The mirror of life.
  It's a gift. Time will tell. 

  Some twist in the wind. 
Some fly above the clouds.

It is given,  time
 and again.

  Window Swing Free!

    Known,  knowing 
      Reflection from glance
       to stance

          I've Begun.

I cannot tell you
   all I'm feeling in
     a timely manner.

My smile is all of Me.

Apocalypse Not Now

Things don’t look so grim to me at this juncture,
the roving blood goons with veiny neck effort 
and pillows for fists,
believing there is strength in numbers
just as Vegas and the warring armies have taught them,
that fear can be mastered like an obedience school dog
off the chain,
and concealed weapons if 
that fails.

Myself, I prefer a pair of mating ducks in the inner harbour.
Male with proud felt green head.
The female by his side and the young ones in tow.
Or a leaky faucet that refuses to fall in line.

Staring out of windows, I see windows staring back
at me.

Underwear friends 
with spider veins for legs
so you know the fangs of pet store tarantulas 
are real.

 
The Public Has a Right to Know Nothing
	
that is why it is the public 
and the rest of it is 
private,

but such blanket statements 
from the blubbery populist blowhole
go over exceedingly well with 
the idiot masses

which is why that fabricated argument concocted 
by marketing 
as to whether a Crisper was a chip
or a cracker

did so well
according to the people
down in accounting.

 
Axiom Reel

cut the room
cut the floor 

spark an axiom reel

hard the hat
hard the landing

tell that bloody 
pilot Turbulence 

to land this role 
nobody wants 

or ever 

asked 
for.
 
The Hunt for Hairy Movember

I have grown over four inches in the past calendar year.
All horizontally.
My white whale of a belly swelled and distended 
and alcoholic 
as though some handsome shoe polish messiah 
could be cut right out of me.
	
I have been practising my breathing.
Inhale then exhale, seems simple enough.
No more difficult than the divvy up of pub grub
chicken wings on the fly.

While Norway tracks me down.
And Japan readies her harpoons.

I was never long for this world, 
but this is getting 
ridiculous.
 
Duty Free

Quite simply unaccustomed to safe-cracked whistles, 
all stock yard light shows 
of the immersive disk drive blow up 
queen shaved down into one final
ball of incendiary thunder
under silly perched aggrandizement, 
and knowing what I know now, 
I would have never sat in the airport 
that long
in plastic blue bucket seats 
watching clean shaven men drag their 
entire lives behind them,
rushing to catch connector flights
onto places with other blue
bucket seats.
 
Kicking Cans

Kicking cans around long enough,
there is always the threat of botulism.

Explain this to your schoolyard bully 
and they will punch you in the head
a little extra 
for making them feel 
stupid.

There is no advantage to being smart
until you are out of school and 85,
old enough to just not care 
anymore.

The world will always be stupid.
With or without you in it.
 
15 Bucks

for a working DVD player 
seems quite the deal
and we drive down to this 
apartment complex
along Mississauga Avenue
and sit in the parking lot
waiting for the boyfriend
to come down.

Some young kid is smoking by the entrance, 
so we get out and approach.
Asking if he is the boyfriend 
and he says he is.

And he hands us fifteen bucks from his right pant pocket
and we give him the bag.

As we drive away,
the missus tells me she is glad 
I came with her.

It is the first of the month 
and the squirrely junkies 
are looking to 
score.

And I tell her it reminds me 
of buying drugs back in the day.

Strength in numbers,
I get that.
 
Ghost Shows

I’ve seen those ghost shows 
where the orbs of light fly into people,
I am not some hermit.
I have a local cable service provider.

My shrink does not believe in ghosts, 
so I do not believe in ghosts:
go along to get along, right?

And I am sane as folded towels in the shape of dying swans.
I have not laughed at my own armpit farts 
in years.

A learning curve, sure there is.
If you are intent on learning.

Don’t the blowjobs of university wind tunnels 
seem way too easy?

                                                                                               
Ryan Quinn Flanagan is a Canadian-born author residing in Elliot Lake, Ontario, Canada with his wife and many bears that rifle though his garbage.  His work can be found both in print and online in such places as: Evergreen Review, The New York Quarterly, Synchronized Chaos, Literary Yard, Red Fez, and The Oklahoma Review.

My homeland.

In my homeland
Why pains ranges like a burning fire
And tears is what it requires
They said men don't cry
And I held it up, burning inside me

In my homeland
I have been through hell and back
And my eyes had become tears bank
Where I try to cry, and the word rang
Tears is a weakness,
In my homeland
no place to live
Terror has put on her garment
Beckoning on the emissaries of death dancing to the beats of herder's drum.
Like grief, pain feed the state of taraba.

