on pacifism
I guess I have just recently recommitted to, or decided I need to accept, that I am and must be a pacifist… in this year of 2024, there are wars and armed conflicts in various places around the world… some of these wars seem justified on one side or the other and some just seem to be the result of blundering on the part of national governments… but, the more I read the news, the more I think about these conflicts, the more true it seems that if the human race is to flourish, or even survive, we must find a way to eliminate war from this planet…
my first argument against war is always to appeal to logic… even if one has no moral objection to the killing and maiming of other human beings in pursuit of some national goal, war or indeed, even smaller armed conflict, is seldom efficacious in resolving the dispute… so often international affairs seem like building houses of cards based on negotiations and diplomacy while war comes in with a sledge hammer… that simply destroys everything and makes matters worse…
war is built on the foundation of violence and the belief that killing certain people will make nations live together in peace… that does not work… killing people just makes their families and friends angry and outraged… they do not want to live in peace with the killers of their loved ones, they want revenge on them… war begets hate which begets more war which begets more hate, etc. etc. etc… war is not an efficient or effective way to solve international problems…
my second argument against war is that it is morally backwards… might does not make right… and just because one nation has a better army and can kill more efficiently, that does not make that nation more right than any other nation… usually the things fought over are in grey areas anyway, so there is no one side that is fully right and no one side that is fully wrong… so compromise and negotiation are the way to make sure that each side gets some of what it wants…
my third argument against war is that it is always fueled by greed for money… and the people who wind up fighting in the war and harmed by the war are almost never the people who wind up with the money, no matter who wins or loses… and in trying to negotiate a compromise over things like border disputes, the only way these issues can be resolved is if both sides are willing to dial back their greed and settle for less than all the money, land, water rights, natural resources, etc… killing a bunch of people does not in any way help for any nation to put aside greed and attempt a fair and respectful resolution of international problems…
my fourth argument against war is the obvious moral observation that it is immoral for any of us to take the life of anyone else… I believe that each and every human being is born into this life with a right to live and participate in all of the joys and pains that make up our lives… these include a right to food, shelter and safety… the first things usually destroyed in a war are food, shelter and safety… it is immoral to kill our fellow men and women period… under any circumstances, any time… and it is also immoral to allow our fellow men and women to live without food, shelter and safety… war is always always always immoral… war is always evil… English poet Wilfred Owen, who knew a few things about war, called it a “cesspool…” there is nothing glorious about it, ever…
okay, now that I have convinced everybody that war is ineffective, evil and immoral, let us proceed to the question of how do we end it… one would have hoped back in the 1950s when I was a child, that the inventions of nuclear weapons would make war obsolete… when nations have this horrible weapon in hand that would make any large war, the last war, because the effect of the war would be to eradicate human beings from the planet; one would think that we would look at each other and say, “let us lay down our arms and look for peaceful ways to solve international problems…” before we finish ourselves off altogether…
but that did not happen… instead nations kept building more and more nuclear weapons in an arms race that goes on to this day with weapons armed and ready to launch right now that would bring on a nuclear winter that would end human life on this planet and most other life as well… this is lunacy… it is like a person walking night and day with a razor sharp knife pressed against his or her throat… we must get rid of those terrible weapons… and we do that not by using them, which would be suicidal, but by education and arms negotiations… we need to all know and acknowledge the danger we are in and make our governments destroy those weapons… there is no harm that any nation can inflict on me that makes it morally right for me to launch a nuclear weapon…. killing one person is immoral… killing hundreds, thousands and millions of people is hundreds and thousands and millions of times more immoral…
I am not sure how to go about accomplishing this goal but, I truly believe that military actions of every kind will not lead to the goal of nuclear disarmament… military action does not solve international problems, it always makes them worse… increasing the hate and dehumanizing those denoted as “enemy” makes it more and more likely that an accidental international blunder or an intentional act of lunacy will send us over that precipice and start a nuclear annihilation of humanity…
so, I advocate demilitarization of this planet… I believe that it is the only way to prevent a humanity annihilating nuclear war… there are so many challenges facing humanity… this planet is rich and abundant but we should be carefully tending it and setting it up to support our human communities so that all people can have food, shelter and safety… we are threatened by disease, by natural disaster, by things like climate change and ozone depletion and dozens of other threats…
I think that we could work together to solve these problem and to make a long and healthy life easier for each of us to attain, if we could quit fighting with each other and start working together to make the world a better place for the benefit of us all…
the first step, I think, is for us all to embrace pacifism… we must change our attitudes about military in every way… there is nothing good about military actions… all military action is immoral in that it aims to kill people… that is what guns, tanks, bombs, etc. exist to do… to kill people… so we must stop extolling the warrior… we must stop funding the military… and we should be working with every resource we have to spread pacifism to every human being on the planet… it is the logical, moral and decent thing to do… we must accept that every human on this planet is our brother or sister and deserves respect and all human rights and happiness being born here should provide… and we must always remember that might does not make right… it never has and it never will…
From the Mists of the Moon
From the mists of the Moon I was born
Avalon remembered in a silky dawn
Riding side saddle out of the Sea of Tranquility
Soft, soft, pale silver light riding
Shimmering silent and still.
