C- Caring is a good Character
R-Resilience is the path to actualizing Recognition
I- Information is Important
S-Sense speaks Sanity
T-Truth is Thorough
I-Initiating an idea is an innovative Inevitable
T-Teaching is Technical
I-Introduction makes understandable a subject Interest
N-Nature is the observed Norm
A-Appreciation encourages Accountability


D-Defining your purpose is a life Decision
E- Encouragement is also useful to Empowerment
P-Purpose leads to Profoundness
T-Training people is a part part advancement's Totality
U-Unity is Unbiased
L-Love Subtly resist the power of Lies
A-Availability is the engine room to Advancement.

 Foreclosed
  
 Withdrawal shoulders folds along mouths
  
 staged tales fault us.  They coffer
 day’s issue, the chance randomness 
  
 arranged when we leave cautioned
 a house our growth each door leads to.
  
 All for themselves now, it’s dread
 their kingdom announces
  
 in counted nights yearning
 for song under the old roof’s uses
  
 while as out of an encapsuled globe
 Xerxes himself would approve of,
  
 we sit new rooms alone and suggested.
  
 -
  
 The enlisting sepulchre

 Out of windows 
 gloomed light insurrects 
  
 incompatible suddenness 
 rotted with years
  
 soundless worlds
 pretend to.
  
 It peals and strips
 ripe notions to death
  
 where drunk and various 
 pronouncements
  
 soft eyes took care with 
 as ears proclaim
  
 the glass between them— 
 our palms their hands
  
 a mausoleum traces.

Andrew Cyril Macdonald considers the role of intersubjectivity in the poetic encounter with place. He celebrates the confrontations between self and locale and the challenge that occurs in the fomenting of identity and independence. You can find his work in such places as A Long Story Short, Blaze VOX, Cavity Magazine, Down in the Dirt, Mineral Lit Mag, ODD Magazine, Thorn, Green Ink Poetry, and Unique Poetry Journal among others. When not writing he is busy caring for seven rescued cats and teaching a next generation of poets.

First, a few announcements: We’re co-hosting a free Mother’s Day poetry reading through Los Angeles’ Chevalier’s Books on May 3rd at 7pm Pacific time. Come out to support an independent bookstore and hear liz gonzalez, bridgette bianca, Gail Newman and Lynne Thompson.

Please sign up here for the Zoom link.

Also, our longtime contributor, poet and essayist Michael Robinson, who writes about his life as a Black person in the USA, about overcoming a challenging childhood, and healing through connecting to nature and growing older, has self-published a collection of his work, From Chains To Freedom.

For a copy of the book, please contact Michael at mjrobinson@rollins.edu

We will gladly publish a review of From Chains To Freedom if someone would like to submit one to us!

May’s theme is Cultivating Thoughts. Cultivating rather than cultivated, in process rather than fully accomplished. Rather than on display in a medieval court or country club, our contributors are at work gardening, tilling the soil of experience.

Actor and humanitarian activist Federico Wardal describes an experience that was on public display, a massive civic parade in Cairo celebrating Egypt’s Pharaonic history.

Mark Blickley follows the semiconscious thoughts of a Covid patient in the hospital, while Giovanni Mangiante traces a quiet descent into madness after incredible loss.

Chimezie Ihekuna’s screenplay The Broken Mirror portrays a family torn apart by lingering resentment and jealousy.

Michael O’Brien illustrates our recent period of indoor isolation through disjointed reflections beginning with ordinary household items, while Robert Thomas takes more sensual joy in food while also commenting on grief and loss.

Thomas also shares a travel diary of a recent visit to Varanasi.

John Thomas Allen gives us a meditative piece on a past film star, looking back as her memory fades from the silver screen.

Jaylan Salah reviews a quiet film, Josef: Born in Grace, celebrating kindness and community. John Sweet suggests that real life may be as surreal as a painting of that sort, and Mark Young sends in some stylized and at times humorous art.

