BETRAYALS OF HATRED QUEUE IN PATH OF LOVE

I met her on resuming junior secondary school.

On Monday, we all resumed school and everyone promised to study well. On that week, we all wrote our first test which was to test the seriousness of a student when they have gone away for holidays.
Like water in a basket, the first, second, and third weeks came and passed. On the fourth week, a new student was enrolled in our class, a female student.

We have a classmate called Ummul Khayr who acted as if she knew the girl before. They were classmates in the formal school she attended.

On Tuesday morning, the new student introduced herself to the whole class. She was friendly but a bit proud.

Fatima was the kind that felt proud of herself in the classroom which I hated. So I spoke to her rudely about her arrogance but it led to a serious odium between me and her in the classroom.
Fatima and I never spoke to each other in a good manner but we were always being rude to each other.
We always had to fight in the classroom every single day since the day we had a misunderstanding with each other.

The first term went by without counseling with each other but we would always find new abusive words to stab each other with.
The second term came again and went by but still battling also the third term.
We were given a holiday for the end of the school year which makes me think about the issues.
I asked myself:
Should I stop this rubbish fight? or what will I do?

After the resumption of SS2, I tried my best possible ways to dodge the girl problem but all went in vain till the day I slapped her but still regretted my actions.

The first term passed by and we resumed as “not friends not enemies” and I really enjoyed myself like that.
The second term was so special to me because I met the love of my life.
In the middle of second term, the school embarked on a excursion to “BILKI BAB”. On that day, I just don’t believe myself when I realized that “NURAINI AND FATIMA” were chatting and smiling with each other.

I have a classmate called Salihu who saw us talking to each other. He announced it to the whole class member and wrote on a paper that “Nuraini and Fatima have started playing love”. some of my friends told me that is there a wish and Salihu said he had a dream about it before.

On our way back to school after the excursion, the bus was full with the story of the new Romeo and Juliet.
We continue like that until the speech and prize giving day of my school. The school gave one month holiday that distracted our relationship. So as a newbie poet I wrote a poem and placed it on my cupboard.

Fatimah
You are like a weapon that budged the gap between me and odium
You are the bridge that bridges my ribs to build a household of love in my heart
You are halal theft who took my heart without permission
You are a kind kidnapper that kidnapped my feelings and emotions
You curtained my heart so that nobody has access to it again
Let me tell you, Fatimah
My heart is your palace
Where you can do anything you like inside, Twerk yourself as fun
My heart is a palace that the kingdom In it never ends but you are only the queen forever.

We resumed SS3 in which I became shy of her. So I wanted her to first speak to me but no response.

NOW
I bought a chocolate and wrapped it in a lovers’ package gift container, I dressed up in a very ironed suit and walked to the front of the classroom. I brought out the gift and started writing with three colors of markers on the whiteboard.

A hyperstructure of surreal evocation:
a review of Kaos Karma by Rus Khomutoff

Kaos Karma, the latest chapbook release from Rus Khomutoff, has remarkable weight for such a slim volume. Coming in at a mere nine pages, the book, were it not a digital only release, would feel delicate in the hand, something only barely able to delay its inevitable collapse. This feeling is soon swept away once you pull back its figurative cover and begin to read. What is found within is a poetry that is anything but delicate. It is a poetry wrought with energy and power. A poetry that does not relent and does not care for the easily overwhelmed senses. Perhaps it is a blessing that it is so short.

Kaos Karma does not bring the reader gently into its message. From the opening page, read as a solid block of full caps text, the reader is almost overwhelmed by the concrete, almost monolithic structure of the work. Its appearance seems almost intended to intimidate the reader. There are no soft hands to guide you as you read on, you are hit again and again by these unrelenting blocks of language. These almost endless sentences are like surreal billboards and indeed I would very much like to see some of this work as billboards. A wakeup from the endless detritus of the advertising world. A hyperstructure of surreal evocation. 

