Forgotten / twirl           

- how easy to be a roving corolla; to be the left wing 
of a butterfly, fluttering 
through a garden of memories, infest by thistles, 
infest by whatever the gun left behind. 

last week, a chapel was invaded & all present 
left a landmark of a crimson river. 

in my calligraphy, every letter is a florid stain
of a body, rippling & 
forming a col. 

in this poem, everything is all about grief. 
i heard memories are the biological 
father of pain, often tearing into your mind. 

& i don't know how to sift pain out of 
this body / to sift myself from this lack
of wilting something calories. 

but i do know that to sieve myself
will touch this little cornflower, hiding 
behind the bars of my ribs. 

so i hide myself, beside the grave 
of a mother, whose chest form a 
cladding for me during a gun battle. 

& this is not the first time i reel 
to this point. my aims were clear: 
to see if a bluebell lush will sprout 
from her grave. / to see if the requiem 
of her portrait will revolve again. 

but every night i revisit, night respond 
with a rhetorical silence. & i thought 
everything is gone. i thought the 
refulgent of my hope has wreck into
this night. i thought that the myth 

that proclaim spirits wear the moon
to see their love ones have effect, 
& my mother, wreck into a black
indigo of nothingness. 

this night, i filch out again. the tarmac roads
so attentive that they echo my footsteps 
& i feel i was turning a knob of something, feral. 

same - the moon went into extinction. & i 
break my toe on a gravestone. i knew this
mother was warning me to stop obstructing 
her sleep / to stop trucking back to 
memories. so i left everything on a flower - 
a rose flower - i drop on the top. 

i left every memory there & walk out - 
walk out of the repose; walk into a life 
still shredding people like a deciduous 
tree. one day - someday - i, too, will be 
forgotten this way. 



Springs - Heaven's Droplets 

Every dawn, I revolve into a garden of
meadows. At this point, the grass have
recoil in warm bathe from heaven. To
walk there will enthrall one in a svelte, to
always refurbish after a bedevil life. 
Once, I was a boy praying that the miry
of lack - poverty - sinking my family will
be dry. Heaven knows how much I 
scrolls this prayer before their tablecloth. 
Even before this poem was birth & 
bath, I was on a rusty way to the brook chapel 
to wash my family's curse, milk on garbs. 
My foot, clashing against the pebbles. 
That means, troubles. That means, the 
way to cleanliness is a sanguinary & 
needs something red to rewash itself. 
That means, everything wants to wash 
itself all the memories, sticking on a hairy 
skin. Here, if you don't wash yourself, you are 
a walking corpse, carrion. You are leprosy, 
nobody will wish to clash. So I take my buta*
& refill it with the springs left in the well - 
getting gabby. I know if I must blush like the 
grass, I must wet this body; flux out everything 
that makes me ooze rancid breath before God. 
So I pray, my head on the mat, that: God, give me
this heavenly springs, before I wilt & twirl.  


Buta: it means a little kettle, use by Muslim to do absolution. 


Wrecking 

          After Chibueze Obunadike, how to eat a father's sin 

anytime my father chap a tree, i carve the former
& the aftermath. how i will come to miss the tree 
& the fruit it produce. how the leaves, forming a 
debris on the floor, will etch grief on my brain. 

to eat a father's sin is to take a kola from my father's
palm & chew: my teeth, browning like his. how i look
old from the way i munch. he do tell me how much 
his grandfather love to break a lobe daily & offer him 
one. after his dead, responsibility were shred to each
child to wash the debts his father left behind. & that

debilitates him, sweeps him into the stream of solitude. 
where i come from, we are living in claustrophobic hamlet 
& everyone fears, debts spread like flood & enclose 
every home. my father once gargle a palm gourd of 
about a future & i was the collateral. in another, 
he induce an urchin & the street knows me for
trudging. & now my father chaps a tree, a fecund tree
which i will spent days, drudging to breath life to
the scion faggots. 



Grievous monologue 


I

& there was rain. A voice from heaven 
telling me I must bath in its springs, if 
I want to be clean. If I want to be free 
from all grievous cobwebs, stitching 
to my reins. 

