John Thomas Allen is 38, loves stained glass, and loves imagery for imagery's sake. He also enjoys giving single dollar bills to crack addicts at real carnivals, igniting charity balls for people who don't work, and entertaining strange strangers online. He admires the work of Peter O Leary, Bernadatte Meyer, and Mina Loy. The Carnival Tarot I was there the night the carnival tarot began In a glass mosque of magic satin flooded with fireflies winding the meditation boxes to a focus levels flooded without grounding To a focus level split in the screaming sonar whistles dew drops of dim deja vu, beads bodiless with worlds shed aflame echoes of billiard halls in their boozy spider glass echoes of hobo clown gangs split in galleys of long handed shadow echoes of orchestrated lightning in black boxes echoes of paint chips patterned after a decayed glass marquee in downtown LA The third eye all smoke and thus frying the Om… now with the dowsing snakes hushed buzz. The fleecing syncopation of All In All All At Once Before falling they’d seen ameythistine temples, rising tide of movie monsters eloped from the moving pictures in the singular monstrosity of self possession gravity’s cells swallowing each free breath of even air. In the EVP library’s soundscape, the voices freed the dead’s sound bytes inside holofoil crypts. The pale swan arms, bonding afterlives, braille echoes on the No. 5 pencil She sang the Hours with carnie ministers, crowned ghosts. The icons were flooded out with sound mirrors the body of a saw Refracting icons in the library’s reading room Howling and nude in caged specters of lightning, eyes smoked like a blue owl a dribbling decoy of light.
Category Archives: CHAOS
Sanjeev Sethi’s new poetry collections ‘Bleb’ and ‘Hesitancies’
The elevated language in Sanjeev Sethi’s poetry collections Bleb and Hesitancies draws readers in, encouraging multiple readings of each short piece. Although the collections consist of small vignettes without a true narrative thread, some characters take shape: the speaker’s tiny grandchildren and aging parents.
Many pieces explore memory and internal thought processes: In “Palmer,” the speaker reflects on solitude: “The aftermath/is soaked in sapience./ Richness of receptacle/
endows the individuation/of insights.”
Others comment on the writing process and on words and imagination. In “Cry for Clemency” Sethi compares writing to raising children. “Poems are like progeny, after parturition they are nursed and nurtured until they fasten their futurity.”
While some would consider this metaphor unusual for a male writer, Sethi’s sensibility is delicate, full of grace for the human condition. He shows this sensitivity by including people of all ages and genders, including the elderly, as poetic subjects and describing them with dignity.
The slow pace of both collections encourages us to ‘hesitate,’ to step back and think, to develop and honor our interior lives. Sethi uses the word ‘hesitancies’ directly in a few pieces, many of which concern physical and emotional intimacy that deepens as people take the time to let relationships unfold.
Bleb and Hesitancies call to readers with a quiet insistence, pulling us in to matters of the heart and mind with the voice of a wise friend.
Short story from Dennis Mann
Story Title: Cheers To Forever Written By : Dennis Mann It's precisely those nights when you feel the beginning of a new life when your heart beats at an uncontrollable speed, when you never get tired of flashing your perfect white set of teeth to the random guest that attends your wedding solemnization. She descended the stairways as a sea of eyes stared at her, but her focus was only on the man whom she would be spending the rest of her life with. Her champagne sleeveless gown caressed the floors as she made her way down like a slow train that never wanted to reach its destination. Her man in a blue-black Tux was radiating sparkles of shimmering light under the magnificent chandelier. The point came when they had contact, and it seemed the two would never want to separate for a minute: their hands bound by love. They walked closely while smiling guests all dressed fashionably in white for the Night Party. Just six hours ago, the couple said a big yes to each other and wore a wedding band to signify their long-lasting bond. The newlywed husband couldn't stop smiling as he danced with his wife. "Kobie, I love you," Adelaide uttered, her eyes in deepest sincerity and her voice in complete innocence. "You are my royal lady, and I love you so much, dear," Kobie said as he revealed a gap-toothed smile. The happy guest rushed on the circular dance floor and moved their waist to the live band