Gladys always said, “Beware of what you dream. Ignore those visions if you must, but remember, these things have a habit of coming back to haunt you.” I don’t know what she based this kind of assessment on but, more often than not, she was right. Not long after this warning I had a dream that Gladys and I were in grave danger in some dark and threatening place. She died but I did not. Unfortunately, I ignored the dream.
After she left, I began seeing all kinds of people I knew who were dead. She said this might happen. Most of them were illusions or cases of mistaken identity. I wondered about the others.
Once the rain began, it was impossible to see the path forward or back. After a while, even up and down were getting confused. I felt as if I was in the up-escalator dream where all the stairs had stopped moving and all the lights in the tunnel had gone out. The air was stifling. It felt thick and smothering like a wool blanket that scratched the skin and burrowed its way into your throat. There was no point in trying to move. There was no place to go. Awake. Or dreaming.
Weathered stone. The way is blocked by weathered stones. Not exactly like a wall. Like what? A path where stones grew instead of grass or weeds. Stones that had sharp, ponied edges. Peaks sharp as knife blades, slippery with moss and mold that glowed in the incipient moonlight. These weathered stones. That moaned as they grew, aching as they cut through the gumline of the earth like teeth with nowhere else to go.
The shy is septic. An open untreated, suppurating wound too long left to fester. The fluids formerly trapped inside are leaking out like rain. I’m sliding on the black ice that covers everything the rain has touched. It’s like walking on sheets of motor oil, something that is both solid and frozen at the same time but impossible to move on. If I don’t relocate, I will adhere to where I am. Become a misshapen ice sculpture in a greasy downpour. Waking up here is unthinkable.
Cento Derived from the Titles of ‘Erasure’ Poems by John Dorsey
Second, our friend and collaborator Rui Carvalho has announced the opening of our Nature Writing Contest for 2022. This is an invitation to submit poems and short stories related to trees, water, and nature conservation between now and the March 2023 deadline. More information and submission instructions here!
Now for this issue, which provides glimpses behind the scenes into dreams, thoughts and processes behind the world we see every day.
In his short story “The Cubelli Lagoon,” Fernando Sorrentino probes the depths of a mysterious lake rumored to be riddled with alligators.
J.J. Campbell begins his poetic offerings with an assertion that the rest of the natural world remains more powerful than humans. He then comments on human nature, looking at everyday scenes and letting his mind wander. Emmanuel Umeji does something similar in his poetry, where the speaker stares up into the sky and reflects on life and death.
Chloe Schoenfeld describes the calm and moist atmosphere after a rainstorm.
Chimezie Ihekuna continues his Christmas countdown while Norman J. Olson contributes more of his detailed and thoughtful sketches and oil landscapes. Olson says his is “not an art of societal amelioration” yet the attention he gives to people and places in his work encourages viewers to notice their depths and regard them with respect.
Damon Hubbs explores scientific research in a slightly macabre way, with poems about the skull of dead 17th century physician Sir Thomas Browne. John Thomas Allen also touches on the mystery of death through a poem where the lines seem to wind you down to the grave. Mesfakus Salahin presents death as the poignant but inevitable end of all relationships.
In contrast, the flowers Channie Greenberg photographs are very much vibrant and alive, even when cut and displayed in a vase.
Lorraine Caputo also conveys how humans interact with and harvest from nature in her literary sketch of a large commercial banana farm in Latin America.
Daniel de Cullagives a bawdier take on nature writing, with a piece on sexy pumpkins and Halloween traditions in his native Spain.
In a different vein, Sayani Mukherjee builds a scene and a mood around a single rose in a vase in a person’s room.
J.D. DeHart presents vignettes shaped by memory, where he describes his amusement or wonder at encounters with horses, strange noises, etc along with conveying the scenes themselves.
John Steirer also draws from ordinary life as a source of grace and amusement in his series of reflections on middle age, teaching, and learning.
Strider Marcus Jones evokes the background rhythm of life even as great global struggles for power and liberation take place: seeds waiting to germinate, couples falling in and out of love, poets writing and hoping for interesting content.