The language of the book carries a heavy taste of surrealism, those dreamlike and visionary sentences that burn and strike the mind. ‘HEAR THE SECRET SUN SPEAK BLOOD LABYRINTH BLOOD FREED FROM THE WEIGHT OF ALL TIME ALL THE DARK REBIRTHS ARE MINE’ is but one example. Though this heavy language is broken up at times with a kind of new-age esotericism, ‘NOSTALGIA IS A DRUG’, ‘BE ALL THINGS IN ALL TIME’, the self-help for the burnt out searchers on the edge of an insane whirling mountain. Guidance from Khomutoff to where? And when? Who knows? This combination of the abstract and concrete in the language give the effect of the reader being brought back into a recognisable and understandable world, though only for a moment. Once the surreal language reengages the reader is sent back off into the vortices of mental propulsion.

And there is a purpose here, though it is obscure. The writing is taking you somewhere, like a guidebook, like the great Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan book of the dead. ‘ALAS THE CHILD WHO LIVES IN A MYTHICAL, PARADISICAL TIME RENEWING THE WORLD.’ But unlike that holy ancient text which reaches in to take the reader through the labyrinth of illusion through to a clarity of consciousness, through to the other side, Kaos Karma does not state which of its threads is illusion and which reality. Perhaps there is neither in Khomutoff’s cosmology, or perhaps both in a swirling miasma of meaning and nonsense. It is up to the reader to decide.

While only a brief taste, it is a taste so full and potent the reader will find themselves at the other end of Kaos Karma with the heady feeling of both clarity and confusion. This is an artwork both highly idiosyncratic and universal all at once. I have spoken often of the idea of the third text, a text that exists only through the combination of the mind of the reader and the work they are reading. A text that exists entirely unique and which is conjured by strange and powerful, but obscure language. Kaos Karma is such a work. The reader is all the better for having experienced it.    

Nathan Anderson is a poet from Mongarlowe, Australia. He is the author of numerous books and has had work appear widely both online and in print. He is a member of the C22 experimental writing collective. You can find him at nathanandersonwriting.home.blog or on Twitter/X/Bluesky @NJApoetry.     

“You were born from the Rays of God’s Majesty when the stars were in their perfect place.”

                                                                                                 ~RUMI

God I return to you in the lights of a star…shining bright with the light of love. Love from the beginning I return without darkness for I have seen the wonders of my soul. The hidden treasure of your spark within me. The world has not covered my soul in sin or emptiness leaving me without you in my heart. Your truth that speaks in me in the wee hours of the morning as the world sleeps forever more. I find my soul among the stars circling the outer rim of Saturn’s moon. I’m that star to the right of your heart. O God never to become dim for you created me to shine forever more.

“When you lose all sense of self the bonds of a thousand chains will vanish…”                                                                                                        ~RUMI

Where can I go O God where you do not exist? I have not traveled far enough to not feel your Holy presence within my soul. Delightful thoughts about the beginning of time together. Reaching for the clouds, as I lay in the fields of joy wishing to see the skies once more. Before the clouds cover the moon and the sun fades into the distinct mountains of Vermont. Once we had a conversation, as I sat on the porch wondering about my life. It was a conversation about my beginning without end. My heart listened intently as you spoke of salvation and redemption. Christ the messiah came alive within me. No more doubt nor sin to confuse my aching soul. For I had received the communion of life with these three words: You are forgiven.

Green Hair

    Have you ever felt like killing someone? I think most have, maybe four or five times in a lifetime. My number’s higher, maybe twelve times a year. I don’t consider myself a sociopath or psychopath. I don’t know the difference. Is there a difference?

     In 2005 I was on an elevator in the Prudential Building, glad to be out of the cold of late February, on my way up to the thirty-seventh floor. The elevator was empty except fore me. It glided silently up at a good clip. I was thinking about how much it would cost to heat this entire building in one Chicago day. Maybe more than I made in one year. The elevator stopped on the fifth floor and a young man got on board. He was skinny, dressed all in black, and his hair was dyed green.