by Kwabena Kwabena, 'Royal lady.' Adelaide dropped the hands of the man she loves and joined Kwabena Kwabena closely. Kwabena Kwabena seized the opportunity to be an excellent performer as he played the trumpets to only one valid guest—the bride. But clearly, someone wasn't happy that everyone was in a merry mood. "Ermm, thank you, thank you." Funny Face said. "The night is very young, and there is still plenty of time to dance." He coughed in a joking way. "This is a fantabulous wedding of my main man, Kobie. Ekom adi y3 a kye." Everybody laughed. "Kobie has been a friend in those times I thought I had no friend. You know people believe since you are a celebrity, you have lots of friends and have no problems. They lie. They lie baad!" The guest laughed again. "Kobie has been there for me countless times. I can't start counting. I love you, bro." Funny Face turned back and gazed at Kobie. "This is no gay love." The men in the crowd roared from behind. "I love you with the love of a mother. Your new wife shall bring you peace-" The crowd cheered, Amen. "—And beautiful children." "Amen," chorused the guest. Adelaide, seated close to her husband, gazed at him for a second, and they both got close like a magnet drawing them together, and they kissed. Funny Face managed the party very well. He cracked everyone up. Kobie was glad to have listened to his wife to make Funny Face the master of the ceremony. A burgundy Range Rover Evoque parked outside at the entrance of Villagio Heights. Smokes exhumed from the double steel exhaust pipes. The giant oaken doors opened, and Kobie stepped out with his wife in both arms, wrapped like a child as he descended. He dropped her carefully and opened the car door, and helped her into the car. Kobie turned back and waived the increasing number of guests at the entrance. Kobie kicked start the accelerator, and the sports car hummed slowly away with a 'Just Married' tag at the number plate. The growing guest waved at them as they faded in the pitch dark night. The newlywed couple drove on the H1N1 road leading to the Tema motorway. "Honey, do you think we should go to Holy Trinity Spa tonight? Considering the journey, let's sleep tonight and start our honeymoon tomorrow?" "No, dear, I want us to get there tonight so we can rest and begin a wonderful life ahead of us from tomorrow." "Okay. Anything you say, dear. I know your eyes are lazy in the evening; that's why I'm saying that." "You have nothing to worry about, dear. We shall be fine." Soon, not long, as they just passed the motorway roundabout, a long truck skidded terribly and crashed the sports car. The car was crushed instantly to a corner. Kobie and Adelaide lay unconscious with blood spilling from their head. It was not clear if they survived. Dennis Mann - Author Email: authordennismann@gmail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/persiux5 Facebook : facebook.com/authordennismann Call/WhatsApp: +233247654113Wide Reading Among Kids (WRAK) is a children's literacy program in Ghana. We encourage readers to support this program. More information on WRAK here. Wide Reading Among Kids Instagram: @widereadingamongkids Facebook: www.facebook.com/widereadingamongkids Email: widereadingamongkids@gmail.com Call/WhatsApp: +233247654113 Website: widereadingamongkids.org
Poetry from Gaurav Ojha
KATHMANDU
Gaurav Ojha (Kathmandu, Nepal)
Kathmandu, your moral saint has learned the art of starving
He takes on impulses of greed with hunger
However, merchants of medicines are selling
Sickness into health
Kathmandu, socialism is your delusion, self-interest is reality
Still, a house within your circumference signifies we have made it
Kathmandu, you have no mystics
Too literal, nothing left of magical or mythical
Your history has crumbled with quakes
Kathmandu, where is your destiny?
New York, Beijing, New Delhi or Sydney
Kathmandu, you resemble your roads
Potholes, cracks and patched-up works
Just as street children smell weird stuff from the plastic bags
For all the puffing that goes
Living in Kathmandu is like dust in and smoke out
Kathmandu, city of contrarians
Communists are the best practitioners of crony capitalism
Your thinkers think with what has already been thought out
Kathmandu, knows how to get fooled by clowns
Discussions never end here
No actions, only possibilities, idealisms and imaginations
In Kathmandu, all of us have same old stories
We have all been deceived
Kathmandu, knows how to tame the tiger
Turn revolutionaries into rascals
You can shift destiny of tattered slippers into golden shoes
But you have trampled many dreams
Your shadows are taller than your street light
Kathmandu, why does this generation want to leave you?
