for more pills for the pile of pills I have become.
Winners or Losers
Perhaps it’s a roll of the dice
Or a coin flip
Or one of those childhood games
Rock, paper, scissors,
But somehow, we end up winners
And/or losers.
It’s hard to tell where it comes from.
Perhaps it’s written in the stars
Or in the lines crisscrossing our palms
The Ouija Board or tarot cards.
Too often it seems like the luck of the draw
Some of us win, others lose.
I remember being given a book about
Andrew Carnegie to read.
Back then they thought that role models
Like that would move us along
Especially those of us who seemed to be moving
Off in the wrong direction.
Needless to say it didn’t work, but I still have
The book somewhere
Gathering dust in some pile of my lost projects
The millions I was going to make, the books
I was going to write, and all my inventions,
Inventions that never quite worked. All this must have been written in the stars.
Hiding Places
What happens when you lose
Your hiding places
And you must
After all these years
Move things, things you piled up
Put aside for another day
Sure you would need them
Use them
Two of this, two of that
Things you barely remember
Half empty, half full
Hiding away until now
And now you reach in
Reach over
Pull things out and try
To think of what you can do
There’s the rubbish of course
Or other places
New hiding places to set them aside
Again
Prizes you can accumulate against need
Against an uncertain future
Hiding places you won’t have to face
For years or
Maybe you’ll never have to do this
Again.
J. K. Durick is a retired writing teacher and online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Yard,Black Coffee Review, Literary Heist, Synchronized Chaos, Madswirl, Journal of Expressive Writing andHighland Park Poetry.
Slavery was abolished in America almost 200 years ago but the system refuses to relinquish a sad history binding young black men as they remain prey and are locked up in a system to perform free labor blue mood cops the modern day crackers the new age slave hunters to capture them.
They clip black wrists in handcuffs the updated version of chains once used to shackle down the slaves for transport on market days now they fill prison cells to work for masters whose guns are trained on their backs just in case they should run.
The traffic stop a gold mine to capture new blood a broken taillight, a freshener on the rearview mirror tinted windows will get a white male a ticket or warning will get a black male maimed, killed or imprisoned driving while black/brown the underlying crime.
I can hear their deceitful voices in my quiet mind thirsty cops wanting to get their fix of blood on their hands excited to get their bragging rights and to pump their chests ‘I got another nigger today’, they boast laughing at their conquests.
Stop resisting they shout while punching and kicking a responsive body to pain. How can one not move receiving such an assault to one’s body and with punches to one’s face and head?
What a bunch of evil men are Chauvin and his kind may their souls cry out from the heat that awaits them when they meet their master—grateful for all the blood they’ve collected for him through the merciless killings they performed on black livesafter all these years reminding us againthat unfortunately black lives just don’t matter. They say reform of tactics is needed for the bad seeds, but how about reforming the entire broken structure and adding some empathy to go along with that please?
The cry “Black Lives Matter” not a threat to a nation is actually a cry for respect, compassion, empathy it’s to spotlight the cruelty and inequity placed on a group of people seeking to overcome the knee on their necks to get the same treatment as everyone else.
Sheila’s writing style can best be categorized as Visual Poetry, blending emotion and vision into a poem or story of color. Her poems and short stories are featured at Spillwords Publications, Literary Yard, Sweety Cat Press Anthology, I, The Writer, and Youtube Poetica2 series, cafelitmagazine.uk and Clarendon House Publications Anthology Poetica 2 and 3.
First, a few announcements: We’re co-hosting a free Mother’s Day poetry reading through Los Angeles’ Chevalier’s Books on May 3rd at 7pm Pacific time. Come out to support an independent bookstore and hear liz gonzalez, bridgette bianca, Gail Newman and Lynne Thompson.
Also, our longtime contributor, poet and essayist Michael Robinson, who writes about his life as a Black person in the USA, about overcoming a challenging childhood, and healing through connecting to nature and growing older, has self-published a collection of his work, From Chains To Freedom.
For a copy of the book, please contact Michael at mjrobinson@rollins.edu
We will gladly publish a review of From Chains To Freedom if someone would like to submit one to us!