Oh, soul of the pale echoes
The forgotten dreams of waves,
Of motion, of eddies, the whirlpools
Of becoming will.
Carry me golden sea horse
Into the valley and over the hill
Galloping against the head wind, wayward
With wild hair flying,
Send me cascading downward
From bright rainbows mounted
Atop my bright majesty, dump me
Into the sluice of sunbeams
Rising to meet me
Careening homeward to Earth
In my quickening dreams.
From the mists of the moon I come
Riding the waves homeward
Alee of my dreams breaking shoreward
In the shadowy wake of morning.
Homeward, homeward in dreams
Of dawn and sunshine spreading
Like a mantle of gold
Worn only for best-day;
Adorned with ribbons of stars
All dripping of midnight
I stretch out to dry on the beach
Of high noon reality and breath.
From the mists of the moon I come
Giddy and girl-like, tiptoeing home
Long after midnight, dreamily disheveled
Hair tangled with the taste of night
And the songs of a lunar prom
Lingering on rose petal lips -
I enter the house of day
Pregnant with moonlight.
Annie Johnson
Annie Johnson is 84 years old. She is Shawnee Native American. She has published two, six hundred-page novels and six books of poetry. Annie has won several poetry awards from world poetry organizations including; World Union of Poets; she is a member of World Nations Writers Union; has received the World Institute for Peace award; the World Laureate of Literature from World Nations Writers Union and The William Shakespeare Poetry Award. She received a Certificate and Medal in recognition of the highest literature from International Literary Union for the year 2020, from Ayad Al Baldawi, President of the International Literary Union. She has three children, two grandchildren, and two sons-in-law. Annie played a flute in the Butler University Symphony. She still plays her flute.
Examine Mary Oliver’s Sleeping in the Forest, Twelve Moons with critical commentary.
“The special puzzle of Romanticism is the dialectical role that nature had to take in the revival of the mode of romance. Most simply, Romantic nature poetry, despite its long critical history of misrepresentations, was anti nature poetry […] Romantic or internalized romance […] tends to see the context of nature as a trap for the mature imagination.” Harold Bloom’s The Internalization of the Quest Romance
“It is the destiny if consciousness […[ to separate from nature, so that it can not only transcend not only nature but also its own lesser forms.” Georey Hartman’s Romanticism and Anti Self- Consciousness
Bloomian and Hartmanian tradition of Mary Oliver’s romantic nature poetry dichotomizes the antitheses between nature and self, body and soul, consciousness and unconsciousness, subject and object, nature and culture, language and muteness, death and immortality, imaginative speaker and immature child, transcendence and immanence. The speaker of the poem recollects the mystical closeness and amity with the natural world as suggested by the ritualizes camp trip sojournings in the forest floor of the maternal earth engulfs her like “as if she feels in water”. Herein the poet laureate superimposes the visionary selfhood upon “a stone on the riverbed”; because her drowsiness is not a blankness but the labyrinthine “lichens and seeds”.
