FREE, IF your past can’t recognize you for what you are now Free, IF you know that the face you carry is a mask that has been unmasked many times Free, IF you realize that you are a pretender that you always wanted to become Free, IF you can think even when they want to think for themselves but they can’t Free, IF you let your life speak rather than measure your being on the shadows of other lives FREE, you want to try again, even IF you have been tested out many times Free, IF you remain interested in something just to feel its resonances in your bones Free, IF you can travel on a bumpy road that doesn’t have any destination Free, IF you can let go of everythings you have for who you are FREE, IF you realize that your a selfish gene and you are only here for a brief survival Free, IF you recognize the difference between having and being Free, even IF someone closes the door on you, we are all under the same sky Free, IF you can imagine a possibility even when without any probability Free, IF you can walk in and out of the market without buying anything Free, IF you can suspect what you have been told with what has been discovered Free, even IF you have chosen the most traveled way, you know there is no other way out FREE, IF you are not framed within an idea or identity, which says you are us/not like them Free, IF you can meet someone for that moment, without diluting her present with past Free, IF you know that you have to carry a rock to the hilltop and roll the burden down Free, IF you realize that it's just a circus in rounds and the audiences admire their clowns FREE, IF you can find ALL in NOTHING and Nothing in All
Category Archives: CHAOS
Poetry from Christina Chin and Uchechukwu Onyedikam
reflection mirror of something — the hummingbird mistakes for a mate sundown… hungry after an evening walk the village dweller making fire the homeless man lives by the day the sun sets on a stray dog at my backyard maybe it's love the sparrow in and out of the nest mother's love a child and his father where she calls home time escapes hold on the local train with lit of cheer on the dust powdered faces the departed soul with the void no return only if he has no attachments always the question of 'to-who' follow the owl the new moon's emissary to salvation fifteenth night of the seventh lunar moon she's been... the ghost i recognize in this graveyard unread messages… rainy night gently pounding the roof heartbreak hotel the vibrant deep and jazzy voice in her belly the old soul sun & moon
Poetry from Gerard Sarnat
Theater Of Your Absurd
Arguably during life’s central act,
drama included both of us finishing
education and training, raising our family
plus finding fulfilling work; I was the adult
more in need of nurturance, well as support.
But during one of these last smaller phases,
maybe approaching a decade now, it occurs
that I, more often than not, am likely partner to
give in excess of receive. Fair’s fair, reciprocation
fine ‘n dandy unless Gerard’s basics aren’t being met?
Thanks, Stanford Medical School
While passing on their short-lived plan you get joint Ph.D. in social psychology then oy veh become an academic shrink
(Didn’t happen); when I chose The Farm because of virtue of five not-standard-four-year curriculum, which unlike maybe say Havad, seemed extremely convenient for kid who never took any college pre-med--also since pass-fail rather than grades-although first semester was flunked by Nobel Laureates teaching biochemistry’s ust-review course for most classmates
---But all new to Sarnat….Schmoozing one noon with Dean’s Office secretary he reveals Faculty Senate now’s looking
at my exam book as example of students on LSD: specifics being absurdly wrong I complained to Chairperson they should at
very least, give Gerry a chance to defend self against charges. He expressed guilt t denying due process, and after Gerard
ranked tops on year-end final exam, R.M. look it upon himself to make things right. Although I used extra downtime to major
in San Francisco’s 1967 Summer of Love, sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll; I luckily ended up sponsored by sequential Internal Medicine Department honchos for plum internship then junior residency at Beth Israel Hospital!
subtle absurdity
some folks (perhaps all, & I am just not observing other bodies)
have commodity runs, maybe changing glasses frames every year
whereas Gerry only gets new ones if my style is no longer available
would guess occurs in neighborhood of once per decade
though yesterday
for a very 1st time you began to understand or realize, after 2-term-President
or even cicada lifecycle periods of wearing that single quite old pair of slippers
over last most recent era, it appears Sarnat’s become sooo promiscuously volatile
Gerard Sarnat has been nominated for the pending 2022 Science Fiction Poetry Association Dwarf Star Award, won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, the Poetry in the Arts First Place Award plus the Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of 2021 and previous Pushcarts plus Best of the Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in 2022-2023 San Diego Poetry Annual, 2022 Awakenings Review, 2022 Arts & Cultural Council of Bucks County Celebration, 2022 Rio Grande Valley International Poetry Festival Anthology, The Font, BigCityLit, HitchLit Review, Lowestoft, Washington Square Review, The Deronda Review, Jewish Writing Project, Hong Kong Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Buddhist Poetry Review, Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Arkansas Review, Hamilton-Stone Review, Northampton Review, New Haven Poetry Institute, Texas Review, Vonnegut Journal, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, Monterey Poetry Review, The Los Angeles Review, and The New York Times as well as by NYU, Slippery Rock, Northwestern, Pomona, Harvard, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine, University of British Columbia and University of Chicago and University of Virginia presses.