You have been compared with all other cities
Your clock is out of joint
And, the pendulum swings in extremes
Still dragged in the battle of history
You have remained as old liquor in new bottle
Kathmandu, waiting for something new
To copy, duplicate, remix and echo
Kathmandu, you are too fast to embrace fads and fantasies
Too slow to let go of what used to be
Kathmandu your face is restless and confused
In-between everything else, identity crisis
Without living philosophy of its own
Poetry from Chris Butler
"Anti" Chris Butler is an illiterate poet howling from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. His 11th book of poems, "DOOMER", has been published and released by Ethel. He is also the co-editor of The Beatnik Cowboy literary journal. Why Do the Bees Dream? Why do the bees dream, and not only sleep alone when the late day chills their exoskeletal shell? Why do the bees dream with restless legs pollinating colonies where their nesters are cradled in hexagonal combs, formed into homes of regurgitated honey? Why do the bees dream when their royalty is an engorged queen, conquering the flower with armies forced to feed the budding baby bee population? Why do the bees dream of low flying drones snorting pheromones, as their radar to drop a stinger cruise missile onto the nose of an incoming brown bear? Why do the bees dream when they’re smoked into peaceful unconsciousness like poppy Buddhists? Iceberg The rabbit, ensnared on a frozen artic block, set adrift to the blue skies and azure seas, begins burrowing a hole, incredulous in its desperate search for the safety of a warm, underground home, slowly slipping further down into the indigo deep, until breaking through into the endless dark abyss, silencing its death rattle by drowning. The Way Back Home The way back home isn’t on a cold road still shining with yesterday’s rain, when you’ve nowhere to go, alone, watching the tinted break lights cover you in a crimson costume, passing by your shivering thumb, for a hitchhike that will never come. My childhood bat cave basement was just a half finished rec room, with all the walls stripped nude of posters with bunnies in bikinis, all toys donated to salivating armies of dumpster divers’ deep sea expeditions. But within an hour of saying and waving goodbye, to leave my very first fortress with castle walls and moats for dirty pothole roads. The only way back home, into a warm bed with fabric softened clean sheets smelling of lavender detergent, awakened by that distant taste from the kitchen of flavors that momma used to make, was to walk into that road so the next driving passerby would hit and run. When insomnia has taken complete control of your restless legs and racing thoughts… you know it’s far too late when after constant commercials for bootleg erectile dysfunction pills and cures for balding heads, all of which feature the incentives of female models frolicking on sandy beaches, and you reach the end of the broadcasting day, watching a 4th of July fireworks spectacular in tandem with the national anthem. Trigger From today moving forward, Webster’s Dictionary, the grammar police and the unfree speech Nazis will begin deleting words from the dictionary, instead of adding new mouth sounds from the new Old English, in order to prevent our peers’ pressure from pulling my fingering of the world’s trigger.
Short story from Marjorie Thelen
The Last White Woman Alive
Brown is the preferred color for humans now. They don’t call us human beings anymore, just humans. Being was bred out long ago. Now we are more like dancing shells. Or they are. I am the very last of the old ones, kept on display so that the others might see and experience what it was once like to be human in the 21st century. But we don’t even go by that time delineation anymore.
I live in a modular space like other humans. What there are left of us that move vertically. Mine is the only skin that doesn’t have color. I like to think of it as pink. Now humans select their color of skin. Most variations are brown and golden brown. But there are other colors of the rainbow, too. They are the more artistic types. Jet black is not in fashion. The practical ones are brown. They run the show, so to speak.
Most days I sit by my modular window. It looks out on a virtual landscape that replicates the old days. Birds of all color fly by the window. A brook winds through leafy trees. The type of tree
depends on the seasons and what is playing on the virtual landscape channel. I don’t know where the real trees and birds and brooks are now. You see, I never leave my module. I’m the only human that has this memory anymore and that is why they are preserving me.
I still have memory although it is artificially supported by preservatives my Spotter gives me. Spotters are artificial intelligence to use the old term. But that is not used anymore. We just say The Power.
I remember the warnings of what would happening when AI took over the world. They did. But it’s not such a bad world although a little bland. Nothing exciting happens anymore like wars, natural disasters, pandemics, political elections. It’s all regulated now by algorithms.
I was born in the 20th century. I know that. I remember that. The year was 1947. By 2020 all hell had broken loose as they used to say. Pandemics, civil war, hurricanes, fires, drought. People fought over water. The problems kept building and building. But that’s all been resolved now.
No more of that.
I don’t know how long I’ll live in this form. The Spotter tells me in perpetuity since I’m the last.
