for more pills for the pile of pills I have become.
Winners or Losers
Perhaps it’s a roll of the dice
Or a coin flip
Or one of those childhood games
Rock, paper, scissors,
But somehow, we end up winners
And/or losers.
It’s hard to tell where it comes from.
Perhaps it’s written in the stars
Or in the lines crisscrossing our palms
The Ouija Board or tarot cards.
Too often it seems like the luck of the draw
Some of us win, others lose.
I remember being given a book about
Andrew Carnegie to read.
Back then they thought that role models
Like that would move us along
Especially those of us who seemed to be moving
Off in the wrong direction.
Needless to say it didn’t work, but I still have
The book somewhere
Gathering dust in some pile of my lost projects
The millions I was going to make, the books
I was going to write, and all my inventions,
Inventions that never quite worked. All this must have been written in the stars.
Hiding Places
What happens when you lose
Your hiding places
And you must
After all these years
Move things, things you piled up
Put aside for another day
Sure you would need them
Use them
Two of this, two of that
Things you barely remember
Half empty, half full
Hiding away until now
And now you reach in
Reach over
Pull things out and try
To think of what you can do
There’s the rubbish of course
Or other places
New hiding places to set them aside
Again
Prizes you can accumulate against need
Against an uncertain future
Hiding places you won’t have to face
For years or
Maybe you’ll never have to do this
Again.
J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard,Black Coffee Review, Literary Heist, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing andHighland Park Poetry.
That tall order
fell on its face
Drew its Last Breath
And turned over to
Look at the Stars.
In Wonder
I Wonder
Bliss is sometimes
where I fall,
resting with
All the Sky
a part of my
heart.
My Sizeless glance
Wakens the fall
into a natural lift.
Behind the window
this was outside my reach.
So Safe to have
no future
Looking back on what I
had.
fallen without a Past to
drive my rivets
to steel , another
Day ahead
winding Down my
Belief in Self,
Until time loses its Last
Rhyme spent to
impress myself more than others.
Until homeless grows a new
home in a forested walk.
The moon peeks around a
Big tree as the ground is
Softer than I had been used to
in the concrete world.
I'm stopped by a feeling
of exhilaration
accelerations compensating
with tangential swings to keep
us apart in a
Dance, that joins our souls,
to feel good about this.
Good has my Back or
was that you for neither Lack.
Sung becomes singing
The Invisible evaporates
to make a delicious flavor
pleased
I'm fallen to Rise Like
Breathing
♡
by John Edward Culp
C- Caring is a good Character
R-Resilience is the path to actualizing Recognition
I- Information is Important
S-Sense speaks Sanity
T-Truth is Thorough
I-Initiating an idea is an innovative Inevitable
T-Teaching is Technical
I-Introduction makes understandable a subject Interest
N-Nature is the observed Norm
A-Appreciation encourages Accountability
D-Defining your purpose is a life Decision
E- Encouragement is also useful to Empowerment
P-Purpose leads to Profoundness
T-Training people is a part part advancement's Totality
U-Unity is Unbiased
L-Love Subtly resist the power of Lies
A-Availability is the engine room to Advancement.
Foreclosed
Withdrawal shoulders folds along mouths
staged tales fault us. They coffer
day’s issue, the chance randomness
arranged when we leave cautioned
a house our growth each door leads to.
All for themselves now, it’s dread
their kingdom announces
in counted nights yearning
for song under the old roof’s uses
while as out of an encapsuled globe
Xerxes himself would approve of,
we sit new rooms alone and suggested.
-
The enlisting sepulchre
Out of windows
gloomed light insurrects
incompatible suddenness
rotted with years
soundless worlds
pretend to.
It peals and strips
ripe notions to death
where drunk and various
pronouncements
soft eyes took care with
as ears proclaim
the glass between them—
our palms their hands
a mausoleum traces.
Andrew Cyril Macdonald considers the role of intersubjectivity in the poetic encounter with place. He celebrates the confrontations between self and locale and the challenge that occurs in the fomenting of identity and independence. You can find his work in such places as A Long Story Short, Blaze VOX, Cavity Magazine, Down in the Dirt, Mineral Lit Mag, ODD Magazine, Thorn, Green Ink Poetry, and Unique Poetry Journal among others. When not writing he is busy caring for seven rescued cats and teaching a next generation of poets.
First, a few announcements: We’re co-hosting a free Mother’s Day poetry reading through Los Angeles’ Chevalier’s Books on May 3rd at 7pm Pacific time. Come out to support an independent bookstore and hear liz gonzalez, bridgette bianca, Gail Newman and Lynne Thompson.
Also, our longtime contributor, poet and essayist Michael Robinson, who writes about his life as a Black person in the USA, about overcoming a challenging childhood, and healing through connecting to nature and growing older, has self-published a collection of his work, From Chains To Freedom.
For a copy of the book, please contact Michael at mjrobinson@rollins.edu
We will gladly publish a review of From Chains To Freedom if someone would like to submit one to us!