The poet and the speaker impersonate Wordsworthian philosophical mind and Yeatsian Artice of Eternity through mimetic imitation of rocks, stones and trees of Wordsworth “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”. Witches, spinsters, crones and mother nature begin to speak for themselves, they transvalue their romantic forefathers’ mythic assessments as they defy the doom of muteness placed on all these female others who inhabit masculine poetic landscapes. Mary Oliver’s poetic revolutions embody mystical consciousness and experience of renewal. From the core of the heart’s engravings, Oliver’s everlasting bonding with nature in the face of sober truth memorializes the unity of the natural despite forsaking the association of supernatural eternity; her poems follow the cycles of the seasons to image loss and the possibility of renewal. Linda Gregerson reviews noteworthily, “She is not so much moved by the works of man, and she somehow contrives to love the world more than she loves language, no common feat for an artisan who works in words.”
Gratitude and reverence of the lyrical naturalist’s ardour of romantic nature poetry proclaims testimonial “I am sensual in order to be spiritual” amidst postmodern milieus. There is a fusion of Transcendental, Buddhist and Christian imageries grounded firmly in the earth, which Oliver views as God’s corporeality. Contemporary mystic of American poetry Mary Oliver stalks the edges of the marshes, journeying deep into the forests to open her breast to the known and the unknowable “as if the edge of sweet sanity” where “wild blind wings open” to interrogate nature of the soul, about its relation to the earth, about the damage of dualism it seeks to separate soul from body, body from earth and earth from the ultimate mystery of the immeasurable and unutterable nature of God heralded by Enlightenment.
Mary Oliver’s rapture with the nature such as the creatures of the wood and the sea, birds of the air, plants of the elds, trees of the forests—this is the liturgy of living things that the poet consistently dwells with and upon the elusiveness of the never-ending rosary.
Further Reading Janet McNew’s [St. John University] Mary Oliver and the Tradition of Romantic Nature Poetry, Contemporary Literature 1969, Volume. 30, No. 1, pp. 57-77, University of Wisconsin Press Journals Division Todd Davis’s The Earth as God’s Body: Incarnation as Communion in the poetry of Mary Oliver Christianity and Literature, Summer 2009, Volume 58, No. 4. Pp. 605-624
Mary Oliver
Examine William Blake’s A Poison Tree with critical commentary.
“A Poison Tree” is a counter myth which expresses the Biblical narrative of the Fall as a tree burlesquing the “Tree of the Forbidden Fruit”. Forbearance of the Wrath of God is anticipated in the allegorical symbolism of the poisoned tree as poetic vehicle, abstraction of human situation [repressed anger]. “I was angry …;/…my wrath did end.” propositional content and grammatical structure clash with substantiation of adjectival noun from angry towards wrath or indignation manifested as seven deadly cardinal vices that these lyrics implied in the metamorphosis of the whole poem. “I was angry with my foe, /I told it not, my wrath did grow.”——this couplet’s propositional content concerns the intensification of emotion, a subject now reinforced by the shift from angry to wrath. The shift is mediated by the pronoun “it”, which is indeed in this lyric Janus-faced part of speech; wrath can be cultivated following the verbs “watered” and “sunned”: “And I watered it in fears/ Night and morning with my tears;/ And I sunned it with smiles;/And with soft deceitful wiles.”——–
Wrath is watered and sunned with fears, tears and soft deceitful wiles; water’s alkalinity provides nourishing nutriment for the sustenance of the poison tree as the language oscillates between the conceptual and the phenomenal to provide a tangible equilibrium between the tenor and the vehicle. “And it grew both day and night/Till it bore an apple bright” —–herein the intense cultivation of anger culminates in literal incarnation which the poem’s conclusion is the incredible transformation despite the occurrence that cannot be gainsaid: “And my foe beheld it shine/And he knew that it was mine/ And into my garden stole/ When the night had veiled the pole/ In the morning glad I see, /My foe outstretched beneath the tree.”
Blake intends us to take the embodiment of deep malice and disdain to be the literalization of Milton’s Satanic forbearance from the forehead by the conceiving of sin. Objects become extensions or projections of the human agency as exploratorily examined in “A Poison Tree” in which the correspondence between human and the natural is […] pronounced […] “the apple bright of the poem” suggest [ing] […] a process where intense emotion repressed, because of binding social codes, is rendered into a tangible symbol.” The power of mind transcends that of the power of the matter in Blakean perspectives and poetic appreciation anthropomorphizing the inanimate and insensible to be personified symbolism of realistic living forms rather than mere poetic device of similitude.