In my homeland
The frightening gloom of darkness
Loom silently in the starless skies,
My homeland, filled with heartless savage
My homeland, on the footstool of brain less bastards.
Dear, my homeland
I fear for my life and future

For the infants yet unborn
I fear for the lives of youths
Who's future bases on strive.
Dear, my homeland
I fear for what life has in store
The more one lives, the more he dies
It's not a bed of roses,
Where one lives in comfort and love.
I fear for my homeland
Where peace and tranquility are imagine.

Innocent blood decorate our land,
Yet, we have been possess by orgyloving and bloodthirsty evil spirit.
With a loud thunderous voices.
When can we have a better homeland?
A better homeland,
devoid corruption,
Free of greed.

My homeland.

In my homeland
Why pains ranges like a burning fire
And tears is what it requires
They said men don't cry
And I held it up, burning inside me

In my homeland
I have been through hell and back
And my eyes had become tears bank
Where I try to cry

Welcome to June’s issue of Synchronized Chaos Magazine!

A recent book from civil rights activist Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, encourages people to develop understanding and respect for people different from themselves through a process of she describes as “breathe and push.”

This involves continually challenging yourself to grow and become a wiser and more caring person and then “breathing” by reflecting and resting to replenish your energy.

As she says “What if this is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?”

This month’s issue deals with characters and places who are “breathing” and “pushing,” growing and becoming. They are caring for children and pets, gaining understanding of the world and becoming more fully themselves, grappling with mythos and legacy, exploring imagination and consciousness, mourning tragedies and resolving to move forward with hope.

Harlan Yarbrough’s young couple and their child navigate an asteroid-caused disaster in a story that seems an allegory of parenthood in a turbulent world. Raising a small child can resemble an isolated, survivalist-type experience in some cultures, as parents retreat into the domestic sphere to focus on their child’s needs. Although the larger world continues to affect them, sometimes the small family simply waits it out until the smoke clears.

Chimezie Ihekuna also writes about parenting in an essay that acknowledges the commitment and care of parents of all genders.

Laura Stamps’ speaker raises a dog and humorously relates how she prefers him to a human companion. K.J. Hannah Greenberg’s second collection of photographed animals seem rather peaceful, contemplating life in the sunshine.

J.J. Campbell’s speaker has finally found love but battles the insecurities of middle age. Santiago Burdon writes of a mother who experiences the dreary weariness of some days of parenthood, as well as a city that has lost its luster and become harsh and angry.

Christine Tabaka writes of various sorts of endings, yet, as her other pieces suggest, these can also be catalysts for spiritual transformations into new discoveries and ways of being. Candace Meredith relates a piece from a person who has passed away, encouraging their loved ones to remember them and continue to live.

Film critic Jaylan Salah interviews Egyptian filmmaker Ahmad Abdalla, whose work focuses on people and cities in the complex state of growing and becoming who they are. Poet Mary Mackey interviews poet D. Nurkse, who discusses his sources of inspiration for his new book A Country of Strangers and how poetry can resist authoritarianisms of various kinds.

Sandra Rogers-Hare educates us on Juneteenth, the day when a last holdout of American enslaved people in Texas learned of their emancipation.

Ike Boat describes the grandeur of a majestic urban hotel within his native land of Ghana. Listen to more about the Asempa Hotel here.

Selene Ozturk’s essay explores the mixture of Roman Empire and American Western metaphors within the architecture of San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts and the idea of rugged, yet enduring grandeur.

Pascal Lockwood Villa’s futuristic story also harkens back to Old West metaphors to explore what it means to be human through a discussion between a robot sheriff and a female human convict.

John Edward Culp asserts the reality of human consciousness in his heady, yet forceful poem while Andrew Cyril MacDonald comments on our human psychologies within a digital, consumerist age.

Sidnei Silva crafts words and letters from her subconscious to reflect and memorialize the music of Vangelis. In another take on music, Jack Galmitz honors a recorder player who breathes out a melody amid the wildness of nature and society. Also, Ivan Fiske writes of the song of our spirits when we breathe and re-center amidst the world’s tragedies.

Renwick Berchild’s poems show how our whole world – cathedrals, whales and other ocean creatures, birds, pottery kilns – is telling us stories, inspiring thoughts and pieces.

Mark Young wends his way through a surreal path of the imagination, navigating territory in a quest reminiscent of the work in J.D. Nelson’s subterranean word forge.

