Café de la olla Sweet aroma screams of México. Bubbling brew boils over and over again. Hints of canela to cure la diabetes caused by the overdose of piloncillo, unrefined brown sugar. Unrefined indeed. Your cure, the poison. The poison, your cure. But you love to dance with the devil. You love to swim in muddy, brown waters. Piel canela. Panocha candente. ¡Uy!
First published in my second poetry collection, Hechizera: Sus Sultry Spells (2022).
Flames in the wind Flames in the wind Rising above ashes Dancing alone Irrational sparks of light To show how hard We burn Spitting fire With every breath Consuming anything we touch The wind keeps us alive Marching on fields Of dry hearts Incinerating all Until we become one Exploding light Suffocating air We were once fire And now we are Nowhere
I’m Andrea, in January 2020 I started writing poetry after I had a vision, twice…In this process, I experienced two visions of myself writing, in the span of a month time, and that was a good enough sign to look into it. So, the day after the second vision I started writing poetry.
Blue Scenes
The other lover once they called sky
A Dionysian clangour who broke limbs,
Feelings, and hard cheese if she couldn’t hide
Crashed answers, food going rotten,
Her hunger helpless like grass,
Her dig a blue sparsely furnished
With fringe stars, tasteless food,
A twisted rough mind where limbs
Shook, and squeezed in-
Don’t wonder why, answers but a dark juice
Worse than unripe currants,
Leave her alone, go on shooting snaps
As the blue rises over deep grey walls-
Maybe your flock, my shepherd of troubled souls,
Lips scraped by honey, mayhem, deceits
Let crinkly women untangle hard secrets,
Moon, perhaps you are a woman,
Only thingie you can do
Is making claims, and demands,
Coming up with sorry tales
Of children, periods, headaches,
All the way bleating you are
Awfully sorry for being a woman-
To cap it off, first season months
Promised us answers, and hope’s damn disguise-
No more wobbling, OK?
Ask the conjuror of light
To quickly move his fingers,
Their fault as ever if soul keeps starving,
And twinges went wild like a flash
On a summer storm.
******
To S.
Was she thinking of blue screens, or last words,
When fleeing heaven, or deserting dark thingies?
Three blue hours ago she set
To lend each awakening his breath
While the Angel was touching waves,
And moving his hands to the source of life,
And in her dream clear, and so deceiving
She was healing, maybe getting into the green,
Sounds engraving on her mind for good-
If only she didn’t hate sudden lights,
And her infinite was different
From a wild lava she didn’t ask for,
The rust of flowers when it clings to limbs,
A sky dodging blue fires, hers,
Her birth, her colours held back by weeds
And a smashed clingy blue-
But regret is stalking her, that cursed evergreen,
Anytime she looks at words flowing all over limbs-
Father of the first seeds, every slight feels like a danger,
So hold your waters, give your heaven
Another look, whenever her soul whispers
That light screeches, then turns out to be
The sister of grass, and earth,
When fields grab her if she gives her words,
And breaths exist, the many red bruises
Already taken for granted.
*******
To M.W.
Great, the ice blue shock runs through you
If you brush against poetry, and a dirty ambivalence
In the morning, when blue overwhelms uneasy thoughts,
And you feel them as they twist, and even shun
Nasty questions from the sky, red whirlwinds,
A water so fed up with lovers in short
That at last she morphs into a large green wound,
An end to deals, and everlasting doubts,
But why are you so scared when the fires stay silent,
And souls vibrant at digging words don’t care
For fruits, honey, handfuls of pages no good
To the skies of desertion, in a word your cave
Where life, ever the confused noise,
Sets lips ablaze with all those endless calls to infinite-
Now it’s high time to silence the books,
Can’t you see your mind never promised
To give in to snarling winds, or clear breezes?
So don't side with them, as she has no honour,
No name to protect, she doesn't care
If they find her weird, and sometimes she laughs,
While shivering from winters, while ice blue moons
Bring back a fever never as red as you’d like,
Just a clash of colours in short bursts,
They never slake a season when dogs
Keep scenting the grass, among flowers always so idle
If she looks cheerful, but maybe a bit dead.