He is a Harvard College and Medical School-trained physician who’s built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor and healthcare CEO.Currently he is devoting energy/ resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry’s been married since 1969 with progeny consisting of four collections (Homeless Chronicles: From Abraham To Burning Man, Disputes, 17s, Melting the Ice King) plus three kids/ six grandsons — and is looking forward to potential future granddaughters.
Poetry from Ivars Balkits
Blue Screen On (Obsolete Technology) A preconception shapes the shifting in endless blue waiting until the strength of the signal weathers or the wash in the wash hardens; or holds in horizontal herds the setting for but not longing; unless the wrist-action rests, waiting for the breathless record... aching, straining, dissolving -- A study in reappearing is waiting at 99 edge of two-digital sank just above normal blue screen for prism flash: Bent shafts of split screen at times so wavery clear that flash dints the log-green soft trade beholden to expectation's blue shrinkage's wrap. Or... Bulges inverted to other bulges... sequent flashes, stilled kinks, and small osmoses of narration. Or... Horizontal tension edged in shimmy, jalousie all through... but not thoroughly stripped of yellow; stained in full bluish wet, yet... Caricature shines through... a map of distortions... no matter the air or the day of the year distorted the same each repetition. Breakthrough at certain instances forming traditions of twice. Musical epidermal flashes that comprise the stories of anyone's guess. -- Then the sea comes in clear but dancing on the beach bends the signal... Longer than legal, but vanished instantly, the same bird flies... Profiles burst on the scene, but I wait no more follow. Some suggestion of pleasure breaking the expanses. The one lamp that melts through though: not picture-perfect perfect. Unwinding is my euphemism for you-know... of all things I call "activity," what's probably most ruined me, probably my last (whatever) to do before, you know... going to my rest, my rest, or The rest, or... I'm not about to unwind this evening. It's not that I've made vows not to; it's that I've unwound twice today already – you know, euphemism, by default, makes it difficult to guess; it consumes the hours I could be winding. I could be winding, you know... -- Euphemism is resistant to correction. Circumlocution does not free it. Unwinding is not moving forward, but languishing, its attention elsewhere... Half-wound person, I could get used to it, latent responses preventing further unraveling. -- Residual: The shadows aren't honest, but that's universal. The shouts are meant to focus attention. Attention! Unwinding provokes too much strain now in the actual addiction, a substitute having taken precedence... as more welcoming: catalogs, memories, masterlessly construed, jogged out of heart rhythm, you see, I like the, uh, but the mother in me doesn't. Oh, those trance moments in true trance-nature – that brought my mother running – I remember her tea-cups telescoping. -- (Confusion... conscious of the context, and the letter "C.") Unwinding is the symbol that stands for me, though at this time it does not stand for me, I can't sustain an interest. I've entered a deeper erasing. Euphemism is hiding from me. Through its protective core and its protective layer, it casts its iron vote for me, my proxy, it goes and stands in for me. -- Boomerang euphemism: It stands for me; I can't stand it. Unwinding... "Brutal." You hear the oink in it: The mood shifts, wear it. About that time a boat arrives. The tug of transition. I'm hoping the energy holds. It folds. -- My errors conspiring against me. Back There Something is coming home to me, but it's taking its time getting here. Looking for clues in my thoughts earlier, I'd have to say: "I'm not looking for fame, just more confidence." And a number of other things I'm ashamed of, like my tongue loosening, as I sing, "my tongue loosening, my tongue loosening, my tongue, loosening my tongue, loosening my tongue" to every note of Santana Abraxas. Every note. And other such thoughts while I was driving down from Tahoe tonight, such as: "Back there? what's." I really did think that earlier. I don't know what to think of that now. -- The moon was hanging over Hangtown as I wound down the curves, thinking again, "My car, my life!" And as I've said so many times: "How a life can be reincarnated in the same life so many times and still not feel the strain (or mystery) gets me!" And nothing more. Except "what good is Art? It can't substitute for loneliness," and "I can never be completely confident," and "Fame is no measure of