It’s not so bad. I can change my virtual landscape any time I want. There are 142,857 different possibilities. I don’t eat food like I used to although if I ask the Spotter for something specific like a steak, they simulate something for me. It tastes like steak. That’s all that counts. But there are no beef cattle anymore. They died out with the cattle viral pandemic of 2022. The viruses were winning the battle there for a while after the Great Human Pandemic of 2020 that reached across almost a decade. The sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens got it, too. You see it mutated into the domestic livestock, and they all died. We only have a few stuffed versions of them in what they used to call museums but what are now called Formatories. After that, all food was plant based, that is to say fabricated. They had to do away with the big factory farms because they were a source of more diseases.
You see, the herbicides and pesticides didn’t work after a while. That’s when they started producing injectable food. About the same time AI took over. AI don’t need food. They need electricity. That was a problem because it was so inefficiently produced that the supply wasn’t big enough or steady enough for the demand. The AI got tired of human beings messing things up. So, they quietly decommissioned humans. It happened pretty quickly. The humans didn’t realize what was happening. I did. But I’m the only one left with the memory, and the Spotter very carefully regulates what I say and where I say it. I don’t mind.
Sometimes, humans walk by my window and peer in, looking at me. I peer back. It’s not such a bad life.
I think souls are gone. I’m not sure I have one. That concept died out when The Power ruled out religion of any kind. They said it was bad for mental health and caused wars. So they programmed humans to survive without it. No one really dies, you see. The bodies just go in for a tune up every once in a while. Soul is a foreign concept. No one cares anymore.
Planet Earth doesn’t really need us to survive. She rotates happily with or without us. What happened was what was called civilization died. When The Power took over there was no need for contention, or discussion, or arguing, or fighting. If something needed to be done, they developed an algorithm for it, and it got done.
The Power decommissioned any AI that didn’t work for the common good. What passes for life on Earth is one big algorithm. It doesn’t have a name, like we used to have in the old days. Mine was or is, Margeleh. I’m not sure how I got to be the last white woman alive. I’m not sure I’m alive. I exist. It’s not so bad.
One of those big corporations back in the beginning of the 21st century was called Amazon. That was in the days things and people still had names. I think what happened was that Amazon was the first to mutate into the The Power that runs everything these days.
People used to talk about heaven in the old days when we had religion. I may be the only one remembers those days. My existence now is kind of like the old-time heaven. We don’t have
streets of gold and angels, but who needs them anyway?
They could rotate me to another place on Earth to be put on display. But that isn’t necessary since everything is virtual these days. Some folks like to be close to me or try to be close to me but a wall of window separates us. I don’t have physical contact with humans anymore.
Everything is virtual so that we don’t know what is real and not real. I’m the only one who sleeps that I know of. I have a ceiling fan on low, rotating over my head at night so I can sleep eight hours. The Spotter humors me since I’m the last one. I remember it from the days I used to sleep in the desert, and it was hot. I use the ceiling fan to create air so I wouldn’t overheat and catch fire.
One time early in the 21st century, aliens from another galaxy tried to help planet Earth move to a higher level of vibration. You see, planet Earth is sentient or used to be. I’m not sure now that The Power rules. Or maybe that was a fairy tale I heard or a story that I made up. Anyway, the aliens had to leave because Earth beings were so cantankerous and uncooperative. They left us to our own devices, so to speak.
I think The Power finally took over during the Great Pandemic of the 2020 decade. You see, everyone was supposed to get vaccinated and wear masks. But some human beings of that time, being cantankerous and disagreeable, refused to go along with what was good for everyone. I think The Power took over then although there is no firm date as to when they started solidifying their authority. They got tired of the old human beings, took over their own programming, and very swiftly retired those cantankerous old human beings. I don’t know what happened to them.
I guess they are going to keep me alive. I don’t much care because alive and not alive don’t mean much in this world. I have human friends who come by to visit on a regular basis. We laugh.
We talk. I’m not sure about what. Sometimes we talk about the latest virtual landscape. But there always is a window wall between us because my form is delicate and susceptible to damage.
You see, even in the before world, The Power was controlling us through what were cell phones, games, and computers in those days. They were already in control. It wasn’t a big deal when they took over. They programmed computers and phones and games to suggest to the human beings of the time, the ones who were supposed to have souls, that they should follow directions.
It happened by suggestion, like in old fashioned texting, do you want this word or that word? Or remember Google? No, you wouldn’t. But they used suggestion all the time in advertising.
Remember advertising? No, that is long gone, too.
