drink or delving the unimaginable depths of your loneliness

As a kid they sell you the fiction
Adulthood means freedom
Freedom of choice
They never tell you it’s mostly picking the lesser of constant bad situations
You get to vote
Which criminal is the lesser of two evils?

Choose:
-Between getting proper medical care or paying the rent
-Between taking the time to get better or going to work sick to pay for the medicine
-A quick ****** or real love
As modern adults
We are slaves to our choices

So many choices you get to make when you’re older
Can the car repairs wait? My health? My sanity?
Which coffin do you pick out for your dad?
When do you pick out your own?

I can’t lie to my son
When you’re older you don’t get to make your own choices
They make you


Inspired by Dan Rourke

I am scared!
Scared of this world

Robert Godwin Sr
Alyssa Elsman

How many more have to die?
By my kind,
By their kind,
Because they blame some other kind
What ever happened to just being
kind?

Daniel Parmertor, Russell King, Jr., Demetrius Hewlin

Where were you when the World Trade Center went down?
It’s something everyone alive then will always remember
Never Forget! was our brand motto for American Pride

Krystle Marie Campbell, Lü Lingzi, Martin William Richard, Sean A. Collier, Dennis Simmonds

And now, the death of another is so commonplace
That we forget what and where.
It’s no longer personal enough to register where in our lives that it struck us
Only note that another life has been struck down
Add another tally to the equation
And still it does not add up

Trayvon Martin
Tamir Rice
Samuel DuBose
Delrawn Small
Philando Castile
Terence Crutcher
Heather Heyer

We are completely desensitized
And decentralized
We keep ourselves disconnected
(because we just can’t absorb,
Take,
Process it all)
It’s not us
It’s not me
It’s somebody else
Somewhere else.
Until it is
Then we care
How much can we take, before we break

Cynthia Marie Graham Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lee Lance, Depayne Middleton Doctor, Clementa C. Pinckney, Tywanza Sanders, Daniel Simmons, Sharonda Coleman Singleton, Myra Thompson

The tragedy is the comedy
We laugh so we don’t cry
Sakia Gunn
Richie Phillips
Nireah Johnson, Brandie Coleman
Glenn Kopitske
Scotty Joe Weaver
Jason Gage
Michael Sandy
Sean William Kennedy
Duanna Johnson
Lawrence "Larry" King
Angie Zapata
Lateisha Green
****** August Provost, III
Mark Carson

I can’t say I’ve never thought of committing violence.
Hell, when my ex-wife cheated, it occurred to me
And I can’t say that I have never hit another
I’ve been a kid
My whole life is designed just to grow up
But, I’ve thought of killing myself far more often than the thought to harm anyone else have ever occurred to me
Because my problems are mine;
My fault,
And I am not seeking some scapegoat

Keenya Cook, Jerry Taylor, Million A. Woldemariam, Claudine Parker, Hong Im Ballenge, James Martin, James L. Buchanan, Premkumar Walekar, Sarah Ramos, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, Pascal Charlot, Dean Harold Meyers, Kenneth Bridges, Linda Franklin née Moore, Jeffrey Hopper, Conrad Johnson, 1 unnamed victim

I am not going to deny that being a white male hasn’t allowed me to sidestep a whole level of *******
One day, angry white males will be the minority
And we’ll have no one left to blame, but ourselves.
If we don’t **** everyone first
If we don’t **** ourselves first

Michael Arnold, Martin Bodrog, Arthur Daniels, Sylvia Frasier, Kathy Gaarde, John Roger Johnson, Mary Francis Knight, Frank Kohler, Vishnu Pandit, Kenneth Bernard Proctor, Gerald Read, Richard Michael Ridgell

Jonathan Blunk, Alexander J. Boik , Jesse Childress, Gordon Cowden,
Jessica Ghawi, John Larimer, Matt McQuinn, Micayla Medek, Veronica Moser Sullivan, Alex Sullivan, Alexander C. Teves, Rebecca Wingo

The earth has already decided that we are a plague upon it
Maybe climate change is the natural response to the abuse of our gifts

Nancy Lanza, Rachel D'Avino, Dawn Hochsprung, Anne Marie Murphy,
Lauren Rousseau, Mary Sherlach, Victoria Leigh Soto, Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Olivia Engel, Josephine Gay, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine Hsu, Catherine Hubbard, Chase Kowalski, Jesse Lewis, Ana Márquez Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Benjamin Wheeler, Allison Wyatt

What is this world going to teach my son?
That he’s better because of how he looks?
Or what I’ve taught him:
You make yourself better.

Jamie Bishop, Jocelyne Couture Nowak, Kevin Granata, Liviu Librescu,  P
G. V. Loganathan, Ross Alameddine, Brian Bluhm, Ryan Clark, Austin Cloyd, Daniel Perez Cueva, Matthew Gwaltney, Caitlin Hammaren, Jeremy Herbstritt, Rachael Hill, Emily Hilscher, Matthew La Porte, Jarrett Lane, Henry Lee, Partahi Lumbantoruan, Lauren McCain, Daniel O'Neil, Juan Ortiz, Minal Panchal, Erin Peterson, Michael Pohle Jr., Julia Pryde, Mary Karen Read, Reema Samaha, Waleed Shaalan, Leslie Sherman, Maxine Turner, Nicole White

I work as a data analyst
So, I ran the numbers
But, these are more than numbers
These are people: sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives, friends, lovers.

Stanley Almodovar III, Amanda Alvear, Oscar A. Aracena Montero, Rodolfo Ayala Ayala, Alejandro Barrios Martinez, Martin Benitez Torres, Antonio D. Brown, Darryl R. Burt II, Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, Angel L. Candelario Padro, Simon A. Carrillo Fernandez, Juan Chevez Martinez, Luis D. Conde, Cory J. Connell, Tevin E. Crosby, Franky J. DeJesus Velazquez, Deonka D. Drayton, Mercedez M. Flores, Juan R. Guerrero, Peter O. Gonzalez Cruz, Paul T. Henry, Frank Hernandez, Miguel A. Honorato, Javier Jorge Reyes, Jason B. Josaphat, Eddie J. Justice, Anthony L. Laureano Disla, Christopher A. Leinonen, Brenda L. Marquez McCool, Jean C. Mendez Perez, Akyra Monet Murray, Kimberly Morris, Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, Luis O. Ocasio Capo, Geraldo A. Ortiz Jimenez, Eric I. Ortiz Rivera, Joel Rayon Paniagua, Enrique L. Rios Jr., Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, Christopher J. Sanfeliz, Xavier E. Serrano Rosado, Gilberto R. Silva Menendez, Edward Sotomayor Jr., Shane E. Tomlinson, Leroy Valentin Fernandez, Luis S. Vielma, Luis D. Wilson Leon, Jerald A. Wright