II 

How easily to be swindle. I mean, find 
a rhetorical & watch yourself sway with 
the wind. I was woo by the wind, a breath
from grief & I inhale more than enough. 
There's always a releasing whenever I 
exhale & heaviness anytime I inhale. 

III

In this part of the earth, I have watch people 
live with grief as a cloth & call it a souvenir 
from God. All their effort to erode the threads
is merely a daily routine - I mean: wash, dry 
& rewear into the same agony. 

& I have heard one asks: what is the use of
shaving when another hairs will regrow? 

IV

I walk into a basilica one time in August. 
The heavens were reseating all their tears 
into clouds, & waiting for a moment to sieve
them out. 

I met the pastor, whose teeth preach peace;
preach gnawing - meaning, come unto me & 
I will chew your problems like cola. I biography 
my life, in a way a screed will be needed. 

But he mustify his mist, shook a loom at me. 
He said my problem is a rock he can't chew. 
Said my problem is a train, driving to its location, 
of which a mere wedge can't clog. 

I swallow them back, into a belly & wobble, my mind
hobbling. 

V 

What can I do to eradicate this grief 
infusing into my biography like an 
inevitable comma? There's more to 
life that just procuring a solution. 

What can I do to soften this grief 
for my body bearing the burden? 
Will you teach me, hummingbird? 
How you carry a message without 
thrumming a jeremiad? I want to be 
the next eulogy in the mouth of wind, 
to inhale & not feel heaviness. 

So Lord, I am in Your sanctuary with
Hannah. My lips, rarely splitting. My
heart, sacred to Matthew 11:28. 
Soften my yoke now before I break into 
shards. 



A Friday I Hold A Mist Of My Uncle 
  
          Friday is a of solemn prayer in my mouth. 
         Chibueze Obunadika 


Still skinny as ever,  my uncle stretch himself over
the mat that was soon to carry his back into a night 
that will have no voice or light. My uncle said it's a 
way of keeping the mat holy, that when it bedriddens
him, fire will not gush from inferno to carpet the mat;
but music from alujuna. On days when he laid himself 
on the mat as though the walls were a god & he was
kissing his feet, I question him on why he must 
murmur words into the air. He would say, to kiss the
air before the air kiss him goodbye. I swear, I saw this 
obliging homesickness as schizophrenia carving out 
of his mind, when insomnia seize sleep as hostage. 
He said it this night & his voice was thin, as if tilting 
on something that was soon to let it go. Night flood 
down with a filming lunar, perforating our curtain. &
his voice was like an organ, about to complete a hymn. 
He draws me, so close, our breaths - sultry & wintry, 
entwining, on a mat. He said: when my breath freeze 
to flux, let me dwell with my prayer mat, my holy mat. 


 A rendition to Abiku, when harmattan scarified our skins. 

there's a cry inside:  first joy;    then death 
morphing the green leaf to yellow  & twirl.  outside 

       there's breeze.       outside, there's wheeze 
       of pain & ferric chloride agony. 

dear Abiku, i see your star(dom)    
how it trails with the mockingbirds       to scorn
           our last hope.     how the owls 

carrying your voice, saying: arise, there's no antidote 
to the plague. 

____________________ 

i wake up this morning & your face stride
past like a firefly in my eyes. 
i know i have anew wedge to lift - pain, 
something uneasy to bypass. 

outside, the family sits again to decide 
how the placenta will not regrow in the
woman's womb, to birth Abiku again. 
& i know this method is mouth: once 
the words windfall, they will dried like 
spittle. 

outside, the breeze is blowing again. 
outside, the walls & skins are being 
scarified from the breath of Abiku. 

Welcome to July’s first issue of Synchronized Chaos!

This month’s issue explores themes of tension and solace.

Are there unavoidable sources of tension in life, and is a life without anxiety even desirable? Where can we find solace and peace when we need them? Where do we need to maintain a certain level of awareness and vigilance?

Satis Shroff comments on the continuing human cost of Russia’s war with Ukraine. Steven Croft reflects on how soldiers and civilians endure the other armed conflicts around the world.

Jelvin Gipson expresses through a fable the need for wisdom to prevent endangering oneself or committing hasty acts of violence. James Whitehead’s poetry speaks to the impact of reproductive legislation and sexual assault on women’s lives.