Since […] “These poets knew that “All deities reside in the human breasts and their poetic tales or mythologies were imaginative account of imaginative reality and thus true” In other words, that the virtue of Christian forbearance is the psychological repression mythopoetically. For Blake the truth behind Genesis is that emanates anciently—and paradigmatically ——-a sneaking serpent of a man sought in the vested venture of vengeance blossoms into a fascinating macabre of incarnational narrative within hermeneutic tradition.
Further Reading Phillip J. Gallagher’s [The University of Texas at El Paso] The Word Made Flesh: Blake’s “A Poison Tree” and the Book of Genesis, Studies in Romanticism, Spring 1977. Volume 28, No. 2, William Blake 1757——-1827, Spring 1977, pp. 237—–249.
Welcome, readers, to mid-January’s issue of Synchronized Chaos Magazine!
We recognize various observances this month: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s birthday, Holocaust Memorial Day, Clean Energy Month and World Braille Day and strive to make our publication as inclusive and welcoming as possible.
We are also hosting a free public literary reading in conjunction with the Association of Writing Programs conference next month in Kansas City, MO. This will be at 6pm on the evening of February 7th at Prospero’s Books. All are welcome to come and hear the readers!
Now for this month’s issue: Holding Up Our Corners of the Sky.
Don Bormon and Mahbub both encourage us to move forward into the New Year with optimism.
Sayani Mukherjee describes cultivating herself as if she were a garden. Chimezie Ihekuna urges young Nigerian students to apply the lessons of their education to their lives, values, careers, and future leadership.
Makhfiratkhon Abduratkhmonova illustrates one young Uzbek woman’s pathway to success and recognition as a writer and intellectual. Davronova Lobar advises parents on how to raise confident children, while Saida Ismoilova speaks to having the courage to pursue our dreams.
Farkhodova Nodira extols the good exercise, glory, and discipline involved in playing sports. Dildora Toshtemirova reminds her fellow Uzbek nationals of the many vocational training opportunities in the country while Shabnam Shukhratova outlines the advantages of study-abroad programs for enriching students’ lives.
Taylor Dibbert also reflects on travel, in his piece where the speaker’s life begins to make more sense when he has a change of scene and visits Sri Lanka. Meanwhile, Daniel De Culla provides an earthier travelogue, about local customs on a trip to Morocco.
Image c/o Petr Kratochvil
Maja Milojkovic’s poem compares working artists to fish in an aquarium, constantly observed while trying to accomplish something meaningful. Graciela Noemi Villaverde touches on the more personal side of her poetic practice in a piece where she “meets” with her poetry.
Sitorakhon Buriyeva reminds us that life is short so we should make moral choices and make the most of our time.
J.K. Durick’s poetry explores our human limitations, what we can and cannot accomplish or change in life. J.J. Campbell dredges up the frailty of midlife: loneliness, physical weakness, awareness of one’s mortality. Niginabonu Amirova ponders human destiny and how we must all die, while Maftuna Sulaymonova highlights the cycle of life with a poem where a daughter cares for her aging mother.
Priscilla Bettis also looks at mortality, with gentle haikus about grief and the burial of a loved one. Mesfakus Salahin reminds us that we are all mortal and will all arrive equally empty-handed in the grave. Sabina Abdulazizova’s poetic speaker speculates on how she’d like to be remembered.
A.G. Davis’ poetry evokes death imagery alongside that of outer space and the mythical underworld. Christina Chin and Uchechukwu Onyedikam’s collaborative haikus also reference death and the underworld, alongside space aliens.
Faleeha Hassan’s lush, imaginative poem illuminates the death of creative imagination that is writers’ block. Noah Berlatsky evokes the impermanence of memory and how past relationships fade into the background.
Jerry Langdon illustrates the storm of heartbreak, when his speaker is no longer able to pull into the safe harbor of his past partner. Mavluda Rusiyeva also describes the intense pain of a broken romantic relationship. Gulsanam Abdullayeva speaks to lost love and heartbreak, while Mohichehra Rustamova quests for interpersonal and emotional peace while grieving having caused someone pain.