Some spiritual teachers advise us to remain in the moment, and this might be good advice for Henry Bladon, whose poems liken the past to garbage and see the future as a source of anxiety.

Bruce Mundhenke, in his poem and in his short story, creates a dystopian future of totalitarian control, fear, and betrayal.

Victoria Kabeya urges would-be social justice and anti-racist activists to check their motives. Are we working to dismantle systems that oppress people or simply replicating them in a different way by becoming celebrity influencers in our movements?

A few people reflect on how we experience nature.

Jack Galmitz contributes a gentle image of flowers, poignantly titled Flores para las Mueres (Flowers for the Dead). Ian Copestick writes of how the world around us can be both personal and timeless, intimate and abstract, and how the pandemic colors our perception, at least of human nature.

Spring and new life break through in Mahbub’s work, after a long period of virus-imposed isolation. And Doug Hawley recollects nearly bearing witness to the mercy killing of a coyote.

Abigail George looks over her past dating life, considering her attraction to older men. Paul Cordeiro offers up various thoughts on age, loneliness, and feisty independence.

Zara Miller points out the unreality of the romantic trope where lovers come together for no other reason than ‘destiny.’

Santiago Burdon probes the emptiness of addiction, while Hongri Yuan examines sources of creative inspiration, from within and outside ourselves.

We hope this issue will shake loose inspiration from the fertile soil of your mind. Thank you very much for reading!

Also, fyi, contributor Daniel Anaya invites interested readers to research and contribute to the world’s literary heritage through Los Angeles’ Sims Library of Poetry. More information below:

The goal of the 44 Campaign is to find 300 giving people who will donate $44 a month for the sustainability and growth of The Sims Library of Poetry. These dollars will help us keep the library open, buy more poetry books, offer events to the community, and hire much needed library staff members from our own community. We currently have two employees working for the library, and we’d love to hire more in order to expand our services and better serve our neighborhood. We’ll also put the money towards expanding our Black and Latinx poetry collection and further renovating the library space to add a reading room and office.​

We are calling it the 44 Campaign because in 1731, Benjamin Franklin created the first library in what would soon become the United States called The Library Company of Philadelphia. He did so by asking his friends to donate 44 shillings a month for the creation of this library. He successfully did so, and created the first public library in this country. ​

The Sims Library of Poetry is the first library of poetry in the city of Los Angeles, and we endeavor to create and support a space dedicated to the reading, writing, and performance of poetry. We are looking for people who believe in the power of libraries, and the significant impact they have on the literacy of their community members.

Membership & Donations | Sims Library (simslibraryofpoetry.org)

And we have three more books from Synch Chaos contributors which we would love to see people read and review. Please comment or email us at synchchaos@gmail.com and we’ll send you a copy of any of these titles and publish your review. Please also email if you have a book you’d like to invite people to read and review, especially if you write for Synch Chaos.

Poet and essayist Santiago Burdon’s Stray Dogs and Deuces Wild: Cautionary Tales

Horror Sleaze Trash proudly presents, Judge Santiago Burdon.

“When I first read Burdon’s work I instinctively realised that here was a man who knew the score. That he was not a fake or dilettante. I could feel a bitter, hard-won experience that lay behind every line. These stories are both beautifully written and capture conclusively the humour, excitement, sadness and disappointment of a life lived on the edge. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.” —Ian Copestick”

Burdon presents a highly amusing collection of bohemian stories from the fringe. He finds literary pearls at the bottom of a dark ocean of smut and sin, propelling us into wild and unhinged terrain in a fashion similar to such luminaries as Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, and Denis Johnson. Buy this book today!” —Matt Nagin

Stray Dogs and Deuces Wild: Cautionary Tales | IndieBound.org

Sonia Das’ poetry collection Window of Hope

Window of Hope is the journey of a woman to human emotions, society and understanding life. Her path takes you to raw emotions, feelings to understand life and its significance through love, passion, sacrifice and contentment. It also talks about the purpose of life, divinity and connection between the soul and the universe.

