Absence of Justice 

If justice is kicked out of a society 
If the social class, offends
And escapes justice 
If money transforms to gum and seals the mouths 
Of the jurists and law enforcers
If the judicial system is sick
Bad deeds, spread quick quick 
Suffering ravages commoners
Great nations of the world 
Are places of no nonsense 
Where wrong doers
Receive full wrath of the law
Regardless of their social status
Saboteurs are caged. 
That's why they are great
No nation can be great If corrupt elements, 
Are bigger than the law
Evils spread fast, when evil doers aren't punished
 

Unemployed, Dating, Self-Esteem Issues

I wish I was naked with you,
but when I am naked with you
I wish I was invisible.

But you might find me by touch,
so I wish I were room temperature.
But you might find me by smell
so I wish I was sleeping in your bed for a week beforehand.
But you might find me by sound
so I wish to hold my breath for as long as it takes
for you to fall asleep waiting for me to come back
from wherever you think I vanished to.

But when I reappear, I would have no present
and you would think I had gone somewhere and returned empty-handed
and that empty-handed sheepishness
is why my self-esteem is so low.

That is why I am not answering your phone calls.


Disney women of the 1980s

The women of Disney’s Saturday morning cartoons were not princesses.

They lived serious lives and were empowered, but somehow we have forgotten them. We should remember three: Gadget Hackwrench, Rebecca Cunningham, Sunni Gummi.

Gadget Hackwrench was a S.T.E.M. gearhead who maintained an airship. She soldered spy equipment. She could drive, off-road, every vehicle that fit a mouse. She dressed in mechanic’s coveralls and was the only Rescue Ranger who wasn’t obsessed with their own image.

Rebecca Cunningham was a single parent who ran a shipping company. She owned a plane. She masterminded supply chain management, international trade regulations, and her daughter’s PTA. Her main employee was a man who starred in a movie without a single female protagonist and she was uncompromisingly his boss. And she did all of these things on screen.

Sunni Gummi infiltrated human castles and posed as a princess, boy crazy and a bit servile to a blonde rich girl until she learned some Hawthornian lessons about life. She became a talented squire, and devised plans on behalf of teenage girls that outwitted politicians, patricians, and her own favoured brothers. She was a savant flute player. She fought with monsters, bare-fisted.She fought with men, naively, but unflinchingly, a pawn played by an older human princess to deflect the violence of Machiavels.

But she represented more than a throwaway piece because no mere pawn could do these things in an urbane world and return home to a rustic family of druids and Gnostic secrets with dignity.

They are not prissy movie princesses. The role model women of Disney were everyday women of Saturday morning.

Let’s talk about working class breakfast cereal and break the chains of royal popcorn. Let’s ask where these women vanished to when we went to college.

Why did we stay silent about their absences when they were replaced in the 1990s by shows named after men like Squarepants, Doug, and other Nickelodeon disappointments?

Why did we let our fascination transfix us on the vapid Disney instead of the empowering one?


Two Magics 

Your fairy godmother has a spell to give you an enchanted pizza topping in your suburban driveway. She throws sparkles over a semper vivum.

It stretches and inflates into an egg on a stem. Voila Bipitty bopitty artichoke. A prince steps out of his Range Rover with a Vessi in his handcasting chill. 

Netflix looks around.


Terry Trowbridge has appeared in Synchronized Chaos before. He has some grant funding from the Ontario Arts Council and hopes that more poets can benefit from their programs in the next cycle (and Terry votes).

Sri Lanka, Again

He’s just booked

His next flight

To Sri Lanka

And is bound

To sleep well tonight.

Taylor Dibbert is a writer, journalist, and poet in Washington, DC. “Rescue Dog,” his fifth book, was published in May.

A COUPLE IN A ROOM

They’re in a room.

And not just any room.

By their very presence,

it’s the room they are in.

Maybe it’s morning.

Or evening. Or dark out.

Or light. Or a certain day

or month. A particular year.

But the room could care less.

Only within matters.

Only each other.

And nothing of anything else.

They huddle. They hold

each other. They’re the

room’s center of power.

They tell it what to do.

            The room obeys

            admirably.

REVOLVING

Death was always a revolver, lying around,

waiting for someone to pull the trigger.

Every chamber was empty but one.

There were potential shooters everywhere.

If they really wanted to kill you,

there was nothing you could do to stop them.

The news was more about knives.

Little jabs from the stories

of what happened to others,

whether it was war or disaster

or local or even family.

For some reason, the blades,

sharp as they were,

couldn’t stab deep enough

to cause the ultimate damage.

You wore the scars, if not proudly,

then at least with deference.

As you grew older,

you didn’t fear that pistol as much.

There’d been shots fired.

But most missed.

A few bullets caused mere flesh wounds.

But the aim was improving.

And your body felt more and more like a target.

The sympathies of others didn’t help.

Sure, they stepped into the line of fire for a moment

but, at the sound of the bang,

they fell away,

left you exposed,

just the way you wanted it.

In the end,

you were so sore and tired and pain-wrecked,

you picked up that revolver yourself,

fired away until a bullet found its mark.

Come morning,

they found you in your bed.

Dead of old age was the conclusion.

But dead of what it takes to die

was the truth.

PAWN

He didn’t wake up one morning

and say to himself, “Yeah that’s me.