Michael Robinson
May’s theme is Cultivating Thoughts. Cultivating rather than cultivated, in process rather than fully accomplished. Rather than on display in a medieval court or country club, our contributors are at work gardening, tilling the soil of experience.
Actor and humanitarian activist Federico Wardal describes an experience that was on public display, a massive civic parade in Cairo celebrating Egypt’s Pharaonic history.
We hope this issue will shake loose inspiration from the fertile soil of your mind. Thank you very much for reading!
Also, fyi, contributor Daniel Anaya invites interested readers to research and contribute to the world’s literary heritage through Los Angeles’ Sims Library of Poetry. More information below:
The goal of the 44 Campaign is to find 300 giving people who will donate $44 a month for the sustainability and growth of The Sims Library of Poetry. These dollars will help us keep the library open, buy more poetry books, offer events to the community, and hire much needed library staff members from our own community. We currently have two employees working for the library, and we’d love to hire more in order to expand our services and better serve our neighborhood. We’ll also put the money towards expanding our Black and Latinx poetry collection and further renovating the library space to add a reading room and office.
We are calling it the 44 Campaign because in 1731, Benjamin Franklin created the first library in what would soon become the United States called The Library Company of Philadelphia. He did so by asking his friends to donate 44 shillings a month for the creation of this library. He successfully did so, and created the first public library in this country.
The Sims Library of Poetry is the first library of poetry in the city of Los Angeles, and we endeavor to create and support a space dedicated to the reading, writing, and performance of poetry. We are looking for people who believe in the power of libraries, and the significant impact they have on the literacy of their community members.
And we have three more books from Synch Chaos contributors which we would love to see people read and review. Please comment or email us at synchchaos@gmail.com and we’ll send you a copy of any of these titles and publish your review. Please also email if you have a book you’d like to invite people to read and review, especially if you write for Synch Chaos.
Poet and essayist Santiago Burdon’s Stray Dogs and Deuces Wild: Cautionary Tales
Horror Sleaze Trash proudly presents, Judge Santiago Burdon.
“When I first read Burdon’s work I instinctively realised that here was a man who knew the score. That he was not a fake or dilettante. I could feel a bitter, hard-won experience that lay behind every line. These stories are both beautifully written and capture conclusively the humour, excitement, sadness and disappointment of a life lived on the edge. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.” —Ian Copestick”
Burdon presents a highly amusing collection of bohemian stories from the fringe. He finds literary pearls at the bottom of a dark ocean of smut and sin, propelling us into wild and unhinged terrain in a fashion similar to such luminaries as Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, and Denis Johnson. Buy this book today!” —Matt Nagin
Window of Hope is the journey of a woman to human emotions, society and understanding life. Her path takes you to raw emotions, feelings to understand life and its significance through love, passion, sacrifice and contentment. It also talks about the purpose of life, divinity and connection between the soul and the universe.
Mark Wasserman’s Skaboom! An American Ska & Reggae Oral History
Musician, podcaster and author Marc Wasserman’s debut book is an exhaustive, extensive tale of the pioneers of the American Ska and Reggae movement as told by the people who lived it. Three and a half years in the making, the story is lovingly told through hundreds of hours of intense interviews with musicians, artists, managers, club promoters, writers, promoters, and the fans who were there at the dawn of the 80s through the early 90s to witness the birth and spread of a uniquely American version of ska and reggae. From a chance sighting of The Specials on Saturday Night Live in 1980 to the mighty Skavoovee Tour of 1993, Marc collects stories, anecdotes, history, gossip, and (most importantly) the feeling of what it was like to be there as groups of young, ska-crazed acolytes spread their passion and ignited a fiercely loyal dedication to a burgeoning culture. Interviews include members of seminal bands The Untouchables, Bim Skala Bim, The Toasters, The Uptones, The Scofflaws, Let’s Go Bowling, Mephiskapheles, and many more! The book also features photos, an essay from Stephen Shafer, and a forward penned by Horace Panter of The Specials.
A few years ago, maybe five, I was supervising and working with a man who was doing community service for a crime that he says he didn’t commit. We were removing ivy from an area around the tool yard of Tryon State Park south of Portland Oregon USA. Two police cars showed up and informed us that they had a coyote with a broken back that had to be killed because the injury was fatal. It had been hit by a car about a mile away on Terwilliger Boulevard which borders the park. They told us to get behind one of the buildings while the shooting took place. We heard more than one shot, making me wonder about their marksmanship.
Afterwards, I thought that I had not reacted well, but then who expects to have a coyote mercy killing interrupt one’s day? I should have either tried to send the police to contact the park ranger before the shooting or done it myself. No one wants unexplained shooting in a state park. The police had explained beforehand that there was no better place to go in the residential neighborhood surrounding the park. Shooting in someone’s yard would have been worse.
Afterwards I explained what happened to the ranger, who was not pleased. The carcass was refrigerated for the possibility of taxidermy for addition to the park’s beaver and other stuffed animals.