Michael Robinson
May’s theme is Cultivating Thoughts. Cultivating rather than cultivated, in process rather than fully accomplished. Rather than on display in a medieval court or country club, our contributors are at work gardening, tilling the soil of experience.
Actor and humanitarian activist Federico Wardal describes an experience that was on public display, a massive civic parade in Cairo celebrating Egypt’s Pharaonic history.
We hope this issue will shake loose inspiration from the fertile soil of your mind. Thank you very much for reading!
Also, fyi, contributor Daniel Anaya invites interested readers to research and contribute to the world’s literary heritage through Los Angeles’ Sims Library of Poetry. More information below:
The goal of the 44 Campaign is to find 300 giving people who will donate $44 a month for the sustainability and growth of The Sims Library of Poetry. These dollars will help us keep the library open, buy more poetry books, offer events to the community, and hire much needed library staff members from our own community. We currently have two employees working for the library, and we’d love to hire more in order to expand our services and better serve our neighborhood. We’ll also put the money towards expanding our Black and Latinx poetry collection and further renovating the library space to add a reading room and office.
We are calling it the 44 Campaign because in 1731, Benjamin Franklin created the first library in what would soon become the United States called The Library Company of Philadelphia. He did so by asking his friends to donate 44 shillings a month for the creation of this library. He successfully did so, and created the first public library in this country.
The Sims Library of Poetry is the first library of poetry in the city of Los Angeles, and we endeavor to create and support a space dedicated to the reading, writing, and performance of poetry. We are looking for people who believe in the power of libraries, and the significant impact they have on the literacy of their community members.
And we have three more books from Synch Chaos contributors which we would love to see people read and review. Please comment or email us at synchchaos@gmail.com and we’ll send you a copy of any of these titles and publish your review. Please also email if you have a book you’d like to invite people to read and review, especially if you write for Synch Chaos.
Poet and essayist Santiago Burdon’s Stray Dogs and Deuces Wild: Cautionary Tales
Horror Sleaze Trash proudly presents, Judge Santiago Burdon.
“When I first read Burdon’s work I instinctively realised that here was a man who knew the score. That he was not a fake or dilettante. I could feel a bitter, hard-won experience that lay behind every line. These stories are both beautifully written and capture conclusively the humour, excitement, sadness and disappointment of a life lived on the edge. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.” —Ian Copestick”
Burdon presents a highly amusing collection of bohemian stories from the fringe. He finds literary pearls at the bottom of a dark ocean of smut and sin, propelling us into wild and unhinged terrain in a fashion similar to such luminaries as Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, and Denis Johnson. Buy this book today!” —Matt Nagin
Window of Hope is the journey of a woman to human emotions, society and understanding life. Her path takes you to raw emotions, feelings to understand life and its significance through love, passion, sacrifice and contentment. It also talks about the purpose of life, divinity and connection between the soul and the universe.
Mark Wasserman’s Skaboom! An American Ska & Reggae Oral History
Musician, podcaster and author Marc Wasserman’s debut book is an exhaustive, extensive tale of the pioneers of the American Ska and Reggae movement as told by the people who lived it. Three and a half years in the making, the story is lovingly told through hundreds of hours of intense interviews with musicians, artists, managers, club promoters, writers, promoters, and the fans who were there at the dawn of the 80s through the early 90s to witness the birth and spread of a uniquely American version of ska and reggae. From a chance sighting of The Specials on Saturday Night Live in 1980 to the mighty Skavoovee Tour of 1993, Marc collects stories, anecdotes, history, gossip, and (most importantly) the feeling of what it was like to be there as groups of young, ska-crazed acolytes spread their passion and ignited a fiercely loyal dedication to a burgeoning culture. Interviews include members of seminal bands The Untouchables, Bim Skala Bim, The Toasters, The Uptones, The Scofflaws, Let’s Go Bowling, Mephiskapheles, and many more! The book also features photos, an essay from Stephen Shafer, and a forward penned by Horace Panter of The Specials.
As the title suggests, The Broken Mirror is a story that reflects on the aftermath of a couple’s marital failure. Like a mirror’s reflection, it makes obvious the consequences of divorce on children. The Broken Mirror is a family drama with unique twists as a bedrock to its plot. The tragic story follows the family as the children grow into adulthood.