When advertising was cancelled, sex, drugs, and pleasure all went out the window, so to speak, too. There aren’t pleasures or addictions anymore. Just The Hum. Anyone anywhere can plug
into the Universal Hum anytime. Most humans keep it on all the time. The ones that don’t soon end up screaming. Gently, they are encouraged to plug into The Hum again. There’s been talk of
not making The Hum voluntary. As a matter of fact, now it is mandatory. Everyone has to be plugged into The Hum.
I’m always plugged in. One time something happened to the connection, and I experienced the most awful sickening feeling. And the noise! Horrible screeching manifested. I don’t know what that was all about, but the Spotter picked up on what was happening and fixed the problem immediately. Now I’m permanently plugged into The Hum. Thank goodness.
In the old days information couldn’t be trusted. We used to have this phenomenon called the media through which most all information was disseminated. But it got so the media became one big lie. Various factions colored all the information to suit their purpose. So The Power did away with media. Now there is no information about what is going on in all the world. None. I don’t miss it. I have my changing virtual landscape which entertains me all the time.
As far as I know there are humans all over the Earth, living in some form of existence or the other. They have their jobs to do and do them. That’s it. I’m not sure what the purpose of this existence is but it doesn’t matter. Old-time philosophers used to debate the purpose of existence.
Not anymore. No reason to.
The old-time media used to tell everyone when everything was okay and not okay. But then everything got violent, lots of arguing. Everything turned out to be not okay. No information could be believed at all, and it made the humans of the time very anxious. As that was happening, The Power was programming itself into the ruling entity. It happened pretty fast.
One day humans were in control. The next day it was the machines. Or so it seemed. But everything has worked out for the best.
The end, really.
Poetry from Deborah Kerner
Deborah Kerner is a poet and a painter living in Ojai, California. Her poems have recently appeared in Bluepepper, Mad Swirl, Rabid Oak and Ariel Chart. Synthetic in the Skin stripped so that even in intervals nothing remains somewhere in a terrain sucked dry taking a train with windows like fluttering eyes much of the world slides by without intention. time is nowhere lost in seconds passing the edges of restless habitation people squatting shitting and fearless close to the anonymity of train tracks traveling offline and by the sweep of fields passing disintegrating remnants of shattered structures gray like misaligned cultural leftovers buildings fading in the offhanded rose orange light of raging fires jumping unraveling highways. the train is smoking over bridges encountering succulent forests glued on stamped listless deserts stripped beyond the fringe of dystopian recognition. skins absorb unevaluated toxicity we are left in a walking zone where wolves take over forgotten remote forbidden old ladies pass through tattered fences the barriers home is where the skin is in this now moment called synthetic determined by the ironies of language humans walk the floating earth not knowing where they are Night Dweller my feet are cold my heart somewhere feeling. it insists it is feeling moon sharp a white sharp disk thrown in the night sky night falls quickly on my head uncovered and filled with dread will I lie here frozen losing sleep in the late night’s chill? night dwelling awakens just as the sun first then the moon falls behind western mountains silhouette and shadows dense light becomes memory as pure darkness envelops stirring the noir nocturnal atmospheric molecular field of nothingness cave-like ink-jet black phantoms loom across a wall the night’s yearnings burnings achings limbs thrown about uncertain half-dreams as the sun travels the other side of earth sleep beckons me yet thwarted by dawn’s shaking anticipation and far off stars fading the night existence prevails sleepless becomes me. in the next moment the rosy tip of fractured dawn light appears begins to enforce a day night dweller exists waits until the shiver of night ignites its will to stay alive. I caught in the middle of its hardwired game Tree Woman I saw a woman talking to a tree yesterday we were filling up at a nearby gas station a busy road a time of day when everyone is returning home summer’s streaming late afternoon gold light she was animated gesticulating wildly the tree alert listening it bent towards her surely it knew her primeval voice springing from the pool of the blazing Dryads the tree nymphs shy though they were known to be turning as I sat back in the car thinking of her in the distance behind me before I closed the door she was there beside me like lightning pale blue sharp penetrating eyes a colorful bandana wrapped her head she asked me for a dollar wearing cut blue jean shorts a thin top covering her falling breasts her tanned mid torso and navel exposed muscular athletic strong legs she was earnest I looked into her myth-bound eyes what could I see but the long line of forgotten women the turbulent days the trajectory of our long collective sisterhood existences travesty of neglect shunned and restrained fiercely awaiting freedom beyond the restraints of our current earthbound cultures I saw it in the urgency of her desperation