Michael Robinson’s pieces relate his journey of spiritual growth and contemplation, finding solace in Christ’s love. Sunday T. Saheed explores life, death, heritage and legacy in his lyrical poem. Steven Hill reflects on how each moment of our lives is in a way, a “loan” and should not be taken for granted.

Chukwuma Eke Pacella comments on the complex inner psyches of boys and men as well as women in thoughtful meditations on gender and human equality. Anderson Moses probes our relationship with our bodies in pieces that touch on heritage and spirituality.

Mahbub writes of various kinds of afflictions and dangers our world faces, but reminds us of our potential for acts of kindness, such as his rescue from drowning in a pond as a small child.

Salim Yakkubu Akko renders the psychological dislocation of grief over a violent nation in crisis (Nigeria) in a stream of consciousness poem, while Bruce Roberts and Leticia Garcia Bradford and Sheryl Bize-Boutte and Patricia Doyne and Ann Pineles also grieve with more linear and forthright pieces over shooting deaths in another nation in crisis (the United States).

Finally, Aurora Brown’s haikus resound with a clarion call of hope.

Consciousness is Self Evident.
To Ask for Proof grants the Disproof
 by the Axiom of Requiring it. 

It's a journey that every Question 
Aborts the Answer
so a walk home resumes.

The industry, The Art 
is how to define Boundaries 
to hold Pleasure as 
an enduring form. 

So If You Like it,
  the process can come
    from non-form
      through form 
        to non-form
Or mid-stand 
where comfort
holds the sensitivity 
to ongoing Beauty. 

Vibrant Joy Sure by feeling 
upon natural ongrowing 

Boundaries that fall to 
      unrestrained pleasure.

Set Heart's desires
   as bounding focus
       drawn a party to

Gifts rising upon the moment,   
                 Evidently. 

Mimesis


upon a saint’s grave lies a litany of prayer

dissolving into a pound of soil. what scrapes 

from a faithful pilgrim with white bird in his 

 

chest & white beards on his jaws than juicy 

flesh, to show him dead? i’ve walked into 

 

dreams to understand what desertion means: 

perhaps, is it the frozen lake a wild hog melts 

into like a piece of his culture he carries on his 

 

nose? who says we don’t admire God, we do? 

Or perhaps, we admire the flower that breathes 

 

behind His throne, too. you see? Even the angels 

have a garden of light they pluck breath from, 

like snowballs, as snow men. what silences a 

 

graveyard isn’t the presence of dead bodies but 

the absence of humans’ scent. i wonder if tearing 

 

a spiderweb means ruining his home and casting 

its bangles out into the cold, like a refugee, like 

how my mother sheds off the skin of her local 

 

color & nail a husk that reeks of modernism on

her ears. do these children know that local drums

 

have the voices they weave into our ears? & do re 

mi aren’t just notes but a series of hushed voices 

waiting to be touched by hands cold and frozen 

 

interpretation. i don’t remember if my lineage pane-

gyrics starts with my father’s name or his father’s, 

 

or his father’s father yet i do know, this language is 

nested into the water that drizzles beneath my legs. 

iyawo n lota (the bridesmaid is grinding pepper)

 

ileke n saso (the beads on her waist her grumbling)

ileke ma saso mo (beads, grumble no more)

 

je ki iyawo lota (let the bride grind pepper.)

i wonder if this song ever fall from mother’s tongue 

like mockingbirds fall into the palm of their deaths.

Sunday T. Saheed, the author of Rewrite the Stars, is a 17-year-old Nigerian writer, and a Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation member. He was the 1st runner-up for the Nigerian Prize for Teen Authors, 2021. His works have appeared or are forthcoming on Rough Cut Press, Brittle Paper, The Comstock Review, Salamander Ink, Aster Lit, The Lumiere Review, Poemify, Afrocritik, My Woven Poetry, Arts Lounge, SprinNG, Rigorous mag, Kissing Dynamite, Beatnik Cowboy, Trouvaille Review, Augment Review, Spirited Muse Press, Gyroscope, Giallo Lit, Open Skies Quarterly, Kalahari, Cajun Mutt, Open Leaf Press Review, Re Side, de Curated and others. He is also an asst. editor for The Nigeria Review (TNR). He was shortlisted for the Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange, 2018, The New Man Gospel Poetry Contest and BKPW Poetry Contest, 2022. He can be read on linkfly.to/sundaysaheed or reached on Instagram @poetsundaysaheed