Suffering Pleasure 


Darkness had just punched the time clock, showing up to work the night shift. I needed to light a couple of candles in my Studio apartment. The purpose wasn't to create a romantic or Gothic ambience, but instead to be able to navigate around my four hundred square foot living space with some light. It seems my memory has been on a drunken binge once again and forgot to pay the electric bill. The Electric and Power guy pointed out I've used that somewhat creative as well as almost humorous excuse far too often. 

The novelty has worn off with the consequence  being orders to confiscate the Electric Meter and return it to the office. It meant he couldn't just pull it out, turn it upside down, and push it back in. The company mid-level suits  had become aware of me pulling it out then placing it back into the service restoring my power after the electric guy left. I guess I'll be playing pioneer for a while. Maybe I should stock up on candles or get one of those oil lamps.  You know what?  My neighbors are leaving on vacation for a month tomorrow. So I'll be able to jump their electric power and their Cable, which I think is still hooked up from the last time I tapped in. I'll try to find some way to get my T.V. out of hock.  Quite possibly I'll just borrow one of my neighbor's.  This guy will be living like a suburban scumbag in no time at all. I've  got it all worked out.

"This has to stop Santiago. There's no future in what you refer to as a recreational activity." I said out loud.

" Ya I know. I've gotta straighten up." Answering back with a four a.m. honesty.

I emptied the entire contents of the paper into the small pool of water in the spoon. 

"When do you think  that  might happen?"

" I'm not sure. It may manifest as a revelation or an epiphany?  Maybe they'll be an intervention,  or the never-fail cure, incarceration."

I held the spoon over the candle flame and bubbles appeared on the surface of the water caused by the heat. 

"It doesn't matter. You've gotta get clean. This is just no fun anymore."  

"You know something?  I'm unable to remember when this was fun."

I drew up the warm coffee colored liquid mixture through a cigarette butt I used as a filter. Then I inspected the contents for air bubbles, flicking the syringe with my finger to dislodge them.

" You look at life as though it's a nonstop parade just for your entertainment and you watch it pass by.  Let me tell you, the last float will be showing up soon signaling your demise. Believe me Santa Claus won't be on it waving his hello. It's got to stop!"

My voice echoed in the near empty apartment.

 "Ya, it'll happen. I promise. I just can't say when."  I answered sincerely. But even I didn't believe myself.

I stabbed  the syringe deep into my vein. I didn't  even have to pull back on the plunger to register.  My dark, thick, rich, red, blood billowed into it offering a crimson preview of the explosion about to erupt inside my body. My finger slowly, ceremoniously pushed down on the plunger.

Boom!

JSB 

Welcome to November’s first issue of Synchronized Chaos Magazine!

First of all, we encourage you to come on out to Metamorphosis, our New Year’s Eve gathering and benefit show for the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan and Sacramento’s Take Back the Night. This will take place at Woodstock’s Pizza in downtown Davis, CA, time TBA.

Second, 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!

Now for this issue, which provides glimpses behind the scenes into dreams, thoughts and processes behind the world we see every day.

In his short story “The Cubelli Lagoon,” Fernando Sorrentino probes the depths of a mysterious lake rumored to be riddled with alligators.

J.J. Campbell begins his poetic offerings with an assertion that the rest of the natural world remains more powerful than humans. He then comments on human nature, looking at everyday scenes and letting his mind wander. Emmanuel Umeji does something similar in his poetry, where the speaker stares up into the sky and reflects on life and death.

Chloe Schoenfeld describes the calm and moist atmosphere after a rainstorm.

Chimezie Ihekuna continues his Christmas countdown while Norman J. Olson contributes more of his detailed and thoughtful sketches and oil landscapes. Olson says his is “not an art of societal amelioration” yet the attention he gives to people and places in his work encourages viewers to notice their depths and regard them with respect.

Damon Hubbs explores scientific research in a slightly macabre way, with poems about the skull of dead 17th century physician Sir Thomas Browne. John Thomas Allen also touches on the mystery of death through a poem where the lines seem to wind you down to the grave. Mesfakus Salahin presents death as the poignant but inevitable end of all relationships.

In contrast, the flowers Channie Greenberg photographs are very much vibrant and alive, even when cut and displayed in a vase.

Lorraine Caputo also conveys how humans interact with and harvest from nature in her literary sketch of a large commercial banana farm in Latin America.

Daniel de Culla gives a bawdier take on nature writing, with a piece on sexy pumpkins and Halloween traditions in his native Spain.

In a different vein, Sayani Mukherjee builds a scene and a mood around a single rose in a vase in a person’s room.

J.D. DeHart presents vignettes shaped by memory, where he describes his amusement or wonder at encounters with horses, strange noises, etc along with conveying the scenes themselves.

John Steirer also draws from ordinary life as a source of grace and amusement in his series of reflections on middle age, teaching, and learning.

Strider Marcus Jones evokes the background rhythm of life even as great global struggles for power and liberation take place: seeds waiting to germinate, couples falling in and out of love, poets writing and hoping for interesting content.

Pippa Phillips and Jerome Berglund distill experience past the vignette into single thoughts and nearly subconscious observations.

Kyle Hemmings captures moments of irony, poignancy and surprise in his tiny poetic vignettes. John Culp explores his personal consciousness in a thoughtful piece.

Clive Gresswell brews up a heady mix of language and thought in his poems.

Mary Grimm evokes a dream experience with a title reflecting the nonlinearity of the narrative.