I did research to try to find all the victims since I became abruptly aware 16 years ago
There are too many
I could not discover a single database that contained a comprehensive record
No one can keep track of it anymore
I know I’ve missed people
I know there are 1000’s of people now missing people
Even 1 was too much

Hannah Ahlers, Heather Alvarado, Dorene Anderson, Carrie Barnette, Jack Beaton, Steve Berger, Candice Bowers, Denise Salmon Burditus, Sandra Casey, Andrea Castilla, Denise Cohen, Austin Davis, Virginia Day Jr, Christiana Duarte, Stacee Etcheber, Brian Fraser, Keri Galvan,  Dana Gardner, Angela Gomez, Rocio Guillen Rocha, Charleston Hartfield,  Chris Hazencomb, Jennifer Irvine, Nicol Kimura, Jessica Klymchuk, Carly Kreibaum, Rhonda LeRocque, Victor Link, Jordan McIldoon, Kelsey Meadows, Calla Medig, James ‘Sonny’ Melton, Pati Mestas, Austin Meyer, Adrian Murfitt, Rachael Parker, Jennifer Parks, Carrie Parsons, Lisa Patterson,  John Phippen, Melissa Ramirez, Jordyn Rivera, Quinton Robbins, Cameron Robinson, Lisa Romero Muniz, Christopher Roybal, Brett Schwanbeck, Bailey Schweitzer, Laura Shipp, Erick Silva, Susan Smith, Tara Roe Smith, Brennan Stewart, Derrick ‘Bo’ Taylor, Neysa Tonks, Michelle Vo, Kurt Von Tillow, Bill Wolfe Jr.

and NOW I’ve run out of lines and time to read off all 2,977 people who died in 9-11
Isn’t that a tragedy?

Untitled 2
by Unknown 2

created from cut up poems at the Jigsaw chapbook debut event (May 27, 2017)


Not being able to fit in and be normal, I fought back and choose to accentuate my differences instead. To take away the sting of the humiliation of being different, I choose to beat my recriminators to the punch. Over the years this freakish, differing defense became the mask, the performance. I perform the freak now to fit in. But this is not an insincere masquerade, but rather one of the many costumes I wear, a reflection of slivers of me. I protect the darkest parts of me by shielding it in light. Trying on different identities
So much so, you’d never suspect I am hiding something. The best place to hide is in the open, where no one would think to look.

As he reached into her robe
She giggled, and handed him his lunch.
“Go to work,” she said.

She sits behind me squawking with an adolescent banter that must seem dire
Her intensity of voice speaks the same thing I had secretly wished for years, but been too afraid to say
“Please pay attention to me.”
Speak, I did, for the very first time
This awkward message of youthful adoration is not exactly communicated articulately
Her only response is, “God, I hate you. Please shut up.”
If I am already taking risks with my life, then I will not be silenced
For once, I will not back down
“You love me. You just don’t know it yet.”


Assembled from works by Ryan P. Kinney

Untitled 1
by Unknown 1

created from cut up poems at the Jigsaw chapbook debut event (May 27, 2017)


Why did she do this to me?
Why the **** am I always left alone?
Why am I always so ******* cold?

I have to get out of here
You’ll just have to pull harder
I have raged, cried, smiled, trembled, and laughed.
And you are as pathetic as you are courageous
Scarred, but whole.
I am alive
I’m you



Assembled from works by Ryan P. Kinney

I wore a blood colored effigy of her
Straddled between that *****’s legs
Wrapped around my neck
While she choked the life out of me
- I broke

I wrapped myself in my sins
And flaunted them
As a badge of survival

From a smoking wedding bouquet
I blew my brains into the ether
And let the fumes ooze into my veins
Filling me with the vitriol of an alcoholic madman
Forced sober to reality his whole life

The poison danced and cascaded into the water
In a downward feral magnetic spiral of broken promises
My pieces littered the lawn in a prismatic shower

Yeah, my work here was done
And I was going out with the combustion impact of a flare gun hitting five gallons of gas over shattered cinder blocks
I doubled her wager
With a halogen explosion of razor sharp glass.
I bet on her broken promise with an even bigger lie-

I AM OK.

Life,  Death,
And everything in between
Black and White
Gray
Our whole life is a gray area
Gray Matter
It’s all that matters
In the space between
Does it ever really matter?
Or do we just recycle back into the spectrum?

I have this little black stone heart
I’ve often looked at it and thought
It would look much better broken
Atleast, that would be more accurate

Instead, I’ve kept it whole
It’s been wrapped, packed, and buried.
It’s still intact
But I do not think anyone could find where I left it

I was found today
A tattered old thing
Glowing red eyes staring up from a box beaten by the hot summer sun
Most would have passed me by
Scared away by my time worn ugliness
But he saw the life I had
The stories I had lived in those sun-bleached eyes

A generation ago,
I wasn’t so ugly
I used to be loved and doted upon
I was new and beautiful
Cherished by a little girl as her best friend

Together, we danced with each pretend man that would be our future husband
We sipped tea with the queen
We scaled grand mountains
And battled terrifying dragons
Soared with the eagles
And swam with the dolphins
We went on grand adventures through muck and mire
And finished each day in baths of pearlescent bubbles

For years we played as sisters
And were inseparable
But, the years also brought change
She grew,
And gradually,
I was left behind

I didn’t happen overnight
As the girl’s body grew
I became less and less a part of it
I became part of the ideas better left behind
Better to be put in their place

I was relegated to a shelf
To watch as womanhood pushed me out of her life
While the dust grew
I watched her first kiss
And guarded the keys to her first car
That allowed her get further away from me even faster
I saw from the window
As she became our make-believe princess
And donned her shimmering prom dress
My eyes were a brilliant blue in those days
And I could see so much better

Then, one day,
I watched as she packed her room
Growing more barren each minute
Eventually, her mother returned
I was placed in a dark box
And hauled to the realm of forgotten loves
I spent my days itching from the fiberglass
And trying to prevent wasps from colonizing my body

I could no longer see anything with my eyes,
But my heart remembered everything
I dreamed of all the things
The girl imagined with me

I lost track of time in that attic
As I relived our adventures
In my fantasies I had grown with her
Both wearing our matching prom dresses
Both dancing with our princes at the ball
We would laugh as the wind blew our hair into tangled messes in her car

I am more than a slab of plastic
I am a totem for childhood hope
A guardian for the dreams she took off to chase

The light shone upon me again
Only when it was my time to go
I was placed in another box
This time on the lawn
With a 50 cent price tag
My life, my love, had lost its value

I was left in the sun
Forgotten, discarded
Until the natural brilliance of my eyes
Their tears and beauty
Leaked into the ground
Leaving behind only the crimson that had always been there

Until someone finally
Picked me
Dusted me off
Loved me for my red eyes
And put me on another shelf
Where I can collect dust anew

Crack,
Goes the little black heart.
Crumble,
Goes the pieces.
The tears are showing again.
Crimson redemption is upon me.
Let the flames takes me away.

