Mark Morris Dance Group performing Pepperland. (Credit: Mat Hayward.)
Welcome to October 2018’s issue of Synchronized Chaos! This month’s theme is Aerial Perspective.
It’s a time for reflecting on your life’s journey. This month’s contributors look at life from a distance: processing trauma after the fact, considering entire scenes and landscapes, heading off into flights of fancy, and expressing ideas poetically through metaphorical language.
Mahbub’s poetic speakers, whether thinking while awake at night or while hiking in the woods, have enough mental distance to consider their lives and situations.
Logan Lane celebrates a fun Halloween tradition that began with Linus in the Peanuts comic strip: going to a pumpkin patch and waiting for the Great Pumpkin. Her piece is a genuine, sincere tribute to tradition. In Joan Beebe’s poem, her tears mingle with the dew. She’s part of nature, part of a natural scene that actually brings her great joy.
In her monthly Book Periscope column, Elizabeth Hughes reviews novels and memoirs that dramatize suffering and survival via self knowledge, self respect, heroism, crime-solving or whatever else it takes to triumph. She reviews Crissa Constantine’s Love and Accept Yourself Now, Marshall Ginevan’s The Wrong Side of Honor, Ellen Payne’s Finding Joy, Rob Watson’s Friends List, and Astra Ferro’s Stepping Stones on the Spiritual Path.
Eddie Awusi’s piece shows his social critique of our deceit and caprice by praising naïve people who don’t get caught up in that behavior.
Chimezie Ihekuna’s poetry highlights how living a life of love and truth is a choice, something we must do, but are also empowered to do. Leticia Bradford’s poems also demonstrate the choice to stand in one’s truth, by speaking up for social justice in a nationwide march.
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal contributes flights of fancy inspired by nature, and JD DeHart’s work reflects similar themes of imagination, as modern life is rendered through broader, often ecological, metaphors.
Ahmad Al-Khatat’s poems convey his love and grief through images from the natural, physical world. We see a mix of personal sorrow and more abstract grief about the human condition. In a similar vein, Michael Robinson describes a thunderstorm that mirrors his grief and guilt and then the subsequent calm, his journey to peace.
Ann Christine Tabaka offers up poems of transformation. Feelings of anxiety and powerlessness turn bedside clocks into mockers, heatwaves create mirages, artists turn chalk and ink into visual scenes.
Some writers reflect on their inner feelings and wishes from enough distance to be able to understand themselves and others in the big picture.
In James Diaz’ love poems, his speakers want to understand and heal their partner’s pain and past grief, blame, and loss. They extend this compassion regardless of whether they’re currently together with that person or whether the relationship has ended.
Abigail George memorializes her complex relationship with her emotionally abusive mother, whom she admired on some levels, and her eating disorder.
Chimezie Ihekuna’s latest installment of his drama The Success Story gets to the point in his protagonist’s life when perseverance pays off. J.J. Campbell’s poems this time around concern aspiration, rather than despair. His speakers are looking for greatness and love, seriously and humorously.
Eliza Segiet contributes poems of war, referencing the Holocaust and concentration camps. Segiet alludes to things rather than describing them directly, addressing the daily indignities of oppression in fresh ways: ‘numbers are born’ rather than human beings, inmates lose the ‘ability to lie by choice’ as they must conceal some matters to survive.
Ian Copestick gives us poems of struggle, writing of addiction and pawnshops and his amusement with books that describe an easier, more refined life. He, like Mahbub, reflects on his existence after consideration, although he’s in the midst of the struggle. His work illustrates how poverty is not always composed of moments of desperate action, but also long periods of waiting and contemplation when one is unable to afford to move forward in one’s life.
Thank you for joining in the Synchronized Chaos journey by reading our publication and leaving comments for our contributors. Hopefully this issue will cause you to contemplate and ponder, then pontificate in our direction, about the major themes in your life and our world.
Silhouette
Touch not
the inner recesses of my heart.
They are forbidden to you,
shut and sealed forever.
My black atman backlit by life.
A dark spirit consuming all.
A silhouette of what used to be.
An unfillable hollowness.
Barren promises, once made,
now shattered and broken.
I shall not let anyone know me,
for I am death. My touch is final.
Odious deeds follow in my wake.
Darkness enfolds all who reach out to me.
Remember always, when you look back,
wondering who I was, and who I have become
You did this to me.
