Story Title: Cheers To ForeverWritten 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 - AuthorEmail: authordennismann@gmail.com
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Wide 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
Author Dennis Mann, children’s literacy activist and author in Ghana
"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.
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.
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
Into The Wild is one man’s journey travelling all over the world big game hunting. Mr. Honeycutt includes many photos of his travels. It is an interesting book for the person who enjoys big game hunting. I personally do not believe in hunting. However, for those who do and enjoy it would be a perfect quick read.
Welcome, readers, to October’s issue of Synchronized Chaos. Each of this month’s submissions comes from a place of considered perspective. Whether through the craft or the subject matter, these authors show they have taken some time to reflect on what they have to say.
John Hicks’ descriptive narrative poetry reflects on the dislocation of Vietnam War service through a soldier reading a newspaper on his day off. In his second piece we ride with his speaker on a crowded bus with various local people to visit a Thai temple. Robert Thomas contributes a rich tale of watching the centuries-old Palio horse race among different neighborhoods of Siena, complete with characters, history, and local color.
Jaylan Salah interviews Egyptian film director Amir Ramses on his passion for artistic representation. With an attention to detail that some may call ‘bossiness,’ he illustrates the harshness of societal judgement, the power of residual memories, and the everyday journeys of characters unlike himself, including women and Jews.
Some contributors go beyond meaning to craft language itself like a cinematic work, creating an atmosphere and sensibility with words.
Wide 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