Raheem, friends with Joke, twin sister to Shade, narrates the story. The title comes from Raheem’s diary. The relationship struggles of Bode and Cynthia, parents to Shade and Joke, get mirrored in the lives of their two daughters.
After incessant quarrels became the order of the day in the family, Cynthia hired legal luminary Ken and filed for divorce from Bode. Cynthia and Ken later married, and Joke lived with them in Calabar while Shade lived with her father, who was devoted to her and also chose not to remarry.
Heartbroken and enraged after the divorce, Bode lied to Shade, telling her that her mother and sister had died and that no one should ever mention their names again. Joke also grew up hating her father and twin sister, feeling that they had abandoned her.
Bode also lost his job and livelihood due to the divorce and a nasty smear campaign.
Ken abandoned Cynthia and Joke and was never seen again after that. After a rough childhood due to her father’s joblessness, Shade fell in love with a young man, Emeka, and got engaged. Joke grew up angry, looking forward to the day she would get back at Shade, whom she believed had stolen away their father’s affection.
Bode passed away after a lingering battle with leukemia and Cynthia died of cancer. One day, Joke realized that Shade was still alive, about to marry Emeka. This set a tragic chain of events in motion that took the lives of both Emeka and Joke.
After Emeka’s violent death, Joke’s friend Raheem found Emeka’s diary and was able to piece together this twisted tale of family relations.
The Pharaohs’ Golden Parade event : new splendor after 3500 years
by Federico Wardal
The Pharaohs’ Golden Parade in Cairo
Cairo. The Pharaohs’ Golden Parade event, which I had the luck to see, is the most spectacular event at least of this millennium, even visible from space. Powerful beacons of light projected into space and illuminated the center of a crowd of 20 million people in Cairo for five miles.
This accompanied the passage of the mummies of 18 pharaohs and four queens from 3500 years ago (18th, 19th, 20th dynasty era) placed in spectacular hearses with immense beautiful processions with people in period clothes and singers who sang ancient songs.
The glittering golden parade was channeled over a five-mile path, guarded left and right by guards in ancient uniforms, from the Egyptian Museum in the immense Taharir square to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, located in Old Cairo.
At the entrance to the museum, the Egyptian president H. E. Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi gave a welcome from modern Egypt to kings and queens who brought Egyptian civilization to the world. A very touching magical moment. The news caught the attention of the media and so it spread all over the planet, as the lighthouses of Cairo have reached the world. Everyone knows how the ancient Egyptian civilization, one of the most spectacular and advanced of the ancient world, was fascinated by the skies and galaxies and their scientific discoveries were amazing for their time.
I find ancient Egyptian art beautiful and reflective of a culture with a high degree of wisdom and insight. The cult of the beyond, of life both before and after death, is predominant. Souls are based in eternity and find themselves in an endless circle of death and resurrection.
This is the profound meaning of the event: to pay homage to everything that the immense Egyptian civilization has created and continues to create. And this is certainly how this spectacular parade arrived, thanks to the strength of the love and respect with which it was made. It was a worthy tribute to the energy of the 22 royals, whose mummies, now, finally, have a home equipped with today’s most sophisticated means of preservation.
Prof. Zahi Hawass, legendary archaeologist and friend of mine, said in his major media appearances that this is an event that Egypt gives to the entire world and that calls the world to visit Egypt. But another fascinating event will occur soon: the inauguration of the Great Museum of Giza, the largest and most grandiose museum in the world. This museum, with its sophisticated and spectacular structure, will remain as one of the wonders of our planet, even as archaeological research continually advances, to offer us all beauty for our eyes.
“I chose the name Hollywood simply because It sounds nice and because I’m superstitious and holly brings good luck.”
If I could laugh through tears, I would, but alas I´m not that cynical. The afore-mentioned quote is attributed to Daeida Wilcox, a wife of Harvey H. Wilcox, a man who purchased 120 acres of land from the original 480-acre ranch, sometime in 1887 – a land on which the green, indestructible vines of show business sprung from.
I know what you´re thinking, and no, this is not that kind of article.
(Not that there isn´t enough source material to pull from.)