Maid Corbic’s poetry extols giving love, but recognizes that his love has limits because of his humanness. Cheryl Snell’s work also probes the limits of love, as she relates coldness and neglect within family relationships.
In contrast, John Culp talks of persevering in love, not shutting the door on each other, even in intense moments. Shukratova Shabnam offers a lament and a tribute to a mother’s hard work and sacrifice while Dildora Toshtemirova probes the complexities of a mother and daughter’s relationship.
Kristy Raines writes of a gentle companionship while Sayani Mukherjee evokes a moment where she meets with God, envisioning perfect communion and realization of her best self. In Charos Makhamova’s piece, spiritual and human love commingle, while Elmaya Jabbarova narrates a vivid dream of a spiritual union with a loved one from whom she draws inspiration. Abdusodiqova Fotima urges people to come to God with their pain, as He is a perfect listener.
David A. Douglas’ formal poem shows a bystander, powerless to prevent the train wreck he’s watching, but infused with courage from his faith to endure being a bystander and bear witness to the scene.
Favour Raymond also bears witness, to domestic violence and its impact on children. Daniel De Culla critiques and diminishes the power of today’s warmaking leaders by locating them within the historical context of other warlords whose empires have come and gone. Mykyta Ryzhykh describes the violence of modern warfare, yet illustrates how life as a whole perseveres and outlasts the individuals who are killed. Evie Petropoulou urges world leaders to pursue peace and justice and for all people to remember our interdependence.
Bahora Boboyeva conveys the terror of a family facing political or ethnic persecution. Jeff Rasley describes a riot where activists leave ordinary passersby to bear the brunt of repercussions for their actions.
Brian Barbeito witnesses and laments people’s increasing post-pandemic harshness and pettiness. Arthur Chertowsky describes slowly losing his ability to read or listen to books as he ages, wondering if he is slowly dying away as he ages.
Fayzullo Usmonov narrates the struggles he faced while growing up in poverty and earning a hard-won university admission. Many other contributors discuss education, including Rejabova Dildora, who outlines modern teaching methods for primary education, Mashxura Maxammatova, who suggests innovative methods for teaching English to youngsters, Fatillaeva Nehrinoz, who discusses language instruction in higher education, Shamuratova Shoira, who highlights podcasts as a tool for language learning, Malika Isomiddinova, who covers new methods for teaching vocabulary, and Alisher Ergashev, who goes into information technology tools for teaching foreign languages.
Farrukh Amirov’s poetic speaker escapes real-world injustice through retreating into the historic poetry of his nation.
Dilnoza Xusanova remembers Erkin Vakhidov, a versatile legend of Uzbekistan’s literary heritage. Bahora Boboyeva discusses Bernard Shaw’s sophisticated analysis of social class, education, and personality formation in Pygmalion. Diyora Bakhodirovna outlines psychological theories of the concept and development of personality.
In his latest set of postwoman poems, Mark Young receives deliveries of various icons of history and culture. Lorette C. Lukajic offers up 13 different ways of looking at Edward Hopper’s painting Nighthawks, about the loneliness, or peaceful solitude, of being in a quiet cafe in the evening.
Duane Vorhees writes of history, the passage of personal and mythic time. Z.I. Mahmud’s essay analyzes how T.S. Eliot and Samuel Taylor Coleridge viewed the purposes of art and literature.
Mirzaliyeva Zarinakhan outlines the history of church reformer Jan Hus, while Daniel De Culla evokes the character of an old fashioned road cleaner. Rbs Nsj gives the background of the Village of the Saint shrine which faithful Uzbeks visit on pilgrimage. Farangiz Safarova discusses Korean greetings and social etiquette.
Arts video journalist and filmmaker Federico Wardal announces his upcoming interview with Italian journalist and music promoter Adriano Aragozzini.
Some more modernist writers play with language. Jim Meirose’s onomatopoetic tale appears to concern a spear-throwing game while Daniel Y. Harris encodes Proxy Godbot the Black Hat Hacker into verse that resembles software. J.D. Nelson contributes his signature word fragments for a piecemeal glimpse of the world.
