*** My green throat has turned into a garden I have to be silent a lot I have to drink a lot so that the trees grow I have to breathe quietly so as not to frighten the birds I don't want to scare those who are happy *** damp forest how does the butterfly come out heat from the clip *** Shh shh she she she along with your hoarse cough Leaves fall to the ground and you don't understand Will tomorrow knock on your door again morning… *** explosions instead of music death instead of sleep butterflies everywhere butterflies *** A huge bird with black glasses would have arrived And taught us all to fly We've never been here anyway *** My thoughts live without me In pursuit of them I stumble And I die The tide of the river *** ¶ spring warmth jumped to my knees ¶ ♪ and they stopped freezing ♪ Thats how the dawn began *** What do we gather instead of mushrooms after the war? *** the dead man was smiling that day *** Perfectionism is good But Perfectionism is not always good Perfectionism is not necessarily good Perfectionism is not very good Perfectionism is not good Perfectionism is not good at all Perfectionism is bad Perfectionism is very bad. Perfectionism is often very bad Perfectionism is quite often very bad. Perfectionism is always very bad So Perfectionism is evil *** (Based on a literary ballad) The clock is knocking, knocking on the door: Behind the door he, you just believe! A gray-haired old man enters the house: "Here I come." "Are you an undertaker? You dare not ask Who should be buried? "Who, why - I don't care." "Then take, grab the log, Drank, knock and prepare the coffin, To bury my love." *** dad mom me and other deaths children nursery gardens and other shadows of the past days of the night and other seconds at one point everything burned down and turned into a fungus mushroom nuclear mushroom from Hiroshima *** autumn kills itself in advance in spring the rain comes through and gets inside the heart shells play snails worms go underground and in the eyes of a continuous prison *** love really exists but only in books
Category Archives: CHAOS
Poetry from Mark Young
Click Here For Attachments
Wombat security has come into
being because the Northern hairy-
nosed wombat has developed
the bad habit of turning into
barrow-wights during their bur-
row nights & setting up spam
factories where they target a
subset of their species — the
nosey hairy ones — who can’t
resist acting on any included
“Click Here for Attachments” mess-
age because anything is better
than being kept in the dark
& driven wombatshit crazy.
Similarity Stops Here
What follows has nothing
in common with what went
before, even though the trees
& lawns seem to be the same.
*
Tupperware may be
going out of business
tomorrow, but will
there be any differ-
ence between tomor-
row’s Tupperware item
& one from yesterday?
*
Track your way down a
dichotomous tree; &, at
each division, it can be
safely said that when the
similarities stop, you’ve
identified another species.
*
If you drive your car over
a cliff, then at that moment
when the plane shifts from
the horizontal to the vertical
you would think that you
could safely say the similar-
ities stop then. Except, you’re
still in the car, & Schrödinger’s
cat is on the seat beside you.
Exorcizing the endocrine glands
Halfway through the
night, with the moon
halfway through its
phases, I rise to take
in the night air, leaving
behind a poem that is
halfway to nowhere.
A line from Colonel Sanders
Criminal courts exist. Their proto-
cols are approved. For these
future challenges, many gulfs
can be bridged by an esterified
canola oil based product with a
non-ionic surfactant added. But
everyone reacts differently to grief;
so, if you’re wired for anxiety, then
an efficacious & speedy way to
overcome the loss of something is
to design a nuclear submarine using
only objects found in the kitchen.
Poetry from Yahuza Uzman
Ecstasy on the Tongue of Survival this poem begins imperviously inside a mysterious silence that wallows in the misery crawling on the throat of silence that lives, dies, and relives in a smile-shaped box of silence that demystifies the blend of smiles and of griefs revolving around the silences on the tongue of my mother. the first silence was housed in a breath-stopping slump, the second was seen in the heavy eyes of my brothers & sisters mourning over the health status of our mother, the third was of the hope that sparkled for a second and went off, & the last was framed delightfully in the closed eye of smiles made by my brothers and sisters in extreme merriment of our mother's health revival. some silence just exist to exacerbate disdainable plight while some only breathe to rebirth the babies of fortune. so i closed my eyes that's deemed with tears of accumulated silence, hoping that, someday, these silences would turn into a world of everlasting ecstasy lingering on the tongue of my mother's survival.
