The Vanities * In God We Trust. – the Mint. * One Nation, Under God. – the ribbon sticker on the car. * God, Guns & Guts Made America Great. Let’s Keep it that Way. – the bumper sticker on the car. * God Damn me if this Defendant’s third victim isn’t my weekend. – the Deputy Attorney General. * We thank God for our great victory today. – the football coach. * We thank God for our great victory today. – the terrorist. * We thank God for our great victory today. – the Executive of the mortal nation. A very short poem about Rubber Tree Plants and the division of labor What in the World would make any one black ant think that it knows more about Earth than another black ant, moving a similar amount of Earth, just because of the specific kind of Earth – for example, a rubber tree plant – that it moves? Its own self? A song? Something it heard? Read? * Now . . . let us consider the red ants . . . The Viennese Renaissance Max was driving to work. He had recently finished a collection of poetry by Georg Trakl. After finishing graduate school, years ago, he read at least half a dozen books by Sigmund Freud. While in graduate school, he studied Wittgenstein, and the logicians of the Vienna Circle. When Max was an undergraduate, his “Cultures and Traditions” course included a component on the Viennese Renaissance. Max had also, in just the last week, finished a book of paintings by the artist, Egon Schiele. And the satellite radio station was playing a work by Schoenberg, to be followed by either Webern or Berg. Stars were aligned in his mind. So Max thought about Vienna, and its wild and weird Renaissance. The Viennese Renaissance is the strangest, and most bizarre, renaissance, in the history of the West and all of its rebirths, Max thought. It consisted of a uniquely sordid, twisted, and literally incestuous cast of cultural figures. That, and some really dull, logical thinkers. At a time when Freud was writing about sons and daughters wanting to have sex with their mothers and fathers, making that his paradigmatic framework, the painter Egon Schiele and his younger sister were checking into an inn and selecting the same room their parents shared on their honeymoon. Trakl was also fucking his own sister. They were, apparently, in love. Unsupervised children on a large estate, complete with carriage houses. Wittgenstein, meanwhile, was probably frequenting the docks and dives where someone might humiliate him, anally or painfully, or both, sad and lonely man. What he could not speak about, he passed over in silence. None of this activity, mental or otherwise, was atonal. It had a tone, its own strange tone. Which sounded . . . off. Max sighed. Max shook his head. Max admitted to himself, as he passed tow trucks and police commissions on the side of the road, 65 South, following a terrible accident, one that probably included fatalities, that this one thing resembled the other. The sight of the accident led to a most logical conclusion, after Max had empirically gathered his data: “One shouldn’t study the Viennese Renaissance too closely,” he said out loud to himself, passing the carnage. “One should only look it over briefly, quickly . . . like the sight of this wreck . . . and pass it by slowly. Or risk distraction. And further damage.” When Thorsten Veblen met your Grandpa Some would have called it old-fashioned – These signs of a pride that knows no end. He would cut the grass, almost daring the dirt, True to his class in his best white shirt. As if every day was a chance to say – To the World at large – “I don’t have to charge. I pay outright. I own my day. And also, I own the night. I own your work and I own my play. My Capital never has to shirk. So look at me – neighbor – What do you see? I am the member of your bourgeoisie.” You put me in a beautiful dizzy So I think today I will address the birds the way I might address a letter to you in hopes of a return . . . how they always fall in circles through their sky singing somber psalms unwritten by tempted mortal us. I will address their angelic comportment, their holy apathy, their tempestuous singing at our morning window as I fall in circles in you . . . or maybe hearing them I will remain silent unlike them, but for their beautiful dizzying spirals & flight as I alight . . . J.T. Whitehead earned a law degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. He received a Master’s degree in Philosophy from Purdue, where he studied Existentialism, social and political philosophy, and Eastern Philosophy. He spent time between, during, and after schools on a grounds crew, as a pub cook, a writing tutor, a teacher’s assistant, a delivery man, a book shop clerk, and a liquor store clerk, inspiring four years as a labor lawyer on the workers’ side. Whitehead was Editor in Chief of So It Goes: The Literary Journal of the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library, briefly, for issues 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. He is a Pushcart Prize-nominated short story author, a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, and was winner of the Margaret Randall Poetry Prize in 2015 (published in Mas Tequila Review). Whitehead has published over 333 poems in over 125 literary journals, including The Lilliput Review, Slipstream, Left Curve, The Broadkill Review, Home Planet News, The Iconoclast, Poetry Hotel, Book XI, Gargoyle, and The New York Quarterly. His book The Table of the Elements was nominated for the National Book Award in 2015. Whitehead lives in Indianapolis with his two sons, Daniel and Joseph, where he practices law by day and poetry by night.