Richard LeDue and John Thomas Allen highlight moments of humor and beauty found within hospital settings, where patients make the most of their encounters with illness and injury.

Ike Boat reports firsthand on a destructive flood in Amanful, Ghana. Stephen Jarrell Williams explores themes of society’s end and nature’s rejuvenation.

Closer to home, Yusuf Olumoh seeks comfort in the sea and solitude after the loss of his parents. Linda Crate describes the recovery of one’s self after an unbalanced relationship, while Scott Strozier illustrates the need for maintaining relationships and how they stay intact or fall apart. Shakhzoda Kodirova’s short story highlights the importance of maintaining our natural and human communities.

Andrew MacDonald’s poetry captures the moments that may seem fleeting or mundane, but which cement relationships.

Thadeus Emanuel comments on change and creativity in nature and in a writer’s mind, and how our creativity and relationships can be derailed by hypocrisy and deceit.

Candace Meredith’s short story illustrates the horror of not only the monster attack its protagonist survives, but of how she’s completely alone in her perception of danger.

Linda Hibbard expresses ambivalence about change and progress: will making things different make them better? Mahbub’s poems draw on dual meanings: bridges between the past and present, symbols that can represent multiple concepts.

Doug Hawley explores the limits, nuances, and paradoxes of personal and political freedom.

Peter Crowley humorously dramatizes various sorts of literal and metaphorical birth pains, looking at the cost of different sorts of creation.

Jason Ryberg contributes vignettes of middle America looking into the drama of ordinary life and little moments of grace or annoyance, while Peter Cherches dramatizes an unexpectedly familiar encounter with jazz great Mingus.

John Sweet shares the ways in which many ordinary people in middle America can become stuck in life, left behind in modern Western society.

Mark Young’s amusing poetry explores the different sorts of “deliveries” we receive in life while Debarati Sen waxes poetic about the joy and beauty of the plethora of words and figures of speech available to all of us.

Ian Copestick’s narrators simply check out of their ordinary lives, using whatever means are available to them. Jack Galmitz delves into a photograph of a man cooking at a barbecue who’s deeply engaged in what he’s doing.

John Edward Culp sends in a somewhat ineffable piece on transcendent travel by means of light, while Diana Magallon contributes a mixed media meditation on discordance. Alan Catlin’s Southern Gothic poetic landscapes, after Sally Mann’s visual art, immerse us in the murky history of swamps and American Civil War battles.

Jim Meirose relates a piece with humor, charm, and dialect while Nathan Anderson breaks language down to syllable and syntax and nonlinguistic symbol.

J.J. Campbell captures the wisdom and cynicism of older age, while Santiago Burdon’s tale of teen angst and athletic shoes humorously reminds us there are times to keep our mouths shut.

Gaurav Ojha also encourages us to quiet down. He says we’ll find wisdom when we stop thinking and speaking and directly experience and learn from life, whether a beautiful sunset or a dentist appointment.

Michael Robinson and Sayani Mukherjee reflect upon the spiritual solace and comfort they find through the faiths of their heritages. Chimezie Ihekuna’s poem reminds us of the spiritual meaning of Christmas as a holiday with a message we can reflect on all year.

Matthew Defibaugh and Christina Chin’s collaborative poetry presents images of gentle movement within nature. K.J. Hannah Greenberg’s set of bird photographs illustrate and comment on the variety of ways we as humans coexist with and treat other species.

Thank you for reading this first July issue of Synchronized Chaos. May it invite you to ponder, consider, and engage with the writers’ and artists’ work.

Nirvana
 

Gaurav Ojha
  

There is no way out

From the prisonhouse of language

As long as we keep on hanging

To symbols without content imprinted on our neurons

We are the self that exists without reference of its own

Assumption of a thinker hiding behind a thought

A drop of rain separated from a cloud for the ripple on lake

There is no still point that holds things together

We are living a dream with a dream

We have been speaking too much

Let us put aside these tedious monologues

And, listen to the silence of non-human existence 

It takes us beyond the meaning humans have made 

Why remain as a burden to our brains?

Humans exist, therefore the denial of reality

What is it like to live without our stabilizing assumptions?