I want to focus on one particular aspect of storytelling that Hollywood has deep-rooted into our subconscious – that love is supposed to be a rollercoaster drama, and that you are genetically (?) and fatefully (?) pre-dispositioned to fall in love with one specific person.
The illusion of “the one”.
And no movie has done more damage to perpetuate that than the 2004 movie adaptation of Nicholas Spark´s novel – The Notebook.
Yes, there have been plenty of toxic movies before the Notebook portraying romantic love affairs like a pre-ode to the horror that was awaiting us in a form of the Twilight series but as a nineties´ baby, this one laid down the foundations for a distorted trend in writing for me noticeably.
Instead of portraying fatalistic love woven drama as a form or one way to tell a romance story, it became so prevalent I see it in every other book/movie.
So yes, there I was in 2005, watching Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams jumping through proverbial hoops, making up and breaking up in the rain a million times shown as the most romantic thing in history, while my grandparents were just chilling over there on the couch, happily married with almost no drama for 40 years.
Being a sucker for romance, and having written a book with a heavy romantic subplot, building a healthy image of love without depriving the readers of the drama, has been challenging to say the least, but incredibly rewarding in the end.
Let´s dive in.
Cause and Effect
The debate on the differences between infatuation and love has existed since the beginning of a recorded word but that isn´t quite the quarrel here. The variety of storytelling that explores physical attraction evolving into an emotional connection or vice versa, or even never surpassing the superficiality of the former, is all valid and artful.
There absolutely are abusive, toxic, superficial, will they won´t they, we break up we make up scenarios, and giving them air time is completely fine.
What isn´t remotely artful or fine, not to mention believable, is the idea that two people fall in love just because.
And there is a quick test to reveal whether the love story you´re looking for has any merit: Ask yourself whether you´d want to be friends with either or both of the protagonists who are supposedly in love.
But Why Is It so Toxic?
You´re probably asking yourself what´s wrong with losing yourself in a fantasy – isn´t that the whole point of fiction?
It is, but there are more impactful results of fiction to be considered. Through stories we teach, we learn, we deal with personal dramas, we inherit, we get inspired, we share. And the more we pretend that the illogical storytelling is completely fine, the more books like Twilight, Fifty Shades of Grey, After, and It Ends With Us will emerge.
We project onto stories, we let them enter our system, and if a projection is toxic, it makes us not want to try. Try to be better.
And trying to be a better person every day, even if just by a little, is the whole point of living.
But if we read about super bland heroes, like a white canvas and the protagonist falls in love with them just because it´s meant to be, and we not only let it slide but copycat the narrative and continue the pattern, we´ll end up stuck in a fantasy world full of self-obsessed maniacs who don´t need to try because someone will come along and love them.
They don´t need to love and respect themselves, or to be upstanding, to lead by the example, it´s fine, isn´t it? Being a passive existence of nothingness?
It´s fine possibly losing all friends because – to drive home my original point – who would want to be friends with a living-breathing personification of an empty bucket of vague colors that is the likes of Bella Swan?
Does I am Cecilia Do Better Than That?
Since you clicked on this article, you might be aware that I am in the final stages of the publishing process with the New Degree Press for my Young Adult Novel I am Cecilia.
Zara Miller’s upcoming novel I Am Cecilia
(If not, you are welcome to join the fandom! I´ve been preparing my readers for the good stuff in the book like exploring the gypsy culture, studying the dysfunctional families, falling in love at a young age for months now…Sounds delish?)
When you´ve been writing since a young age, and reading has been a central core of your identity as it was in my case, you pick up so many stylistic choices from your favorite authors, you sometimes forget to ask yourself – Are all of them healthy and worthy of an homage?
I am Cecilia might be a piece of fiction but it´s not fantasy, so I couldn´t justify my protagonists falling in love because *magic*, or *destiny*, or *whatever*.
Not that the fantasy genre isn´t accountable when it comes to making a romance make sense.
(Remember when Jon Snow and Daenerys fell in love just because and it felt like drinking spoilt milk anytime they kissed or said I love you to each other? Now compare that to the emotional impact of Jon falling in love with Ygritte.)
