IN-SIGHT 

The tiny virus locked her on a smelly hospital bed

Alone as deserted in sand dunes

No one to talk to and take care of

I saw her screaming with pain and losing her mind

A mother of two smart offsprings

Sometimes she laid like the dead

The ventilator looks like a new organ

Nurses in astronaut dress trying their best to save her life

I can sense my heart weeping
On the plight of that lonely grandma

THE SOLITUDE OF MAN 


In this Market,


Man stands alone, like a flower among thorns


Not until he tips the merchant


Like a seller, waves an old customer to a seat.


Then, he becomes a camouflaged chameleon.


In this Market,


Man is desperate to announce himself


Like a child, through pained cries.


Over time, he registers his presence with goosebumps amidst cries.


In this market,


Man stands alone


When through the crowd, he walks like the wind.


Unaccompanied. Unseen. Unheard. Untouched. But felt.


In this market,


Man stands alone


When the seats once warmed by his presence,


Like the heat of the sun, 


are left cold, when he sets like the sun.


In this market,


Man stands alone


When his name is called 


before titles and crowns.


The silence drowns out his screaming response.


In Honour of Late Awo.


Poet's Bio

Uduak Wisdom Ezekiel is an indigene of Mkpat Enin, Akwa Ibom state. He is an Undergraduate in the faculty of Law, University of Uyo, currently taking courses on creative writing and Poetry on Coursera. He has won several literary prizes for speaking and writing, and already his first work published on Synchronized Chaos Magazine titled, The Solitude Of Man along with hundreds of unpublished ones.

    *The foggy day*


It's the time to wake up early

With the distress of fog 

The white cool air fills my room

With a sneezing sound.

It pushes me into bano (bathroom)

With my morning tools 

I open the tap 

The snowy water falls into the vase.

I run back to the room 

Jump into my bed and begin to 

Sleep with my pillow 

Which once I used to hug every night. 

The Rainstorm

I sit here
11:40 p.m.
Listening to
a rainstorm.

There can't
be many
better feelings
than this.

Than being
safe inside,
and
hearing the
elements
outside.

The rain
hammering,

battering at
your window,

as you drink
your last drink.

Give your cat,
and dog a
goodnight
stroke,

turn off the
lights, and
just lay there

listening to
the rain.

Falling,
falling,
falling. 


They Are There

I've really,
really enjoyed
tonight.

Catching up
with a friend.
Consuming
both red, and
white wines,
and whisky.

But that's
far from the
most enjoyable
part of the night.

That would be
the conversation,
the laughter, of
which there was
plenty.

Sometimes I feel
quite misanthropic,
but nights like tonight
show me just what a
fool I am.

Yes, some people
are monsters, but
there are also the
other type.

The genuinely good
ones, I'll admit that
you don't come across
them very often, but
they are there. 


Buddhist-Curious

Once upon a time,
I was reading up on
Buddhism.

I was feeling very
depressed, and one
of the first things I
saw was that one of
the four Universal
Truths is that, " All
Life Is Suffering."

The way I was feeling
right then, I was very
impressed with that.

It really struck me as a
Universal Truth.

I read more about
Buddhism.

But, a year later,
I realised that,
it's not quite true.

Not in the slightest.

I'll agree that a Hell
of a lot of life is
suffering, but no
way is all of it.

There's sex,
although it's a
long time since
I last had it.

Music, poetry,
comedy, drinking.

A walk in the
sunshine.

A beautiful meadow,
my beautiful pets .

Yes .

There's a lot of
suffering, but
there are also
a lot of good 
times.

A lot of fun.

Forgotten / twirl           

- how easy to be a roving corolla; to be the left wing 
of a butterfly, fluttering 
through a garden of memories, infest by thistles, 
infest by whatever the gun left behind. 

last week, a chapel was invaded & all present 
left a landmark of a crimson river. 

in my calligraphy, every letter is a florid stain
of a body, rippling & 
forming a col. 

in this poem, everything is all about grief. 
i heard memories are the biological 
father of pain, often tearing into your mind. 

