Everything
Too many
people
pretending and accepting
what the world has become….
When will we open our eyes
and our hearts
and change everything?
Arrival
You speak
and I listen,
believing
with a flow of tears.
This world temporary,
but You
are forever
helping us
into the Arrival.
Congratulations to contributor Jacques Fleury, who was chosen among 4,000 competitors from 83 countries as a recipient of the 2026 International Naji Naaman Literary Prize for Creativity!
Also, Synchronized Chaos contributor Marisa LaPorte has a new book out, which includes a few poems Synchronized Chaos published.
Dead Grandmas Are Universal by Marisa LaPorte is a raw, intimate poetry collection that traces the emotional inheritance of trauma, grief, queerness, mental illness, and survival through the lens of womanhood. Across deeply confessional free verse poems, the author explores complicated legacies passed down through generations of women: addiction, abuse, self-destruction, resilience, and the desperate longing to be loved without disappearing in the process. If you’re interested in reading and reviewing the book, please let us know.
It’s been said that life isn’t so much about finding oneself as it is creating oneself. In this issue, contributors suggest that statement could also prove true about meaning in life, that it’s something we can build by ourselves or together over time.
Several contributors begin by confronting life’s darker realities. J.J. Campbell’s To Live Your Dreams, as reviewed by Cristina Deptula, expresses a deep desire for human connection and understanding despite loneliness, trauma, and despair. J.J. Campbell’s poetry later in this issue further develops the theme of alienation, including from one’s own aging, weakening body. George Gad Economou reflects on the allure and consequences of excessive drinking, reflecting on the bittersweet memories that remain long after moments of indulgence have passed. Nad Raf addresses loss, betrayal, and personal recovery, finding herself among the neglected and forgotten, while Elaine Murray finds solace in grief through her memories of love. Hussein Nasr Jabr looks at loss and others’ struggles with tenderness, while Stephen Jarrell Williams and Marisa LaPorte speak to relationships lost and those that drift apart. These works suggest that meaning often emerges through the honest confrontation of suffering.
Themes of power and vulnerability also appear throughout the issue. Alan Catlin creates a sense of dislocation in his work that demonstrates the psychological brutality of government authority and institutional control, while Mykyta Ryzhykh demonstrates the powerlessness of individuals confronting systemic violence. Mickey Corrigan excoriates those who believe their wealth and power insulate them from accountability. Anonymous issues a revolutionary declaration against Elon Musk. Fhen M.’s criticism of Bagulaya’s Marxist analysis of contemporary Waray Filipino poetry reminds us that our lives and imaginations exist on multiple aesthetic levels and cannot be reduced just to socioeconomics. Together, these works remind readers that artistic expression remains a powerful means of resistance and reflection.
At the same time, many contributors celebrate the everyday experiences that connect people to one another. Abbie Huh captures summer moments filled with warmth, welcome, and abundance. A. Iwasa’s review of Ivan Salinas’ Dealer highlights the ordinary beauty of these slices of life amongst classic cars. Mark Young finds a mixture of wry humor and joy in ordinary encounters and systems of social etiquette. Dianne Reeves Angel transforms interactions among women into a poetic song and dance, while Christina Chin’s illustrated haiga commemorates a simple yet meaningful exchange of craft. Soumen Roy and Mesfakus Salahin speak elegantly of love and connection as Lan Xin urges people searching for true love to continue to be kind and true to themselves. Bill Tope’s inclusive prom story similarly celebrates community and acceptance. Jacques Fleury’s poem speaks to getting out of one’s personal comfort zone to build bridges across social barriers. Jernail S. Anand celebrates the role many women have historically played holding families and communities together and promoting peace, as Danijela Ćuk urges the world to pursue peace and compassion. Naeem Aziz celebrates an act of heroic rescue where a man showed up for a young girl in need. Qahramonova Zahro Qahramonovna pays poetic tribute to her family and her heritage. Mahbub Alam honors a long-term loving marriage as Graciela Noemi Villaverde finds exquisite and delicate beauty in a newer relationship and Mirta Liliana Ramirez reflects on short, but meaningful loves. These works reveal the significance hidden within ordinary encounters and shared experiences.