If I smash my hand into a mirror
It may release some of rage,
But it’s only a band-aid on a gaping wound
Scars that still gush my life’s blood

I seek another love to “fix” me,
I am disgusted in myself
For feeling as though I am broken
A twisted reflection of frustration and loneliness

I am falling apart
And can’t pick up the pieces
The cracks are so beautiful
But, the shards cut so deep

Why are there so many?
They haunt my ******* dreams
Get out of my ******* head
Give me my life back

I am so ******* angry
All the time
At everything
Why won’t the music drown out my thoughts

When I’m finally broken
Who will pick up my pieces?
When I cannot stand
Who’s arms will I fall into?
When the liquor runs dry
And the blood begins to clot
Who will be my new vice?
Who will be the final peace I am missing?

Sleep, sweet child
I’ll watch over you
Even after my eyes have worn out
And I’ve leaked the last of my plastic pellets

I watched over your father
Even though, for awhile
I was lost to him
Because of the original corruptor

But, I came home
And brought back
The last shred of good from his childhood

I’ll keep the monsters
Under the bed
And in the closet
I will turn on the light
I will be there
Long after I’m gone

Mother may I, please…
Go to bed tonight
Without being afraid of you

Mother may I, please…
Not be so happy that you are gone
And wish that you would stay away forever
Just hope that you’d finally die
And end our misery

I love her
But I hate who she is
What she has made of me

She tried to bribe an apology with a $5 bill
As though that was supposed to dry my tears or heal my broken lip
I never quite got over that one
So strong is this imagery, that is almost completely overshadows any tenderness

I am terrified that I will repeat her mistakes with my son
And become a parent too much like my own, without thinking about it

They say home is where your heart is
But, I’m afraid to go home
Where your roots grow
The seed of all evil is planted
Fed by tainted water

How can you have so much rage and love for the same person?
This is a person I remember smacking me in the face at 8 years old for not holding up a curtain rod properly
Because I was too short to reach it
And the same mother who would walk me down the concrete path to the majestic sundial sculpture and pick through sea shells in the sand at the beach

This is the mother I want to remember
The darkness so overwhelms the light
That all I can remember of my childhood is the beatings…
And the frustrations…
And the anger…

As I’ve held knives to my arms
Or pictured my brains painted on the wall
I’ve wondered about where I came from
How I got to where I am sitting
Void of compassion and full of rage
And asked
If she ever had these same moments after her beatings
Or on the streets when she ran

I feel as though I suffer from some form of survivor’s guilt
Although I suffered some abuse
When I hear other’s stories
Mine never seems to measure up
That maybe mine wasn’t so bad
It could have been worse
That’s how I describe my family
And the ******* happy years of my childhood
It could have been worse

I thank you for not being as bad as you could have been
But that’s not the same as being good
The lesser of two evils
Is still evil

Yeah, it could have been a lot worse
But, that doesn’t make me close my eyes at night
And stop the memories…
The pain…
The fear
That I’ll wake up and be that 8 year old boy again
Terrified of his own mother
The nervous tension of never waking up
Or worse yet,
Of actually waking up
And setting her off again

Why the hell do parents do such stupid **** to their kids?
Your kids never get over it
It just sits there and festers
And rots away all the warm and fuzzies I have for you

*******
And your ****** life
And everything you put me through
And everything you went through

This needs to get out there
I won’t hide from it anymore
It’s not my shame
It’s hers.

This rage I blame on you
Maybe it is a function of mental illness
The mania was always there
And maybe you were just a trigger
But still…
It only takes one well-placed trigger
To completely blow through someone’s life

My memories are a mask of bruises and shame
I am an incomplete adult
Because I was not allowed a complete childhood
I want to live
Not feel so dead all the time

Mother may I, please…
Love you
Live happily ever after
Forgive you

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

The remember the child
The shy mama’s boy in glasses
Now, with your tattoos, and curses, and **** burns
Scarred by the sins of rage’s past

You are what I could have become
I love you, my brother
But I hate the monster you’ve become
The one I feel inside me when I look at you

How much I could be like you

This waste ****** me off
Squandering your gifts
God ******, You could be so much more than this broken child
Whose cracks bleed the same blood
And shards reflect the same glow
So different,
Yet so much like me
That it infuriates me

And that wife, you ungrateful *******
Who tolerates, worships you
Brushes off your crumbs
You treat her like ****
And **** on her love
While I worshiped mine
And she betrayed my heart
Choosing money over love

I am really tired of having to prove that I am the good son
Brother
by Ryan P. Kinney

The remember the child
The shy mama’s boy in glasses
Now, with your tattoos, and curses, and **** burns
Scarred by the sins of rage’s past

You are what I could have become
I love you, my brother
But I hate the monster you’ve become
The one I feel inside me when I look at you

How much I could be like you

This waste ****** me off
Squandering your gifts
God ******, You could be so much more than this broken child
Whose cracks bleed the same blood
And shards reflect the same glow
So different,
Yet so much like me
That it infuriates me

And that wife, you ungrateful *******
Who tolerates, worships you
Brushes off your crumbs
You treat her like ****
And **** on her love
While I worshipped mine
And she betrayed my heart
Choosing money over love

I am really tired of having to prove that I am the good son

What am I trying to hide?
Am I a freak?
Or do I just perform the freak
These masks reflect slivers of me
A differing defense that protects the darkest parts of me
By shielding it in light
One never sees the monster
Hiding in the open
No one ever suspects that I am hiding someone
When they are staring it in the face

What part of me do each of these reflect?
Who am I?
The man who performs shards of his character,
But never the full act.

