The world is lonely while they cry for help and
                    they reach their hands up.
In words, in books, in paintings,
                    they portray their loneliness hidden or blatant.
But even that isn't enough to highlight
                    the lowlights of our lives
It's in our blood, it's in our veins, our bones,
                    it's in the cigarettes that we smoke.
Which fills the air and wails out loud,
                    screaming a symphony of isolation.
It's hidden in the corners of the cities,
                     hidden in the tall green grass of the countryside
It's everywhere you look, in famous words,
                     in ancient books.
It fills your mind, it takes you hold, it's in the tiniest key hole,
                     but enough.
It's enough to spark a burning fire, to long for another's touch,
                     to feel desire
From another human being,
                     to share in what is the only thing worth keeping
Human company. We long, we dream, we scream for it,
                     and we hope it favors us too.
It's overwhelming, it makes me, it makes me long
                     like so many others
We are not alone in our loneliness
                     and what a queer thought that is

*“Wir können uns einreden, dass wir mit einem Buch nicht allein sind, wie wir uns einreden können, dass wir mit einem Menschen nicht allein sind.”

"I go to Nature to be soothed and healed and to have my senses put in order".
- John Burroughs


Part I

When the time was right, he does not hesitate to follow the path, “I've been waiting for this moment a very long time" he says.
Just himself, a Sage XP fly rod, a Golden Prince reel and a selection of March Browns and Slate Drakes. Its a special morning, Autumn 60s, overcast skies and lowlights.


The pathway bends past tall Sugar Maples, Old Stone fences, a Groundhog or two, trout lilies and mountain laurel. Its right here, that his fondest memories reside.
He had come at last to transcend the idea of coming back to the river for a greater purpose. A purpose that makes life worth living, a milestone, his own personal mark on this special place.
The sound of the river is in earshot now. A Chipping Sparrow sounds the alarm and all of Neversinks inhabitance are now on notice….human approaching.


As he reaches the river bank he's transported to a memory of his Granddad. The times when they fished this stretch of the river together.
His Grandfather told him about a time when fly fisherman and fly tiers honored Neversink and made it famous.


We always fished until it was dark. Granddad would light the lantern and we’d walk and talk all the way home. I often felt encouraged that just knowing the importance of this place, brought me luck.

Part II

"So by now, you're probably wondering who I am." "My name is Tom, Tom Murphy." "As a child, I came here each summer to spend time with my grandparents in the town of Roscoe, NY. When I graduated high school, I still came here from time to time whenever I had a college break as an Agronomy major at Cornell. I've always loved this place. It's always been near and dear to my heart."


The very next morning, Tom makes his way down the pathway to the river again. A nice steady Breeze was blowing through the trees, and that's when he heard it again. It's almost as if someone was speaking through the trees and wind. There it was again, this time calling out a whispering "tight lines." This was the very same voice that Tom heard as a child when his Grandfather took him to the river from the very first time.


A light rain began to fall, and Tom took cover under a large hemlock tree. Thunder sounded off in the distance, and everything in the forest was dead silent. As Tom peered across the river, he spotted movement in the adjacent Forest. A second later, a figure appeared on the bank of the river. An older man probably in his late sixties dressed in a top hat and coat, a split bamboo fly rod, and a German Shorthair Pointer by his side. Tom called out, " Good morning, sir. How are you?"

i remember now, it was by the tree that i found the fallen star. I saw it from my window as i lay waiting for sleep to visit, the moon was full to the brim that night. Spilling lucid light onto the landscape adding highlights to the dales and lowlights to the fields of tea.

The fallen star was still warm, i hoped i could save it. So i climbed the tree with the star tucked in my jacket pocket. Limb over limb till i sat on the crown, ready to call the route for the fallen star to go home.

That is when it began to talk.

"I am here, to make sure you know there is only one thing

that will stop you.

It’s in plain sight but hidden under a mask,

your best friend who will ask you to make amends.