Art itself becomes a source of connection and renewal throughout the collection. Joseph Ogbonna reimagines Leonardo’s Mona Lisa as a confident and engaging presence, bridging centuries of artistic admiration. Priyanka Neogi celebrates Charlie Chaplin’s artistry. Mohammed Al Gaddafi Masoud’s poetry celebrates creativity, joy, and human fellowship. Sayani Mukherjee reflects on the sacrifices involved with and the transcendent possibilities of artistic creation, acknowledging both beauty and impermanence. Noah Berlatsky humorously probes the limits of human logic and classification, while Thi Lan Anh Tran and Musharraf Hussa evoke elusive presences that linger at the edge of human consciousness. Together, these works demonstrate art’s ability to deepen awareness and foster connection across time and experience.
Nature serves as another important source of meaning. Duane Vorhees contemplates the cyclical patterns that unite human life with the natural world. Ananya S. Guha explores memory, imagination, and time through encounters with nature, while Nurbek Norchayev reflects on sorrow, happiness, and life’s purpose amid beautiful landscapes. Emmanuel Taiwo draws comfort from nature’s cycles of birth, life, and death, and Brian Barbeito pursues spiritual insight through both wilderness contemplation and the quiet observations of a summer poolside scene. Eva Lianou Petropoulou’s works celebrate peace, sunshine, childhood, love, and hope. Christina Chin’s haiku and art showcase dragon boat racing. Collectively, these contributions suggest that nature offers both perspective and renewal, helping individuals understand their place within larger cycles of existence.
Many writers also emphasize the importance of preserving and transmitting knowledge. Ismatova Dilnura highlights the role of books in children’s education, while Sharifov Sirojiddin Shavkatovich examines the history and significance of calculus as a cornerstone of human understanding. Akbarova Farangiz explores the use of folk proverbs as a literary device in Abdulla Qodiriy’s novel O‘tkan Kunlar (Bygone Days). Jasmina Qahramonjonova honors the dedication and achievement of athletes whose discipline inspires others. Timothee Bordenave seeks a rational and ethical framework for living that promotes both personal fulfillment and social well-being. Karimova Navbaxar Mahmudjanovna honors the importance and dignity of the teaching profession. These works underscore humanity’s ongoing effort to learn, grow, and pass wisdom from one generation to the next.
The collection further broadens its perspective by addressing collective responsibility and hope for the future. Dilnoza Jabborova’s examination of pollution in the Aral Sea serves as both a warning and a testament to the possibility of environmental restoration. Oʻktamova Sabrina Mahmud qizi urges mulching and natural soil enhancement to improve agricultural fertility. Shonazarova Parizod recognizes the often-unseen labor of volunteers whose efforts sustain communities. Maki Starfield proposes that humanity’s current crises may be addressed through a synthesis of scientific knowledge, spiritual understanding, and ancient wisdom. These contributions encourage readers to view personal meaning as inseparable from the well-being of society and the planet.
Taken together, these works reveal that our lives do not have to be meaningless. Meaning can emerge through memory and imagination, struggle and perseverance, learning and creativity, nature and community. Whether confronting loss, celebrating beauty, questioning authority, preserving knowledge, or imagining a better future, each contributor illuminates a different aspect of humanity’s ongoing search for connection, purpose, and renewal. The result is a rich tapestry of voices that affirms both the complexity of human experience and the enduring hope that gives it meaning.
Wheat of Words
Rain draws up
houses in the clouds,
chairs made of light.
Angels plow the night
of happiness.
They plant songs in
the brass threshing-floors,
beating the wheat of words.
On the House’s Hip
We write on the house’s hip:
We are here.
We chew on the street’s loneliness
’til the alley turns
into a moon on the soul’s shoulder.
The wind’s wound…
you tell it like a secret.
Lightning drinks its glass,
and we drink down the question.
Sparrows soften the bitter cold.
What’s the point of staying…?
The olive tree left it to the windows
to tell what’s left
of the shouting inside us,
tossing it in the grinder.
Tightness
No sound strips me bare
but time’s handkerchiefs
wiping themselves,
and ruin is born
blooming tight little dreams.
Mohammed Al Gaddafi Masoud was born in 1978 in Gharyan, Libya, holds a theater diploma from Tripoli’s Jamal Al-Din Al-Miladi Institute (2000) and is the author of several collections, including lyrical poetry (We Woke Up to Joy, 2006) and journalistic dialogues (My Dialogues with Them, 2008). Widely published across the Arab world, his work has been translated into numerous languages—English, Chinese, Spanish, Polish, French, Italian, and Albanian—and appeared in international print and online journals from Spain to Argentina. In 2024, he was selected as one of 72 global poets for an Italian-language anthology curated by Angela Costa, reflecting his broadening transnational literary presence.