Window of Hope by Sonia Brajabandhu Das, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® (barnesandnoble.com)

Mark Wasserman’s Skaboom! An American Ska & Reggae Oral History

Musician, podcaster and author Marc Wasserman’s debut book is an exhaustive, extensive tale of the pioneers of the American Ska and Reggae movement as told by the people who lived it. Three and a half years in the making, the story is lovingly told through hundreds of hours of intense interviews with musicians, artists, managers, club promoters, writers, promoters, and the fans who were there at the dawn of the 80s through the early 90s to witness the birth and spread of a uniquely American version of ska and reggae. From a chance sighting of The Specials on Saturday Night Live in 1980 to the mighty Skavoovee Tour of 1993, Marc collects stories, anecdotes, history, gossip, and (most importantly) the feeling of what it was like to be there as groups of young, ska-crazed acolytes spread their passion and ignited a fiercely loyal dedication to a burgeoning culture. Interviews include members of seminal bands The Untouchables, Bim Skala Bim, The Toasters, The Uptones, The Scofflaws, Let’s Go Bowling, Mephiskapheles, and many more! The book also features photos, an essay from Stephen Shafer, and a forward penned by Horace Panter of The Specials.

Skaboom! An American Ska & Reggae Oral History by Marc Wasserman PRE-ORDER — DiWulf Publishing House.

Mercy 

By Doug Hawley 

A few years ago, maybe five, I was supervising and working with a man who was doing community service for a crime that he says he didn’t commit.  We were removing ivy from an area around the tool yard of Tryon State Park south of Portland Oregon USA.  Two police cars showed up and informed us that they had a coyote with a broken back that had to be killed because the injury was fatal.  It had been hit by a car about a mile away on Terwilliger Boulevard which borders the park.  They told us to get behind one of the buildings while the shooting took place.  We heard more than one shot, making me wonder about their marksmanship. 

Afterwards, I thought that I had not reacted well, but then who expects to have a coyote mercy killing interrupt one’s day?  I should have either tried to send the police to contact the park ranger before the shooting or done it myself.  No one wants unexplained shooting in a state park.  The police had explained beforehand that there was no better place to go in the residential neighborhood surrounding the park.  Shooting in someone’s yard would have been worse. 

Afterwards I explained what happened to the ranger, who was not pleased.  The carcass was refrigerated for the possibility of taxidermy for addition to the park’s beaver and other stuffed animals. 

                    **************************************** 

Coyote sightings were more common at the time this happened.  We saw one a few blocks from our house.  A couple crossed our path in Tryon.  We later learned that there was a coyote family in the park.  Same couple and pup?  We were warned not to leave out pet food for fear of feeding coyotes and pets being killed.  There was at least one report of a cat killing by a coyote, which was at first feared to be some twisted ritual killing by humans.  At the time, some were worried about attacks by coyotes on humans.  Nothing like that happened, but we were disconcerted by the fearlessness of the coyotes that we encountered. 

Other animal sightings are becoming more common.  In the last few years, unverified cougar observations have happened within a few miles of where we live in residential areas and the first killing by a cougar in Oregon was recorded on a hiking trail. 

Your skin reads like emptiness

By Abigail George

My love had style. Irony. The sketches of subtle pleasure and pain. The resentment that comes with frustration. His motion hollowed out something in me. Perhaps a hollowed out bitterness. There was a yellow river in his hair. In the palms of his hands he held something back from me. The life of his family secrets. A room filled with the music of treasure. Earth becomes with weaving. Earth resonates in that most rare personal space of touch. The wide health of touch that makes you feel extraordinary on days hellbent, and filled with winter.