I am the Anonymous Ally
Taste me
With all the colors if the rainbow
I am not gay, straight, bi, or trans
I am just the idea
That we are all human

I am called the Goth suit
I am not a character as much as I’m armor
A suit using my darker side to shield my vulnerable core
By usurping the fashion of a subculture already too diluted
The flames crawl from the ground
Feeding on my poisoned heart
Subliming into scarlet remorse leaking from my eyes

I am Broken Promises
Wrapped in the discarded and forgotten relics of lovers past
Much like they discarded and forgot me
The heart never forgets
It just scars over
And now I’ve created this character I can’t get away from

I am the Leprechaun
A caricature of a culture I do not participate in
But am suspiciously genetically a part of
I am American, diluted Irish sprinkled with Scottish and German
And I don’t even know that
Pass me another drink
****, I hate beer
I’ll be sleeping it off in the tent
Then disappear

I am the Clark Kent mask
Call them hipster glasses if you will
I came to them on my own as a way to soften the blow of my intensity to the public. These glasses hide a super man.
Or maybe, just a bizarro.
I look where others are blind
I perceive what goes unnoticed
Appearances deceive
And I’ve tricked you into seeing into the real man’s eyes

I, I am the Chaos Lantern
Chaos is the natural state of the universe.
There are no rules,
No laws that were not meant to be broken.
Change and flux are the lifeblood of the universe
I, I will restore it to its former glory.
Anything is possible at any time for no reason

I am Mirrors and Gears
I am the human mind wearing the man
Reflections of energy
Moved by an ancient machine
Shattered by each new branching neuron
Pushed ever forward into a pointless oblivion
A spider web of pieces that eventually consume themselves
I am a paradox.
I see the world as color and feeling, fire and ice, machine and nature, reflections and shards, darkness and light.

I am the Manic Hammer
The moment you put a barrier on something
Is the moment you create an obsession to break it
This is my tangible fight for control over the anger
By succumbing to it
I am the rage given form
The unjustified hammer of indignity
And pure primal power

I will violently and passionately take revenge on the world for the sin of my birth
I will give so much of myself to the quest that nothing of the man will be left
In the end, the man will become the journey
I am full of all of the evils in the world
Just waiting to see how many people open me

I am The DestructiKing
The ultimate evolution
When the hammer falls
Into regal splendor
And Rage gives way to hope

I am just a man appropriating another culture
A name does not exist for me yet
My process is like a quilt
I fabricate each part piece by piece
Then painstakingly (painfully) stitch them together
For now I am just a collection of past fashion faux-pauxs
A remake of a shell I used to be

I am the Box Man
A walking, blank picket sign
For a protest with no purpose
Righteous indignation and class warfare
A rebel without a cause
And plenty of cause for alarm

I am Anonymous America
I’m not fully me
I am a merging of several different people
Conflicting ideas and injustices merged into a formless identity
The American Dream
Merged with the Nightmare
Neither, not sure of what they mean

I am Blue Collar
***** jeans and Blue name tag
Swearing my way through tedious, 10 hour shifts
Earning my right to drink like a man

I am White Collar
A silk noose around my neck
A keyboard eroding my fingertips
Earning my right to Caucasian entitlement

I am Gray collar
Busting my *** one minute
Sitting on it the next
Being told what to do
While barking out commands to others
***** jeans
Over a starched polo
Earning my right to an identity crisis

I am a student
In an academic stupor hangover
Cramming facts and figures
Crunching deadlines
And lamenting the pains as my mind expands
Forced against the bubble of its previous limiting confinement

I am an Acolyte of the Covenant of Primus
I am more than meets the eye
A real person in disguise
Watch me transform into something beautiful
I am trying on religion
With the only thing I’ve ever worshipped
The fantasies of childhood

I am the Jesus of the Junk
Garbage comes to me and through me is redeemed and reborn
I feed off our throwaway society
Your trash is not only treasure
It’s my sustenance
You may see garbage
I see endless possibilities
I walk on the fetid waters of our decadence

I am the AntiFather
A contradiction in terms
A childish babble
It is not my job to be the God Father
I will not remake you in my image
I will wear, and shape, and polish, and break you
Into a man better than this false idol
The Father is fallible, mortal, and full of sin

I am the Phoenix
I am fire, passion, energy, color, light, warmth, and volatility.
It started with a broken heart.
Through the crack seeped liquid fire.
Burned away all that I was.
Purified me
Boiled me down
And rebuilt me.
From the ashes rose a better, broken man.

I am Ryan and Lisa
Two hearts merged into one
All twisted into each other
Until only the twist is left
When they eventually unravel
Neither could ever be called whole again

I am the Jail Baby
A helpless coincidence of accidents
Born incarcerated
Forever trying to be free
A double helix chain, shackling me to a broken past,
Keeps me tied to my bars

We are the Amalgams
The point in which the flux of personal identity converges
Different pieces of each mask,
Fragmented, devastated, shattered, stitched, traumatized, and melded
We merge, we flow, and flux
Always the river
Never the same river twice

I am a schizophrenic collection of ideas given form
Some halfway
Others still growing
I am one that exists as many
An imagined multiverse constantly crashing into each other
The broken mirror reflecting all the possibilities
Perceived through incoherent, skewed symbolism
A lens of light, color, and cyphers
It’s my mind that fractures
And births my many selves
I am an amalgam of brilliant and idiotic moments in constant flux

Art is the process of Destruction
Take it apart
Distill the remnants to their core essence
Then remake them in your own image

I am my layers.
We are all one
Each a piece of the other
We are Ryan

by Ryan P. Kinney and Aaron Shinkle

It began with a wail
“Bring the Hammer. Bring the Rage.”
And with a boom, smash,
A few cuts, bruises, burns, and scars,
We forged our lives

Together we were an alloy of absolute, disheveled chaos
A folded steel of unstoppable imperfections
Clean, because we knew how to get *****
Stronger, because of our magnificent flaws
Pure, because of our willingness to flaunt our impurities

Our emotions boiled to extremes
Represented as terrifying visages of paint, mud, blood, dye, and pieces of glass
Peppering our bodies as proof that we can feel
So real, so raw, so unlike the mundane, moderate identities we are forced to live
That no one passes without gawking in amazement and terror
Our mild manners are just masks for our superhuman madness

The rage comes and flows through us
Fills us
Finally with a conduit
An exit strategy
In the effigies of our commodified existence
They crack with the spider web of safety glass
Explode into splinters and shards
And trail across the sky in a dance of magnetic iron oxide

We are twisted and mangled and sick
Mangled into some image of another
Twisted in the rubber band tension just moments before it snaps
And sick of being told not to feel

We broke who we were to make who we will be
The endless shells of molds fractured
Shatters like our porcelain dreams
Their shards still present in our skin years later

We destroyed what held us back
Or held us in
The prisoners using their own shackles,
And bodies as weapons against their inanimate jailers

