Death Philosophy 

Someone who loves 

chilling  

dancing  

drinking 

smoking 

asks me if I write with an ink? 

I answer to her with  

yes, it’s from  

my pain 

my ache 

my lonely  

my grief  

with the colour of death philosophy 

Will Be Quite 

I’m seeking a land, and not a homeland
Without the aid of Google maps, instead 

I will discover a new land with a loyal pet as
I gave up from my friends a long time ago 

I want to work like a bee, and fly with
the birds by the beautiful blue skies 

I create a family of different plants
with seeds of my own, and rain from God 

being a writer is being a father of griefs, and
writing about what the city lights hid from me 

the rain drops wash the rooves of leaders
and damage the shelters of few believers 

with my eyes I see, while nothing stops me from
crying when I hear my adopted brother’s dying 

I jump into the dead sea to cure my wounds
as I will have new cuts with no pain as long as 

I will be drinking whiskey, and creating an unhealthy
cloud from the smoke of my addiction to cigarettes 

being happy doesn’t mean I’m sleeping without
counting the stars, instead it’s another way to 

forget that I am actually being hanged to death
since the day, I decided to own a colour of the rainbow 

I will be quite with the mirror, and hold
The candle dropping more wax in my throat 

Accent of Grief  

I stepped above my spirit
to release the joys from the bottom
of my belly button 

I broke my heart a few times
To feel a healthy beat to enjoy
every misery I face on my own 

I cracked my brain to recall
the times when my father wasn’t a man,
when he knew about death 

I drank dark roast coffee
to bitter my words from saying them
to the clock on the dull wall 

I cried as a powerless musician
because I knew that my blues and jazz
have a deep accent of grief 

A Foreign Student and Shaving Blades 

A few weeks ago
I went to the washroom in a
Coffee shop nearby to my school 

there by the sink
I saw shaving blades
I was shocked and terrified in the moment 

I went back to my table
to study my homework, next to me
a foreign student was talking on the phone 

he spoke the same language as I do,
his mouth was smiling, and his eyes were
watery creating a river of lonesome homesickness 

turns out, the shaving blades
have a chemistry in his current life
so do I, but I would use it on some other day of the year

Ahmad Al-Khatat was born in Baghdad on May 8th. From Iraq, he came to Canada at the age of 10, the same age when he wrote his very first poem back in the year 2000. He also has been published in several press publications and anthologies all over the world. And he currently studies Political Science at Concordia University in Montreal. He recently has published two chapbooks “The Bleeding Heart Poet” and “Love On The War’s Frontline” through Alien Buddha Press. They are available for sale on Amazon. Many of his new and old poems are also available on his official page Bleeding Heart Poet on Facebook.

Feeling Pain

Mahbub

Why do I feel pain in my heart?

The reason is why I take the drugs

Often go out in the open green fields with shady large trees

Soften my eyes, soothe my heart and mind

Feel drowsy the whole –

Can’t stay any more

Come back to me

Come back to my resort

Why do I feel pain in my heart?

Can it be exposed exactly

So far as it to say the loss of you

Threw me to the dark where I float and fly

The turning of the youth

Spent like the storm nothing left to see

I find and mind and mind

Flooded with the load ——-.

  Continue reading →

Welcome to October 2018’s issue of Synchronized Chaos! This month’s theme is Aerial Perspective.

It’s a time for reflecting on your life’s journey. This month’s contributors look at life from a distance: processing trauma after the fact, considering entire scenes and landscapes, heading off into flights of fancy, and expressing ideas poetically through metaphorical language.

Mahbub’s poetic speakers, whether thinking while awake at night or while hiking in the woods, have enough mental distance to consider their lives and situations.

Logan Lane celebrates a fun Halloween tradition that began with Linus in the Peanuts comic strip: going to a pumpkin patch and waiting for the Great Pumpkin. Her piece is a genuine, sincere tribute to tradition. In Joan Beebe’s poem, her tears mingle with the dew. She’s part of nature, part of a natural scene that actually brings her great joy.

In her monthly Book Periscope column, Elizabeth Hughes reviews novels and memoirs that dramatize suffering and survival via self knowledge, self respect, heroism, crime-solving or whatever else it takes to triumph. She reviews Crissa Constantine’s Love and Accept Yourself Now, Marshall Ginevan’s The Wrong Side of Honor, Ellen Payne’s Finding Joy, Rob Watson’s Friends List, and Astra Ferro’s Stepping Stones on the Spiritual Path.

Eddie Awusi’s piece shows his social critique of our deceit and caprice by praising naïve people who don’t get caught up in that behavior.

Chimezie Ihekuna’s poetry highlights how living a life of love and truth is a choice, something we must do, but are also empowered to do. Leticia Bradford’s poems also demonstrate the choice to stand in one’s truth, by speaking up for social justice in a nationwide march.

Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozabal contributes flights of fancy inspired by nature, and JD DeHart’s work reflects similar themes of imagination, as modern life is rendered through broader, often ecological, metaphors.

Ahmad Al-Khatat’s poems convey his love and grief through images from the natural, physical world. We see a mix of personal sorrow and more abstract grief about the human condition. In a similar vein, Michael Robinson describes a thunderstorm that mirrors his grief and guilt and then the subsequent calm, his journey to peace.

Ann Christine Tabaka offers up poems of transformation. Feelings of anxiety and powerlessness turn bedside clocks into mockers, heatwaves create mirages, artists turn chalk and ink into visual scenes.

Some writers reflect on their inner feelings and wishes from enough distance to be able to understand themselves and others in the big picture.

In James Diaz’ love poems, his speakers want to understand and heal their partner’s pain and past grief, blame, and loss. They extend this compassion regardless of whether they’re currently together with that person or whether the relationship has ended.

Abigail George memorializes her complex relationship with her emotionally abusive mother, whom she admired on some levels, and her eating disorder.

Chimezie Ihekuna’s latest installment of his drama The Success Story gets to the point in his protagonist’s life when perseverance pays off. J.J. Campbell’s poems this time around concern aspiration, rather than despair. His speakers are looking for greatness and love, seriously and humorously.

Eliza Segiet contributes poems of war, referencing the Holocaust and concentration camps. Segiet alludes to things rather than describing them directly, addressing the daily indignities of oppression in fresh ways: ‘numbers are born’ rather than human beings, inmates lose the ‘ability to lie by choice’ as they must conceal some matters to survive.

Ian Copestick gives us poems of struggle, writing of addiction and pawnshops and his amusement with books that describe an easier, more refined life. He, like Mahbub, reflects on his existence after consideration, although he’s in the midst of the struggle. His work illustrates how poverty is not always composed of moments of desperate action, but also long periods of waiting and contemplation when one is unable to afford to move forward in one’s life.

Thank you for joining in the Synchronized Chaos journey by reading our publication and leaving comments for our contributors. Hopefully this issue will cause you to contemplate and ponder, then pontificate in our direction, about the major themes in your life and our world.

Silhouette

Touch not

the inner recesses of my heart.

They are forbidden to you,

shut and sealed forever.

My black atman backlit by life.

A dark spirit consuming all.

A silhouette of what used to be.

An unfillable hollowness.

Barren promises, once made,

now shattered and broken.

I shall not let anyone know me,

for I am death. My touch is final.

Odious deeds follow in my wake.

Darkness enfolds all who reach out to me.

Remember always, when you look back,

wondering who I was, and who I have become

You did this to me.

Continue reading →