& i don't know how to sift pain out of 
this body / to sift myself from this lack
of wilting something calories. 

but i do know that to sieve myself
will touch this little cornflower, hiding 
behind the bars of my ribs. 

so i hide myself, beside the grave 
of a mother, whose chest form a 
cladding for me during a gun battle. 

& this is not the first time i reel 
to this point. my aims were clear: 
to see if a bluebell lush will sprout 
from her grave. / to see if the requiem 
of her portrait will revolve again. 

but every night i revisit, night respond 
with a rhetorical silence. & i thought 
everything is gone. i thought the 
refulgent of my hope has wreck into
this night. i thought that the myth 

that proclaim spirits wear the moon
to see their love ones have effect, 
& my mother, wreck into a black
indigo of nothingness. 

this night, i filch out again. the tarmac roads
so attentive that they echo my footsteps 
& i feel i was turning a knob of something, feral. 

same - the moon went into extinction. & i 
break my toe on a gravestone. i knew this
mother was warning me to stop obstructing 
her sleep / to stop trucking back to 
memories. so i left everything on a flower - 
a rose flower - i drop on the top. 

i left every memory there & walk out - 
walk out of the repose; walk into a life 
still shredding people like a deciduous 
tree. one day - someday - i, too, will be 
forgotten this way. 



Springs - Heaven's Droplets 

Every dawn, I revolve into a garden of
meadows. At this point, the grass have
recoil in warm bathe from heaven. To
walk there will enthrall one in a svelte, to
always refurbish after a bedevil life. 
Once, I was a boy praying that the miry
of lack - poverty - sinking my family will
be dry. Heaven knows how much I 
scrolls this prayer before their tablecloth. 
Even before this poem was birth & 
bath, I was on a rusty way to the brook chapel 
to wash my family's curse, milk on garbs. 
My foot, clashing against the pebbles. 
That means, troubles. That means, the 
way to cleanliness is a sanguinary & 
needs something red to rewash itself. 
That means, everything wants to wash 
itself all the memories, sticking on a hairy 
skin. Here, if you don't wash yourself, you are 
a walking corpse, carrion. You are leprosy, 
nobody will wish to clash. So I take my buta*
& refill it with the springs left in the well - 
getting gabby. I know if I must blush like the 
grass, I must wet this body; flux out everything 
that makes me ooze rancid breath before God. 
So I pray, my head on the mat, that: God, give me
this heavenly springs, before I wilt & twirl.  


Buta: it means a little kettle, use by Muslim to do absolution. 


Wrecking 

          After Chibueze Obunadike, how to eat a father's sin 

anytime my father chap a tree, i carve the former
& the aftermath. how i will come to miss the tree 
& the fruit it produce. how the leaves, forming a 
debris on the floor, will etch grief on my brain. 

to eat a father's sin is to take a kola from my father's
palm & chew: my teeth, browning like his. how i look
old from the way i munch. he do tell me how much 
his grandfather love to break a lobe daily & offer him 
one. after his dead, responsibility were shred to each
child to wash the debts his father left behind. & that

debilitates him, sweeps him into the stream of solitude. 
where i come from, we are living in claustrophobic hamlet 
& everyone fears, debts spread like flood & enclose 
every home. my father once gargle a palm gourd of 
about a future & i was the collateral. in another, 
he induce an urchin & the street knows me for
trudging. & now my father chaps a tree, a fecund tree
which i will spent days, drudging to breath life to
the scion faggots. 



Grievous monologue 


I

& there was rain. A voice from heaven 
telling me I must bath in its springs, if 
I want to be clean. If I want to be free 
from all grievous cobwebs, stitching 
to my reins. 