We have ideas for everything

Our heads have become so weighty

For the respite from this headache

Take a dip into constant toothache of existence

No need for a great renunciation 

Even as we embrace our illusions

We can still become a Buddha on the dental chair 

No need to glue the self together for a social protocol  

Discompose your desires, identifications and memories

As nothingness of being overflows, the self empties 

 

(KATHMANDU, NEPAL)

Bodhisattva Projecting 


                                            
                                             Orgone


=====LESS=====
=====LESS=====
=====LESS=====
=====LESS=====
=====LESS=====


                               

tempest


                                                 =====LESS=====
                                                 =====LESS=====
                                                 =====LESS=====
                                                 =====LESS=====
                                                 =====LESS=====




the spring has (rung (in the dietary removing (a cause and 
not a grown thing (left-most removing (rightmost rightmost
rightmost (lapping at the silk (an order and order an order (
faster through the thread and colour (reacted in synthetic (
a hammer guide (a metal armament (less speaking and more
spoken (****************(outside in the distance (cold
cold cold (foundational without sighting (the spring on the
tongue (99999999999999999999999999999999999999999
9999999999999999999999999 (alphabetical conniption (
less tragic than the one before (_________________(outside
and out of order (stupefaction to the modal interview (a clap
and the thunder has arrived (god and god and god (0000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000 (000000000000000000000000 (00000000
0000000 (except you are the same (a static and a deep hum (
found connection (found extraction (found reduction (growing
growing (growing (growing (sight gone (sight come (asterisks
against the climbing side (northern facing (eastern facing (.....
...................(it's good to be back (modular and entrapment (
floor design (wall hanging (get out of the town (sweet sweet (
tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetttttttttttttttttttttttttt (tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeettttttttttttttttttttttttt (ah)))))))))))))))))))))))))
)))))))))))))))))))))))))))  

                                             Orgone


=====LESS=====
=====LESS=====
=====LESS=====
=====LESS=====
=====LESS=====


                               

tempest


                                                 =====LESS=====
                                                 =====LESS=====
                                                 =====LESS=====
                                                 =====LESS=====
                                                 =====LESS=====



                           
Carry (over_under) Carry


velocity speaking after tone removed and impulsed through the cataleptic normalised without synthetic movements and interrogation as scientific impulse drivers conscript and writhe in torpor now removed and collated into breakage and anticipation cast out and found without the forming and selective tired flashes of liability 


this = skull


magnetic in the skyfall betterment longitudinal as ascetic entertainments re-modify entrapments known to fakir tempestuous and lotus shunting a speed so formal not antiseptic and renowned in thought and name so juxtaposed    




+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++++++
+++++++++++++
+++++++++
++++++
++++
++
+





solution breathes itself to life with transcendental 
longing at magnetic height and muscle complexity 
as selfsame as the honorifics embellishing through 
mud brick anti-natal concluding only wake and 
enterprising 

Oratory Illumination (fracture)



illegitimate                        [phone as rung]




promulgated over this                               +
                                                  


                              
                               a shell to crack and take
abandonment so well



[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]
[phone ringing]




this colour comes in articulation writing sound through 
causations known and unknown a crown atop the head 
and breakneck pace



+running+
+running+
+running+




[the bell [phone]] has... 


Oyster as Baptismal



explain
         (explanation)
explain
       (explanation)


+
+
+



vulnerable to this reciting 
notation is the key



vouchsafed as
vouchsafed as




hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm



now the number is...


(,,,,,)

 

Bio: Nathan Anderson is a poet from Mongarlowe, Australia. He is the author of Mexico Honey, The Mountain + The Cave and Deconstruction of a Symptom. His work has appeared in BlazeVox, Otoliths, Selcouth Station and elsewhere. You can find him at nathanandersonwriting.home.blog or on Twitter @NJApoetry.