     The young man rode the elevator to the seventh floor. When we got there he stepped half way out, leaned his left arm on the door and gave me a big smile. Then he hit all the buttons on the elevator going up to the top by running his fingers across the panel. That meant the elevator doors would open and shut on every floor till I got to the thirty-seventh.     

      Anger flared through every muscle of my body. I rose up on my toes and slapped the now closed door with open palms. The anger management class had not prepared me for such a sudden show of hostility from a young stranger. When it came to the young, my anger made few distinctions. They seemed egotistical and took their comfortable world for granted. They had no respect for those who had sacrificed to serve their country.

     I felt in my left inside suit pocket for the piano wire I’d had since my tour in the Vietnam in 1970. I kept it because Chicago is no longer a safe city. Even in the loop area, this close to Lake Michigan, a person might attempt a robbery. Now I felt immediately that I was justified in killing that smiling green gutter snake.

     My plan was to come up behind the guy and strangle him with the wire quietly and quickly. Before that green dude got off the elevator, he was probably seeing as fat and out of shape. No threat to him. Just an old man.

      I got off two floors above where green dude got off on the nineteenth floor, took different elevator down to his floor. I walked all the quiet hallways but I could not find him.  I opened all the doors on the floor and looked in. Mostly they were law offices. No sign of green hair.

      How can anybody be so stupid as to dye their hair green? Must be a lonely, attention-seeking dude. A narcissist. Pathetic. No women will ever love him. Leave green to the trees and plants.

     I forgot my job interview on the 37^th floor and went back down to the lobby to wait for the green guy. His hair was pasty like a green avocado, only shiny. I waited an hour, trying to look busy on my cell phone, but he never came down. Could the bozo actually have an office in this place? Maybe he had a company that sold hair color for men.

      I decided to walk around the area near the lake and then over where the big department stores were, hoping I’d catch sight of him on the street. After an hour I gave up in the cold and ducked into a bar on Wabash to warm up. I was ordering a beer when I look down the long bar I see that the second bartender has green hair and wears black.

      “That’s an unusual hair style,” I say to the guy standing next to me at the bar.

      “That’s Pete,” the guy responds. “His father owns this place, or did. He died two weeks ago.”

      “Well, I guess somebody has to run this dump,” I mumble.

      “Yeah, I think the family has to sort it out. Does it go to Pete or to the brother of his dad? His uncle helped run it. The dad died at fifty-five and left no will.”

       “I’m not a lawyer,” I add. “I used to sell cars. It seems right this place should go to the son.”

      “That’s what the regulars think. We remember Pete when he was a kid pushing a toy truck between the tables.”

       “I didn’t play with toy trucks. I had toy tanks, soldiers and fighter jets. My dad was killed in World War 2 at nineteen when I was two. My parents were from Alabama and got married at sixteen. I don’t remember much of my dad.”

      “Hey Pete, come down here. This guy’s a lawyer.”

      “I said I was not a lawyer.”

      “Pete, this guy can help.”

      “Great, tell him he gets free beers.”

      “Pete, I’m sorry,” I say. “Your friend here got it wrong. I’m no lawyer but don’t mind a few free beers.”

      “You look familiar. Haven’t we met? Didn’t I see you earlier?”

      “No, I just pulled into town. I live in Wheaton over an hour away.”

      “Sorry about the mix-up. Things are always noisy in my bar.”

      “No problem.”

      “What do you think of my hair? Odd, huh? My customers here can now always spot me.”

      “It’s a bit odd by Wheaton standards.”

      “I did it for Saint Patrick’s coming up. I thought I’d do more this year than green beer. It’ll give folks a laugh. We can all use some cheering up.”

       Green Hair goes to get me a beer on tap. As he walks back toward me with the mug of beer I study his face. Is this the guy from the elevator? He’s the only green hair guy I’ve seen all day.

     “Sorry about your loss,” I say. ‘Your dad left you something wonderful, and thanks for the beer.”