He was grace. He was mercy. When I was with him, I knew what desire was. There was always going to be the possibility of silence between us in the early hours of the morning. We had nothing to talk about. Nothing to say after the dry thirst that followed the physical act of the sexual transaction. I always felt apologetic for the fatigue I felt. I don’t know what he was thinking. What he felt.

He called me ‘doll face’. Now, I don’t look like a doll. A doll wears a painted expression. Rosy cheeks that blossom. A pained smile. I have put on weight around my middle. I haven’t seen him in the past fifteen years. I don’t know what he’s doing right now. Living. All people live. Others do it extraordinarily. Others extremely ordinary. I know what you’re thinking. Why am I here? Why do I come here week after week to rehash the past, to live there as if I was part wild/part history wilderness/part object/part possession? Is it just a sham, this insane vanity that I have to talk about him repeatedly when I come here, now that I am flying solo single handedly? 

Even when I was younger, during adolescence I was always drawn to the older man. The man with the accent who served me in a restaurant. Cultured. Educated. The writer. The teacher. The math teacher. The English-English teacher. The film and television production lecturer. Portuguese, British. The introvert. The man ten years older than I was in the summer I turned the lush age of twenty-two.

I thought I would be safe in the city surrounded by buildings. People who did not care for me, about me. Who would not turn their heads to look at me. To acknowledge me. Yes, I thought I was safe. The same way I feel when I come to see you every month. I feel safe here. I feel I can say anything. Know I will not be judged. I remember the electric blueness of the light. Nature was translated into pollution, climate change, global warming, buildings, banks, delis, foot traffic, cars everywhere you looked, grassy parks in the city where men played chess. Time meaning nothing. Time meaning everything.

The first day we met I looked up. Met his gaze head-on, chin up. He did not look away. I did not look away. A flicker of inquisitive excitement filled the void I felt in my heart. I knew what he was thinking. Passion. This was what I was looking for. A boyfriend. To be part of a couple. I was too young to know the difference. The difference between passion, and betrayal. Love in his hands. When he kissed me hard or soft. Gentle. Going all gentle on me.

I knew what his childhood was like without him telling me anything about it. His relationships with his siblings. Rivalry. Abandonment issues. A father addicted to drugs. Alcoholism on my side of the family. Cancer. It was the tapestry of loss that connected us.  Love was the photosynthesis of an awakened loophole into place.

I’m apologetic about love now. It’s walls made of brick history. I’m sorry for loving you. The glare has shifted mysteriously. The hours tick on. The clock inside the glass cabinet minding seeds’ growth. He was magic. It’s been one those days. Long, empty. The day dulcet. Elegiacal. Summer burning the nape of my neck, my shoulders. The back of my arms in my sleeveless dress. Admiration.

That’s when it started. I think I admired him with my perfumed hair. I don’t know what he made of me. I was a girl way back then. New to the city. Johannesburg. I think about him like family. That closeness close up, That quiet intimacy that belonged to men and women who find themselves at a loss for words in museums or art galleries or the theater. You see I don’t need people. I was lost in the city. Dust, flowers of plastic rubbish washed away off slick, cement pavements.

What is the meaning of couples anyway? We weren’t a couple in the truest sense of the way. The sky a polychrome blue. His eyes awash with a blue ink. His self control powerful. The control of a man who knows what he wants. Who also knows that he is going to get what wants come hell or high water. My memory is still raw of that day. The flow of the talk was always intense. Yet we could always sit for hours in each other’s presence and not say anything. Lost in our own world. Our own thoughts.

Yes, let us talk about the men in my life. My brother’s remoteness when his girlfriend lived with us for off and on for a year. She moved in with her color television, double bed, chest of drawers, and oven but after the year she was gone again. After that my brother and I were closer than ever. Confiding in each other over the skinniness of cigarettes and lukewarm coffee.

My wiry father’s absence, and abandonment. The Johannesburg men. Powerful men with hybrids of status, and large sedans . Influential men. Men who had the life experience of women and children in their lives. I want to remember them all, and what they meant to me.