*******
To S.
Where the hell is his strength,
The sea looks so dazed tonight,
While they are fighting over the silverware,
And an electric blue, maybe the birth of mourning,
Is rising in the sky, yet you can hear a farewell,
Whispered as they called for the mother of life,
Bitterness climbing the stairs to hurt
The onlookers at the moon,
So many bruises, like an eclipse they shine,
Among boxes all over dispersed, neglect,
A tense elegance from a light that never chills words,
If they hand blue to souls, some dodgy drugs,
Anytime she runs high and naked
Among deceiving sounds, and a second season
Raids answers much faster than love and time-
‘Cause you 're a dream, moon, but not life
For words bracing frayed warps,
And blue roots you can’t weed out-
Many books later, lights given up for missing
Were found, theirs was a broken idiom
Only souls intend-
No big deal, what mothers simply can’t love
Are unsolved children from fights
Between their wombs, and moon,
Those chatty ladies who can’t wait
To screw up your dinners with endless tales
Of lousy sex, worry, or distress.
*******
But in the cold bleak light from the hall
You simply can’t be a goddess
Looking for fauns or friends,
Nor a maenad uprooting trees, or enemies-
Soul, your anger is a seed, it always
Gives birth to waste, and sour cream,
No need for the old grandma's remedies,
Hurling yourself at hectic days,
Or raising your hand against limbs-
The seed will soon rise up,
And they won’t call you bastard,
Those good for nothing,
Moon, father, mother,
A fibbing mist raiding your life
Whenever you make room
To an absurd white,
To papers encroaching on the walls,
Books writhing on the floor,
Maybe the winter thrust to first births?
No, just a rejected look for you to learn
How to weave time, so cut it out
With angst, and worry,
If the lover of a lost hero gets more to weave,
Or light can’t divert you while dogs,
And nights wipe out passion, or lust-
Even if a party of days and blue bags shakes you up,
Listen to the voices moon is fuddling,
Unsafe breaths, but please don’t go green-eyed on her
When she writes to heaven, so many letters lying
Among corpses, a rubble of stars,
And the absolute faith, no one can grabes first seasons,
Or so says the maddening memory
You can see standing up against a powder blue,
Drop it, be it your model an ambivalent moon
When she dodges the dull blue of the sky,
And those restless bored sahms, falling stars.
*******
Adrenaline high up the sky, you shocked-
Do not bend over me, night,
No need to, you’ve got lovers, right?
Fear, fear always digging her graves, souls,
Cold, and a silence you misplaced so long ago-
Just remove the sounds words echoed
When stalked by water,
Or fighting like no tomorrow with light-
And you, my cold, do not bite me tonight,
No need to, as souls, and a tousled desire
Don’t mind green, or silence-
As soon as they leave give birth
To life, and God, your last resource,
Give the sky his own fire, but, my soul,
Don’t set yourself on fire, not your fault
If days start whirling ‘round you,
Scalds, men, rejections, of no importance at all,
As you chose from the start colours
And plain books, certainly not love, nor limbs,
You just kept slicing shreds from renegade skies,
Dissenters, the lunatic fringe -
That’s why skies can’t grab you on the fly,
Nor can Sahara want you as a prophet-
Just an albedo of words
Breaking through stones, and boulders-
Dunno if she feels like a mother, but you inside
A place where they’re so keen
To come and meet you,
Questions, doubts, slip-ups
In a brand new creation:
A heavenly vault, foliage, that pearly white
Set to strike back at your soul.
Born in Italy some decades ago, Gabriella fell in love with the English language at six, soon after she had started writing poems (in Italian). She has contributed to a number of national and international magazines and anthologies, and is the author of Lo sguardo di Orfeo, L’inverno di vetro, Di altre stelle polari , Casa di erba’, and in English, A Blue Soul and Blue Branches.