Like the flowers that bloom from the blood-soaked battlefield
Where the shattered pieces of glass become the strands of horse hair on an artist's brush,
Where the pigments of blood and paint are intertwined onto the canvas of a mad artist's carousel
of orchestrated mayhem.
The American Dream is a shattered amalgam of trading people for things
Experiences, for proof of them

We will clear away the rubble of ourselves
Move away from the pieces that hold us back
And forge ahead with the fury of an exploding gas tank

When the sun goes down
And the flames go up
We will finally break
The last dismantled icon of glass, plastic, electrons, and lies
This will be an end
There will be no more funeral processions
No more grave markers
We mourn our lives no longer
There will only be rebirth
A beautiful emotional breakdown
Where rage finally gives way to hope
Witness the fall of a man
A property, a thing
This will be our legacy of beautiful destruction
One last time
Then we will pick up the pieces
And build the rest of our lives

by Ryan P. Kinney

Assembled from works by J.M. Romig and Ryan P. Kinney

Once you log into The Network, you can't log off.
Once you're plugged in, you can't opt out.
That's the way things are.
Your life becomes your Channel.
Your world becomes your Show.
Have you seen the latest episode of Walking Dead or Breaking Bad?
Have you looked in the mirror?
Reality shows?
Who’s reality?

We live in the information age
Full disclosure is no longer optional
We are sharing information.
We are contributing to the death of the self.
Or are we finally mastering intelligence?
We know how to play the system
how to get followers,
when to drop a hashtag,
when to upsell a sponsor,
We are social creatures
And social control is how you keep the pigs in their pen
Until it’s time to offer us up as sacrifice at the altar of decadence
The Rich are locked up
in their floating wi-fi enabled panic rooms,
High above all of the pollution.
Living vicariously through the shows
broadcast by The Network.
Sell me another artificially derived addiction
Masquerading as sustenance
Tell me how much I need it
Need you
Preach it with the fear of the unorthodox on Fox News

Meanwhile on the ground,
people are caricatures of themselves -
the byproduct of generations
of narcissism as survival mechanism.
Nostalgia, and criticism
as a means to pay the bills.
Unless you choose to never log in.
Choose to ignore the cameras
following everyone everywhere
You can always get a real job -
If you can find one.
Most people don't.
It's the new economy.
In exchange for our data, and privacy,
we get ad-revenue and a chance at stardom.
We willingly give them our intelligence
Our spirit
For another video game
Another TV show
That promises a better reality
See it all in HD
While we dubstep to our doom
Up Jacob’s Ladder
Built out of the 15 minute prophets

We’ve traded a heartbeat for an electronic pulse.
Blips and bleeps in an imagined humanity.
Forgetting that living means leaving the house.
When the feed is quiet -
we take the occasional moment
to breathe – cough -
and look up to where all the stars used to be.

Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

by Dawn Richardson and Tiffany Ann Boyd

Assembled from works by J.M. Romig, Sheena Zilla, and Ryan P. Kinney

My first memory is of dying.
I felt like I’d lived a full life
And now I was gladly fading away.
My first last words were
“Tell Elizabeth I love her”
I don’t remember knowing Elizabeth.
I love her though, or at least I did in that moment.

“These aren’t sad tears I’m crying, I’m just cutting onions my dear.”
It makes me want to rip off my flesh and run down the street as bare muscle and bone screaming ****** ******.
It will get better once I leave this purgatory waiting room of stress and self-loathing, but until then my outlook is a bit glum.

I am terrified
Before me is a discolored, screaming, clawing, misshapen alien creature
My son takes his first breathes of real air
We are all exhausted
His mother looks at me with a look that practically screams,
“We did it.”
I plead, “But we’re not done doing it yet…
Are we?”
His gurgles turn into cries
And I know…

For some reason, couldn’t tell you why, I thought about Frankenstein’s Monster.

Some parts are really fuzzy,
I hold it close to me- the fuzzy parts against my skin.
It’s a quilt blanket, stitched together of pieces and parts of found cloth.
My father made it for me.
My very last birthday gift.
I cocoon myself in it like a womb.

I hated him for what he’d done, but I hated myself more for missing him.
I have to fight everyday to be a better person in spite of what I was exposed to.

Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

By Ryan P. Kinney and Dawn Richardson

Assembled from works by Ryan P. Kinney

This one’s for those who have let me down
Disappointed me, failed me
Failed to live to their potential
This one’s for EVERYONE

We will be naked and bare
Ugly and beautiful
Out from under the covers
Out of control
And into the light

There will be no more hiding
Not from the rhetoric
Not from the self-righteousness
Not from the lies we tell ourselves

This one’s for every woman who didn’t love me
And for every one that ever did
This one’s for every person who has ever doubted and underestimated me
For those who ever thought my life should be a mirror of their journey
‘Cause theirs worked out SO well for them

Not from the us that never was
Not from our definitions of family or love

This one’s for me
For not living up to my own potential

This one’s for those who patronize my intelligence
But yet are so easily fooled into acceptance
With a pair of plastic black frames
This one’s for IRONY

Not from the guilt
Not from the pain
Or from the shame
Not from the anger
Or the happiness

This one’s for who I AM


Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

By Brittainy Kasunic
Assembled from works by Sheena Zilla and J.M. Romig

I left you
scrambled on the wall
naked for all to see

Even in this rare moment of content
He feels a wave of manic energy
On the horizon
Rushing toward him like a bullet train
And his muscles tense
In anticipation

“Good girl”
Shadow dropped the bone at my feet.
I picked it up and tossed it back into the endless grass
As it spun like boomerang in the air –

These relics, tokens of breath taken,
Remind me to keep in mind the person I will become.


Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

By Aaron Kasunic

Assembled from works by Ryan P. Kinney, J.M. Romig, and Sheena Zilla

I am in her arms
Having been told, “No”
And resigned to rejection so many times
So many times I told myself that this would never happen
As my lips touch hers
I laugh inside my head
“Is this really happening?”
This is really happening.

I called you art,
poetry,
even…honesty.

I hold my breathe
I can see him through the window
As I have seen him through the electronic window of my TV for years
As I get closer this feel less and less real
This is my hero
My God

She broke my heart.
I was a business tycoon,
A man of great wealth
I could have anyone I wanted,
but not her.
She didn’t know what she wanted. She needed guidance.
So I found her, and we both got what we really wanted.
I always get what I want…
…I don’t like this memory.

I won’t say the word regret,
because I don’t
I won’t say the word sorry
because I’m not.