      “You’re welcome,” the green-haired bartender says. He gives a quick smile as he walks away to help another customer.

don’t touch me please

don’t touch me please

the grenade of death ignites inside me and will not explode

the ruins around me are overgrown with emptiness and others are dying instead of me

these others (for some reason)crave life in a glass of metallic milk

these others are born and die alone, inhaling the smell of milky silence

don’t bother me please

give me your first gift (you never gave me anything)

give me your last gift (I gave you my tears and you didn’t know about it)

death is nothing more than a surprise box

death is nothing more than a nuclear bomb that will tear me to pieces

no need to pick up my pieces from the floor pleaseеееее

splinters of dreams cut the veins of silence in which the clock clicks

countdown and nuclear bomb will teach you how to fuck like in porn

countdown and nuclear dust will teach you water

because the future is water is spit flowing from the wall of a destroyed house

no need

the sun is so in vain that the snow doesn’t melt and the fingers are still dumb

an island of a concentration camp of thought is buried in an ocean of knowledge about the principle of nuclear fusion

no need to study science

after all even I am nobody needs and unknown to anyone

and no one is capable of knowledge while the unfinished house of life is being bombed

the cemetery guard reports:

for the past night in the cemetery:

no one died

no one was resurrected

he looks…

he looks at me with red eyes

he speaks invisibly and inaudibly

he asks and doesn’t know what to ask for

I look at his face and upper body

I look at his torso cut across by a shrapnel

I forget that I have eyes and that I need to breathe

our lips don’t move

we’re talking forever

End of hi-story

1

the first day since the end of world history quietly ended

2

red birds are still silent in the invisible void

red birds peck the grainy despair of the cemetery

red birds knock on the window of a bombed house

3

kittens died inside the belly

mother cat died inside the womb of the planet

4

warmly

coldly

birds

without feathers

without wings

without beak

without eyes

without a body

nothing

nowhere

warm cold of nuclear winter

cold warmth of late autumn

eternal autumn in the joints of the prison

tightness bleeds

5

the cage of reality is torn

forever

 Happy Constitution

Deuteronomy head book.
The appeal of all the people,
Disaster of freedoms
Happy Constitution.

He pledge of peace Harmony,
Light of happiness the fountain.
Of perseverance,
Fortunately the Constitution!

                    Maftuna Rustamova 
                   Bukhara region 
                   Jondor district 
                   30th school 
                    8-"a" class.

Breezeway

Trevor sat in his fancy new ergonomic computer chair, an early Christmas gift from his parents. The spare, sandy-haired man was seated comfortably in the open-space public assistance office, where he worked as a caseworker, managing welfare cases. He had been so employed for almost a year. This chair, he thought sadly, as high-tech as it was, couldn’t prevent his hands from shaking. Sometimes it was worse than others; just now, his hands quavered furiously. Clearly, this was not a good day.

Into the room strode Bert, a colleague at the agency, just back from lunch, who observed Trevor’s affliction with the usual bemusement. He took off his winter coat, placed his Starbucks cup on his desk, which was next to Trevor’s, turned to the other man and said, “Hey, Tremor, what’s up?”

Trevor instantly became self-conscious and tried to hide his twitching fingers. Bert’s coarse misuse of his name only added tension to an already tense situation.

Bert picked up his coffee, took a sip, smiled winsomely, but said nothing. The genius to his technique of torturing Trevor lay in levying the insults and putdowns only half the time. Always keep him wondering when the other shoe would drop, thought Bert smugly. To that end, Bert unwrapped a stick of gum and slowly placed it on his tongue, watching the other man from the corner of his eye. He chewed rapidly, soon getting the wad of gum limber. Then he began loudly popping it. He smiled with satisfaction as Trevor reacted severely to the chewing and to the sounds.

Trevor, who already suffered the early stages of Parkinson’s Disease, had only recently been diagnosed by his neurologist as also suffering from misophonia, a condition in which the patient exhibits untoward reactions to certain “trigger’ sounds, such as lip smacking, gum popping, dogs barking, clocks ticking, or people chewing with their mouths open. As a result of this condition, Trevor routinely frowned, sighed, or even stared at his nemesis. Which only encouraged Bert all the more. Also accompanying these reactions were increased heart rate, panic, anger, and a strong, almost desperate desire to escape the source of the trigger sounds. Just now, Trevor glared balefully at the other man. Bert smirked.