****************************************
Coyote sightings were more common at the time this happened. We saw one a few blocks from our house. A couple crossed our path in Tryon. We later learned that there was a coyote family in the park. Same couple and pup? We were warned not to leave out pet food for fear of feeding coyotes and pets being killed. There was at least one report of a cat killing by a coyote, which was at first feared to be some twisted ritual killing by humans. At the time, some were worried about attacks by coyotes on humans. Nothing like that happened, but we were disconcerted by the fearlessness of the coyotes that we encountered.
Other animal sightings are becoming more common. In the last few years, unverified cougar observations have happened within a few miles of where we live in residential areas and the first killing by a cougar in Oregon was recorded on a hiking trail.
My love had style. Irony. The sketches of subtle pleasure and pain. The resentment that comes with frustration. His motion hollowed out something in me. Perhaps a hollowed out bitterness. There was a yellow river in his hair. In the palms of his hands he held something back from me. The life of his family secrets. A room filled with the music of treasure. Earth becomes with weaving. Earth resonates in that most rare personal space of touch. The wide health of touch that makes you feel extraordinary on days hellbent, and filled with winter.
He was grace. He was mercy. When I was with him, I knew what desire was. There was always going to be the possibility of silence between us in the early hours of the morning. We had nothing to talk about. Nothing to say after the dry thirst that followed the physical act of the sexual transaction. I always felt apologetic for the fatigue I felt. I don’t know what he was thinking. What he felt.
He called me ‘doll face’. Now, I don’t look like a doll. A doll wears a painted expression. Rosy cheeks that blossom. A pained smile. I have put on weight around my middle. I haven’t seen him in the past fifteen years. I don’t know what he’s doing right now. Living. All people live. Others do it extraordinarily. Others extremely ordinary. I know what you’re thinking. Why am I here? Why do I come here week after week to rehash the past, to live there as if I was part wild/part history wilderness/part object/part possession? Is it just a sham, this insane vanity that I have to talk about him repeatedly when I come here, now that I am flying solo single handedly?
Even when I was younger, during adolescence I was always drawn to the older man. The man with the accent who served me in a restaurant. Cultured. Educated. The writer. The teacher. The math teacher. The English-English teacher. The film and television production lecturer. Portuguese, British. The introvert. The man ten years older than I was in the summer I turned the lush age of twenty-two.
I thought I would be safe in the city surrounded by buildings. People who did not care for me, about me. Who would not turn their heads to look at me. To acknowledge me. Yes, I thought I was safe. The same way I feel when I come to see you every month. I feel safe here. I feel I can say anything. Know I will not be judged. I remember the electric blueness of the light. Nature was translated into pollution, climate change, global warming, buildings, banks, delis, foot traffic, cars everywhere you looked, grassy parks in the city where men played chess. Time meaning nothing. Time meaning everything.
The first day we met I looked up. Met his gaze head-on, chin up. He did not look away. I did not look away. A flicker of inquisitive excitement filled the void I felt in my heart. I knew what he was thinking. Passion. This was what I was looking for. A boyfriend. To be part of a couple. I was too young to know the difference. The difference between passion, and betrayal. Love in his hands. When he kissed me hard or soft. Gentle. Going all gentle on me.
I knew what his childhood was like without him telling me anything about it. His relationships with his siblings. Rivalry. Abandonment issues. A father addicted to drugs. Alcoholism on my side of the family. Cancer. It was the tapestry of loss that connected us. Love was the photosynthesis of an awakened loophole into place.
I’m apologetic about love now. It’s walls made of brick history. I’m sorry for loving you. The glare has shifted mysteriously. The hours tick on. The clock inside the glass cabinet minding seeds’ growth. He was magic. It’s been one those days. Long, empty. The day dulcet. Elegiacal. Summer burning the nape of my neck, my shoulders. The back of my arms in my sleeveless dress. Admiration.
That’s when it started. I think I admired him with my perfumed hair. I don’t know what he made of me. I was a girl way back then. New to the city. Johannesburg. I think about him like family. That closeness close up, That quiet intimacy that belonged to men and women who find themselves at a loss for words in museums or art galleries or the theater. You see I don’t need people. I was lost in the city. Dust, flowers of plastic rubbish washed away off slick, cement pavements.
What is the meaning of couples anyway? We weren’t a couple in the truest sense of the way. The sky a polychrome blue. His eyes awash with a blue ink. His self control powerful. The control of a man who knows what he wants. Who also knows that he is going to get what wants come hell or high water. My memory is still raw of that day. The flow of the talk was always intense. Yet we could always sit for hours in each other’s presence and not say anything. Lost in our own world. Our own thoughts.
Yes, let us talk about the men in my life. My brother’s remoteness when his girlfriend lived with us for off and on for a year. She moved in with her color television, double bed, chest of drawers, and oven but after the year she was gone again. After that my brother and I were closer than ever. Confiding in each other over the skinniness of cigarettes and lukewarm coffee.
My wiry father’s absence, and abandonment. The Johannesburg men. Powerful men with hybrids of status, and large sedans . Influential men. Men who had the life experience of women and children in their lives. I want to remember them all, and what they meant to me.
‘You’re beautiful. Good girl.’ He whispered. It was always like that.