I will say that with age comes perspective
and with perspective
comes introspection and –

The well of my youth is no longer a place I can drink from.

The destruction of the self is intolerable,
Everyone tells me
To destroy myself is acceptable,
Little round pills


Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

by Ryan P. Kinney and J.M. Romig

The coy house thinks, “Should I let this man enter me?”
Although she pretends to resist at first
She soon relents,
The pressure giving way and her door granting passage

He pledges to give her hardwood floors
To put a swingset in her backyard
The finest dressings on her windows
Painting her face,
Decking her out
To show the world how much he loves her
Softly wooing, he promises her a family

She hopes this one will make good
As he begins his work,
She watches the swell in his young wife’s womb
And for a while, believes in life again

For the first time in years,
She breathes fresh air as they move in their boxes
The melding of their past and her future
An image so bright,
That she is almost blinded by the light
When one night,
The soon-to-be mother misses her first step

At the bottom of the stairs,
He finds his world in pieces
As the paramedics pack the body and cart it away
The door closes behind them
And the air grows stagnant

The only boxes he ever unpacks,
Contain spirits
To numb him from the haunting emptiness inside
The past becomes nothing, but a foot stool
Slowly crushed and deformed under his weight
Her rooms,
Built to house new memories, home cooked meals, and laughter
Now nothing, but
Stale beer, chips, and wasted life


Created from prompts at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

by Ryan P. Kinney and Dawn Richardson

Created from prompts by J.M. Romig, Dawn Richardson, and Ryan P. Kinney

She loves him like a fire,
Enveloping, holding, and caressing the wood,
While slowly consuming every part of him

Shaking off clothes like the leaves in autumn
Their bodies exposed,
Changing from a wan pallor
To a flushed crimson hue

Their bodies burn,
Breathe drifts like smoke into the skyline
The mountains **** their horizons

The dragon flies and dragonflies in the dusking night
The snow blanketed world deadens the sound of his beating heart
Her tide slowly recedes into him
The delicate wax of his heart melts under her fury
She swallows his cries

Babies sleep soundly


Created at the Winter Writing Workshop (Dec. 27, 2015),
HEYMAN! Productions

My Life is a Scratched CD (OR Blue Collar Lament- The Little Napper Remix)
Lines taken from poems by JM Romig (Ursa Somniculosa/CD Skipping Down Route 11) and Ryan Kinney (Blue Collar Lament)

It's long drive on this highway
The window creeks
- its jagged way down
I breathe in the new air for the first time in months
the CD starts skip-skip words
Hopping over - lines
Reminding me
Of finite fuel
repeat-
finite time
With work looming just hours away
repeat-
Death, just decades away

I spend most of my week
in the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
on repeat
in a semi-conscience trance
watching multi-million dollar machines work

repeat

in the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
is a constellation of dirt, chipped paint
and cobwebs
forming the shape
of a bear
lounging in a hammock

skip

They are more alive than I am.
Monday at 3 PM I click off my brain,
switch on automatic,
repeat
automatic
skip
- the countdown:-T-minus 40 hours.
Each minute that ticks by
in the dull monotony slowly steals my sanity,
bit by bit

Each minute closer to Friday
slower and slower,
until on Friday they seem to tick
backwards--

skip

I have coworkers
who insist that it's a monkey,
trapped in a net

Each day blurs into the other
making them indistinguishable.
Repeat-
My finite time
Monday,
the entirety of the previous week
on repeat-
T-minus 40 hours.

skip

they are wrong.
It's clearly a bear

In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
repeat-
Death - just decades away.
The dictator they put in charge of the asylum
barks out commands on cue,
just to remind everyone that they own you.

skip

The desperation for dollars
are the shackles that keep me here.

I often welcome sleepwalking:
I think of Emerson
On repeat-
Skip-
I think I feel like his transparent eyeball
repeat-
His eyeball-
I begin to understand
I begin to feel like I'm one with everything
skip-
everyone is love
repeat
love
every-Everyone is me
and you
skip-skip
-the impending coma

In the few instances the machines malfunction
I curse being awakened.
At least as a zombie, I don't feel
my mind rotting
repeat

the rotting constellation of dirt,
chipped paint and cobwebs:
Ursa Somniculosa
No matter where I am on the floor,
I can see him hanging there in his hammock

on the weekends I love life.
I shed the identity the uniform has forced upon me
and my true self emerges--
repeat
my finite fuel

In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
repeat
the desperation for dollars
I truly only live two days a week
repeat
my finite time
I'm dying the other five

skip-skip

I think of Ursa Somniculosa -
In the back of the factory
where I sell my free time
enjoying his perpetual vacation
maybe sipping on a nice tall beer
soaking up the sun -

NOT being a trapped monkey
like all of us down here
on repeat

by Aaron Kasunic, Ryan P. Kinney, and J.M. Romig

How can I explain the error you make?
When you stand so vigilantly waiting to lunge into the abyss?
This pit full of fire and blood, it calls to you
Doesn’t it?

I have pointed the finger
Only to turn it on myself
I have held grudges and forgiven
I have trusted and misguided
I have been Judas and Jesus

I was immortal once
Believe me, you,
I was invincible

If this horrifies you,
Then you are right
It horrifies me too

We walk on moon rocks
In the weightless ways of childhood
Straining our legs and lungs
Suppressing the rebirth of the sun

We will be naked and bare
Ugly and beautiful
Out of control
And into the light

by Aaron Kasunic, Ryan P. Kinney, and J.M. Romig

How can I explain the error you make?
When you stand so vigilantly waiting to lunge into the abyss?
This pit full of fire and blood, it calls to you
Doesn’t it?

I have pointed the finger
Only to turn it on myself
I have held grudges and forgiven
I have trusted and misguided
I have been Judas and Jesus

I was immortal once
Believe me, you,
I was invincible

If this horrifies you,
Then you are right
It horrifies me too

We walk on moon rocks
In the weightless ways of childhood
Straining our legs and lungs
Suppressing the rebirth of the sun

We will be naked and bare
Ugly and beautiful
Out of control
And into the light

by Ryan P. Kinney

It was the end of monsters
The end of mothers
The end of haters
Of lovers
Of pain and suffering
Of bliss and ecstasy

Nothing to hide under the bed
No terror floating in your head
Just the buzzing and swarming of the insects

There was just the animalistic need to survive
And Gaia had decided
It was best for her survival
If we did not

The fall of man

Truth be told
We did it to ourselves

by Ryan P. Kinney

This is a dream I had the night of May 27, 2013.