“One clear moment, one of trance
One missed step, one perfect dance
One missed shot, one and only chance
Life is all…but one fleeting glance.”
― Sanober Khan
First of all, our friend and collaborator Rui Carvalho has announced the opening of our Nature Writing Contest for 2022. This is an invitation to submit poems and short stories related to trees, water, and nature conservation between now and the March 2023 deadline. More information and submission instructions here!
Also, our co-editor Kahlil Crawford and I are announcing once more our Latin culture-themed issue, which will be October’s first issue. Submissions for this are welcome up through the end of September. Kahlil was inspired by the works of Fernando Sorrentino, who sent in a set of stories, one of which is published in this issue. Lorraine Caputo will write the editorial letter for that issue.
Finally, we continue to encourage you to support assistance and education, including literacy classes, for Afghan people in need through RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of Women in Afghanistan). They are looking for people to translate articles from Persian/Pashto into English and to translate the English and Pashto articles on their site into a variety of other languages.
This month at Synchronized Chaos we acknowledge the fragility of life and the passing of time.
Robert Stephens relates a tale of a father’s yearly visits to his daughter’s grave that take on increasing poignance as he approaches the end of his own life. Santiago Burdon’s story of a father and daughter celebrating a teenage milestone turns bittersweet at the end.
Mark Young contributes poems of vagary and translucence, speakers who don’t see everything, who have trouble finding their way. Faroq Faisal also explores mystery and the limits of our conscious knowledge.
Damon Hubbs evokes ecology and cosmology in his inventive take on nursery rhymes.
J.J. Campbell speaks to memories and change, what can evolve with time and what stays stuck.
Ian Copestick probes whose lives we value, what type of justice is appropriate for various forms of cruelty.
Fernando Sorrentino writes of a life upended, and ultimately enriched, by a mysterious visitor. Pathik Mitra writes of intercultural connections made through unusual ways wile traveling. Farjan Mushfiqul Amin relates a clever anecdote between two friends recalling history.
Some aspects of our world are uncertain and threatening, on smaller and larger scales.
Christina Chin and Uchechukwu Onyedikam’s poetic collaboration, like Sayani Mukherjee’s first poem, speaks to the violence endemic in nature and human society and the fragility and uncertainty of life. Muhammad Sinan relates the precarity of the oil industry while Hannah Aipoh highlights the injustice of subtle sexism embedded within our cultures. Mahbub Alam illustrates the effects of inflation on already struggling people.
Film critic Jaylan Salah traces how director Baz Luhrmann portrays artists who only tenuously fit into society. Robert Stephens’ poem relates the pain of unrequited and temporary love. Petro C.K. metaphorically represents the often imperfect fit between what we say and what we mean through poems that make use of language that is somewhat auto-generated yet sounds official and informative.
Yet, we can have the choice of how to respond to a challenging world, even though it will outlive us.
Gaurav Ojha meditates on how the knowledge of our inevitable deaths can bring a rare preciousness to life. Gabriel T. Saah and Fayzullayeva Sevara urge us to make the most of life because it is impermanent.
Akinmade Abayomi Zeal speaks stridently on living to the fullest and avoiding traps that derail one’s life. Syed Tabin Ahbab tells the tale of brave hunters who stood up to defend their village.
Uchechukwu Onyedikam sends in gentle poems of spiritual search, humility, and gratitude. Raafia Shaheen encourages self care practices to get through a difficult time. Md. Nurujjaman relates a tale of someone who simply hops aboard a bullock cart, riding wherever the driver and cows lead them.
With a similar spirit of gentleness, Chapaina Wabganj sends us a photo of a peaceful sunset, with a solitary boatful of people dwarfed by the scene. Sayani Mukherjee’s second poem evokes the soft comfort of autumn twilight and the change of seasons. Kaiser Mahmud praises the natural beauty of his Bangladeshi homeland while Mokhlesur Rahman describes the luscious fruit and economically important agriculture of the region.