_____________________________________________________
Translation Dr. Salwa Goda
J.J. Campbell’s new collection To Live Your Dreams is a collection of raw, emotional, and often dark expressions of life, love, loneliness, and despair.
His speaker often feels disconnected and isolated, describing themselves as “broken” and struggling with feelings of loneliness. Many poems express a sense of disappointment and disillusionment with life, love, and relationships, which are often fleeting and precarious. In “the twilight,” “love is like juggling hand grenades…you hope the people are entertained and the pin never comes out.”
The speaker frequently uses self-deprecating humor and acknowledges their own flaws and shortcomings. The lack of capitals and punctuation in the poems, and the non-rhyming, understated, free-verse narrative help to convey the speaker’s raw pain and humility. They also frequently use dark humor and irony to cope with emotions and experiences, including trauma and abuse they have survived. In an attempt to snatch a smidgen of hope from a barren life, he fantasizes about “being shot while getting rejection letters in the mail,” and in “count the seconds,” he recollects “explaining being molested again/to a group of people who never wanted the truth.” Finally, in a moment perhaps familiar to many writers who mine the well of their own sufferings, he reflects, “she liked my poetry/which is a sign something was up.”
Despite the speaker’s struggles, they often express a deep and touching desire for human connection and understanding. In “the one,” he reflects on a tenuous long-distance romance, suggesting with a tinge of tragicomic hope that “maybe this silly thing called love/will take care of everything.” Hope can spring eternal in a person’s heart, and we hope that he finds his way to peace and connection, one way or another. The collection’s title itself can be taken in multiple ways: while he has not yet “lived his dreams,” the fact that he still has dreams, that he can still hope despite his past and present struggles, becomes poignant and beautiful in itself.
Community and love are two-way streets, though, and perhaps reaching out to others who are struggling in similar ways could help him to find purpose and friendship. It’s clear that he’s not the only one in his situation, as he mentions support groups, counseling, and encounters with others on dating sites who seem equally broken and lonely.
In to live your dreams, J.J. Campbell offers a glimpse into his speaker’s complex and often troubled inner world. Overall, these poems convey a sense of raw emotion, vulnerability, and introspection.
J.J. Campbell’s to live your dreams is available from Whiskey City Press here.
Back When
Back when
no fear of dying
in our teenage escapades
reading your thoughts
I loved you
innocence soft
before Viet Nam
twisted my existence
so many friends
tear collections
head drooping
into yesterday smiles
writing poems
tattoos of today
touch of you
still stroking my heart.
A Lonely Place
In the middle of night
walls trying to contain my thoughts
thinking of you
out there years ago
we were single and together
pleasure moments
lasting
dreams
never believing
someday we’d wake-up apart.
The poet
The evening melts into oblivion
I saw a soul perched on my skin
Beaded and bubbled in love’s warfare
The greenery is dropped in palettes
Hues of red and crimson joy
The fairies sung in unison
A drama written upon the land of sadness
The holy grail is beamoned with sacrifice
A numberless winged dews of poetry
It has the power to heal any broken soul
The sad demise of mountains high
A melodic death happens afar
The poet is now crowned with victory
Art as it is upon God’s hands.
FOREWORD FOR THE POEM “TƠ VƯƠNG ÁO DÀI”
There are presences that pass through one’s life without leaving footprints, yet they leave behind deep vibrations within the soul. No noise, no name is called—only a fleeting touch upon a fragile moment of the heart—and then they remain, like a fragrance that never fades from memory.
“Tơ Vương Áo Dài” was born from such moments. In it, the áo dài is not merely a symbol of gentle beauty, but a delicate streak of light within the rushing flow of life. A passing figure, as light as the wind, yet enough to stir an entire stillness within the heart.
The poem does not tell a complete story, but instead preserves scattered fragments of emotion—of gazes, of distance, of unspoken feelings that have already turned into lingering attachment before ever being named. Between reality and dream, between closeness and distance, one sometimes can only stand still, quietly watching a figure dissolve into the mist of time.
If poetry is the place where the unholdable is preserved, then “Tơ Vương Áo Dài” is a gentle attempt to hold onto a beautiful moment—even if only in imagination, even if only within memory.
