This Is Why I Am Insane

Today’s Sunday Reader comes from writer and musician Ryan Kent and is one of the many poems found in his most recent anthology titled This is Why I am Insane.

98. THE MOST BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE WORLD

she told people she was v e n u s

collected rocks and other silly shit

said this one was good fortune

this one was for testicular fortitude

gave them and a few more to me

i threw them in her front yard

as i walked back to the car

she called me drunk at 3 am

about making dandelion tea

said the stars were aligned

and the moon and the gods

and the seasons wanted

us to dance naked in her

front yard where she saw

me toss the handful of rocks

told her i’d be over in a few

n o w she may have not been v e n u s

but it’s not like i’m royalty

e i t h e r

24. THERE WON’T BE ANY STATUES

her married name was a city in italy

she had yellow purple green bruises

on her legs and arms

track marks

encore

thinking of that girl and another one

as i sit next to strangers in brooklyn

drinking corona alone l o s t c on f u se d

no intention of going back

or being asked to turn around for that matter

that’s ok

one of these days things will be different

until then i’ll slink by

breathing at one bar

and breathing at another

holding my breath

in between

119. A HORRIBLE DISGUSTING HABIT

the last girl wasn’t around anymore

i spent three days drunk with

some redheaded b i r d

up in her bed her little d o g too

then it began to wear off

and wore off quickly f a s t

like cheap varnish flaking from

cheaper wood

then i dropped a house on her

little vintage shoes

pointing up

then there was this town

then another one & g i r l s

girlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgirlsgirls g i r l s

now i’m walking up these new stairs

a place where i creak

but the floors

do not

141. THIS IS WHY I AM INSANE

she has that curly hair you

can only get if you were to scalp

some unlucky son of a bitch

wore dresses like carmen m i r a n d a

smoked cigarettes drank bourbon

could fit on the back of a sport bike

she collected knick knacks

and cats and skulls and dead bugs

had some knives and custom guitars

the hairs in my five o’clock shadow

have started turning gray now and

everything is too damn loouuudddd

i lie in my bed on my b a c k

ask my feet if i was right

was i right to leave her

wait for them to give an answer

but just like me

they got n o t h i n g

26. THE FOX

must have given her number

to forty men that night

she was new to this stretch of road

from somewhere out west

everyone wanted to know her

even me

eventually she made it my way

blinking her eyes

stirring at some drink

wearing some strappy dress

talking all kinds of shit

while i filled an ashtray

on that wooden patio

clever women

cover all their bases

no one wants to be caught

looking over the fence

when standing

ten feet from

the bag

82. RED FLAGS IN A PRETTY DRESS

she turned over that time in her bed

back and mermaid hair to me

didn’t like what i’d said about love

i counted her boxes of shoes

her scarves and ties and necklaces

and dresses and hats and purses

from my exiled side of the mattress

her cat hopped up purred on my chest

made little kiss faces at me

that’s when i knew i was finished

and that’s when i knew i was glad

oh we muscled on for a while

but we were already a dead m o u s e

that was no longer fun to toss

cats sure got a hold on

this reality thing

most of us play dress up

112. SPIRIT THAT BEAT THE JAPANESE

he said we had wooden dreams

that we were foolish stubborn boys

real men get out of bed before 7 am

they don’t wear seatbelts e i t h e r

said christian academy would fix us

knock us down a few pegs

spent years proving them wrong

sleeping through the afternoon

flying under the radar

ignoring all of the gods

our own private suicide missions

now we’re poor drunks

and at night we remember

that we love our fathers

no matter how much

we hate them

Find more of Ryan Kent’s work HERE.
If you would like to submit writings for consideration into The Sunday Reader, contact us [email protected].

If you know who Ryan Kent is, it’s probably from his role as a vocalist in several bands around town, most notably southern-fried metallers Gritter and brutal thrashers Murdersome. As a rather talented lyricist, though, it wasn’t much of a stretch to move into the poetry game, as he did with his first book, Poems For Dead People, back in 2014. Since then, he’s continued writing at a furious pace–he even mothballed an entire book’s worth of poems that he decided weren’t the right thing for him to release at that time. However, he has finally given the world another volume, in the form of This Is Why I Am Insane.

This collection, admittedly rather thin at only 64 pages, is nonetheless jam-packed with poems, which often appear two to a page. Each poem is numbered, then placed into the collection out of order, in a sequence only clear to the author. The numbers are as low as 04 and as high as 151, and while not all the numbers inbetween appear here, enough appear to make clear that this project is the result of a sustained burst of creativity in which Kent cranked out a great deal of high quality material.

He didn’t lack for inspiration, either, and the crucial inspirational factor is made clear by the opening lines of the first poem in the collection, “Flicking Her Heel.” “Well/I signed them/like the attorney asked/and like everything/else that fades away/like the hairline/and pride/and teen angst/so does love.” If it isn’t already clear, this is Kent’s divorce book. The subject of a failed marriage comes up multiple times, but the stronger focus of this book is the life that remains once the marriage is over–tales of a loner lifestyle involving too much time at bars, or sitting home alone.

A lot of This Is Why I Am Insane‘s best moments aren’t even drawn from first-person observations, but instead from those little snapshots of someone else’s life a person catches by sitting in one place for a long time, paying attention to everything at once and nothing in particular. Poem 129, “Fwends,” tells the story of a car accident in which the drivers recognize their acquaintance only after they’ve collided. As the two women in the poem sit on a sidewalk crying together over their destroyed cars, Kent, watching out his window, thinks, “The ones you know/are sometimes the/ones who wreck/your shit.”

This is, for my money, the most striking moment in the whole collection, but there are plenty more to be found here. Kent has definitely developed a love for odd typography, placing large spaces between words, throwing down lines irregularly across the page, even sometimes s t r e t c hing out a word, or drrrrrrrraawwwwwwing it out across the page. At times, this works quite well; at the best moments it reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s many dashes of irregular length. However, at other times it almost feels like an obscuring device, like it’s being done to divorce the writer from the immediacy and impact of what he’s writing. The problem is, this protective device can also shield the reader from the full impact of the words. And they do hit hard.

Really, a great deal of this collection’s poems would work best read out loud. This makes a ton of sense in light of Kent’s day job as a vocalist–he’s used to converting his notebook scribbles to spoken, sung, or screamed language. Fortunately, he realizes that this talent still has value where his poetry is concerned, and will be harnessing that gift by doing a reading at Chop Suey Books in Carytown on Monday, August 28 at 6 PM (click here for more info). Whether you’re a fan of his previous poetry, someone who’s rocked out to his bands, or a total newcomer, this reading is worth catching. Ryan Kent may or may not be insane (personally, I found him eminently relatable–if anything, I’m a little worried about the guy), but he’s definitely talented. Go see him at Chop Suey on Monday night, and pick up a book while you’re at it. It’s worth the trip.

Follow Ryan Kent’s poetry at facebook.com/Poemsbythisfool.

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