success." And "Safety is no excuse," and "What the future is is very hard to interpret." -- But. Let me see if I can back up over this: I was thinking of the magnitude of a person, how one's could put another one's lights out, disable him (and here was thinking of specific persons). And also I thought of how I was my car spinning... its wheels, so? spinning its wheels it is. And spinning there in the corner by the statice flowers, an unclaimed memory of what I was thinking back there, which was, uh... Shoot, it's not coming. It was, it was, just before I turned my head to think, "I am my car spinning..." It was... (?) It's lost! No! I was thinking what would they, anyone, want with Nothingness? but that... that thought was in a context I can't retrieve at the moment because I am concentrated on this task of reworking th..., reworking th... Oh, well... -- Break: Well, I spaced out. And to get spaced back in, I thought I ought to concentrate on what I am right now, which is... spaced out. Oh, yeah, identities. I've had three or more. I keep vacillating, as if the change was not secure. I just don't feel like I have much hold on it, then I do. I won't go into it, but then I do. I guess I'm still confused, and it isn't settled – but no, what was the point, it had to do with outline, no, not the border, not the edge, no, it lingered up in the birches and was lost. "Up in the birches and was lost?" What do I mean? I mean that like a butterfly a brilliant insight has flitted from me. In trying to embrace the image as it wobbled out of the puzzlebox... oh, I give up, I know it's incomplete, I don't know why it's fuzzy out of reach, or why it keeps slipping behind a cloud... It is a cloud, isn't it? It's a blackout cloud rising from the peak and heading towards me at one-hundred-thousand miles per hour, brace myself! it's ready to break, ah, just like the milky-warm waters off the Bermuda coast: (. .) -- Here the art ends and the complaining begins. -- I find this sort of backtracking at the end of my thinking, and though the thought is moot, I keep on going, I keep on going, until I have something to say: I don't have much to say at this point. I don't have much to say at this point, either. Soon I begin to see the parallels between my now looking back over my thoughts, and, and... the Tie-in! maybe.
Poetry from Canadian poet Lisa Reynolds
Poetry from Chimezie Ihekuna
Christmas Time! There comes this holiday It’s not just any other day! The world has placed a strong value on it People are always on the verge of doing the feat Gifts, presents and other great substances are exhibited The celebration galore is always depicted All and sundry are in the mood of merriment It’s the time for enjoyment Compliments of its season are heard everywhere The best of complimenting outfits kids wear Love for one another becomes obvious The event is indeed glamorous Celebrating the birth of the Savior of the world is the reason some religions mark this holiday This happens on the Dec.25th day To some, it’s a time for sober reflections; To determine their New Year’s Resolutions To others, it’s the time for rest; To prepare their minds for the best To the business people, it’s time for sales; To make efforts to work out yielding profit scales. It’s simply celebration time! It’s simply called Christmas Time! The Christmas Proper Jingle Bells I hear The Horse’s Ride I care Christmas bunnies I yearn Boxed presents I earn Decorations I learn Santa Claus I fear The Amusement park I visit The Grotto I sit Friends and families I have fun with The fun I live everyday with The Festivity I can’t afford to falter The very reason I recognize The Christmas Proper
Poetry from J.D. Nelson
a football party at a house across the street— yellow moon grows full chickpeas & brown rice . . . a spider climbs down a thread to investigate leaves are blown from trees— the driver with a flashlight asks for directions in the chicken coop a few mice scurry away . . . the cold autumn wind bare tree silhouettes against the cloudy night sky— the dog sniffs dead leaves crescent moon at dusk— the squirrels’ nests are revealed in the bare branches ------------- bio/graf J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) experiments with words in his subterranean laboratory. His poems have appeared in many small press publications, worldwide, since 2002. He is the author of ten chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including Cinderella City (The Red Ceilings Press, 2012). Nelson’s poem, “to mask a little bird” was nominated for Best of the Net. Visit http://MadVerse.com for more information and links to his published work. His haiku blog is at http://JDNelson.net. Nelson lives in Colorado, USA.