The dream opens to me in a booth at a restaurant with an unknown faceless female friend. I begin to notice at other booths across me a single woman sitting in several different booths. I slowly begin to realize that all of these woman look like Lisa, although each unique and different. These very similar women were sitting by themselves, and freaking out people around them with how similar they looked. I instantly rationalize that they are all Lisa’s from alternate realties, different possibilities of what they could be.
I am talking with my friend as I notice these women. My friend gets up to go to the bathroom and I approach these Lisa’s, addressing them all at once. I ask them to join me at my table (there are 3 of them that I can identify, but my mind told me there were 3 more there, a total of 6). They all come to my booth without a word, as though they were expecting this. I bring them to my table and add a chair for my friend at the end. The friend never returns and despite my mind telling me there were 6 Lisa’s, there was only space for 3 of them. They sit down.
One Lisa is very similar to mine, although very thin and pale. Another Lisa is rather chubby. A third Lisa sits down a few minutes after the others. She returned in place of my former friend. She was dressed in cyber goth clothing with black contacts that made her pupils appear to be constricted solid black circles. I exclaimed, “Ooo, there’s a goth Lisa.”
I addressed the Lisa most like mine and began asking her questions to gauge how like mine she was, almost suspecting that she was. The only question I can remember was, “What kind of car do you drive?” She told me a story about her white car, but I cannot remember the details. I told her the story of my breakup with my Lisa. Somewhere in the conversation I grabbed the thin Lisa’s wrist and she asked me, “Do you want to break that wrist?” I asked, “Problems with an eating disorder?” She nodded.

The chair at the end of the booth remained empty.

I awoke…

Maybe I shouldn’t drink before bed.

The following is a very powerful dream I had the night of May 15th, 2009. I don’t often have dreams because my vivid imagination means I daydream a lot. I am seeking interpretations from anyone. Can you help me discover what it means…?

I am sitting in an auditorium. I am with my father, mother and brother, Shawn. The presenters are giving away tickets, one to a Cavs game, another to Cedar Point. I chose Cedar Point.
Instantly the environment changes. I am attending a huge social event party in a large multi-level office building. I am attending with 3 nameless, faceless friends. The party features 7 themed rooms. The first was an entry way similar to the one at my middle school. The second was a cross between the Cleveland Zoo (indoor parts) and an Indian bazaar market. There were tanks with lizards, salamanders, sharks, and sting rays. All had a price sticker on them. The third was a parlor with computers. I never discovered the other 4 rooms.
At this party, I knew Lisa was attending. I also knew she had a magical crystal that split her into 2 people. However, due to the 7 rooms she was accidentally split into 7. Each of the 7 Lisa’s was a different color (clothing), each representing a different personality characteristic.
The first Lisa I ran into was the black one in the entry way. When she saw me, she exclaimed, “Oh, ****!” and ran. It was shortly after that that I realized that she and the white one were evil. They were trying to **** me. I killed the white one. I do not remember how or why. Next I started running from the black one. I was sure that it had already killed my friends and I was next. She chased me into the parlor where I confronted her. When I turned around I realized this “Black Lisa” had turned into me. I killed it by slamming its head into a laptop screen.
I ran from the parlor into a stairwell. Here I encountered the red, purple, and yellow Lisa’s. These, I was sure were the good ones. I wanted to protect these 3 Lisa’s from the other 2 (colors unknown), that I was sure were trying to hurt us. I paid most attention to the red one. It was then, that my friends returned, coming down the hall with one slung over the shoulders of the other two. All three were alive and well.
Then I woke up…



Ryan’s Interpretation

The Dark Muse Dream

The following is a very powerful dream I had the night of May 15th, 2009. I don’t often have dreams because my vivid imagination means I daydream a lot. I am seeking interpretations from anyone. Can you help me discover what it means…?

I am sitting in an auditorium. The womb or an early family home.
I am with my father, mother and brother, Shawn. This scenario represents the beginning, my childhood and early family life before Lisa.  It also portrays quiet desperation.
The presenters are giving away tickets, one to a Cavs game, another to Cedar Point. Cedar Point is circumstantial.  I was going there later that month.
I chose Cedar Point.  The choice represents the choices I had to make in my life to go from child to man.
Instantly the environment changes. The 360 my life took after I met Lisa.
I am attending a huge social event party in a large multi-level office building.  Suddenly I had a social life and friends.  I was no longer an unknown and alone.  She brought me out of my shell.  The multi level building represents the complexity of my life with Lisa.
I am attending with 3 nameless, faceless friends. The party features 7 themed rooms. The first was an entry way similar to the one at my middle school. This was the familiar.
The second was a cross between the Cleveland Zoo (indoor parts) and an Indian bazaar market. This was the bizarre, strange, and new.  These first two rooms represented the outside world.
There were tanks with lizards, salamanders, sharks, and sting rays.   These creatures represent the untouchable, i.e. slimy.
All had a price sticker on them. They are for sale.  Nothing is sacred.
The third was a parlor with computers. The parlor represents my sanctuary, calming, and relaxing.  Yet the computer was one of many causes of my divorce.  To Lisa, me on the computer meant neglect.  The parlor also represented home with Lisa, hidden from the rest of the world.  This is where all the fighting and problems occurred.
I never discovered the other 4 rooms.  
At this party, I knew Lisa was attending. I also knew she had a magical crystal that split her into 2 people. Lisa was 2 completely different people.
However, due to the 7 rooms she was accidentally split into 7.  This represents the 7 deadly sins.
Each of the 7 Lisa’s was a different color (clothing), each representing a different personality characteristic. In my world, color represents emotion.
The first Lisa I ran into was the black one in the entry way. When she saw me, she exclaimed, “Oh, ****!” and ran. She is scared of me or ashamed.
It was shortly after that that I realized that she and the white one were evil.  White means my hidden anger towards Lisa while black is my guilt.
They were trying to **** me. Both my anger and guilt are killing me from the inside out.
I killed the white one. I do not remember how or why. Next I started running from the black one. I was sure that it had already killed my friends and I was next. The “Lisas” or more accurately, me destroyed all I had left (my friends).
She chased me into the parlor where I confronted her. When I turned around I realized this “Black Lisa” had turned into me. I was really running from and angry at myself.
I killed it by slamming its head into a laptop screen.  The act of slamming the head represents the violence I am guilty of and fear I am capable of.  Breaking the computer destroyed that which destroyed my happiness.
I ran from the parlor into a stairwell. The stairwell represents the path to my new life.
Here I encountered the red, purple, and yellow Lisa’s.   The good parts of Lisa I wanted to protect.
These, I was sure were the good ones. I wanted to protect these 3 Lisa’s from the other 2 (colors unknown), that I was sure were trying to hurt us.  I have an apprehension something else out there will hurt me again.
I paid most attention to the red one. Red means love.
It was then, that my friends returned, coming down the hall with one slung over the shoulders of the other two. Slung over the shoulders means a shoulder to lean on.
All three were alive and well. They were there, surprisingly, when I thought I was alone.
Then I woke up…

by Aaron Kasunic, Ryan P. Kinney, and J.M. Romig

How can I explain the error you make?
When you stand so vigilantly waiting to lunge into the abyss?
This pit full of fire and blood, it calls to you
Doesn’t it?

