AM NOT A POET

Don't call me a poet,
I cannot write the pain that flows through my veins
Nor draw the chains handcuffing my body

Don't call me a poet,
I'm afraid to use my blood as ink and my skin paper
Tangled in this life too
A slave to my emotions.
Afraid to let out my voice
which unwittingly quivers when I speak.

Don't call me a poet
Because I cannot make out words of letters
I therefore personify my sorrow
Though I pen my own story
I cannot give myself a happy ending

So, don't call me a poet.

Amirah Abdulrahman. (JAWAHIR'S PEN)

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

Taken from the Work of Everette Maddox

I can see morning

Good things

Autumn trees

A row of lights

Railroad tracks

Oh world

For years you have noise

Frozen morning

A small yard

Dogs barking in some poor home

It’s all puddles

Neon bar

My boxers drink Gin

My sister dubbed the booze

Get drunk

Falling off a bar stool

Stay drunk

I can’t pour piss

Sweating comfort

I ain’t drinking orange juice

Everybody dies topless

I watched dog days

Hot Pearly Gates of the Confederacy

I threw the whole telephone book

Clouds brooding ah yes

My friend kissed my ass

I’m near an old radio

Murderous rock n roll

Heaven, hell, or Birmingham

The last day

Tendril
By Sreya Sarkar

Decenniums descended, 
Brave women marched with men
Shoulder to shoulder
Azaadi looked within reach
Palace walls crumbled
But a turret grew there instead
Its snake head sissling
Keeping watch on all
Tightening its grip 
On men, women, children
Some escaped 
Into the folds of wealth
Sheltered in connections
Others had nowhere to hide 
They worked in the streets, and the fields
Exposed to the strict police gaze 
The masters needed the shroud of virtue
To veil their craving 
They made it law
Loose gowns,
Tight headscarves
A pretty young one 
botched the command
Her tendril escaped
The gaze weaponized it
Looped it to choke her
The zhins moaned in agony
Beat their breasts 
Lit a bonfire
Jumped in, one by one
A neo-futurist architect and AI 
Imagined a mane of hair in the wind 
Is the gust enough to place it in Azadi Square?
Can the snake be decimated,
the blood washed away?
Will the “flowing free” replace it, instead?

Insides of mausoleums
i
Shapes shifted
blue (turquoise endeavored)
to the favorite bar
our constant devotion what
stumbles across them the
distant voices once heard if
hereafter recollected,
existents of a higher plane
every body talks of—
this no man’s land
a graveyard
sought for if retrogressive.

ii
Type doors
to faded sepulchers
spectraled silhouettes align with,
bundle what light makes
(ancestral, important)
in tombs
windows encase them,
cutting the distance to climb of
their paradise eternal
a squared room
contorts it.

iii
Sky’s throw
the distance that covers
closed sets of harvest
(once and for all)
if consequents of choices
stand tall to accuse of
some Other’s vision
this room stocks it while
perennial graces
alabaster
herein triumphs.

Andrew Cyril Macdonald considers the role of inter-subjectivity in poetic encounter. He celebrates the confrontations between self and Other and the challenges that occur in moments of injustice. He is founding editor of Version (9) Magazine, a poetry journal that implicates all things theoretic. You can find his words in such places as A Long Story Short, Blaze VOX, Cavity Magazine, Don’t Submit, Experiential-Experimental Literature, Fevers of the Mind, Green Ink Poetry, Lothlorien, Nauseated Drive, Otoliths, Synchronized Chaos, Unlikely Stories and more. When not writing he is busy caring for seven rescued cats and teaching a next generation of poets.

Welcome to November’s first issue of Synchronized Chaos Magazine!

First of all, we encourage you to come on out to Metamorphosis, our New Year’s Eve gathering and benefit show for the Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan and Sacramento’s Take Back the Night. This will take place at Woodstock’s Pizza in downtown Davis, CA, time TBA.

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 Culla gives 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 Hemmings captures 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

Synchronicity

Two caged parrots
mimicking
a false climax


Tone Deaf

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.