Laylo Mamatova shares the history of the Central Asian spring holiday of Navruz, while Zuhra Ruzmetova waxes effusive about the beauty of Uzbekistan in the spring. Wazed Abdullah writes of the history embedded within a long-flowing river while Muntasir Mamun Kiron rejoices in the beauty of the land and culture of his native Bangladesh, Lilian Dipasupil Kunimasa anticipates the fun of summer in an upbeat piece and takes comfort in gentle winds, and Mahbub Alam reflects on a foggy, quiet morning.
Isabel Gomez de Diego’s photography explores how people experience built environments, on small and larger scales.
Steps
The auric field
Of my own nemesis
Own your tribe
Nurture the sockets of your heart
As if a newly polished
High school ground
That transports your
Little brittle garden
Into a big pool of
Melancholic ambrosia.
My other half as if it
Gently spoke my rawness
My wet treasured hydrangeas
Into a wooden coffin of
Tumultuous laughing stock
The soft peached rainbow
Bulking around the lawn
The little trinklet of a choir
My sudden bemused allegory
It's fair enough
Leaden steps
With my own nemesis
Happiness
A blessing given to us,
Every land is wealth
Every time God gives,
It is a great happiness for us
My family is healthy
There is no blame
Live and laugh
It is the greatest happiness
Our sky is clear,
People are kind
It's productive all the time
That is a great happiness.
Boronova Sevinch Ural girl was born in 2006 in Dehkanabad district of Kashkadarya region. Currently, he is a 1st grade student of the Academic Lyceum of Karshi State University. His first poem is called "Onamga" and is the winner of the "Best Journalist" nomination. He is the author of the book "Charming pearls of Uzbek amateur poet and writers", poems and stories were published in the book "Flowers".
Night... quiet, silent, sad
Memories wander
My crazy spirit is restless
Distracted, afraid suddenly
Drops anduh, beun, be sas
I am with myself
This is the breath in which souls enter into battle
You struggled, I struggled, I give up..
Suffering, pain, suffering
A heavy burden on your shoulders...
My heart, kneel! This is breath
I'm a torture in your soul!
***
Without agreeing with myself
I hurt you a lot today
Your heart is broken because of me
I'm sorry, it's no longer valid
I suddenly ask myself a question
- Why do you always say such words?
My answer does not satisfy me:
- It wasn't intentional...
It's canceled, I'm tired today...
Why am I so sad?
My heart, please forgive me
Don't hurt my little heart...
When luck comes, it comes twice
The smile that disappeared.
When happiness comes, it comes twice.
Holding a flower in his smile...
***
To walk around in horse
I want to live in a palace.
The quietest part of the beautiful castle
I want to read in the light...
Do I say princess is in my blood?
I think, tying my day to my night,
The most handsome and intelligent owner of the palace
Looking at my father...
Etiquette, education, life with peace
Teacher, my kind mother.
It's getting worse day by day
Lament about the most beautiful dreams...
Anyway, it's over.
God wrote our destiny
Whatever he says is what he says
Good to know dears
Prayers made stand firm...
***
Man is demanding
Man is an aspirant
Man is adaptable
Man is a seeker
Man is enterprising
Man is understanding
A big road
I went on the highway, my destination is far away
I still have a long way to go...
I went for a walk in search of happiness,
I will definitely find it, it is waiting.
***
The winds are stroking my hair, though
Jealousy of raindrops comes.
The wind makes my hair red
If he says to leave, he will...
The rainy air, the smell of the soil...
The heavenly castle captures my imagination
My soul is fresh, I'm in a good mood
I'm happy to play in the lap of drops.
Money
Money makes a person everything
He takes away his faith and puts it in the grave...
He ordered the execution of conscience
Drives and chases the self...
***
When the mirror of the heart is gone,
No matter how hard you try, it won't work.
A heart that hurts from you, give it to you,
Smile from the heart and do not smile!
Mohichehra Rustamova
Uzbek language student at the Faculty of Philology of Urganch State University
In 2022, she received the "For Services in the Field of Science" badge and badge, and in 2023, she actively participated in the international festival and became the owner of the "Scientific Researcher" badge. In 2023, the owner of the "Hokim Scholarship", the winner of the republican stage of the "Zomin Seminar-2022" of republican artists, an official member of many international organizations, she has authored books, her articles and creative works have been published in international magazines and newspapers.