I have pointed the finger
Only to turn it on myself
I have held grudges and forgiven
I have trusted and misguided
I have been Judas and Jesus

I was immortal once
Believe me, you,
I was invincible

If this horrifies you,
Then you are right
It horrifies me too

We walk on moon rocks
In the weightless ways of childhood
Straining our legs and lungs
Suppressing the rebirth of the sun

We will be naked and bare
Ugly and beautiful
Out of control
And into the light

by Ryan P. Kinney and J.M. Romig

I am shards and reflections
Machinations and reactions
I am translucent pieces and parts
Assembled and disheveled

Spitting.
Clicking
Fingertips stumbling ever so awkwardly
Across the keyboard
Slightly stale leftover love
Making memories
Drift in...

My conscious lacks a separation between the human and the inert
Most sociopaths have a certain charm

by Ryan P. Kinney

We fought, we thought.
We lived, we loved.

Anger/stupidity
Cold numb void
Unthinking, emotionless machine

I thought about you
And it made me cry

You wear a blissful grin
Like angels falling
My ancient wall of flowers
I see it in the darkness of your eyes

You got high on my experiences
Took my stories into your body
You loved it

Her shriek of terror, screaming
I’m worthless
How could I do this to her?

The tears stream
The blood flows from my ****
Diluted with stale coffee and ****** cigarettes

The heartbreaks, the beatings,
The suicidal thoughts
I made you paranoid, cynical, and distrusting

I wished you could be near me
I cursed the world,
I wished everything could be wonderful
No interferences

A cold gruesome memory
I don’t deserve her
Skin still embedded in glass
I see my twisted reflection
The monster I’ve become

I sealed my fate
Inside
life's last chapter,
a book so elegantly bound

No matter how you try to purge
You’ll never be rid of this poison
The world blinds, confuses, and muffles
My heart is often bound and gagged
So much like you

I went out to the bridge
Clutching my Bible
Never even opened it
And a letter from you,
Plunged into the river,
Still crying
No one was there
No angels to care

Just die…

We lied

by J.M. Romig, Ryan P. Kinney, Morgann Blackwood, and Aaron Kasunic

Here’s to vices and virtues
To living without apologies or regrets
To breaking in order to heal

This old bird no longer caged
She gets to look on the other side of the bars this time
He gets another stumble in the hallway
A headfirst dive into a bottle of pills

Purple sharks and goats
That glow in the dark
Banana dimpled belugas
Swimming wildly asunder

Then I met God
The most beautiful of all my conquests
I knew no one else would quite match up to her

Her hair in the porch light
Looked like the thunder god had an ******

Her face still cannot be manifest
This woman,
The most beautiful thing I’ve seen
She lingers in my conscious
And has a major role to play in what will be my swan song

If experience has taught me anything (an unlikely assumption)
It is that if a woman ever tells you
-Straight up-
That she is a *****
She is not lying

There are exceptions to that rule
As I myself am quite exceptional

Patchwork Dreams
by Aaron Kasunic, Amanda Whitlock, Morgann Blackwood, J.M. Romig, Ryan P. Kinney, and Valentine Berlin

The block is killing me
A million thoughts stopped by a lacking syllable
The start
Could it be? Should it be?
I’ll fill the silence with doubt
Waiting for the right sound
While the deadline looms...

These dreamers in my mind have stopped dancing,
Tired of waiting for the music:

Paint splashes grayscale
Patches together in swatches
Blending to erase the boundaries
I never follow anyway
It’s been years since
My guidelines were straight
Enough to stay inside
Yet it’s where
I prefer to be

I’ve been poor, so poor
That harvesting cigarette butts to squeeze the tobacco out
Was the only way to smoke
So poor that i had to carve a pipe out of a carrot
To smoke that tobacco
Yes, I’ve been poor
Poverty is a misery, but I’m crafty
So-so living, those problems
Making do is how I survive
Yes, I’ve been poor
And I carry the scars to prove it

Loop. Swoop. Pull.
Nope.
Loop. Swoop. Pull
Still no.
Mom’s getting fed up
I’m sorry.
I just can’t do it.

I race through the shop door
The natural light stings my wet eyes
And the chill stops me for an instant
My mother screams behind me,
“Get the **** out of here.”
I am sobbing, finding it difficult to breathe
As I choke down mucus and blood
My lip is already starting to swell
Tomorrow, she will try to bribe my forgiveness with some useless object
Another ******* worthless sentiment
From a parent who never stopped being a child

So soggy... everything...
The grass, the hay, the sky
And my crotch- presently soaked in blood.
Two periods in one month!!
YAY for me.
Soggy... everything.

Jesus died
Because I am a sinner
I’m on my knees
For the fifth time this week
Trying to find my salvation
On this bathroom floor
Penetrated by the needle
Full of bubbling holy light

I’m drunk and so ****** out right now
There is no God
If there was
He would have saved me
Or atleast given me a bigger ****

Before the arthritis set in,
I could grab a ****,
They called them “handys” back then,
And I was very accomplished.
My grip was magical
And Old Faithful would quietly make a show.

I’m as dead as America in the Fall
The dead-eyed liberal zombies are coming
To knock down the walls of my panic room
Picketing my rights
If they had half a brain
They’d put down those signs
And pick up a gun

It’s already past 11.
The kids are long since asleep
I quietly stick the key in the lock
And try to open the door without the usual creak
I drop my briefcase in the hall
As though the full weight of 70 hour work weeks were stored within
I loosen my tie and walk to the fireplace
There I spot the kids, dead to the world on the couch
“Waiting for Santa”
He’s finally here!
As I bend to slide another present under the tree

Memory corrupted
Trying to recover
Installing... Installing
Installing the good data. Recover the bright.
Installing... Installing
Deleting viruses. Replace corrupted data.
Installing... Installing
Waiting for completion
In-
Stalling...
Ready to carry on
In
Stalling....