‘You’re beautiful. Good girl.’ He whispered. It was always like that.

A Flashback to the Journey

When I went there it was winter

At the time of my returning

It opens the new sight of spring in nature

A lively exuberance in all objects of nature

That makes our heart dance all through the way

Plants worn in the green leaves and the buds

The sun-beam flashes out the glorious past

The sky and the waters engulfed in

By sneezing and coughing, touching and hugging

Breaching the bond we have had

The virus creeping through in the air

Drove us into the storm and war

Never thought before.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

12/04/2020

On a Strange Platform

People are living in the cave

Though they had no experience before

Feel like elaborate or suffocated

At the same time awakening the heart

Our existence and the predecessors’

Imagine the self and others on present, past or future

Pervaded nature all over

People forgot that

Roads and beaches redressed in its own blanket

Birds and butterflies, crabs or red crabs and turtles

Fly and float free with new notes and hopes

Green, red or rosy always smiles over 

Nature wants this to be in such kind

People take exercise in the yard

They like to have been among the family dears

Or deep in heart to prayers, music or drama

And try to get removed from the pain of virus fever

The world stands on a strange platform

Where one leg is on stair and the other waiting on the point of the train

Starts to run with the whistle by the uniformed man in duty.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

13/04/2020

In the Battlefield

Deaths and the reflection of deaths all around

In the left, right, front or back

Fighting for the reconciliation

A reformation, recognition

The spreading hands of the lifeless bodies on the ground

What can we do for them?

We are promising, singing and praying

Carving the sight in mind

Lightening the heart a new hope

Though the self breaks and regenerates

No diplomacy here acts on

A joy over the matter fighting for

Swells up in courage

Never breaching the hand raised to pace with you.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

14/04/2020

How the World Running

Sitting on the rickshaw the man suddenly felt uneasy

Waiving his hands to get any help

The people encircling him

Stood silent and waited for what is going to happen

The poor condition became poorer and more helpless

Without taking any more time, he collapsed

Instantly and slowly breathed his last spreading the hands

The man was not other than the rickshaw puller

Waiting for the passenger on the turning point of the highway 

Nobody came in touch of him if he bears Covid-19

People see the death in their open eyes having no feeling over there

More interested to have snaps or videos

Again the fever attacked mother kept away alone

In the jungle by her sons in fear of the virus

How the life appears before the eyes!

What a world it prevails at this moment!

Maintaining a social distance?

The world has lost its vows to make over

Hey you agree or not.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

15/04/2020

An Agreement with Corona

Corona, a virus attacks the human body

Though not visible this virus, this disease

The same intuitive 

Greed or avarice, selfishness, jealousy, exploitation, economic barriers

And what not that breaks the whole system of humanity

You build so many missiles by which

This green world can be destroyed six times in a moment

Is there any use of this in place of Corona?

In spite of spreading the helping hand you make yourself powerful

Spending the gross amount of money for the atomic energy

On the other hand crores of people die out in hunger

This invisible virus destroys the whole community of the earth

Fight to survive, helpless to meet the quick get pass

Have belief in heart one day soon or later

The vaccine will come to light to recover

In the meantime it will cause an irreparable loss to the earth

Then after some while you will rule your objects the same as before

Forgetting all the deaths and the sufferings 

In lieu of the firing the fire

Please pull me up dear from the chimney door

Make a way living altogether in the fresh water

Under the shade of the large trees

Refreshing the mind in the green fields.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh

Four Poems

By Chinese Poet Yuan Hongri

Translated by Yuanbing Zhang

Soul an Invisible Muse

Open the eyes of your soul

and you will encounter your many souls

In timelessness, as if the sun and moon never set or rise

The world is only a book, phantom-like

The soul an invisible muse

Before the words were born, you were a giant

From the kingdom of gold who know not yourself.

