my monsters of spring in the rains of unbearable loneliness are drowning *** the mastodons of the dead tongue pull the corpse of a harsh scream from the grave and put it in our ears harpies of misfortune gnaw at the skin of the chitin in which we live dead language dead chitin the soul is alive *** memory envelops us as we used to be memory envelops us with our former which of the moments of paint will fall to us in the future which of the moments of spring will fall to us in the future fingers on the hands became screams fingernails torn off the future is gone the future is red *** sakura gave me silence the flowers of the soul open and the sky is bright *** angels fall asleep mafia wakes up the sky is melting like ice cream life melts like the sky shots play catch up bodies play hide and seek one two Three children's play adults four five six death flies *** fragments of thoughts in an iron eye finger pharynx hiroshima is a city in japan where once people liked to watch movies scar of loneliness at the moment of death cylinder-like neck mushroom people grow into the ground everything around merges into mush the lesson of honesty is drowning in tears *** pathology of meaning air puff an apology for hate blood of flowers and everywhere death death death *** sauna burns under the sun steam resembles a fungus of a nuclear explosion *** fire light flames live wire devouring element all around red *** soul tulips worry in heaven on earth dead souls *** pay per soul my iron son bathes himself in the bath weeping indulgence tin soldiers turn to ashes money bodies life becomes a hunt for yourself ∞∞∞ silence signs look like death *** crunching tree branches under your feet autumn dreams *** What did I do while nuclear plants grew like mushrooms Probably scolded the daughter beat the cat Dragged a piece of halva Filled the chambers with gas And did not notice how my daughter turned into In the Virgin Mary And I don't know how to deal with her now *** Birds sing in the language of silence that they have nowhere to return from warm lands *** Metal birds live longer than meat birds I wish I didn't become a robot I want to become a slave, but not God I want to be a god It's best to be a bird
Category Archives: CHAOS
Poetry from Taylor Dibbert
Look the Other Way He runs into the ex At the grocery store, The kind of thing Where it seems like The two of them Are aware of each other, But no one Does anything, There are no looks, There are no words, Nothing is shared, Who knows if There will ever be A time to say the things That could Have been said Long ago, He just knows that That time Is not today. Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. He’s author of the Peace Corps memoir “Fiesta of Sunset,” and the forthcoming poetry collection “Home Again.”
Essays from Mark Young
It has been raining off & on over the last few days, occasionally quite heavily, as the bottom edge of the monsoon trough passes across northern Australia. Even now the clouds off to the inland are acquiring that gray glassiness that might indicate another storm is about to arrive. But it's also been reasonably warm, & the mosquitoes are out in plague proportions. Disturb them & your arm, within seconds, resembles one of those commercials for insect repellants, where some dickhead sticks his arm into a glass case that is swarming with the little beasties. I keep thinking of Ross River virus, Q fever, some other thing that brought crows crashing down out of the skies that I saw last week on a documentary that Brad Pitt narrated. Which, at the same time, was also killing people without explanation, but nobody made the correlation with the crows, especially not the Centre for Disease Control because they're so far up themselves that testing animals is beneath them. Let me just point out in passing that it was a veterinarian who first posited the relationship between kuru, a disorder that was discovered amongst the Fore people of New Guinea, & scrapie, a disease that affected sheep & goats. & let me just say that it was only veterinarians who protested against the British Board of Agriculture loosening its regulations on what could be fed to animals. & let me finish my aside by saying guess where bovine spongiform encephalopathy, shortened to BSE, popularly known as mad cow disease, came from. Feeding cows infected animal parts. Oh? Not that I'm putting that forward as something to be found in my garden. I'm the only mad cow around, freaking out about the mosquitoes, doing strange dances as I attempt to swat them. No crows are falling from the sky, but with that raucous caw they have, I don't think I'd mind. midnight rambling I have a jukebox inside me. Sometimes it lets me play what I want, but most of the time it determines the selection. The music is mainly from the mid-fifties to the mid-seventies, for me 15 to 35 years of age. A bit of bebop & blues & Bach from before that time, a few ballads from after. Things I grew up with, or found by going back to the roots of what I'd heard. Things that later fitted in with what I'd heard before. Some of it I have chosen. Some of it has chosen me. I tend to have an emotional attachment to my choices. Songs that make me weep or feel joy, that I probably early heard at some particular time & gathered up & kept the environment as well. I get the same sensation in my gut from particular Bach & Aretha Franklin & Miles Davis pieces. Much of Motown fits