But the scope of writing a realistic relationship blossoming between two teenagers who are not that interested in falling in love, to begin with, is challenging to say the least.
The titular character Cecilia, our heroine, has one goal and one goal only – to get the hell out of a small town in Slovakia and go to college where her superb intelligence wouldn´t be perceived as strange.
Her love interest, Dany, is a professional hockey player, groomed to enter the NHL as soon as he comes of age.
How do you reconcile a relationship like that? Would just because of work?
Well, no. Although they are both perceived as being attractive by their peers, I thought finding an angle to justify the process of falling in love was the best approach.
Both the missing link and the key to it was the single-mindedness of their thinking. Focused solely on one goal – as teenagers often are – they find a little something to their liking in each other.
So, to answer the question of whether I am Cecilia does better than the stories coming before it, I´ll leave it to your better judgment as a reader and a perceiver.
I am Cecilia will be available on Amazon, Kobo, Ingramspark, and Barnes&Noble in the upcoming weeks. You can follow me on Instagram @zaramiller_author, or on LinkedIn under Zara Mille for more news and swoon-worthy fiction content. Looking forward to meeting you all.
« MAINSTREAM PRO-BLACKNESS IN THE WEST IS ROOTED IN CAPITALISM. NOT IN JUSTICE. »
V KY
The waves of protest regarding the death of George Floyd which began in the United States were orchestrated worldwide. Since the selection of Barack Obama in 2008, the normal world has been mentally prepared to live events through synchronicity, hence a total rupture from the traditional political approach of the 20th century. Such interpretation of politics highlights a new scheme when it comes to understanding new cycles of Western politics. Most events are coordinated in order to welcome a certain, higher political agenda, prepared ahead of time.
It took White European and American leaders seventy four years, since 1947, to mold our modern society. In that length of time, the progressive abolition of nationalism, the Americanization of the world, the development of technology and the first foundations of globalism through politics and culture were laid before our eyes. Indeed, it takes about fifty years for our leaders to prepare a new political cycle. In that sense, as time goes by so quickly due to an accelaration of events, generations are formated and misled on purpose by external factors. And in that case, a generation which fails to wake up from the illusion of the Western life will crush the chances of success of their descendants who will be more likely owned by the corporations which dominate us, whether in medicine, technology or in the music industry.
Social media became progressively more and more important in our lives as different generations decided to jump into the experience, for fun or more serious reasons. Yet, these platforms, whether Facebook or Twitter were promoted at a time when people could still make a difference between the real world and virtuality. Yet, such distance and dynamic disappeared by the early 2010s, a time when members of an irrelevant Armenian-American family from Beverly Hills showed the world the keys to capitalize off of narcissism. With a camera and good filters, anybody could become a king or a queen of the world. And in a society where the essence of the spirit of God has been crucified by the harsh brutality of capitalism, social media found its place. Indeed, capitalism favored a separation between the minds and the bodies of the individuals living in the West, a place where the well-being of the self has to be pushed aside as the preservation of the capitalistic structure has to be protected at all costs. In that sense, social media became a new way to compensate for the loss of the human essence in the West through narcissism and the savior-like complex of superiority attached to politics and activism.
Over the past ten years since the 2010s, the West lived the first era of simulation in the virtual world. Many of us have had businesses online -or still have- and in the near future, bloggers or any random Youtuber will be the new faces of daily news and information to the people as traditional journalism will be diversified.
Yet, in that specificity, Black people in the West were the first targets to have been used for the experimentation of technological advancement in the digital world, especially. Such issue was displayed by the Black Lives Matter movement. The actual original and authentic popular movement created by black activists in Ferguson as a result of the death of Mike Brown was known as Hands Up, Don’t Shoot, an organization slain political worker Darren Seals was apart of.
Such genuine movement would later be made to be forgotten and surpassed by the fabricated Black Lives Movement whose members, financed by shady powerful political figures, were looking for a way to extend their tentacles in Ferguson following the protests organized by Hands Up, Don’t Shoot. The movement of Darren Seals had thus been hijacked.
Black people all around the world believed they were supported, when in reality, no one really cared for them. They were, once again, used as another experimentation.