And perhaps, it is precisely this incompleteness that creates the most enduring beauty of human emotion: beautiful because it was once felt, and forever lingering because it once touched the heart.
ENTANGLED IN AO DAI
Thi Lan Anh Tran (Aschaffenburg, Germany) & Musharraf Hussain (Assam, India)
© Copyright by Thi Lan Anh Tran & Musharraf Hussain
Ao Dai drifts softly through the lane,
and leaves my soul in twilight rain.
Your eyes—like evening light so clear,
just touch my heart and linger here.
The wind plays gently with your hair,
like drifting clouds suspended there.
You smile—an open sky so wide,
and scatter stars deep in my mind.
I am a leaf adrift in time,
carried by winds of fleeting rhyme.
I wish to follow, soft and still,
yet stand unmoving by your will.
Perhaps our fate is silent, small,
or love blooms in a misted call.
I stand alone, yet not alone,
your voice still calls me like a tone.
If one day you should pass my way,
please let me call your name that day.
Even within a dream’s soft gleam,
just let me hold your fading dream.
I gather all my broken vows,
and stitch them where the memory flows.
Your Ao Dai still moves like grace—
while I am lost in endless space…
TƠ VƯƠNG ÁO DÀI
Thị Lan Anh Tran (Aschaffenburg, Germany) & Musharraf Hussain (Assam, India)
© Bản quyền thuộc về Thị Lan Anh Tran & Musharraf Hussain
Áo dài ai nhẹ qua đường
Để hồn tôi lạc giữa sương khói chiều
Mắt em như ánh ban chiều
Chạm vào một thoáng đã nhiều vấn vương
Gió nghiêng sợi tóc ven đường
Ngỡ như mây trắng nửa vương nửa rời
Em cười nghiêng cả bầu trời
Rơi trong mắt biếc rối bời tim tôi
Tôi như chiếc lá giữa đời
Theo cơn gió nhẹ rã rời tháng năm
Muốn theo em suốt âm thầm
Mà chân đứng lại trong tầm mắt em
Phải chăng duyên khẽ lặng im
Hay tình chỉ nở tim mền khói mơ
Để tôi đứng mãi ngẩn ngơ
Nghe tim gõ nhịp dại khờ gọi em
Nếu mai em bước qua thềm
Xin cho tôi gọi tên em một lần
Dẫu là trong giấc phù vân
Cũng xin giữ lại bóng thân em về
Để tôi gom cả lời thề
Khâu vào nỗi nhớ bốn bề mênh mang
Áo dài em vẫn dịu dàng
Còn tôi mắc lại giữa ngàn tơ vương…
LỜI TỰA CHO BÀI THƠ “TƠ VƯƠNG ÁO DÀI”
Có những hiện diện đi ngang qua đời người mà không để lại dấu chân, nhưng lại lưu lại những rung động sâu xa trong tâm hồn. Không ồn ào, không một lời gọi tên — chỉ là một thoáng chạm khẽ vào khoảnh khắc mong manh của trái tim — rồi từ đó ở lại, như một hương thơm không bao giờ phai trong ký ức.
“Tơ Vương Áo Dài” được sinh ra từ những khoảnh khắc như thế. Trong bài thơ, tà áo dài không chỉ là biểu tượng của vẻ đẹp dịu dàng, mà còn là một vệt sáng mong manh giữa dòng đời hối hả. Một bóng hình thoáng qua, nhẹ như gió, nhưng đủ làm lay động cả một khoảng lặng trong tim.
Bài thơ không kể một câu chuyện trọn vẹn, mà lưu giữ những mảnh cảm xúc rời rạc — của ánh nhìn, của khoảng cách, của những điều chưa từng được thổ lộ nhưng đã kịp hóa thành nỗi vương vấn. Giữa thực và mộng, giữa gần và xa, có khi con người chỉ biết đứng lặng, lặng lẽ nhìn một bóng hình tan dần vào màn sương của thời gian.
Nếu thơ ca là nơi lưu giữ những điều không thể nắm giữ, thì “Tơ Vương Áo Dài” là một nỗ lực dịu dàng để níu lại một khoảnh khắc đẹp — dù chỉ trong tưởng tượng, dù chỉ còn trong ký ức.
Và có lẽ, chính sự dang dở ấy lại tạo nên vẻ đẹp bền lâu nhất của cảm xúc con người: đẹp vì đã từng được cảm nhận, và mãi còn vương vấn vì đã từng chạm đến trái tim.