灵魂是隐形的缪斯

睁开你的灵魂之眼你将看到无数个自己

没有时光之飞逝犹如日月从未落下与升起

世界只是一部幻影之书而灵魂是隐形的缪斯

在词语尚未诞生之前你曾是黄金之国的巨人不知何谓自己

A Flying Saucer of Giants

Day by day the lightning in my body is waking up

And flying to this mortal world, dark night like iron

Seeking the Devil’s head, to make him into a skeleton of hell

And to repay time with gems

The python’s body will become a golden bridge

Towards a giant city of the morrow

Standing out against the sky, like clouds rising, gathering,

And an interstellar spaceship on my palm,

Like flying saucer of giants

Flashing miraculous brightness from another galaxy

天外之星系的闪烁灵光之巨人之蝶

我体内的闪电正在一天天醒来而飞向这个黑夜如铁的尘世

寻找魔王的头颅让他成为地狱的骷髅而偿还那一枚时间之宝石

那巨蟒的身躯成了一座黄金之桥而通向明日之巨城矗立于天际云蒸霞蔚

而我手掌之上一轮星际之飞船犹如来自天外之星系的闪烁灵光之巨人之蝶

Heavenly Temples and Towers

I rode a heavenly camel towards a desolate desert,

a jade bottle poured the sweet dew of the Kingdom of Heaven

from which emerged a lake, an eternal spring that never dries up,

and giant trees in prehistoric times grew

Their branches and leaves rustled in the garden of phoenixes and birds

The song of birds was music, it intoxicated the clouds

Colourful pebbles grew into huge gems in the dreams

That transformed into heavenly temples and towers.

一座一座天国的殿宇楼阁

我骑一匹天国的骆驼来到一座无人的沙漠

一只玉瓶倾泻天国的甘露汇成永不枯竭的泉水之湖

于是生长出史前的巨树枝叶婆娑宛如凤鸟的花园而鸟鸣如乐让时光醉了天空的云朵

而一粒一粒五色透明的沙砾在梦境里长成巨大的宝石长成一座一座天国的殿宇楼阁

Fragrant and Amaranthine for Thousands of Years

One day I will return from outer space

on a red cloud and bring a giant picture scroll.

My lines of lightning songs will flutter gold greetings from a prehistoric giant city

The mountains that have been sleeping for hundreds of millions of years

will become transparent

and the lights will be brilliant, like five-coloured gems

And the songs of my soul will blossom from me

like the fairyland flowers of the Kingdom of Heaven,

that remain fragrant and amaranthine for millennia

千年芬芬不谢

有一天那天外的我乘一朵红云归来而带来巨人的画卷

我的一行行闪电之歌将飞舞史前巨城的黄金的问候

那沉睡亿万年的山岳刹那间透明而光芒灼灼若五色宝石

而那骨骼里的灵魂之歌盛开如天国的仙葩之千年芬芬不谢

Bio:      Yuan Hongri (born 1962) is a renowned Chinese mystic, poet, and philosopher. His work has been published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada, and Nigeria; his poems have appeared in Poet’s Espresso Review, Orbis, Tipton Poetry Journal, Harbinger Asylum, The Stray Branch, Acumen, Pinyon Review, Taj Mahal Review, Madswirl, Shot Glass Journal, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Village, and other e-zines, anthologies, and journals. His best known works are Platinum City and Golden Giant. His works explore themes of prehistoric and future civilization.     Yuanbing Zhang (b. 1974), who is a Chinese poet and translator, works in a Middle School, Yanzhou District , Jining City, Shandong Province, China. He can be contacted through his email- 3112362909@qq.com.  Address:No.18 middle school Yanzhou District ,Jining City, Shandong Province, China  Yuan Hongri  Phone:+86 15263747339 Email:3112362909@qq.com

Email:3112362909@qq.com Hongri Yuan Phone:+86 15263747339

Address:No.18 middle school Yanzhou District ,Jining City, Shandong Province, China