To understand the place of black people in the technological progress, one needs to fathom their place in the history of the West. Most of them descend from enslaved Africans who allowed the Western world to prosper. Yet, by the time the Industrial Revolution began, Slavery was abolished. The enslaved Africans were not freed out of love and respect but simply because they were no longer needed in the North (as illegal systems built on slavery carried on as late as the 1960s in the south of the United States). The machines delivered them. Yet, as they remained oppressed in the sphere, away from their roots, black people had never been exposed to the joy of mass consumerism before the 1970s. So when they were given the chance to enjoy such social changes fifty years ago, they entered the game of economics without understanding the dynamic of power. Indeed, as they were excluded from the life of economy for centuries, Black Westerners have a hard time evaluating power and often rush in the moment to buy as a way to compensate for the fact that they were always possessed. The digital world is one of the biggest insults towards them as the Western Black people are always encouraged to embrace celebrities as examples, not realising that in the hierarchy of power, entertainers belong to the lowest, most despised field. They are just present to dumb down the masses through entertainment.
The protests of 2020 proved two things important. The black and white opposition is now obsolete as the relations to power will be based on the embrace of global politics as a whole and the preservation of these institutions. As the selection of Indian-American Kamala Harris proved, minorities are being raised by the white global institutions to further the agenda of a dying white ruling class which will disappear in a matter of twenty years. A particular situation as we know that Whites in America will become a minority by 2050.
In the quest of power preservation, color is no longer an issue as long as the values are preserved and passed onto the next generations. Yet, it is still possible to exploit the black and white opposition to further chaos in a society, as black people are often selected and given a higher power when marking a social transition from a given order towards chaos. Indeed, the only purpose of Black people in the West is to be used.
Then, modern Black Westerners are not their ancestors and clearly understood how to manipulate the pain for profit and how to deal with pro-blackness through the spectrum of capitalism. Black Westerners are self-centered and their worldview is deeply rooted in a disdain for the southern causes of the third world. Indeed, many Black activists in the United States or in Europe, criticize the political schemes of the white countries they live in, yet they refuse to leave such nations and go back to the lands of their blood ancestors. Their anger is not really directed towards the social injustice as many simply want to change one little element so as to be included within the said white institutions of power. Most modern pro-black activists believe in the preservation of power through white institutions and consider their geographical space to be a shield in their quest for political advancement. They know that by going back to the land of their ancestors, they would be losing the privilege conveyed by being an American, French, British or German citizen. Black Westerners are the reflection of the white institutions which made them and that is why they aspire to be embraced by them.
The arrogance of the geography led to a real classification regarding the importance of black pains in the Americas. Most pro-black fights outside of the United States follow an African-American pattern when only Northern Black Europeans can claim a proximity to the Black American experience as they had the same colonizers. In that sense, the BLM movement was an insult to all the other minorities such as the Native Americans or the Mexicans who are also the victims of 1492 and its consequences. Worst, it placed the Black American experience at the center of global pain when in countries such as Chile, Colombia, Peru or El Salvador, 1492 is everyday. If the world had to be exposed to the face of George Floyd, no one barely heard of Camilo Catrillanca, a Mapuche Chilean activist who was also the victim of police brutality in Chile. No one pays attention to the experience of the Black Peruvians, the Black Cubans, the Black Ecuadorians or the fight of the Natives in Costa-Rica or Chile who die everyday at the hands of the police. Why? Because capitalism grants power to the minorities whose members belong to the most powerful political entities on earth. And the arrogance and self-centered attitude of the new digital activists from the mid 2010s are a proof of that.
There are, unfortunately, millions of Kim Kardashians of activism. Monsters who managed to create a sense of glory for them through their platform. The new saviors of black people who will never spend a dime on the creation of real structures.
V KY (previously known as Victoria Kabeya)
French-Belgian author and historian of African and Middle Eastern heritage. Born in France, 1991, she began her career in 2015.
As a scholar, Kabeya’s work evolves around postcolonialism through art (mostly rap French music), the study of the Sicilian/Neapolitan subject in postcolonial Italian society, Blackness in the Arab world (Israel, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq), the Afro-Caribbeans and Indigenous Natives in Latinized America, Race-mixing and the consequences of psychological trauma among young Black boys in the ghettos.