Pippa Phillips and Jerome Berglund distill experience past the vignette into single thoughts and nearly subconscious observations.
Kyle Hemmingscaptures moments of irony, poignancy and surprise in his tiny poetic vignettes. John Culp explores his personal consciousness in a thoughtful piece.
Clive Gresswell brews up a heady mix of language and thought in his poems.
Mary Grimm evokes a dream experience with a title reflecting the nonlinearity of the narrative.
Mark Young’s artwork also eschews direct representation to focus on the effects of juxtaposing contrasting colors and visual elements.
Poet John Tustin writes elegantly of characters brought together into the same space who get driven apart or don’t end up interacting. As in Mark Young’s work, the beauty lies in the implied connections and contrasts.
Jim Meirose evokes a surreal atmosphere with a vacationing couple and their unusual tour guide at the Acropolis.
Christopher Bernard’s poem comments on people of differing income levels sharing urban space, encouraging the homeless and dispossessed to walk with the same self-assurance as the wealthy.
Olawe Opeyemi’s poem shows a speaker mourning sorrow and injustice he sees from his window.
Adepoju Timileyin’s characters also observe each other, speculating and empathizing from a distance. Sometimes they actually interact, though, as he does with his grandmother. In his final piece, Timileyin points to writing as a way to connect.
Shilpa Barti also brings together disparate artistic elements, with the effect of celebrating creative growth in nature and through literature and music.
Z.I. Mahmud also turns to literature as a subject, through his scholarly essay on the global and historical impact of Indian classics.
Jaylan Salah interviews author Joanne Harris (most famously the creator of the book that inspired the movie Chocolat) and discusses her themes of cuisine, creativity, small towns and tolerance/acceptance as well as how these themes come through in her later, darker works.
Mary Beth O’Connor, in her memoir From Junkie to Judge, illustrates how personal struggles such as addiction and abuse affect people of any class, race, personality or profession.
Awodele Habeeb touches on the social dimensions of personal struggle. He points out the inadequacy and cruelty of telling young people that education will prepare them for a better future if society does not provide avenues for them to use the skills they gain.
That sentiment is a driving force behind our New Year’s Eve gathering and choice of organizations to support. We do hope that Synchronized Chaos Magazine can play a part in opening up pathways towards allowing society to benefit from the creative gifts of all its members.
The Tri-angles of Christmas wishes
(From me, them and you (to yourself)
IF: I wish all the best in this Christmas for you,
They wish all that Christmas can best offer you,
then, it will not be out of place to say this to yourself:
‘’I wish me all the best Christmas can offer’’
These are the simple Tri-angle of Christmas wishes
WEEDS LEFT
weeds left,
wilt in the sun
without work and water.
their seeds
are the wild flowers,
waiting for volcanic wind
and ash to fall,
so the fertile cinders
can colonise herbaceous borders
ending the old age
of selfish sediment
treading it down
in molecules of time.
another marxist
dons his trenchcoat
and tears pages from his red book
planting the old words
of revolution
in minds of homogenous compost.
over-privileged gallows begin to swing.
bullets sweat in their chambers
waiting for the right heads.
THE DARKEST FLOWER IS THE EVENING
again
consensual persuasions
make sensual equations
as we smoke and share a think,
then the same
as she bends over the shingle sink
breasts slapping
on bowl and rim,
peachey buttocks yapping
as i slide in
and out of her velvet purse
each time deeper than the first
two parts making one perfection
of mental physical connection.
outsides
i saw two magpies
in the branches of a tree
barbed tower
watching our sharing eyes
shape fractured liberty
slipping the shackles of feudal power.
in this then,
i know how all of when
you're gone
reduces me to being one
and the darkest flower
is the evening
opened by your scent
giving everything
and receiving
mine in mind and meldings meant.
THE TWO SALTIMBANQUES
when words don't come easy
they make do with silence
and find something in nothing
to say to each other
when the absinthe runs out.
his glass and ego
are bigger than hers,
his elbows sharper,
stabbing into the table
and the chambers of her heart
cobalt clown
without a smile.
she looks away
with his misery behind her eyes
and sadness on her lips,
back into her curves
and the orange grove
summer of her dress
worn and blown by sepia time
where she painted
her cockus giganticus
lying down
naked
for her brush and skin,
mingling intimate scents
undoing and doing each other.
for some of us,
living back then
is more going forward
than living in now
and sitting here-
at this table,
with these glasses
standing empty of absinthe,
faces wanting hands
to be a bridge of words
and equal peace
as Guernica approaches.