in there. Plus a whole lot of single songs – Winter in America, Time after Time, Darling be home soon, 7 Seconds, Heroes. The ones that have chosen me are varied. The jukebox's favourite is Milestones. I'll be somewhere, anywhere, & suddenly that staccato Da da da da, da da da da, da da da da Daaaaaa will come blasting out, causing me to veer off the road or slop my drink or drop whatever it is I'm holding. There are a few that are shared between active & passive – transitive & intransitive? – choice. The jukebox has a soft spot for Dylan which I don't always have. Occasionally we separate the song as if it were a disputed territory. Sometimes we both agree. Round Midnight was playing inside my head in the early hours of yesterday. I went to bed, & when I woke up was confronted with the snowplough of Milestones clearing all before it. Then the jukebox paused, said "You want midnight songs? Let me give you one." I felt a slight frisson, thought Wilson Pickett & thought it inappropriate. But was pleasantly surprised when the jukebox started into The bridge at midnight trembles, the country doctor rambles, bankers' nieces seek perfection, expecting all the gifts that wise men bring. It is one of the songs we share with no dispute. So, in a duet, we wandered off into the afternoon singing The wind howls like a hammer, the night blows cold & rainy, my love she's like some raven at my window with a broken wing. (2005)
Poetry from Don Bormon
My School The name of our school is Harimohan Government High School. This is one of the biggest and oldest schools of Bangladesh. A place of pride for the students. The school has a great reputation. Reputable for us. We have gotten the school, By a great person’s contribution. His name is Harimohan. He was a big landlord, His full name is Harimohan Mallik. The school has many great achievements. It has been considered the best school of Rajshahi Division in Nineteen-Eighty-Seven. Our school has many co- curricular activities. Scout, Red-Crescent are worth meaning. The students of our school are very smart than the other schools. The teachers of our school are very skilled than the other schools. The technologies of our school are very advanced than the other schools. So, I feel very proud to be a student of this school. Don Bormon is a student of grade 8 in Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh.
Photography from Channie Greenberg
Poetry from Laskiaf Amortegui
Yearning The crickets sing accompanied by their sonorous violins, I wonder where you will be... See that the moon flirts with them, and who will you smile with? The fireflies illuminate the recital, and your face does not appear. In my thoughts you fade like the moon. The cocuyos dance happily to the beat of the cello, He smiled, they dissipate me to solitude, while I lose myself in the bonfire that my cigarette lit. Colombia
Poetry from Joel Oyeleke
HOW NOT TO DEFINE A COUNTRY after Mubarak Sàid I inhale the stench of isale eko - the dirt of mile three park. How does the boy learn to speak seven languages that can hide the lingua franca of joy? How does he rehearse the dictum of pain? How does he master the syllables in grief? How does he converse in sorrow? How does he achieve fluency in anxiety? He questions his existence like a man seeking reality in a tabula raza. He tells the tale of a girl caught in the peril of a nation that gives adulation to the antonym of goodness. This girl sheds Antarctica into her dress; It is how she fights wickedness. How do I gather the casualties in my heart, delete the record and start again? We are taught to understand that to die is to live to revolt is to fault to complain is to end in pain to hope is to hang on a rope. The skylarks fly quickly, I watch their steps, their posture; how trickily they become lords of the air. How they deceive us to let them roam the sky, now see them own it, see them seize the sky. See them leave fragments of the sky for the grass, For the grass who let their tongue get wet from political fore-play that is well played - The grass that is gardened yet dies. I remember that a poet should not fret I give heed to the voices from the root - They speak of How the truth is a tongue that has lost its language to the colonization of deceit. How my country is a testament of Golgotha with barrage of bodies torn apart into fleshy crumbs. How is my land a metonym of distress? We ask 'how' until we don't know how to define the complexity. We ask how until our voices become an orchestra screaming; 'eli eli lama sabachtani' How not to define a country is to say the sun sets at noon - To say wahala is a facade. Look at him defining a country in metaphors when he is the metaphor for a wailing parrot caged in a place where good plays the role of evil. He sees the country as the synonym of hell & It is written in the book of abnormality; That the parrot will wail on the way to damnation & not find rest. Yet in the dome of gods, there is peace for the wicked.
JOEL OYELEKE studies Literature in English at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun state. He is a published poet, literary enthusiast, God addict, poetry reader for Arting Arena Magazine and curator of Poetry Village, OAU. Author of THE THEM IN ME (Direwords, 2022). Co-author of LET ME GRIEVE (Arting Arena Magazine, 2023). Joel won the Arting Arena Poetry Prize in 2022.
Asides writing, he loves to teach, talk and play football.