Under the rocks into the caves it’s a farce it’s a maze. So all you have to do is ask and you’ll find your way home”

and with that the fallen star fell.

sunlight
highlights
the lowlights
of all things
continuing contrasts
lighten the load
of an expanding
consciousness
change occurs
void of that unaffected
thoughts, beliefs, ideals
actions perceived free of inspiration
a hidden motivation
spirals cyclically and infinitely
to ever expanding nothingness
the body is only a vessel
for a timeless being
a collection of all
that was and is and has been or will be
what wasn't and isn't and hasn't
been and won't ever be

my social skills are painted by bubblegum lipstick and the ash of my lucky cigarette in a pack I found from a few weeks back
one more pill, one more line, another sip
another white lie, stale cigarette smoke filling up the back of my throat
buried in the depths of my backpack along with old makeup that makes me feel made up,
made up of small talk and old inside jokes
i thought would last longer then the last drag you took before you used it to finish the masterpiece you call a night out with people you think you need the most.
but they're just as made up as you.
made up just like the taste of that bubblegum flavor that lasts as long as the last drag.
as long as it takes to paint yourself into the crowd of the social scene.
the socialist you thought you could be under the lowlights and backlights where even darkest whites could've bloomed in the corner of that crowded room, where the lucky eventually ended, and the lights eventually dimmed, and the made up small talk fades into the faces you won't remember in the morning, along with the polished insecurities you learned to forget forgetting that you painted yourself to fit in.
fitted into that party that didn't even matter a few weeks back.

I think that maybe I loved you,
in the darkness,
and in the lowlights.

And I think that maybe I held you
in my heart
or in my hands.

I think that maybe I misunderstood
all the little things,
or maybe the big things,
the things of which the size, I couldn’t comprehend.

I misunderstood everything.
Every moment that was spent thinking that I understood the world,
thinking that I understood us.
Who we were,
and where we were going.

Everything was supposed to be black and white.
I expected it
to be black and white.
I tried to avoid all the grey areas where the lines were undefined,
sought to avoid the questions and confusions.

But I couldn’t.

Slowly,
the universe seeped through the eyelids I had attempted to keep forced shut.
Strands of color.
Threads which shot across the darkness,
of my lonely ceiling,
weaving galaxies,
and forming Gods.

I watched all the stories being written
in the form of harlequin dreams.
Surrendered to the kaleidoscopic visions,
of everything I’d originally witnessed in passionless monotint.

Everything became chaotic,
complex,
as I laid there in what was now
nothing more than the remnants of a former perspective.

I think that maybe that was the moment it all made sense.
All the things that didn’t make sense,
all the things that were never meant to make sense.

I became suddenly comfortable with this *******-like perception,
where everything was smeared and splattered together
as an illustration of pure and continuous creation,
providing a canvas for both reason and insanity.

I think that maybe it was then that I loved you
for everything that you weren’t,
and everything that you would never be.

I loved you for all the expectations that weren’t there.
For all the things you didn’t ask about,
and all the secrets I didn’t feel the need to tell you.

It was all clear,
when the lines blurred and the colors mixed.

I think that maybe I loved you
simply because I loved you

~
“My reasons for writing had to be my own, divorced from expectation.
There would be no reward.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, “We Were Eight Years in Power”

<>

certain words, hers, previous unknown, or, better,
not yet your own,
acquire your devotion, all the my oh my of possessed tenses,
words ironic, for they are the shoving of contrary adhesive separators,
AC/DC currents running together, a single physical electric stabbing,
owning you, but gulfing away those customized,
prized illusions yet kept,
freeing finally by focusing on the single commandment that matters:

Expect nothing, but write, knowing the only reward,
is the satisfying of self-imposed goals and conditions,
that are will always be,
always,
one more step and edit away from attainable, maybe.

My reasons, my illogical reasonings, admixture of anguished highs and loving lowlights,
a porridge of seeds that need burying to be borne,
in soil of a soiled soul, write to breathe, write to see, write to taste,
write to smell, write to hear my voice say,
not good enough,
even when it might be, just, barely, though that bar is a
moving target,

always
a perpetual notch too high.

