From Notebooks In Turkey #2 - Spray-Bomber Signatures, Istanbul, A Photo Essay

 

Only seas and rivers and blades. 

Revivals.

Only canyons and clefts. 

Confrontations.

Only territories undivided seeking divisions, finding ships,

maps and lighted pathways 

while histrionic activists fight to save the planet. 

But what do they conserve of wisdom? When do they, without opinion or agenda, share wonder?

Or is this who they are? Steaming...streaming...waiting...spraying....

Nodding off

asking themelves how best they beat afflictions out of us.

This green bloke rendered by Caps says he's got the answer. It's knowing his own body is not one but a trio of confused humors and open chords played on a blues guitar out of tune.

The best syllable is one relating that certainties are defined by nothing being certain. 

Look, there in the light, a mincing flash, a gasp, innuendo. 

A question. A supposition. A horizon.

 

More lies. More names. More colors.

Less to accept as simple sunshine.

So welcome, then, to the modern-post-post-modern.

Where we've never been what we project ourselves to be 

while we consider the grind-house version of our own history on film.

What's it look like? 

Who plays you among the philistines with spray guns?

Among all these actors and this hardware?

Drama or comedy? Which type of soundtrack?

We'll ask Mr. Hure. Remember him from Notebook #1? 

Just as you remember Leo, the Bad of Kings.

This, above, will help. This is who you were. Met has captured you, fingers and all.

This is who you are now. A scattered blast, another closed entrance.

Another name in need of a place to sit. 

Another seat in need of a name.

Another why without reasons sipping tea in a lantern garden. 

Another you, head so round, in a foul mood with a trademark, your name in red Cyrillic. 

You're all over the place. Sit a while, enjoy some coffee. The world's a beautiful place.

Don't agree? 
Doesn't matter.

From Notebooks In Turkey - #1 - Spray-Bomber Signatures, Istanbul, A Photo Essay

 

A tattoo, your person. A country. Every stone you've turned your ankle on wincing while climbing seas to lighthouse beacons.

This is Banker Street. A trap you don't enter willingly. The sprayers knows this, lure you in.

Filth, love, redemption, call it what you will -- many a tongue, many a script.

He's each. She's every. Dog. Bag. Bird. Flower. 

You've sunk into skates while trying on swamps. W, X, Y....

All the pithy voices. All the noise. More and more we are the robots making music that no one with a soul listens to or wants to hear.

The Herods walk among us and we chase lucre in the name of ancestry, victory, impulses toward garnering attention toward our causes. 

It's the long moan, the short wait, the end of woe, the start of ish and ness. 

One day you realize nobody has ever had answers, especially those who crow the loudest. 

Take the steps. Get yourself there. 

Pause. Realize the steps take you. 

Carry on. Disappear.

Without margins. A lamp. Its glow. Wake up. Nobody cares about your identity.

Or your trademark.

Or the copywritten flourish in your grin.

What do these anarchistic bombers want? To please us, or to piss on us?

Maybe they want applause. Chaos. A paycheck in order to buy more paint, food, drink, narcotics.  

They'll be the first to tell you there's nothing self-indulgent in what they do. 

That property is meant to be shared. Unless it's their property. 

This is a contradiction they live by. An adolescent boast. A sneer they call art.

You can't do what Leo does under cover of night. 

Or what Mr. Hure renders of himself in lilac.

Why would you desire to? Surely, one Mr. Hure is enough.

And then there's Hero. What arrogance does such a name suggest?

Prison time? Victimization? What's the kernel here embedded deep within such pathological vituperation? 

For the support of all androgynous revolutionaries? 

In the name of anger and boredom? 

Leo knows. Leo gets around. But mostly he gets stoned.

Lola knows too. Whatever Lola wants....

The cats, the scarlet mice, the jet skis -- they're indifferent. They have other agendas.

A Suitable Match By Basil Rosa, The November 2025 Featured Story In The Bloomin' Onion

Too cruel is life to those aged beyond their years.

A sincere humble thank you to editors Daniel Groves and Leah Harter at The Bloomin' Onion for featuring my Basil Rosa story, A Suitable Match in the November 15th, 2025 issue of their magazine.

The story is now available on the Featured Archives pages. Here is a direct link: www.thebloominonion.com/a-suitable-match-basil-rosa

This links to the The Bloomin' Onion home page: https://www.thebloominonion.com/short-stories-home

Here is the story's opening paragraph:

A Suitable Match

by Basil Rosa

Cruelty and the teen experience are often synonymous, and Najam’s harelip and long hooked nose made him an easy target. I didn’t know if he was devout, nor did I doubt he felt like an outsider. When I asked my daughter Georgina about him, she replied with a note of defensive incivility, sounding a lot like Clare, her mother, that organized religion was never what anybody’s God had in mind. I could no longer make Georgina attend mass or pray for Najam. Neither could Clare. Accepting limitations is one of those difficult lessons each parent learns....

The Uroboros Mirror, A Basil Rosa Story Published In The Bloomin' Onion, October, 2025

 

A Basil Rosa story, The Uroboros Mirror, is now available in Issue Number Two of the online magazine, The Bloomin' Onion. https://www.thebloominonion.com/the-ouroboros-mirror-issue-two

Many thanks to Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Groves.

Here is a link to main page of The Bloomin' Onion:  https://www.thebloominonion.com/

Here is the first paragraph:

The Uroboros Mirror

by Basil Rosa

In the 1980s, while wearing red leather pants, it hit me—I was a girl in a man’s body. Bopping about, my hair spiked and dyed peacock blue, a ring in one nostril, I wanted to be Cindy Lauper. I kept my Sony Walkman and earbuds on, determined never to conform or lose the humor and optimism my favorites songs delivered, though I vacillated between “Cruel Summer” by Bananarama, and Funboy Three’s “The Lunatics Are Taking Over The Asylum.”

Blurring The Line, A John Michael Flynn Story Published In Penelle, October 2025

A big thank you to editors Kameron Ray Morton, and Oscar Matallana Correa for publishing the story, Blurring The Line, in the inaugural issue of Penelle magazine. 

Kameron hails from Arkansas, and Oscar from Bogota, Columbia. I'm tickled and grateful to have a story accepted by two editors from such different backgrounds. I hope their interest speaks to universal elements it may possess.

Here is a link to the Penelle home page: https://penellemagazine.com/2025/10/22/issue-1/  

This links directly to the story: https://penellemagazine.com/2025/10/22/blurring-the-line/