“What can I do about it, Dr. Patel?” Trevor had asked, when told of the diagnosis. “How do we treat it?”

The physician shrugged indifferently. “There is no treatment,” he told him bluntly. “You can wear sound-deadening headphones or play music or,” he suggested, “ask your co-workers to stop their annoying behavior.”

Trevor had had this condition since he was nine or ten years old—more than twenty years ago—though in those days there was no available diagnosis.

“Trev,” said his father, when the young man was eleven, “pretend that dog’s not there; that’s a boy!”

“Mom and Dad are going to take you to a shrink,” threatened Trevor’s brother, two years older and embarrassed by his sibling’s constant overreactions to ordinary sounds.

The malady was still relatively unknown. Even today, Trevor’s own MD has never even heard of the condition.

Throughout school, Trevor had felt that he wore a cloak of misfortune that no one else seemed to understand. Bert knew none of this; he knew only that Trevor was “different” and “sensitive” and must therefore be punished.

“Want a piece of gum, Tremor?” asked Bert, cracking the Juicy Fruit between his molars. Trevor closed his eyes, gritted his teeth, and mentally placed himself somewhere far away. Snap! went Bert’s gum, and Trevor was brought back to the present, nearly sobbing with frustration. He felt a bead of perspiration on his forehead. He had to do something!

Trevor sprang suddenly to his feet and called out, “Ms. Shaefer, could I have a word?”

Norma Schaefer, the office manager, also returning from lunch, frowned unhappily at Trevor but crooked a finger. What was it this time? She thought peevishly. “A quick minute,” she said. He followed her into her private office, dropped into a chair before her desk.

Once they were both seated, Trevor explained his recent diagnosis, described his symptoms, both physical and mental, and, in spite of  his abject embarrassment, appealed to her for help. He had previously had to account for his tremor, which was due to Parkinson’s, because some of his welfare clients, as well as his co-workers, had questioned his sobriety and his sanity. Some had even conjectured that he was undergoing withdrawal from alcohol or drugs.

“What do you expect me to do about it?” she asked impatiently. “I mean, I’ve never heard of this condition, and besides, how can I tell employees they can’t chew gum?”

“It’s just the popping,” he stressed, “and chewing with their mouths open; it’s not gum chewing itself. It’s the noise.”

Norma’s mouth formed a straight, unhappy line. “Look, Trevor, we already stopped employees from smoking. Many of them substitute gum for cigarettes, and I think that’s a good thing.” At his disspirited look, she pounced: “Maybe casework isn’t the right job for you…” He looked up sharply. “You just don’t seem very happy here,” she added, with feigned concern. You have little to say to anyone; you’re not even signed up for the secret Santa gift exchange this Christmas.”

Trevor thought back to the office Thanksgiving party, which had been held only the week before. Sitting by himself in the break room, he had witnessed Norma herself eating noisily at the next table.

She sounds like a garbage disposal, he thought wearily, looking dismally at the otherwise elegant woman. “What are you staring at?” she demanded, dropping a Buffalo wing back onto her plate. “Don’t stare at me!” Her loud chewing hadn’t seemed to bother anyone else, he’d noticed.

Trevor blew out a tired breath. Norma spoke again, drawing him back to the present: “Your work is adequate,” she conceded, “but if you can’t get along with the other employees and you aren’t happy here, then maybe you should consider a change.” And she left it at that, stealing an overt glance at her watch. Pushing himself to his feet, Trevor exited the manager’s office, his shoulders slumping in defeat.

Thirty days later, just in time for Christmas, found Trevor, master’s degree and all, sweeping the breezeway that bisected the strip mall where he now worked as a maintenance worker and groundskeeper. The air was cold, the wind brisk, but he didn’t mind. The salary was scarcely adequate, but at long last he had found what he most coveted: peace and quiet. He sighed and smiled a little. Peace. It was so sweet.