My reward for acknowledging, accepting, no denying, freeing, finally,

There would be no reward






11:02 Sabbath
February 22, 2020
from deep in the internal confessional

The Policy of Elemental 80 Hg
How to turn the heads of the gods…


Hyperbole defaults
To feeble absurdities
But as projected, it's ineffective
against hypocrisy

What timber could ignite
Without the base
of anguished disgrace
the simplistic guarantees
Of Hell For All Eternity.

You mislabeled me
as the failed experimentation
Of your botched indoctrination
Now I’m
--- Uninstalling your crazy beliefs
     ---- wiping unnecessary protocols of
             -----atrocious & barbaric deceits.


I control the heat
remaining subtle in a realm
contaminated by extremes,
people slurping and swarming
drawing down my serenity
I don't require civility.
Hold out my arm.
Expose my neck!
I rebirth myself. I raised myself.
I mirror, I don't reject.

Reflecting on the horrors
I witness, I attend, I align.
Receiving encapsulated caption updates
Is the blueprint of our design
Recalculating recalculations
after every iniquitous turn
Calamities are my manna.
Until its impossible to burn
After every drama, I build back stronger.
"Infallible's"compare me
to an unhinged *****
Outside the liquor store
rickety, irate, decrepit
Flapping arms, shrieking, obsessive
We ask her to wear a mask and
That squawking windsock drops
like a whisper to the floor.
She believes she's
blameless, virtuous, courageous.
But she's not programmed for more.
She's a portal, the link to the facts
that she's been holding back.

The mysterious, the marrow
The anonymous, the nameless
Fused components of the ancients.
with nonconforming brains
sequences of neuronal synapses
Prototypes of dichotomy
Chaos in ignorance highlights
while secretly we bond the lowlights
Skirting the edge of this craze.
Strap in!
Anarchy is happening.
Behind burnt orange curtains of flames
**** everything.
Our settlements rain ashes.
Until you choke on gluttonous
Zealous overreactions

You'll find you're not ******* essential.
Monitoring, testing, intending
to prevent the instantiation
Expectant alarmists rebranding progress
as biblical warning signs
--Excuse them, friends
my neanderthal cousins tend
to mow down innovation with hostility.

paralleled in our DNA
the bridges between
us/theirs/yours
I'm the half-breed you forced forward.
I provide no sustenance for power.
The gods who chewed me up and spat me out
Denounced me as unsavory

Undigested, I regenerated.
I'm the consequence, not the recipe.
You are the igniter,
the hypocrite, indignant denier.
Yearning to free yourself of me.
But I exist; it's justice,
Nobody sees you anymore,
host ghost.
No, this is not a mistake.
This is your create.
This is what you bumbled here to fate.
this unrelenting tsunami
streams constant lies and hate
Eliminate societal norms
personal integrity, blocks, restrictions, constraints.

I'm the antithesis synthesis of
frivolous amusement and benign disgust
the poet, the engineer.
Now you're trembling, filled with doubt?
simply because you're auto weeding out?

The gods accept our sincere invitation.
we’re their protégés
We're their revolution evolution
The gods are coming out to play.

-Notorious 80Hg
        (aka Mercury)

I am sad, but I am happy.

I knew I would not make it long. When I imagine a future, I see gray. There is nothing but fog and my headlights, lowlights, brights- they’re all out. I do not think I worry people too bad, I hope. I know my mom cannot stomach it, though. I do not want her to live in that fear, the type you get when you’re just waiting for something to happen.

I am sorry to you Mom. I know you have given so much. I hope I can give it back in my next life. I am sorry, Bot. I think you will be fine eventually. I am sorry, No. I know you will not. I want to watch you grow up. Dad, you gave so much and yet have seen so little of me. Mom, you too.

I am sorry, BAN for taking one of your best friends. I hope you can forgive me. I am sorry LAN for ditching you last minute. MAM, you will move on better I am sure. You guys know pain, but I am sory nonetheless. I am sorry, C, for starting something I could not finish. I love you how I have never loved before.

Things are hard, but they’re sweet and I think that now is the perfect time to draw it to an end.