II 

How easily to be swindle. I mean, find 
a rhetorical & watch yourself sway with 
the wind. I was woo by the wind, a breath
from grief & I inhale more than enough. 
There's always a releasing whenever I 
exhale & heaviness anytime I inhale. 

III

In this part of the earth, I have watch people 
live with grief as a cloth & call it a souvenir 
from God. All their effort to erode the threads
is merely a daily routine - I mean: wash, dry 
& rewear into the same agony. 

& I have heard one asks: what is the use of
shaving when another hairs will regrow? 

IV

I walk into a basilica one time in August. 
The heavens were reseating all their tears 
into clouds, & waiting for a moment to sieve
them out. 

I met the pastor, whose teeth preach peace;
preach gnawing - meaning, come unto me & 
I will chew your problems like cola. I biography 
my life, in a way a screed will be needed. 

But he mustify his mist, shook a loom at me. 
He said my problem is a rock he can't chew. 
Said my problem is a train, driving to its location, 
of which a mere wedge can't clog. 

I swallow them back, into a belly & wobble, my mind
hobbling. 

V 

What can I do to eradicate this grief 
infusing into my biography like an 
inevitable comma? There's more to 
life that just procuring a solution. 

What can I do to soften this grief 
for my body bearing the burden? 
Will you teach me, hummingbird? 
How you carry a message without 
thrumming a jeremiad? I want to be 
the next eulogy in the mouth of wind, 
to inhale & not feel heaviness. 

So Lord, I am in Your sanctuary with
Hannah. My lips, rarely splitting. My
heart, sacred to Matthew 11:28. 
Soften my yoke now before I break into 
shards. 



A Friday I Hold A Mist Of My Uncle 
  
          Friday is a of solemn prayer in my mouth. 
         Chibueze Obunadika 


Still skinny as ever,  my uncle stretch himself over
the mat that was soon to carry his back into a night 
that will have no voice or light. My uncle said it's a 
way of keeping the mat holy, that when it bedriddens
him, fire will not gush from inferno to carpet the mat;
but music from alujuna. On days when he laid himself 
on the mat as though the walls were a god & he was
kissing his feet, I question him on why he must 
murmur words into the air. He would say, to kiss the
air before the air kiss him goodbye. I swear, I saw this 
obliging homesickness as schizophrenia carving out 
of his mind, when insomnia seize sleep as hostage. 
He said it this night & his voice was thin, as if tilting 
on something that was soon to let it go. Night flood 
down with a filming lunar, perforating our curtain. &
his voice was like an organ, about to complete a hymn. 
He draws me, so close, our breaths - sultry & wintry, 
entwining, on a mat. He said: when my breath freeze 
to flux, let me dwell with my prayer mat, my holy mat. 


 A rendition to Abiku, when harmattan scarified our skins. 

there's a cry inside:  first joy;    then death 
morphing the green leaf to yellow  & twirl.  outside 

       there's breeze.       outside, there's wheeze 
       of pain & ferric chloride agony. 

dear Abiku, i see your star(dom)    
how it trails with the mockingbirds       to scorn
           our last hope.     how the owls 

carrying your voice, saying: arise, there's no antidote 
to the plague. 

____________________ 

i wake up this morning & your face stride
past like a firefly in my eyes. 
i know i have anew wedge to lift - pain, 
something uneasy to bypass. 

outside, the family sits again to decide 
how the placenta will not regrow in the
woman's womb, to birth Abiku again. 
& i know this method is mouth: once 
the words windfall, they will dried like 
spittle. 

outside, the breeze is blowing again. 
outside, the walls & skins are being 
scarified from the breath of Abiku. 

Welcome to July’s first issue of Synchronized Chaos!

This month’s issue explores themes of tension and solace.

Are there unavoidable sources of tension in life, and is a life without anxiety even desirable? Where can we find solace and peace when we need them? Where do we need to maintain a certain level of awareness and vigilance?