Category Archives: CHAOS
Essay from Jamshidbek Abdujabborov
Nobody is perfect Everyone think I'm perfect, that I have a perfect family, that I have good friends, but one thing is for sure! That's fk bullshit! My life is far from perfect! Everyone keeps asking "how can you not have a boyfriend? You are perfect! You are beautiful, all the boys want you! You have a good body, you are so sweet and you only want the best for others" and yes, ofc I do! Bc I know what it's like to treated like shit! NO, I'm NOT perfect! Nothing about me is perfect! NO all the boys don't want me! I am broken! Everything I have been through has destroyed me inside! I'm not the same as I was yesterday, I'm not the same as I was a week ago, a month ago or a year ago! I do not know who I am, I do not know what I want, I do not know who my friends are, I can't live with my family! Nothing in my life is perfect! My whole world is laughing! The only thing I want for others is the best, be I don't want them to end up like me! I put on a face, so people don't see any other thing that a happy me! No one should see the truth. People won't understand! It anyway! All I do is wait! Wait for something good to happen, wait for me to find myself! But now it doesn't seem to happen! That's just how people are born! Someone is happy, someone is unhappy and some people are just waiting!
One day.. One day, he'll know. He'll know your birthday, your middle name, your parents' names and where you were born. He'll know your zodiac sign, your eye color, how many scars you have and how you got them. He'll know how many cousins you have and how old you were when you first learned how to ride a bike and exactly how many freckles you have. He's going to know your favorite book, movie, song, food, pair of shoes and color. He'll know your dreams and why you can't sleep at night. He'll understand why you worry about irrelevant things. He'll know that when that one song comes on, he'd better turn it up. He's going to memorize your facial expressions, your laugh when you really think something is funny and the bad habits you wish you could break. He'll know how you don't want to get any older, how much you love golden hour and when the sun sets or rises. He's going to know how many kids you want and what colors you want in your wedding and how you wish you could tell all the people that you hurt how sorry you are. He'll know that you like your coffee with cream and sugar and lots of it. He'll know that it takes you forever and a day to decide where you want to eat and exactly what ice cream you like to order because you never change it. He's going to know how you dance, kiss, smile, walk and sing. He'll figure out what to do when you can't stop crying and he'll know exactly what's wrong before you tell him. One of these days he's going to know everything there is to know about you and he's going to love all of it. So, be patient and wait for the right person.
Poetry from Rosiyeva Gulbahor
Vocational school No. 2, Koshtepa district, Fergana region. In this vocational school, young people are directed to various professions and trades. Vocational school has various directions.1 Car body repair.2 Repair and maintenance of car engines.3 Tractor driver4 Tailor5 Electro-manteur6 Car electrical and electronic equipment servicing.7 We can cite computer graphics design and operator directions as an example. In this school, all conditions are created for young people. Students can apply the knowledge they have acquired during the lesson in the process of practical training.As an example, we can say that all conditions are created for the students of the computer graphic design room in this room. And provided with enough computer equipment. Through computers, they study the fields of IT and graphic design. And in the future, they can get a job based on the fields they have studied in school. Nowadays, due to the high interest of schoolchildren in the profession, schools also guide young people to the profession.The main goal of these works is to ensure employment of young people in the future.Ro'ziyeva Gulbahor Hasanboy qizi. She was born on September 7, 2006, Koshtepa district, Fergana region. Currently, she is a 2nd year student at KHM No. 2, Koshtepa district.