I’m the runt of the chessboard.”

He’d been small and powerless as a baby

The years hadn’t changed the situation.

He had his own house — more of a crib

really – with a mortgage looking over it.

And a wife and two kids to share

in his lowly status:

Plus extended family — a hierarchy

that forever doomed  him to a bottom rung.

And a job that shunted him this way,

that way — atypical pawn – of limited

movement, potential, disposal,

and no chance of being a king.

The city with its. roads, its traffic signs,

its cops, its bankers,

only existed so as to tell him what to do.

He attended church to confirm his insignificance.

And played cards with his buddies

though even the winners didn’t really win.

Alcohol found him an easy mark.

So did reality TV.

And then-the doctor’s found

cancer in his brain —

inoperable and in charge.

THE SUN’S PROXY

So little of the sun’s rays

make it to the attic window

and the subsequent shine

does no more than

illuminate some flies,

living and dead.

The past lives here

so it’s only right

that brightness look elsewhere

for its truth

and that a pervading dimness

tends to the fully-packed cardboard boxes,

the over-stuffed metal trunk.

I come up here with a flashlight,

so that I control memory’s narrative,

glossy up an ancient photograph

yet leave a wedding dress in shadow,

glimmer off a bronze baby shoe

but let sleeping love-letters lie.

In this cramped space,

I am the sun,

uncaring of a jigsaw puzzle

but stopping to polish up

a favorite model MG sports car,

shunning school report cards

while bringing out the colors

in a far-too-small-for-me

hand-painted psychedelic shirt.

The true sun

must concern itself

with the limited world of insects.

In low-ceilinged storage space,

the life I’ve lived

revolves around me.

TO BE WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR

A beautiful beach day,

perfect for the tan that will give me

that G Q look just in time

for Miss Right – the phantom lady.

Sea breeze is blowing,

my air’s full of sand

and smells like salt –

hope that doesn’t chase away this woman

who’s not about to show up anyhow.

I tried hawking myself

in the nighttime,

but neon always focused

on my worst side

and shadows had their own dark things

to say about my character.

I’m a compendium

of fidgeting theories,

in constant search for that holy grail –

my best aspect.

What if that special someone prefers

natural off-white to bronze?

And I’m not so muscular.

Is my bathing suit just being honest

or is it asking for trouble?

I could dress in a suit

and look as square as six Salvation Army generals.

Or shop where the kids shop

and come off as a survivor of a time-machine crackup.

Some things they say should be left to chemistry.

So ultra violet rays contribute to oxidative stress,

melanocytes produce eumelanin.

Really, I’m doing all I can.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Tenth Muse. Latest books, ”Between Two Fires”, “Covert” and  “Memory Outside The Head” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.

Pink and black and white poster for a Day of the Dead festival in Italy. Includes yellow and pink flowers, candles, and a skull with a floral wreath.

DEAD CELEBRATE THE LIVING’S DAY 

How happy are the nations without war

Who live in a deep dream of deceit and lies

Of obscenities and outbursts

Sheltered by witch gods

And serial killers and sorcerers

Who easily get in wherever they want

In our body and our mind

Making a fuss and causing a lot of trouble

To open their eyes and eat them if they can

To those who die in the nations at war

Applauded in Europe and America

Showing false feelings

To the humans who come in boats

And are locked up in new concentration camps.

Quietly, and slowly dancing mariachis

In a daring dream adventure

I’m going to celebrate the Dead’s Day 

A Living’s Day to me,  in Italy

From October 27 to November 3

Without knowing if in Bergamo, Via Daste e Spalenga

In Cremona, Via Gioconda

Peeking at the place where Da Vinci is dead

With a tasting of bones and heads of Catrinas

Of bread of the dead, and not blessed bread

In Lucca, Villa Gori, Via della Misericordia

In Rozzano (Milan), Fattoria S. Giuda, Via Giuseppe di Vittorio

In Milan, Piazza della Scala a Piazza Castello

In Rome, Largo Venue, Via Biordo Michelotti

In Rovigo, Via Parenzo

In Turin, C.so Casale

Or in Verona, Ristorante Hacienda de León, Via Boschi

Where the dead born in wars

Peek at the place where the altars are of the living

Dancing and shouting between real and artificial fireworks:

What a good meal we’re going to have together with them!

Let’s lick our lips with them

Oh, what a momento¡

How good the living taste to the dead!

Who died not in combat

But under the powerful bombs

Of men transformed into serial killers and criminals

Committing acts against humanity.

-Daniel de Culla

Broken 

We are broken from previous years

We are broken and weak

Do not come with gifts and close mind

We cannot believe words

Because was never said

We are broken

With several wounds

We try to fix ourselves

Love

Is a word

That nobody understands the same way

Love

Give

Protect

Understand

Respect

Heal

Rebirth

We are broken

Not ready to move

In this life 

Don’t play with Human hearts

The Painted Porch 

at the side of the street of Campoyong
a space between the ligneous living room
& cacophony of the outside world
I sit here in the painted porch
watching the public crowd pass by

on the glass table on the tiled deck
reads a journal on realist painter
in his oil on canvas El Kundiman
a man plays a 1930s piano
& a maiden sings a love song
now mute indeed are tongue and heart

Krebs watches townspeople walk by
yet he remains on the periphery.