Poetry from David Kopaska-Merkel and Kendall Evans
The Tip of Time’s Arrow
Time travel proved necessary If we wanted to meet other civilizations Among the stars Everywhere our ships landed Goldilocks worlds, gas giants, Or sunburned cinders Ruins dotted the landscape Sucked dry of metals and useful minerals Intelligent entities everywhere Had crashed their ecologies and perished— Their technological prowess Not enough, never enough To compensate for their behaviors. Time travel proved possible In the mid-twenty-fourth century When the physicist Krisha Dalal Learned to point time’s arrow both ways Her equations unarguable A crew of select humans and one AI Was sent into the past. Crowded time vehicle Humans: eager AI cool in its rack of superfast processors We set sail for the Devonian, a test run Early plants, insects, amphibians But no large terrestrial predators (The sea a frightful tale of teeth and armor) The ride was silent, uneventful The doors opened upon a dusty plain A hovering pall of dust. Our first dire discovery: The air, unbreathable— Like inhaling a lungful of nothing-- Though evidence and theory Suggested the Devonian air Would sustain us. Fortunately mission control Had planned for such contingencies: We have vacuum suits Our vehicle’s mini-airlock Snug for one standing man. Four of us set forth Three humans and the AI’s avatar Nearby, lycophytes and ferns Cluster along a stream Motionless, as if no wind Has ever breathed across this land. Primitive flying insects hover in midair As if captured in invisible amber Their wings do not blur Nor move at all; they hang Motionless above the stream Its surface dimpled As if with the reticulations of water flowing And yet this surface is static Still as a stagnant pond. We move on Keeping our vehicle in view-- The world like a vast art installation We move thru it, observing, Yet without interacting. Are we trapped in one frozen instant Of past time? After our excursion We discuss possibilities A test: I try to pick a single leaf—and fail The AI directs a robot To try, with the same result This world we cannot change And we’ll never reach the date We’re to be plucked from time Reeled back to the future. Will the engineers who sent us Deduce our fate Find us before we starve Locate this exact nanosecond Where we are stranded? Or will their rescue attempts Be a few frozen instants away? Along with the AI, We wait and we pray. David C. Kopaska-Merkel won the 2006 Rhysling award (long poem, written with Kendall Evans), and edits Dreams & Nightmares magazine (since 1986). His poems have been published in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, and more than 200 other venues. Some Disassembly Required, a collection of dark poetry, was published in 2022. @DavidKMresists on CS. Blog: https://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/ More than two hundred poems by Kendall Evans, including a number of collaborations with David C. Kopaska-Merkel, have appeared in various SF/fantasy/horror magazines, chapbooks and anthologies. He and David also collaborated on "The Tin Men," which received the SFPA 2006 Rhysling Award for best science fiction poem written in 2005 (long poem category). His short stories have also received recognition, including two honorable mentions in THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR. His novelette "Don Huavaca's Dia de los Muertos" appeared in the anthology BARE BONE #6.
Poetry from Oona Haskovec
pleading with nonexistent existentialists i lay with my mouth agape red hair used to mould that form into lust but i do not wish for that kind of pleasure i wish to be carried away by my own hand to fall so deep into simple sadness that my skin dries out and my lips peel off and my eyes are found empty bloodshot with lashes glued together by salt i imagine a bliss where light fills every crevice in my teeth my tongue the place where my lips used to be everything that i fear the glow tugs at my voice urging me to cry out pleading with my throat to breathe i ponder the possibility of death how blood could splatter not only my skin but the lives of my beloveds too so called darlings who see in me hope who see in me a rope to hold on to if i tie that rope into a noose who is to say they will not use it? who is to say i would not be responsible so instead i hold onto the threads of nonexistent existentialists and hold off from killing my darlings another day.
Oona Haskovec is a writer based in San Francisco, California. He writes about inner worlds and tiny unimportant things. His work has been previously published with Synchronized Chaos, K’in Literary Journal, and Nightjar Literary Magazine.
Poetry from Makhfiratkhon Abdurakhmonova
You are the Miracle of the World (for girls) You are strong, You are brave, You are beautiful, In every single way. You are capable, Of achieving your dreams, Of overcoming obstacles, And making them seem small it seems. You have a heart, Full of love and compassion, And with every beat, It radiates so much passion. You are unique, A one-of-a-kind gem, A miracle of this world, And someone's perfect friend. So don't let anyone tell you That you're anything less than great. Because you are amazing And destined for something great!
Poetry from J.J. Campbell
in the middle of writing a poem
i always love when
my arthritis starts
flaring up right in
the middle of
writing a poem
i have only
survived these
years by finding
pleasure in the
pain
god help us all
when that stops
happening
———————————————————-
love letters to female prisoners
is it possible life
has passed me by
possible all the
former lovers
weren’t the ones
to make the mistake
all the old guitars
collecting dust
all the things
i tried for pussy
this pen served me
as well as any of
them
i might as well be
writing love letters
to female prisoners
and as the mundane
starts to swallow me
everyday
prison becomes
a relative topic
modern day slavery
someone is always
making money off
of someone
———————————————————
walk in the park at dusk
here come the virgins
the terrorists were
promised
all the freedom we
gave up to feel secure
now our own nation
points the gun at each
other
kids can’t play outside
you can’t walk in the
park at dusk
and god forbid, don’t
you dare be mentally
ill
too bad we can’t make
money off of them
if that ever changes
suddenly…
———————————————————-
trying to steal my heart
an angel with dark hair
panties begging to be
yanked off
a smile that seems to
be too good to be true
the latest trying to steal
my heart although, i am
a willing victim
this one wants to get to
know me enough so she
can travel across the
country and fuck me
my inner child starts
to sprint
but the battered soul
inside knows there is
no way this will ever
come out good
all the while, i’m trying
to play it cool
i certainly believe i’m
due a fucking break
——————————————————–
words are not enough
the spanish princess cries
herself to sleep in my arms
complains about the pain,
life and all the miles between
us
i feel helpless, know that
words are not enough
fall in love with an introvert
and come to terms with a
brand new level of frustration
stuck in the old century of
love letters and flowers,
boxes of candy and a glass
of wine at sunset
how in the fuck did so
much time pass us by
J.J. Campbell (1976 – ?) is trapped in suburbia, wondering where all the lonely housewives have gone. He’s been widely published over the years, most recently at Cajun Mutt Press, The Rye Whiskey Review, Misfit Magazine, just good poems and The Beatnik Cowboy. You can find him most days on his mildly entertaining blog, evil delights. (https://evildelights.blogspot.com)