This path, overgrown with briar and brambles,
Thorns and nettles strewn in disarray;
A loathsome path of broken dreams, and yet,
Willingly I walk it each day

This path that hurts not the feet, but the heart,
Where roiling streams overflow their banks,
And burning cinders comingle with ice --
An affirmation of Life's cruel pranks!

What is it that prompts my unwavering steps?
The love that greets me at journey's end!
The ghost of a love lost so long ago
Leaps boundaries only love can transcend

What pain I endure to savor love's bliss!
On this path, blazed by temerity,
I fly past the graveyard of ill-fated  dreams
To a love that defies mortality

How weary I've grown trying to understand
Why such perfect love incurred God's wrath;
And now all that's left are the memories
That await me at the end of this path

the seconds chisel the ice;
the thaw, it has begun.
as old woes come to die,
new paths are clear in view,
if distant and unwanted.

return to past hallucinations,
don't trust your withering eye,
and always have in mind
the sad contempt you held
for him. (but who am i?)

old world across the ocean,
torment me with vivid lies.
i ask for salvation
and all i get is you,
ether, slipping between my trembling fingers.

she had an accident
but all i can do is drink,
until the scars and bruises
dissolve and melt into
the atlantic, or at least the bath water.

i read because i must,
and listen to the beats
that others love to death
but i just want
to get laid (but what do i know?)

i fear that god has made me so
no living soul will comprehend
that i don't mean harm
when i do the things
that hurt the most.

dread and happiness comingle,
like awkward exes at a party,
their hands touch at the punch bowl,
but they were never really
in love to start.

in black sky above us, the shreiks
of the shells cut the air, sharp, until
the dreaded booms which tell us
how close

how close the rounds landed
to our trench, where we hunker, drenched
in dreck, mud and blood, an unwilling
audience to this martial symphony

screams stream skyward
and comingle with the next volley,
a cacophonous courtship of vibrations,
invisible, but we know it's there

a miserable marriage of metal
and flesh--monkeys made into men
who ****** their own; who are determined
to sing these sour songs

when the lobbies stop, the only sounds
are the winds, the ones which will gently carry
the sounds of men moaning, crying,
praying for silence

White light on white skin on soft sheets
As slender figures stir and wake
With the rise of gentle breaths
That comingle in cool air
That warms them to each other
With touches that are so new
In depth and texture that
They gasp to sigh with stuttered breath
And revel in the soft kiss of soft lips

Ego Storm
by Ryan P. Kinney

Do you see it coming?
There! On the horizon…
A selfish **** storm of pretension and superficiality.
It’s inevitable.
So why fight it.
Welcome to the Ego Storm.
----------------------------------------------------------­--------------------------------------------------

I say unto the non-believer.
I am Ryan.
You have never known one like me,
Nor will you ever

I burn, I shine,
I flash so bright.
With every color of the rainbow,
But I do not sparkle.

You can’t stop me,
Or help me.
I am a sickness.
I am average,
But, Oh so much more.
I NEED to be different.
No matter the cost.

My thoughts are perpetually incomplete,
Ever evolving,
Never to be understood.
Like an alchemist,
I will make the ridiculous a reality.
Anything is possible at any time for no reason at all
Hell, Even I don’t understand me.

I am constantly unsure of who I am
But always confident and cocky that I am.
I am an adult child,
Never fully grown,
And I refuse to mature.

I never control my emotions.
I channel them.
And express them with color
I bleed liquid color.

I attack everything with a sharp tongue and a soft heart,
Pushing boundaries and pushing buttons.
I am sorry,
But not really

I will turn everything into a *** joke,
Because life is one big sensual sense experience
It is meant to be felt,
Not thought.
Created,
Not forced.

I’m in love with a fantasy.
Obsessed with an ex,
Who dared to leave me.
Romance in a dream.
An unfulfilled, unrequited devotion to the imaginary

My memories are my scarlet letter,
A crimson “A” for *******.
Sure, I’m a bit of a *******.
Pain is preferable to feeling nothing,
Experience is superior to the void.

I’ve witnessed the birth of beauty
Where others only see trash
I’ve created it.
I’ve also watched it wither and die.

I survive on the decadence of our society.
Your **** is my sustenance.
I turn nothing into something.
Then give it sweet oblivion in the hell of my dreams.

I am plugged in,
But only on the original analog connection.
I prefer the nuisances that inconsistency provides,
And refuse to let the tech think for me.
It is a machine.
You control it.
It does not control you.

I befriend, commiserate, and comingle with the dredges of society
The downtrodden, broken, abused, freakish,
Overlooked and underappreciated,
Geeks and intolerated deviants.

I force the shy to rise up and speak out,
To slice the crippling fear of looking foolish.
To prove the biggest fool among us,
May be the most brilliant.

The unpopular are my cool.
I love the weak and pathetic,
Just like me.
Equality through adversity and diversity.

All of you are pieces in the art that is my life.
Some are darker,
Some are brighter.

I will get inside you,
Around you and through you.
I will **** that which pleases me,
And **** that which does not.
But nothing more than your mind,
The most brutal tenderness you have ever had forced on you.

I will swear with one hand on my “Bible,”
With the sweetest foul mouth you will ever hear.
I laugh at the stupid,
And weep at the unintelligent

I will force you to know me,
And force harder for you to know yourself
I will take your words,
Make them stronger than you ever could
I shall throw the full weight of my genius behind them.

I will question everything,
And make you question yourself.
I will annoy you with a thousand “y’s,”
And swear out every other vowel.

I will make you give till your hands bleed,
And on occasion your ******.
I will challenge you to succeed.

Your clock is ticking.
So do it,
Or do me.
Too many are lost.
Go find yourself.
Or go **** yourself.
-------------------------------------------------------­-----------------------------------------------------
I think,
Therefore I am Ryan.
I am better than anyone I have ever known.
As the clouds begin to part in my mighty presence,
I can see the only one I have ever truly known
Is myself…

Do you believe in aliens?
And if you do is it already to late?
You said didn't
You'd never again make that mistake

What about gay marriage?
What's your stance on this?
You told me it's none of your business
What's in my spouse's pants or
What door they go behind when
They have to ****

Is it love that makes *** better or
*** that makes love better?
You had never known these commodities to
Comingle you told me unfettered

What was it like going to your first concert?
At twelve years old
You came home covered in blood and sweat
But you hadn't been hurt

How did you get that scar above your eye?
You sighed, it was a souvenir
From the third time you died

Have you ever once shot a gun?
No but you  pointed one at the man
Who used to hurt your mom

Have you ever gotten young drunk?
If things go right you'd be that way tonight
And it'd be a real ******
I knew in that exact moment
That I wanted to kiss ya

You shift in the bed. Light comes through the windows.
There are birds singing outside,
too early for spring, but singing nonetheless.

A full night’s sleep and you are still tired.
Your bones and soul both resist inertia.
The warmth, yours and hers, comingle.

Nearly three years since you exchanged vows.
None of them easy. None of them the stuff of fairy tales.
Times of death and loss and struggle,

Constant chaos.

You prefer peace. That is the truth of it.
it has been a long journey to capture it.
an old man’s journey to rebuild himself from the rubble.

She shifts slightly and settles back into her deep sleep.
You would prefer the fairy tale, but you have lived too long
to believe in them.

In its place is what you have, a different kind of love,
soft as flesh, strong as steel, A thing you wish
you had found as a young man.

But age has its value. Age is a treasure,
Wisdom, however it comes, is treasure. You smile, fully awake,
reaching your arm over the covers

and drawing her closer still.