self-portrait in tar


and words aren’t actions,
and prayer is as
meaningless as regret

the temperature is a nervous
stutter between rain and snow

the town is a vast expanse of
empty parking lots, of
grey shot through with crushed
plastic and dead leaves

i have wasted my life

i am afraid of growing old and 
dying in front of my children

i am afraid of
growing old and dying

in the end we are only
something
subtracted from nothing

the drowning years


it’s always the same stupid shit,
always these self-inflicted wounds

his 15 year-old girlfriend pregnant, the
asshole from the barfight in a 
coma and not expected to live but
brenda laughs, says why not

dead-end job at the minimart and her
boyfriend doing six months in county, and he
says his stepfather has a place down
in north carolina

tells her he’s had a crush on her
since middle school, and she
asks if it’s gonna be a boy or a girl

and he says he doesn’t want to know

doesn’t really give a shit
one way or the other,
and she nods

tells him she needs to
leave a note for her sister

needs to feed the dog

small, ordinary acts to help her
feel like she’s
moving into the future


the forest of the profane


early autumn frost in the
shadows of sunlit buildings, all
blue sky and junkie dreams

man walking past you says he’s
got god in his veins

says there are other
versions of hell that have nothing to
do with faith, and his smile
is filled with blood

this town is where i live
but it’s not my home

this idea of judas as scapegoat
needs to be reconsidered

despair is a sickness
not a weapon
but it will always be used by
tyrants to beat you down

will you suffer the first blow or
will you burn down the castle?

will you set the gospel aside
and hear the truth instead?

all choices come to an end when
the dog you fail to praise
decides to take your tongue
                           as his own


skeleton afternoon


this is the man with no eyes who
tells me he pities my blindness

this is the party to celebrate
the death of the deathless kingdom

i fuck his wife in the back seat of
someone else’s car or
he seduces my daughter before
they both disappear

a stalemate

a gun for every starving child
so they can all grow up safe

even here in this cramped and
sullen space between 
disposable gods
we are all someone’s enemy


notes on ideology


good times in the suicide
factory down on your hands and knees

swallow the cock or swallow
the barrel, and
how many choices do you really need?

how many lives are you planning on
screwing up other than your own?

goddamn kids gotta grow up
sooner or later, i guess

can’t be sucking at their
mother’s tit forever

they need to know they’re useless

need to know how much blood is
required to solve each problem, and
maybe you have to smack them around
a little to drive your point home

maybe a house gets burned to the ground,
maybe a car gets stolen or some
fifteen year-old girl from the
trailer park out at the edge of town
gets knocked up, but this shit
happens every day

you fuck or you get fucked

you walk or you crawl

a lifetime of  meaningless rules and
blown chances, and then
you die

and the story ends the
body is found,
but how do we get there?


same goddamn way
every time

14 yr old girl sits on her bed,
curtains pulled,
father’s gun,
instructions on her laptop screen

knowledge is power,
right?

puts the muzzle to her head and
pulls the trigger, and so
turn the music up a
little louder

send flowers

bring shovels

a lot of bodies left to be
buried before this
part of the story ends


halcyon


tired of being so fucking
old, and tired of all
the goddamn years i wasted

tired of being on
the wrong coast

or not being able
to forget your face

of everything i write
sounding
like a suicide note

The Padma Bridge

The moon has risen in the dreamy sky of us
From Mawa to Janjira you dreamt of
Linking the two parts over the river Padma
25 June 2022, the plan got established 
It blazed the light on the dark river
Long waited love came to light 
Joining the south and western part of the country to Dhaka city
Facing the challenge we once had for freedom in 1971
Our great leader Bangobandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman handled the leadership 
His fittest daughter Sheikh Hasina, our prime minister
Just proved how brave she is in her heart and fruitful her merit!
The Padma Bridge provided us all to live in connection 
Mitigating the needs from one part of the river to everywhere in speed.
 
  
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
28/06//2022


 Fire

Fire is in, fire is out
The heart is firing for sex
On the other it's firing in love
Look! the bodies are firing in the container depot fire at Chattogram
In some distance the body is fired on suicide
The sun-burnt eyes are firing in terror
On the other some are firing in anger or pain
Some are firing for the absence of the lovers or beloveds
The garments factories are firing with bodies of the workers
Plastic warehouses containing hazardous chemicals
At Nimtota of Chawkbazar in Old Dhaka fired hundreds of lives
Some are firing with the neighbors to win the fight
Some are smiling with fire
Over the glory of entering into world unknown
  
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
28/06//2022