And I climb the staircase and a well-lit blonde bob smokes a cigarette in affair with no one and with eyes for naught but the night, and yet she still makes the effort to nod as I enter and this fills me with hope for the evening ahead.
And the lights are ambiguous at best as I walk the corridor and consider a former love or lover in a corner with arm encircling the waist of a current beau in sweater vest and boot cut. He is gesturing wildly and all eyes are alight as he swings his tale and I turn and head for the kitchen where I see Jess with teary eyes as she dabs her forehead.
Jess has not been crying, she has simply thrown up and warns me of this possibility as she hands me a pill and places her hand around my neck, draws me in and holds me tight whispering “sweet nothings” with a smile as I swallow.
I head toward the living room and find the couch pushed to the wall and bean bags thrown helter skelter. Sam Cooke sings sweet melody as a young man brushes the inside of my arm and says “Do you want company?” and “That’s a shame, a terrible shame,” as he steps away to offer himself to another.
A shirtless individual entertains a cavalcade and I lean in to hear “You’ll be surprised how many times you need to stab someone to kill the son of a bitch.” Pause, grimace, “A wise man draws quickly across the throat and gets the foul deed done in one quick go.” Pause, final rejoinder, “You must never forget the idea is not to bring death, but to simply withdraw life,” and they clap on conclusion and I realize I have just witnessed a performance piece as he takes a quick bow and then waves a hand across his face in attempt to deflect attention deftly earned. A girl in front of me turns to her side and insists, “This is nothing compared to his cut of Capote, now that is divine.”
And I grab a bean bag and head to a corner and sit and close my eyes and try to recall the melody of ‘God Only Knows’ as that never fails to bring a tear to the eye and tonight is Sam’s night after all. Leaning my head against the wall I stare to the ceiling and spy a spider in a webbed corner and lose myself for a moment as it – as if startled – hurries to one side.
A brunette drops a bean bag next to mine and leaves only to return with a drink and lit cigarette. “Charlie,” she says by way of introduction and it strikes me she is the kind of girl that will not age well. Cliché perhaps but her eyes are a blue most piercing, with a southern lilt that is oh so disarming and hints at inner strength most resolute.
She tells me she achieved her first multiple orgasm when a boy went down on her as she listened to ‘Smile’ on heavy headphones with eyes closed and only the odd lift of the hips to guide the way, she slept with her lit professor on a dare and was disappointed that a published author could be so unimaginative in bed, she owned two iguanas and had just finished the short stories of Hemingway.
I nod at each revelation and tell her I admire her sense of adventure, I own zero iguanas and I am considering hiring a cleaner before my apartment inspection a week from Tuesday.
Charlie takes a drink and a drag and points out the spider overhead, a cat brushes itself on Charlie’s leg and then on mine and Love begins once more.
Michael Tyler has been published by Takahe, Bravado, Adelaide Literary, PIF, Daily Love, Danse Macabre, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Dash, The Fictional Café, Potato Soup Journal, Fleas On The Dog, Cardinal Sins, Mystery Tribune, Other Terrain, and Suddenly And Without Warning.
Michael writes from a shack overlooking the ocean just south of the edge of the world. He has been published in several literary magazines and plans a short story collection sometime before the Andromeda Galaxy collides with ours and …
GOAD 27
—for J.S. Strifling
Glittering smoke rises from reality roses. Even a bestselling
agent can’t move a dingy cellar. Presumption of innocence is
strained: don’t you
recognize the baggage
on that carousel?
One can’t imagine a
permit granted for
that murder weapon. Due
process aside, the defense
writhes. Sensing what it has
accomplished, the rifle weeps.
GOAD 28
The kids don’t wear watches no more. Those phone-
computers wipe their asses and everything. Drenched in pharma
ceutical opera, they
drag race on imaginary
highways & skid into
the palace of error. (No,
it’s not my cane & white
locks talkin’.) Reason may
adopt a rhythm, but rhythm
ain’t reason. Will the kids ever
locate invisible light?
MEMORY TACTICS
A fistful
of mustard. Gulped whole.
The fact spawning the occasion
is often repeatedly force fed.
He feigns ill.
To bypass depression-
inducing gatherings. A sealed lid
can be trusted. Let fine memories prevail.
CRITICAL REBOUND
Crises unburden folks of the
need to scrounge for “relevance,” of pressure to
heed
unnatural
diagnoses. There’s no
practical moralist on our staff; the lot hang
on by a strand of
floss. Let’s recycle each into an
accountable doer. Yet
should any grow allergic to threshold, out they’ll
tumble. Once the throttle’s regained, I won't let your
isthmus
down. No
reason it
should sink.
A previous contributor to Synchronized Chaos, I have published 12 books of poetry– most recently Zeugma (Marsh Hawk Press, 2022) and A Pageant for Every Addiction (Marsh Hawk, 2020), written collaboratively with Maya D. Mason. My Selected Poems & Poetic Series appeared in 2016. I am the author of Reading Poetry with College and University Students: Overcoming Barriers and Deepening Engagement (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), as well as two books of criticism, and three edited anthologies. My work appeared in Best American Poetry 2007. My paintings hang in various collections. I am a Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia.