Satis Shroff comments on the continuing human cost of Russia’s war with Ukraine. Steven Croft reflects on how soldiers and civilians endure the other armed conflicts around the world.

Jelvin Gipson expresses through a fable the need for wisdom to prevent endangering oneself or committing hasty acts of violence. James Whitehead’s poetry speaks to the impact of reproductive legislation and sexual assault on women’s lives.

Richard LeDue and John Thomas Allen highlight moments of humor and beauty found within hospital settings, where patients make the most of their encounters with illness and injury.

Ike Boat reports firsthand on a destructive flood in Amanful, Ghana. Stephen Jarrell Williams explores themes of society’s end and nature’s rejuvenation.

Closer to home, Yusuf Olumoh seeks comfort in the sea and solitude after the loss of his parents. Linda Crate describes the recovery of one’s self after an unbalanced relationship, while Scott Strozier illustrates the need for maintaining relationships and how they stay intact or fall apart. Shakhzoda Kodirova’s short story highlights the importance of maintaining our natural and human communities.

Andrew MacDonald’s poetry captures the moments that may seem fleeting or mundane, but which cement relationships.

Thadeus Emanuel comments on change and creativity in nature and in a writer’s mind, and how our creativity and relationships can be derailed by hypocrisy and deceit.

Candace Meredith’s short story illustrates the horror of not only the monster attack its protagonist survives, but of how she’s completely alone in her perception of danger.

Linda Hibbard expresses ambivalence about change and progress: will making things different make them better? Mahbub’s poems draw on dual meanings: bridges between the past and present, symbols that can represent multiple concepts.

Doug Hawley explores the limits, nuances, and paradoxes of personal and political freedom.

Peter Crowley humorously dramatizes various sorts of literal and metaphorical birth pains, looking at the cost of different sorts of creation.

Jason Ryberg contributes vignettes of middle America looking into the drama of ordinary life and little moments of grace or annoyance, while Peter Cherches dramatizes an unexpectedly familiar encounter with jazz great Mingus.

John Sweet shares the ways in which many ordinary people in middle America can become stuck in life, left behind in modern Western society.

Mark Young’s amusing poetry explores the different sorts of “deliveries” we receive in life while Debarati Sen waxes poetic about the joy and beauty of the plethora of words and figures of speech available to all of us.

Ian Copestick’s narrators simply check out of their ordinary lives, using whatever means are available to them. Jack Galmitz delves into a photograph of a man cooking at a barbecue who’s deeply engaged in what he’s doing.

John Edward Culp sends in a somewhat ineffable piece on transcendent travel by means of light, while Diana Magallon contributes a mixed media meditation on discordance. Alan Catlin’s Southern Gothic poetic landscapes, after Sally Mann’s visual art, immerse us in the murky history of swamps and American Civil War battles.

Jim Meirose relates a piece with humor, charm, and dialect while Nathan Anderson breaks language down to syllable and syntax and nonlinguistic symbol.

J.J. Campbell captures the wisdom and cynicism of older age, while Santiago Burdon’s tale of teen angst and athletic shoes humorously reminds us there are times to keep our mouths shut.

Gaurav Ojha also encourages us to quiet down. He says we’ll find wisdom when we stop thinking and speaking and directly experience and learn from life, whether a beautiful sunset or a dentist appointment.

Michael Robinson and Sayani Mukherjee reflect upon the spiritual solace and comfort they find through the faiths of their heritages. Chimezie Ihekuna’s poem reminds us of the spiritual meaning of Christmas as a holiday with a message we can reflect on all year.

Matthew Defibaugh and Christina Chin’s collaborative poetry presents images of gentle movement within nature. K.J. Hannah Greenberg’s set of bird photographs illustrate and comment on the variety of ways we as humans coexist with and treat other species.

Thank you for reading this first July issue of Synchronized Chaos. May it invite you to ponder, consider, and engage with the writers’ and artists’ work.