Suddenly At Noon
Mahbub
I was lying at noon
Suddenly a sound of cock’s calling voice reached my ear
At the same time a bird, after that a crow and dove
One by one serially raised their voice enough to disturb my sleep
My heart swelled and I felt like love
I went to the past years when I wandered here and there
Like the stars in the sky
And enjoyed the noon in silence with the voices now I here
Then I was outside home, now in the room
Love both too much
Life speaks sometimes for regenerating life with so many
To lead in this charming soothing heavenly harmless world
A source of reaching the perfection of love.
A Realm of life
There is nothing to sob
Nothing to fob
Extremely cold freezing outside inside
People watching missing
Staring at the moon
The stars, the sisters
The heavens, the earthly bodies
Slings to the back door
Here they fight, hide
Cooking and making the roof
The sky is green, the sky is dark
The sky is red, the sky is white
O signal light,
Don’t you see the frantic, catastrophic
Victimized, water-muddy life?
A Moonlit Night
When I am bare of soft touch and speech
Eyes shed
Mind waves
Darkness surrounded
Over my head
A full moon rises in the sky
Feeling too much
You debarred me from your breast
Bathed in the soft light
With the fragrance of the night-blooming jasmine, tube rose
My eyes glares at the queen of the night
Reflects the beauty and scent I enjoyed
My adoration, my love
O my world, you gave me a lot I get and lose
How charming the moonlit night!
Speechless Time
I’m walking in this road so many years
So many years watching the trees, the bushes, the flowers
The sky over my head enlightens
As is in my heart always
I am a man, a learner also reading and writing
Looking at the old and new faces for so many years
So many years I go closing this mouth
I advance; I proceed to have the light
I remorse I am to come back
Without saying any word
In this way time finishes
Man comes, man goes, and man passes away
The sky shines always for the new
See the objects, observe the subjects
Roll on and move on always
They sing in my heart
They cry in my heart
They talk to me every now and then.
Rolling in One
I owe to the parts of my body
I owe to the parts of yours
We meet together, get together, laugh together, cry together
Hang together and what not?
I am in you, you are in me
Always you to me, I to you
Joint by joint, die in ecstasy
Devour me dear; to be in tight more and more, a feeling, softly moving
The whole taste is in my mouth
Like a basket rolling round in one.
Hiking
You made this hiking for me
I went out with my utensils
You know I love the world you dream
You made a field book to reach the goal
This is my compass to fix the direction
Then I take my steps and follow the signs
You draw on the turning point
You are so caring like the silent breeze by the river or lake
You are so soft feeling I never forget
I love to see the birds
I love to eat the grass
I love to run with brass
I love to make my woven
I love to lie in the camp
I love to cook my own
When I reach the goal
I decode the hidden number
You open my door
And find out my own place to live.
Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh
22/01/2018
Please feel welcome to read the four previous installments of The Success Story here, here, here.
and most recently, here.
Chimezie Ihekuna
[Greg begins his journey of writing in the Living Room. All parts of the Living Room are convenient for Greg except there are visitors.]
Greg stays in the house continues for the next three years. He is faced with several rejections. The writing materials he has in his possession tell how many writing conferences he has attended. Jane, currently on a month break after her first semester at the University of Perth, studying General Medicine, is on hand to see through Greg is doing. She is doing a great job encouraging Greg in his pursuit. At times, Jane’s mood appears discouraging to Greg. But Greg’s passion does not give in easily. Though there are certain reasons for the manuscript rejections that may want to frustrate him, Jane never gives up encouraging him. Andrew is busy with studies the Perth Institute of Business Management. Mr Smith just left for work while Mrs Smith is in the kitchen preparing breakfast for Jane and Greg.
Despite having his first and second books, ‘Never Late’ and ‘Dare to get Back on Track’ being rejected over seventy times by publishers and agencies in Perth, Berth and beyond, Greg has written in book form and submitted to different publishers other ten manuscripts, including his just-finished piece, The Success Story.
Crissa Constantine’s Love and Accept Yourself Now
Love and Accept Yourself Now is the memoir of Crissa Constantine’s journey through being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Ms. Constantine takes the reader through the diagnosis, her shock, then her treatment. She also goes into her life and travels through Europe and her friends and people she meets. She includes many suggestions that can work for anyone through stressful times. The book will keep the reader interested and intrigued all the way through, page after page. I highly recommend this book particularly for the invaluable advice she gives. I believe that anyone can learn something from this memoir and apply the advice and suggestions to themselves.
Crissa Constantine’s Love and Accept Yourself Now is available here.
Elizabeth Hughes