Mark Young’s artwork also eschews direct representation to focus on the effects of juxtaposing contrasting colors and visual elements.

Poet John Tustin writes elegantly of characters brought together into the same space who get driven apart or don’t end up interacting. As in Mark Young’s work, the beauty lies in the implied connections and contrasts.

Jim Meirose evokes a surreal atmosphere with a vacationing couple and their unusual tour guide at the Acropolis.

Christopher Bernard’s poem comments on people of differing income levels sharing urban space, encouraging the homeless and dispossessed to walk with the same self-assurance as the wealthy.

Olawe Opeyemi’s poem shows a speaker mourning sorrow and injustice he sees from his window.

Adepoju Timileyin’s characters also observe each other, speculating and empathizing from a distance. Sometimes they actually interact, though, as he does with his grandmother. In his final piece, Timileyin points to writing as a way to connect.

Shilpa Barti also brings together disparate artistic elements, with the effect of celebrating creative growth in nature and through literature and music.

Z.I. Mahmud also turns to literature as a subject, through his scholarly essay on the global and historical impact of Indian classics.

Jaylan Salah interviews author Joanne Harris (most famously the creator of the book that inspired the movie Chocolat) and discusses her themes of cuisine, creativity, small towns and tolerance/acceptance as well as how these themes come through in her later, darker works.

Mary Beth O’Connor, in her memoir From Junkie to Judge, illustrates how personal struggles such as addiction and abuse affect people of any class, race, personality or profession.

Awodele Habeeb touches on the social dimensions of personal struggle. He points out the inadequacy and cruelty of telling young people that education will prepare them for a better future if society does not provide avenues for them to use the skills they gain.

That sentiment is a driving force behind our New Year’s Eve gathering and choice of organizations to support. We do hope that Synchronized Chaos Magazine can play a part in opening up pathways towards allowing society to benefit from the creative gifts of all its members.

Everything is lost

Love is dead

Death hides in life

Life is dead

Even death is dead

It is a dead land in the dead world

Only time is alive

Time is the chief guest of the funeral of love

 Memories make fire

Love is burnt and so on

Time is burning everything

Dead souls are lamenting for the past

The sun stands behind the ceremony with pain

Tears of air blow over desert in vain

Procession of absence is an  imagination

Death bends all and each

Only death is true, nothing else

There is none to love.

1.


hot pavement—

summer plays hopscotch

barefoot


2.


antipode—

the widening pupil

of a ghost eye


3.


white rainbow—

the sunstruck film

from last summer 


4.



divining tomorrow

from a feather—

 

a dove

turns blue

to match the sky


5.


darkening rain—

the legibility

of dream words 

She definitely wasn't singing.

This was a cry at the break

of dawn, I couldn't

understand her words but the pain.


Perhaps, hope of surviving the day,

the sky is enough to occupy species 

but not ready to spice her lips.


Or the climate condition,

surviving the burning noon

or the cold that houses her haven.


She definitely wants a HOME

Maybe a listener or comforter,

and she did, as I watch her.


She was next to my room,

perching filtered tree on hope to survive.

Not all bird sings, some cries.



Title:- Cries of my neighbour

Adepoju Timileyin: Juste Ink 



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Nigh on Nine


I rote on tales from granny,

about the last penny

that got married to the soil,

She must be lost.


I learnt of mistakes from granny,

that it shines with the evening sun

it's neither hot but hurts n' hunt.

Oh pains of losing a day! 


I cleared anxiety n' shuffle my hopes.

I nailed my fear and caged my guilt,

And before the night came

I cleared the soil afraid of losing

my penny.


And so I dream

dreamt about my sleep.

And so I knew,

knows dreamland was an odyssey

to future n' Illusion pinned on mindset.


Adepoju Timileyin: Juste Ink.


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My Grandma Tales



My grandma had said,

"even burial grounds makes noise"

She said, her father, My granny

still shouts, whispers

n' hold whips on wheel of hope.


She also said, Màmá Sódìki, 

our next door neighbour, whose history says

she left to buy cloth for her children since birth, I don't know if to envy the twin, they'll have more to wear.


And Ìyá okẹ̀-odò who sit beneath 

the ólùmọ́ tree and feed ears with Àló,

I once overheard nightingale 

repeating her rhythm, 

who dare not envy such sonorous tune.


My grandma said,

they made burial ground their haven

and scare us away from their abode

to home beneath momma's wrapper.



Poem by:- Juste Ink 


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POET'RY



Where there is pain;

We proffer lines of comfort....

Where there is betrayal;

We sit them beneath stanzas of trust...

And where there is no one,

We are here, there, n' anywhere,

With themes of solitude enough 

to gulp sorrows


We have chose to bear

children of their pains,

We have chose to carry

drops of their misfortune

on lines (art) of poetry.


Poem by:- Adepoju Timileyin: Juste Ink

Bio- Shilpa Bharti, pen name- Rose is a published poet. She has served on the editorial panel(open leaf press review) of several literary journals. She has been on the judging panel of poetry contests including the poetry pea journal haiku contest. She had her work published in failed haiku journal; poetry pea journal of haiku and senryu; creatrix haiku journal; neo literary journal; narrow road literary journal (young voices slot); an ode to the queer journal; howling press; throat to sky magazine,origimi review journal and ressurection press. Her forthcoming work includes poems in the SAHITYA AKADEMI and Her Artwork has managed to appear in several other art journals.