Poetry from Gabriel Flores Benard
You never know they’re gone until it’s too late.
The sun blossoms in the distance,
piercing bespeckled eyes,
leaving them in tears,
having never seen dying beauty before.
Sunlight takes eight minutes
and twenty seconds
to race across violet oceans,
to make its presence known.
Cosmic oceans drown the screaming.
We don’t hear the sun
because the voices would be deafening.
We are not ready to hear it cry.
We never know when the screaming halts.
We never know when the calls stop.
We never know when the requiem plays.
We never know they’re gone
until it’s too late.
Poetry from J.J. Campbell
---------------------------------------------------------------------- the chinese alphabet i dread the holidays mostly because i grew up on dysfunction normal shit is as foreign to me as the chinese alphabet but i'm old now crazy left years ago i seek the quiet never minded being alone, just never wanted to be lonely the phone won't ring on christmas all my former friends have their families and the friends they are using now i'll turn on some music something dark and melodic we never even bother to put up a tree anymore somewhere charlie brown is laughing ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- while alone in the shower she reminds you of a ghost from your past listens to mozart while humming in spanish pretends to play the slide trombone while alone in the shower her kisses taste like you were born on the wrong planet she once kissed me on my lips and told me to close my eyes i never saw her again --------------------------------------------------------- plastic bombs in the sand insomnia dances like a lost lover strung out on neon lights and a gentle line of cocaine think of all the years since our lips first met then ponder how each of us should already be dead rainbows and smiles plastic bombs in the sand maybe one day the poor won't have to fight a rich man's war i know long after most of the planet ceases to exist you ever learn to speak another language yeah i can say fuck fluently in nearly all of them that's really all you need ------------------------------------------------------ make believe brilliance blah blah blah long lines rising prices i knew there was a reason i never wanted children and all the good alcohol is too expensive and the shit i can afford is only meant to harm the liver faster i put on some charlie parker and wonder which will come first the first line of a poem or a fresh vein don't worry if i can't afford the alcohol how the fuck can i afford the drugs poem after poem make believe brilliance blah blah blah maybe santa should actually bring me some scratch offs that are winners ---------------------------------------------------------------- way too early in life the darkest eyes cover up the most pain her smooth skin tasted like all my nightmares made into an off broadway play the twinkling lights are supposed to be joyful you've seen too many movies about small towns backwoods killers and all the children that succumb to reality way too early in life the holidays are rarely happy no snow for christmas just rain endless fucking rain misery fit for everyone around here J.J. Campbell (1976 - ?) was raised by wolves yet managed to graduate high school with honors. He's been widely published over the years, most recently at Dumpster Fire Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Asylum Floor and The Beatnik Cowboy. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)
Poetry from Henry Bladon
Primary Thunderclap
Whispered words
in a darkened world
shatter the glass icon
in your head
earthly ghosts
circulate around
nebulous neural activity
like a bout of all-day drinking
where jagged thoughts
slice into viscera
leaving distant dreams
overwhelmed by synthetic ideology.
That moment
at the bottom of the bottle of gin
when everything is like the precarious nature
of a well-chewed pen,
and I have
kaleidoscopic
images plaited
in my mind
and my head feels
like it’s so full of unopened mail
that it makes me wonder
if there really is
a place called
vertigo.
Poetry from J.D. Nelson
the sun has come out one crow flies across the lot & then another — on the 38 one block from Jack’s Lawson Park sidewalks lined with tents — ol’ crow got sum’n he takes it up to the roof of the bus station — the year’s shortest day the mailman knocks on my door & postage is due — without a coffee I walk back from Circle K crow caws out hello! — bio/graf J. D. Nelson’s poems have appeared in many publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of ten print chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including *Cinderella City* (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s first full-length collection is *in ghostly onehead* (Post-Asemic Press, 2022). Visit his website, MadVerse.com, for more information and links to his published work. His haiku blog is at JDNelson.net. Nelson lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA.