Poetry from J.K. Durick

Posted on 04/01/2020 by Synchronized Chaos

Plague Poem for Day Nine

and I always thought they lived

outside my imagining they did

were actual links to reality

solid shapes coming and going in

patterns they control – but today,

and yesterday now that I think of it,

the street out front has been/is empty

the neighborhood is neighborless –

the cars strangely silent,

the children playing elsewhere, if at all,

joggerless, dogwalkerless, the elderly couple

walk for their health no more, perhaps

there never was a mailman after all —

the whole world has become worldless,

absent, misplaced, unaccounted for

like it never was, never wasn’t, won’t be

— I’d open the blind most mornings

like this and there it was and there

I imagined it would always be.

Plague Poem for Day Thirteen

This morning is so quiet here:

my careful morning routine

seems hollow, empty of all

the meaning I assigned it before,

why even the birds hesitate at

the feeder, sing to themselves

if at all, or just recall the songs

they sang before, before this,

these numbers that numb us –

more than 22,000 dead worldwide,

over a thousand in the U.S. –

the numbers seem mysterious,

distant suggestions floating by

hinting at things beyond this

morning quiet, this isolation

I have made of myself, for myself.

When does it catch up with me?

When does this slight cough connect

me with others, gives me my place

in the count on the morning news?

Plague Poem for Day Fourteen

As faithful as that, they are there each morning, early

as if waiting all night to announce the latest, as if

the virus was theirs to dole out a little at a time, yesterday

the mathematics of it, exponential, then geometric growth,

the effected and the dead, and now today a new symptom

they’ve discovered to haunt us – can I taste, can I smell,

is this headache the usual eyestrain or persistent, just like

the coughing I do in the morning as if I’m a cold engine,

the aging car in the driveway trying to start up again, did

I get too close then touch my face, should I stand back even

further than I have my whole life, this checking of new

symptoms has become a symptom of this new virus that

has us, has us turning to the networks and internet, has us

waking to the “they” that have been waiting all night to make

our day.

Christopher Bernard reviews the Joffrey Ballet’s latest production

Posted on 04/01/2020 by Synchronized Chaos

DANCING IN SPACE

The Joffrey Ballet

Zellerbach Hall

University of California, Berkeley

A review by Christopher Bernard

What is greatness – moral, intellectual, artistic? It has a musty, old-fashioned sound, and is not exactly a fashionable idea just now, with our cultural hysterias against “elitism” of any kind, or perhaps ever was in a democratic culture with its sweet, egalitarian shibboleths. Nevertheless, the idea of greatness, saintliness, genius – of a superiority one cannot ignore but only acknowledge with humility and gratitude and admiration, even, in supreme cases, awe – periodically returns, because, like “truth” or “goodness,” it is a value that, however we may pretend we can do without it, at a certain point we discover that we can’t without collapsing into moral incoherence: nihilism, demoralization and despair.

In my own experience, artistic greatness, in particular, is partly discernible by the fact that the subject is more powerful, more beautiful, more astonishing or impressive than I remember it: that painting, this poem, this dance company, that book is more than I assimilated or knew; in some sense is permanently beyond me. It reminds me of what is often meant by “transcendent experience” – “artistic greatness” seems to mean a direct, sensuous experience of transcendence, piercing through the fog of distracted daily living in concentrated brilliance – and thus is an absolute value and not a category of relative merit.

I was provoked to these thoughts partly by the arrival in Berkeley over a recent weekend (and thanks to Cal Performances) of one of the country’s pre-eminent dance companies, a company that has, in the past, shown itself capable of reaching such heights with sometimes intimidating ease – the Joffrey Ballet, based in Chicago and not nearly a regular enough a visitor to the Bay Area and the finely tuned dance audiences we have here. And the company was indeed better than I remembered.

The Joffrey, originally under Robert Joffrey, then Gerald Arpino, and now Ashley Wheater, has mastered a lithe and muscular style of dancing that was on full display throughout a cast in which all of its member are presented as principals.

The performance I saw opened with Christopher Wheeldon’s “Commedia©” (yes, the copyright symbol is part of the title, as with other dances by Wheeldon; is this meant to prevent other choreographers from every using this title for one of their own works? Will someone now copyright “Swan Lake” or “The Nutcracker”? One can only hope they will resist the temptation), a brittlely elegant dance-class piece mimicking the somewhat matte cheeriness of the Stravinsky score it is set to, the clever, if chilly Pulcinella. Never having warmed to the music, I found it hard to warm to the dance, admiring it too from afar, though the contributions of Yumi Kanazawa and Yuki Iwai were noteworthy, and above all that of Brooke Linford, which was of an altogether memorable lightness and grace.

Stephanie Martinez’s “Bliss!”, which followed, set to Dumbarton Oaks, a richer and more complex piece of Stravinsky’s, was a good deal of a looser, less self-conscious affair, spinning between beefcake machismo and winsome femininity, with strong contributions, again, by Iwai and Kawazawa and by Jonathan Dole, and with an almost hilarious riff on muscularity by a stunning Derrick Agnoletti.

If the performance had ended, or peaked, there, at the first intermission, I would have had an interesting afternoon, with some moments to savor and much to have enjoyed. But I wouldn’t have been prepared for what followed.

What followed? “Beyond the Shore” followed. But wait: this is a work, choreographed by Nicholas Blanc (long a staple at the San Francisco Ballet) and co-commissioned by Cal Performances, and so having a special relationship with the Bay Area. The dance is set to a thundering, highly theatrical score by Mason Bates (perhaps best known here for his work, a few years back, with the San Francisco Symphony), “The B-Sides,” originally commissioned by the Symphony. Blanc describes his dance as about “exploration as a metaphor for human nature,” which is certainly a good thought to hang on to as we are thrust into a series of dance adventures, one for each section of the music, as thrilling, compelling and complex as I hope to find in this or any other dance season, climaxing in a profoundly astonishing and deeply moving pas de deux by Victoria Jaiani and Dylan Guttierez that took me to places dance has not taken me in a very long time indeed, in a section called “Gemini in the Solar Wind.” This was inspired by (and for once, the word is just, for this was in the deepest sense an inspiration) the famous 1960s Gemini spacewalk, recordings of the NASA communications from the walk being cleverly, and oddly movingly, incorporated into the music. The dance was a haunting and vivifying experience, demanding much of the entire company, which met the challenge with limber and dramatic success.

After being vaulted into outer space by “Beyond the Shore,” we put on the razz and came back to earth in the concluding, dance, “The Times Are Racing,” by Justin Peck, a choreographer I have had mixed feelings about till now but this time was completely won over. A sneaker dance if there ever was one, this work starts in a throbbing mob cluster of bodies exploding into a swirling disco-thon to a jammy score from Dan Deacon (moving from ironic, to joyous, to hopeful, to joyous, to ironic, from his hit album America) with an array of young dancers who seemed like they’d jettisoned ten years from the assertive maturity of the Blanc, and dressed up, or down, in sports punk togs from Humberto Leon of Opening Ceremony, splashed with defiance – “Fight,” “Rebel,” “Change,” “Obey,” and of course “Defy” – and knocking them flat with a trip-hop stew of dance styles I soon gave up counting. Starting at a race, it only got faster, wilder, crazier, though whittled down at moments to knock-’em-out solos, especially from Edson Barbosa, that knocked out the audience too, till, speeding by like it would never stop, the dance spun out to succeeding heights of crazy, then spun back in on itself, whooshing back into its cluster like a deblossoming flower before collapsing in total exhaustion.

What a dance. What a performance. What a company.

____

Christopher Bernard is co-editor and poetry editor of the webzine Caveat Lector. His new novel, Meditations on Love and Catastrophe at The Liars’ Café, appeared in January 2020.

Poetry from Michael Robinson

Posted on 04/01/2020 by Synchronized Chaos

Michael Robinson (right) and fellow contributor Joan Beebe

Quiet Reflections

She always slept in the chair,

Between the boxes that were full of clothes:

Children’s clothes that she passed down.

Her with her silver-hair and arthritic fingers,

With the scar on her nose that had been broken,

“I was a Helen,” she declared.

It was hard to imagine this old half negro and Cherokee woman,

Being anything other than a gentle and sensitive redeemer,

Of abandoned children in the inner-city.

3.20.2018

Never Mind

Why should we forget the bodies lying in,

Streets, in the classroom, in the hall.

Blood dripping into the cement.

We should not mind those body-bags lying in the corner

Collecting dust year after year.

Should we mind it after all,

This is Vietnam.

No flags are placed over the bodies,

Eventually, they too will be forgotten.

3.20.2018

Remember Me

Long after my body turns to dust,

After the last spring flower bloom over my grave,

And the peacock returns to the mountains.

The words, my words will still live on someone’s bookshelf.

Words are long forgotten in the world.

Sweet Love

The moon is fading my love,

Ending our moments of joy,

It is the daisy that we hate seeing come to life.

Still, we remember our tender bodies engulfed in ecstasy,

Long before the moon faded over the eastern skies,

Among a host of stars reflecting over the pond.

We too still fade into the sunrise.

3.20.2018

Forget Me Not

Do not forget my love for you,

Those roses made of cardboard,

While the sun turned into dust.

And the moon fell into the ocean,

Forget me not my tender heart.

Remember that blanket that held us together,

And those glasses of wine spilling onto the sheets,

Our lips touching as if they were silk.

Forget me not my tender soul.

3.20.2018

Curse

My black skin with my Cherokee mother’s eyes,

Reflects the sadness of generations of crossing the desert.

Living in contempt of life,

We hold onto the strength of our very souls.

3.20.2018

After the Winter Snow

For Larry and Donna

Bliss surrounds a black boy after the snow has fallen

A sign of the human heart has survived

An understanding of life and suffering

Hunger and thirst and desire and hopes

No longer does regret linger within his soul

It was a winter of solitude setting on the pew

Praying for salvation

While the flakes of snow surrounded the outside

Harsh was the winds and still was the life he had

There’s no need to be afraid he thought:

In time there would be a flower that would bloom inside of him

Today was that day.

3/5/2018

Touch Me

Touch me with your soul,

Like the haze of the mountain air,

That surrounds me,

Touch me when I’m young before the pain of life,

Surrounds me,

Wipe away my tears with your calm fingers,

Hold me close to your center,

Place the flowers in my garden.

8/27/2012 11:10 AM

9/6/2012 9:43 AM

The Return

The ride back to the inner-city was not the same,

It was the peacock’s feathers that allowed me to fly,

Flying above the winter winds,

High enough to reach the heavens in the summer breeze

It was never enough to ride the tide of hope with the winter snows,

With it flakes of violence.

8/27/2012 10:57 AM

A Drop of Love

A drop of love

In the shadows

A sip of warmth

No sexual fantasies

Reality a sip

Of kindness

And shadows turn into woodchucks.

9/6/2012 9:45 AM

Yesterday Hopes

Dreaming of the mountains,

In the middle of the night,

Two empty wooden chairs set in the open air,

Amber winds engulf my wonting spirit,

Peacocks coo,

In the middle of the night.

9/6/2012 9:12 AM

Awaking to it All

The freshness of it all:

Mountain air and flowers in the garden,

Blossoming souls arrive from the city,

Chickens, ducks, peacocks, turkeys, and geese,

Gaze around the coop,

I see life open before my tearful eyes.

9/6/2012 9:27 AM

Never the Same

Never the same after visiting the mountains,

Eating moms farm fresh eggs over easy,

Dad feeding the birds,

And it’s my time to renew the essence of my soul.

9/6/2012 9:36 AM

Play It Cool

When the sun climbs between the mountain’s breast,

Just play it cool,

Like jazz bouncing off the rooftops,

Just play it cool,

Smells of fried chicken and collard greens

Pork chops covered with gravy,

Just simple words and simple actions,

The cool breeze settles on the top of the ocean waves,

So just play it so cool.

9/6/2012 12:00 PM

Roof Tops

It was never easy climbing to the top of the building,

Like crabs pulling each other down,

As they reached the top of the pot,

Clawing their way to the top,

Climbing the stairs each rung brings me closer

To the top of the mountain in the inner-city,

Rooftops close to heavens gates

9/6/2012 12:11 PM

Life is Gentle

For Pat

Life is gentle at night with the wind blowing calmly. When you walk the dogs and rest from a long day’s work. Life is so peaceful knowing you are rested and wait for me to come to you. We hold one another. The years have been so precious to us both. It’s always the calming rains that last forever in our relationship. Life is kind and so is our love for one another. Life continues as does my love for you. Life is gentle as is my love for the life we have built together. You are the heart that I found in the time of my sadness. Life is so gentle now that you have found peace.

I want to Write

I want to write about the stars and the moon. To put down on paper what has never been writing before about love and the destiny of the heart. To write words that climb out of the catacomb of the darkness into the wondering light of the stars.

The Visit

The dining room is nice—

Pink wallpapered walls:

But no music playing

Shiny silverware and steak knives:

Beautiful Chinaware and nice designs

A plastic knife and folk:

White soft walls—

Woody Woodpecker laughing;

And a Styrofoam box with a hotdog

Star Night Star Bright

Shooting stars shooting

Shooting guns shooting

Shooting stars shooting stars

Shooting hopes shooting guns shooting

Bodies shooting stars shooting

There’s hope while stars keep shooting past.

Poetry from Shelby Stephenson

Posted on 04/01/2020 by Synchronized Chaos

FRIENDSHIP THAT DOES NOT WAVER

for Margaret Maron

Sitting in lightsome shine with country daylight,

A comforting, non-judgmental treasure,

I feel Thank-you shaking me: a wish surrounds my mind:

Publish your poems.

Feeling talk-back lips more than any errors,

I float loyalty into your scene with timely

Shouts of mystery not of my own writing.

I feel like a barking Corgi puppy.

Sold on remembrances, mindful, searching,

Doggone it, yes! I want to read your slave-lines

Which assess the family story from its past.

It calls like a crow’s caw,

So that infused by longing to venerate,

Without jokes or importunate flourish,

I ground the pages leading me to your novels.

I find you, therefore, we are.

Lonely now, questing, I see you, school girl, sitting,

Thirteen, fourteen, forward-leaning toward our teacher, Miss Fisher.

Hearing the lesson-plan, you move your full face, shortly,

spelled “silence.”

We are cousins; I see you turn the pages,

Keeping the moment for yourself, or your part of it.

Loveliness, still a burdensome relation,

yields soft turns in your school-desk.

Traveling homeward, you socialize with darkness,

Spread-eagle with those that fly the field-lights,

Prompting a query: Where’s the poem

wanting has touched me.

Fiddledeedee has been scattered on the road in

Your Willow Springs: it salutes your writing,

Yielding to readers rushing to read our welcoming laughter.

I leave you with good intentions.

Just let days not tangle; hand the friend the poems,

Row along willows what your words you feel are,

Calling with no put off: how can a friend captain

Mortality’s Protocol?

Time’s a sea-crawl, whereat I am dreaming

I should be still and leave your many poems.

Seeing my work you splurge at sharing

close as my name.

Query from Willow showers in the spaces,

Townships, alone, where once we wrote our longings:

Evil and good have set us onto letters

whose shapes confab.

Essay from Chimezie Ihekuna

Posted on 04/01/2020 by Synchronized Chaos

Chimezie Ihekuna (Mr. Ben) — Chimezie Ihekuna

This is the last of an eleven-segment relationship advice column from Nigerian author and Christian motivational speaker Chimezie Ihekuna, where he identifies and debunks certain beliefs he disagrees with on the topics of relationships, marriage and sexuality.

Deception 11

Things will change for the better if only I’m married

If you are an advocate of this statement, what makes you think so? What makes you think your present challenges can only be tackled if you identify yourself as being married? What makes you think or gives you the hope that marriage will make things better without your handling them now? Do you know marriage has its challenges? In the first place, what is your view point about marriage? Can you withstand the difficulties associated with marriage?

It can be inferred that people (especially women) who believe in the efficacy of this marriage come from dysfunctional homes. Due to the nature of upbringing, they console or assure themselves the improvement of their situation for good (and possibly, better) by getting married. They hope their situation will greatly improve if they get married.

Sadly, they fail to really come to terms with the fact that marriage takes preparation and possess immense challenges. Their inability to seriously tackle or truncate certain imbalance associated with their upbringing and relationships may cost them irrevocable setbacks in their approach to pressing marital issues. Simply put, their viewpoints are myopic because the presence of prevailing situations encountered has overwhelmed them to believing that marriage is the only way out.

Marriage can be compared to institution of higher learning for an individual to gain admission into citadel of higher learning, it is compulsory to tender the basic qualifications obtained in the high/secondary schools she attended including the institution’s entry (certificate) result, Also, it Is anticipated, her maturity. At high/secondary school level, certain actions can be tolerated owing to naivety of students. On the other hand, it is a different ball game at tertiary level as the crux; maturity will be a criterion or yardstick for a student’s action. In other words, it is believed that the tertiary institution is a citadel of higher learning where students ought to ‘give up’ their childish tendencies and fully embrace maturity (responsibility). This analogy reflects itself as the institution marriage. Relationships individual involve (themselves in) ought to be a preparatory ground for marriage, just as the high school is a step or preparatory academic phase for a higher citadel of learning. Precisely, it is an institution which ought to be prepared for; in terms of knowing its basics, handling pertinent issues which are not associated with it just like where high or secondary school leavers must have obtained their High school or secondary school certificate and maturity in the light of empowerment towards handling issue that have do with marriage (akin to ability to meet up with pressing demands of higher learning institutes)

It is disheartening, most people whose belief is centered on this mirage do not realistically see to certain asserted facts. Consequently, they become unfit to take care of general home affairs after getting married-unfit wives and husbands. You can imagine a family raised by incomplete parents (unfit husband and wife) and no eventual home.

This story depicts the reality of taking into “Things will change for the better only if I’m married” assertion.

Stacy was born into a family of a well –to-do background. Being the first in a family of four (Later, her younger sister died some years later after she was born), special treatments were given to her especially by her father. She had two younger brothers. Things seemed rosy until her parents started living a cat and dog lifestyle due to impending challenges the family faced at that time. Subsequently, Stacy’s mother decided what she saw as normal –leaving her husband with the children. Although her father played a dual responsibility; generally seeing to the finances of his household and physical and mental wellbeing of his children, he was faced with an uphill task of balancing home affairs and his busy working schedule. As a result, he felt the need of having mistress (who later became his second wife). She bore him only a child but was busy maltreating Stacy and her younger siblings. Personally, you can imagine a girl not growing under the “watchful eyes “of her mother. Stacy had to endure the storms of life and painstaking to cater for the needs of her younger ones. Her predicament was so unbearable that she decided to take on menial jobs to make ends meet.

As Stacy grew up under inauspicious conditions to an adult, though very beautiful and one most sought after ladies in her locality, she, without the proper guidance of a good counselor and her mother, felt that marriage would be the way out of her pathetic state. Fortunately for her, she agreed to a marriage proposal made by a dashing you gentleman, Anthony, on the condition that he must take care of her younger ones. What a naivety- influenced decision! She eventually got married to him without proper mastery of what it means to stay married and of what the true foundation of marriage is. Now, she is married for nearly thirty years but living under the shadow of regrets.

Conclusion

To experience an enduring a blissful and beneficial relationship with your spouse, whether married or not, don’t you think you can safeguard yourself from the servitude of the identified blindfolds known as deceptions? Now, you’ve read them, the rest is up to you!

Poetry from Mahbub

Posted on 04/01/2020 by Synchronized Chaos

Tiredness

My sorrows never stopped
I always drink water of sorrows
In the open sky
Here the world always shrinks into
Here the people are walking by
We care for what we don’t
We love for what we actually not
But we are to stay, we are to stand
Feed our children and our beloved
So I have a duty
Regular presence of my physic
You find me so tired
Though I should take preparation for the next.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
24/05/2019

It resonates, resonates

It resonates, resonates
The whispering, murmuring sound of the rivers, the oceans
It sparkles all around the waves to the sky where it mixes
I stumble; fumble but stride to the sand
Try my heart and soul without any fear or joy
The waters roaring, the air so hissing
Throughout this atmosphere I started my journey
Knowing that never to find any destination to steer
I lost in the love boat of you
Here nobody you can see but lots of sign
The love nights filled with so much heavenly joy
Every waves of the waters today resonates the sound ‘LOVE’
Though never to get in touch
It’s more than that.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
24/06/2019

A Death Scene of the Crow

Suddenly the crow heading down into the spokes

Just opening my eyes to the highway

Swings, rolling into wheel

The boy paddling the bi-cycle

Instantly got down and brought the bird back on the ground

Watching left and right

I rushed to the spot

The crow was dying jumping over and down

Just like the cocks and hens or other birds are done for cooking

It flies here and there and over trees after trees

And comes down to the wastes they like to eat

A cleaner or sweeper of our towns or cities

But not to the spoke the head turns into

It is Death- not permits the air to survive.

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
24/06/2019

The Love Sight

The farmers cultivate the land

Grow crops and feed the people all over the world

The cultivation of the womb just like that

Where the adults perform the best as lovers

Builders of nation, of civilization

We see the blood shedding for the new

The water pouring for the new

You can say ‘yes’ or ‘not’

Dwindling on the earth

The sons and daughters

The fathers and mothers

Always seekers –one from the others

Every moment we see the morning dew

On every blade of the grass

How time does fly!

Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
24/06/2019

We Have a Faith

Today’s burning sun calms down tomorrow