Ubali Ibrahim Hashimu’s love poem draws on a rich heritage of metaphors while Chimezie Ihekuna’s poetic speaker revels in the anticipation of the holidays and an impending marriage. Tanvir Islam writes of a patient and kind romantic love.
Mesfakus Salahin takes an innocent joy in nature and expresses his determination to move forward, even with a broken heart. Charles Upshaw, the Man of Legend, also writes of perseverance and confidence, especially for altruistic and noble goals.
A Day To Come One day your children you dearly love will wail, but you will not be able to comfort them. One day the trees will provide oxygen in abundance, but your lungs will not be able to take their fill. One day your love ones will say their goodbye, but your mouth will be too shy to say yours. One day you will be given a bath and it will be your final bath, but you will not feel it. One day the meal of your heart will be served before your nose, But your name will not be mentioned. One day you will wear your clothes but you will not be able to get them off. One day the things you are fighting for will not be of any importance to you. One day you will leave your home and never return, but others will now claim that. One day you will live in a house you never built in your lifetime, and you will never come out to greet your neighbors. One day your name will be given a title you shall carry forever, and it shall be called the “Late”. One day the closet of your home will be invaded and you will say nothing. One day the shoes you loved dearly will be worn by others and not yourself. One day you and your partner shall share your bed and you will not be able to see who lies next to him/her. One day you will stand in the presence of a great Judge but you will not be able to hire a lawyer to plead your case. You will do that alone. And One day you will wish to be around your friends, But you will lie somewhere alone in your dark room never to come out. If you are to live, live right and now, If you wish to love, love right and now. For the day is sure but unknown. Peace ✌️✌️🕊️✌️🕊️🕊️ © Gabriel T. Saah ( Marvelous Inker). -Gabriel T. Saah
A Really Bad Man I read in the local newspaper, the other day, about a man who lived in the same city I do, he got caught having sex with his dog, and posting it on Messenger. He moved away, obviously, otherwise he would have been lynched. He moved to rural Wales, right out in the sticks. Where I suppose nobody knew who he was, or what he'd done. Well, he got sent down for eleven years. I think that's fair enough. He's fucking sick. But people get less than that for murder. Most people get less than that for murder. I'm not defending a dog fucker. If he'd tried it on with my dog, I would have killed him. But, you have to ask yourself ; Killing a human being, who will be mourned by many. Many lives will be destroyed. Is shagging a dog, as disgusting as it is, really worse than that. I don't know. I think that both are inexcusable.
I've not Lived Until I soak myself under the sun Almost ferried away by the waves of the ocean Flipped by the flaps of the flapping trees Tasting the salts of the sea And living like the bliss of the heavens, Drenched in the rain, pregnant with dreams And delivered of all my fantasies. I have not lived, until I'm ready for death Choking from too many pleasures - satisfied Yawning, belching, dizzy, weary from hedonism Hence clamouring to see my Home Begging, dying to meet my Maker And see the house He'd prepared yonder For me to retire And be steeled from terror And malice And treason And poison Where I'd wrestle with death And be defeated by death And take my turn to win through defeat: My battles over death - finally and permanently. And then be immune to terror And be forever condemned to bliss In my own flat That my Maker prepared yonder. I have not lived! Until I see the sky under the East. I have not lived To see the rising of the sun Neither have I seen the sky in the West Nor lived to relish the setting of its sun And watch the moon from the West glistening, And adore my Maker for His mightiness. I have not lived! For I have not breathed from the North Nor sleep in the East Nor take my detour to Aomori Where even the angels might freeze. I have not lived! And I want to live To breathe the air of the North And soak myself in the oven As I'm freezing from the frenzy of the Bahamas And watch my seeds run around While I watch Admiring their tiny little legs And their hearts brimming of innocence. I have not lived! So neither malice nor rancour Nor hatred should get the best of me. For I want away with terror With malice With poison With envy With lust With lost With everything omen. I want away with all Until I truly live. ABAYOMI ZEAL