LOVE WANES LIKE OLD NEWS
she left,
without remorse or love to lose-
and cleft
the music from the blues.
bereft,
in melancholy mental muse-
the theft
of love wanes like old news,
and jests
through pain to wear in new shoes-
the rest,
just words in ink and oral clues.
POETS IN THE BACKFIELD
Stay a while?
The subliminal cuts are coming through
These days of deadly boredom,
And poets in the backfield
Writing
Something
Interesting.
Hardy,would not like today,
Life's become an angry play;
And our deoxyribonucleic acid
Carries no imagination,
That's not already put there
By a rival TV station.
I can hear you saying,
Yes,but,we have the right to choose:
A color,and a ball of string-
Or poets in the backfield
Writing
Something
Interesting.
You said:
"The Golden Bird eats Fish
In South America
And most of the peasants let him,
Because of Bolivar."
Yet,millions starved in Gulag camps,
And Czechs cried fears when Russian tanks,
Thundered through their traumoid streets
Pretending not to be elite.
As one old soldier put it:
"The West and East preach different dreams,
But ride the same black limousines."
Stay a while?
These sheets are cold
Without your sighing skin;
And this poet in the backfield
Is writing
Nothing
Interesting.
Strider Marcus Jones – is a poet, law graduate and former civil servant from Salford, England with proud Celtic roots in Ireland and Wales. He is the editor and publisher of Lothlorien Poetry Journal https://lothlorienpoetryjournal.blogspot.com/. A member of The Poetry Society, his five published books of poetry https://stridermarcusjonespoetry.wordpress.com/ reveal a maverick, moving between cities, playing his saxophone in smoky rooms. His poetry has been published in numerous publications including: Dreich Magazine; The Racket Journal; Trouvaille Review; dyst Literary Journal; Impspired Magazine; Melbourne Culture Corner; Literary Yard Journal; The Honest Ulsterman; Poppy Road Review; The Galway Review; Cajun Mutt Press; Rusty Truck Magazine; Rye Whiskey Review; Deep Water Literary Journal; The Huffington Post USA; The Stray Branch Literary Magazine; Crack The Spine Literary Magazine; A New Ulster; The Lampeter Review; Panoplyzine Poetry Magazine and Dissident Voice.
It is to these darkly born Areas we still travel,
bent back as St. Sebastian in sin’s queasy light.
On bored nights, funeral trains circle us.
The conductors stuff cats in their habits as penance,
and by their wise blood Charon is humbled.
By this delivery, Lazarus was brought to die
finally and struggling, giving voice
to the final Word. Death wraps eager hands
with reptile skin. It protects its children. Still
as sullied Hosts, crooked reeds bind
an ill choir, the darkness is disturbed and moons rise
in the eyes of the weak and willing.
Death is not staid, he’s fast spreading, sudden
as wildfire on a derelict’s blanket.
Death’s a ministry and the prayer books
it distributes are filled with dark braille,
a kind that could cure blindness
but can’t be seen for very long.
John Thomas Allen is a 39-year-old poet and hopes to one day camp out in the Poe Museum in Baltimore. He likes hopes the political atmosphere in the US thins out, and that experimental poetry will continue on no matter what happens.
Synchronicity
Two caged parrots
mimicking
a false climax
ToneDeaf
In the fading light
the bare trees
whisper
your half thought-out
thoughts
The Last Visit
Growing child-like
& hungry
in her lonely
reindeer eyes
Inflation
Warblers living
on dollar store
crumbs
The Noisy Nude
Painted in gouache
& several variations
of pink
the nude in the picture
giggles
as the art critics
walk by.
Kyle Hemmings has work published in Otoliths, Pure Slush. Potato Soup Journal,and elsewhere He loves 50s sci-fi films and 60s garage bands.