When We Are Just An Ostentation
If her lip was a sweet
I could crave to have it in mine always
After she stole my heart
And set it on mountains
That springs water from depth.
Love sometimes looks like flower
While sometimes; the black ball in your eye.
That very day was another walk
Into heavens
But when everything seize
I rerely believe we're just an ostentation
Which is very otiose.
Reflections
Tales of past has match in
The present as I lingers into the simile
And antonyms of bliss
I snore out the hue of constellations
And held my pillow as the saviour
That dries up the streams on my face.
Can you decipher the joy gotten
From a crippled comic
Or that of the lurch in lurid?
A pellucid hope has made hay
For the future
Only if it will catch reflections.
NOBEL PEACE PRIZE!!! The 2023 Nobel Peace Prize will go to Human Rights Defender, Southern Azerbaijani Turk, Zanjan-born Nergiz Muhammedi, who fought on the front lines of the Human Rights Struggle in Iran and is now convicted in the cold dungeons of Tehran and sentenced to 31 years of excessive punishment. As a soldier of approximately forty million Turks living in Iran, Nergiz Muhammedi and Azerbaijani Turks are always at the forefront of the struggle for freedom and Human Rights against the dictator Persian regime. On this occasion, I wholeheartedly congratulate Nergiz Muhammedi, Southern Azerbaijan The struggles of Turks for Human Rights and National Rights in Iran!!! After briefly talking about the Nobel Peace Prize given to Ms. Nergiz, let’s now see
WHO IS NERGIS MUHAMMEDI? She was born on April 21, 1972 in Zanjan, Iran. He successfully graduated from Imam Khomeini International University and received his doctor of physics degree. Throughout his university life, he wrote articles supporting human rights in student newspapers. Nergiz Muhammedi, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison in Tehran in 2016 for founding and running a human rights organization that campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty, according to information we received from reliable sources, was first arrested in 1998 for her criticism of the Iranian government and after serving eleven years in prison. In April 2010, she was summoned to the Islamic Revolutionary Court for her membership in the DHRC. She was released on $50,000 bail, but was re-arrested a few days later.
Meanwhile, Nergiz Muhammedi’s health had deteriorated while in custody and she suffered from an epilepsy-like condition that caused her to periodically lose muscle control. She was infected with the disease, so she was released and allowed to go to the hospital. Nergiz Muhammedi was tried again a while later, in July 2011, and was found guilty of “acting against national security, being a member of the DHRC and making propaganda against the regime”. In September, she was sentenced to 11 years in prison. He was sentenced. On July 31, 2012, Muhammadi was released from prison.
On May 5, 2015, Nergiz Muhammadi was arrested again based on new and unfounded accusations. The 15th Branch of the Revolutionary Court sentenced him to ten years in prison on the charge of “establishing an illegal group” and five years in prison on the charge of “counternational assembly and collusion”. On October 8, 2020, Nergiz Muhammadi was released from prison, and after a while, she was arrested again for another crime. While she was serving an unfair sentence just because she was a Turk. Her husband and two children live outside of Iran. When we think in this context, Nergiz Muhammedi deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. I congratulate her wholeheartedly and wish her success on this sacred path she has embarked on. I also thank those who contributed to this issue and congratulate her wholeheartedly…
Yahya Azeroğlu (TÜSKÜM) is the chairman of the Turkish World Art and Culture Centre.
CURRICULUM VITAE Born on 24/10/1955 in the Yukarı Topraklı village of the Ara district (ALGIZIL) of Iğdır, the margrave of Anatolia, Yahya Azeroğlu is the second child of a crowded family of 11 people. As a result of completing a significant part of his education in his birthplace, he migrated to Turgutlu district of Manisa with his family and spent a short part of his life in this charming district, the pearl of the Aegean region. After a while, Yahya Azeroğlu went from Turgutlu to Istanbul and met the literary figures of Turkey at the Turkish Literature Foundation in Istanbul.
We can list these literary figures such as Osman Yüksel Serdengeçti, Necip Fazıl Kısakürek, Arif Nihat Asya, Ahmet Kabaklı, Niyazi Yıldırım Gençosmanoğlu, Mehmet Akif İnan, Erol Güngör, Cemil Meriç, Ayhan Songar. Yahya Azeroğlu went to the conferences of these literary names and took literary lessons from them. Yahya Azeroğlu, who has made great progress in the field of literature, went to Germany after his military service, which, in his own words, was a debt to the country that he loved unconditionally, and took foreign language lessons there for 2 years, along with various cultural and artistic activities.
While residing in various European countries, Yahya Azeroğlu continued to publish his articles and poems in Turkish newspapers and magazines published there. In this context, his successful cultural works in Europe must have attracted attention, as he was invited to events such as symposiums, conferences, panels and poetry recitals held in many European countries. His poems were ranked and awarded in many poetry competitions he participated in, his poems were published in numerous anthologies, he was the subject of the book “My thoughts know no boundaries” by the famous German writer Claus Peter, whom he met in Germany. Azeroğlu also participated in the folklore activities of Elazığ, Bitlis, Antep and Diyarbakır regions. Due to this and many similar achievements, he became the subject of news in the famous BILD newspaper published in Germany.
Returning to his homeland in 1983, Yahya Azeroğlu settled in Iğdır, his birthplace, and served as the regional representative of TKK while dealing with the land inherited from his father. In 1995, he founded “IĞDIR POETS AND WRITERS ASSOCIATION” with his friends. He served as the president of the association for 15 years and published a literary magazine called “Edebiyat Bülteni”, which continued for 29 issues, together with the writer Fahrettin Budak. Yahya Azeroğlu, the privilege owner of the magazine, was also the editor-in-chief and chief writer of the magazine. Assist., faculty member of Celal Bayar University, Department of Science and Literature. Assoc. Dr. Necati Bayat, one of İrfan Murat’s students, used Yahya Azeroğlu’s art, life and poems as his graduation thesis by analyzing them and compiling them into a book.
Azeroğlu wrote many scientific articles under the names of “Mount Ararat in Turkish culture, the legendary village in the Aras valley (ALGIZIL), the social and cultural life of the Revan Turks in Taşbur, Ahlat and Alparslan, and Istanbul University faculty member Prof. Dr. Oktay Belli’s discussion of the Aras basin. He was accepted to the scientific committee team he established for his scientific studies on Ahlat. He was entitled to receive the Ahlat citizenship certificate for the 100-stanza Ahlat epic he wrote about Ahlat in 2012. He received more than 100 awards, plaques, certificates of appreciation and participation certificates for these works, and he received many awards in Azerbaijan and Turkish. The awards he received as a result of his work on the world of the world added color to Yahya Azeroğlu’s cultural and literary life.
In this context, he published his books named Çırpınış, Muted Screams, Take A Sample from Atatürk, Under Albayrak and The Epic Village in Aras Valley (Algızıl). İLESAM Iğdır for a long time. He served as a representative and participated in programs on various television channels for the January 20 Baku massacre and Khojaly genocide. He served as vice president of the Association for Denying Unfounded Armenian Claims (Asimder) for 2 terms. Yahya Azeroğlu, especially the Turkish Writers Union, Azerbaijan Printers Union and Turkmeneli Writers Union. He has been a member of many literary organizations in the world, including the Tabriz Writers and Poets Union. From time to time, he accepted their invitation and expressed his views by exchanging ideas on literary subjects.
In 2019, a student named Ebru Koçak, a senior at Akdeniz University Department of Journalism, used her research and analysis on the life and art of Yahya Azeroğlu as her graduation thesis and ensured that it was entered into the university archives. In addition, Yahya Azeroğlu, who is also the state artist of the Ministry of Culture, is the father of four children, two boys and two girls. He settled in Antalya in 2015, a long time after his retirement. He was elected as the vice president of the Federation of Eurasian Art, Culture, Literature and Science Associations (Askef), based in Antalya, and continues his cultural and artistic activities in the Turkish world to reach Turan. News articles and other articles written about Yahya Azeroğlu 1-Turkish Literature Magazine (Ömer Lütfü Mete) year 1981/issue 85 topic criticism2-Anadolu Newspaper 1982 Germany topic news 3- Bild Newspaper Germany 1982 topic news4-Yeşilığdır Newspaper.
Today the post-
woman brought
me the Lone Ranger
& Tonto. Except the
Lone Ranger is
now no longer alone
because he's got
in touch with his
inner self, & Tonto
is a psychic from
the subcontinent &
not a Native American
sidekick. Damn these
shades of gray. What-
ever happened to
black & white, even
when / in color? I
blame Alan Ladd,
playing Shane with
that small man syn-
drome. & Coop, Gary
Cooper, the tall silent
one who learnt to talk
& went off to mix it
with the likes of
Picasso. Wasn't a
virgin Quaker bride
enough for him? You
could see it coming
as it neared high noon.
The hero as a man in
black. Do not forsake
me, I begged him. Ob-
viously he didn't listen.
Today the post-
woman brought
me an unemployed
dancing monkey. Put
me down as some-
one who can't tell
a lymph node
from a lung, but I
think there may
currently be a search
on for organ donors.
Today the post-
woman brought
me the winter
of our discontent,
the Arab spring, &
the summer of love.
Plus an apology
from the bookshop
for being unable
to fill my original
order, “The Fall,” by
Albert Camus.
+
Where nature walks
If a tree falls
but no one listens
then there is no peer review
Sometimes attention catches natural presence,
like flowing water turns the mill's wheel
to bring flour from grain.
The kitchen supplies
find
peer review
at the dining center.
Who's is speaking?
My Heart Speaks!
Love has an invitation open to its Kind.
The peer within
as freelance
expressing
found standing in faith
The forest speaks where faith raises ears
The fallen tree,
Bless Thy Heart
May seed freshen
Soils and sun share the expression!
Where nature walks
by John Edward Culp
Friday morning
October 27, 2023
