This is the game, set and matching end-piece to what is known as:

http://hellopoetry.com/poem/385266/poetry-round-find-your-self-within/

by way of an introduction....

T'is season to move forward,
back to old acquaintances renewed,
sand, water and salty sun,
three lifelong friends who,
Auld Lang Syne,
never ever forget me

I get drunk on their eternity,
their celestial beauty,
and they, upon my tarnished earthly being,
muse and are bemused

unreservedly and never judgingly,
share shards of inspiration unstintingly,
we share, never measuring
this captain's humanity, his human efficacy,
by mystical formulae of reads or hearts

grains of sand, water wave droplets and sun rays,
and his beloved words, derived there from,
all only know one measure...
immeasurable
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/699991/adieu-my-crew-my-crew/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Pilgrimage (Reunion)


at last to begin,
to begin the 'at last,'
this reunion occurs
this first day of June
where on my
body's flesh colored calendar,
X red-marked,
deeper than any real cut of despair


this morn, leave for familiar parts,
embarking 100 steps to that
Adirondack chair,
my name, my self,
(oh god at long last)
so often, long lovingly
revealed unto you


the garden's sundial welcomes me,
Prince, Guardian, of the gate to the green,
the green steppe way to bay and beach,
a brief song of "ring around the irises,"
blooming around him,
he issues,
to celebrate his own glory recalled,
his own purpled prosed long ago one ecrivez'd,
by having the third mate
ring the greened worn,
bronzed ship bell
upon conclusion of
his raising of the gate


shorts and T white hair shirt,
costume de rigueur
of this Peconic pilgrimage,
turban and baseball uncapped,
stepping humbly
toward that worn wood throne
where carved are
the initials of
my poetic friends,
and his vast modest,
Concordia of poetic essays


Those odd disordered
collection of aleph bets
that have been prepared for this hour,
are sun dappled,
breeze caressed,
wave watched,
a fresh redressing after a
dum hiems,
a long dark winter


all rise up welcoming with voices
tremulous yet oratory,
sing with a love so spectacular ,
Handel's Messiah Hallelujah Chorus,
au naturel


the armies of ants declare this a
Truce Day,
parading before me in formation,
the rabbits race
in elegant uniforms,
white tailed bemedaled, dress grays,
announcing their  showoff arrival
with a new across-the-lawn
land speed record


the dear **** deer,
familiar families and generational,
look upon this human and
grumble while chewing our shrubbery,
an act of sherwooded lawn high robbery
but perforce acknowledging our entrance,
by uttering a Balaam blessing/curse,
a neutralized
"****, they're back"


the seagulls on the dock,
sovereign state observers from
Montauk and the far island city,
sent by the mother winds superior,
observers and reporters to nature everywhere,
Summer Season of Man Has Begun


a few white wakes disturb the water's composure,
the early low arc'd sun has not peaked in strength,
at 10:00am, the temp just breaches 60 Fahrenheit,
the beach sand untrod, no unlasting human impressions,
no children's red pails yet to them decorate,
amidst the sea life's detritus and smooth licked pebbles


Enough.


each tree ring and grass blade demands a verse,
an all my own tributary accolade,
this too much to accommodate


a year ago I issued an invitation,
do so again for my word is my bond
my responsibilities, my *******,


there are chairs for all
on my righted round and my motet left,
here, there are
no Americans,
no Canadians,
no Aussies or Brits,
or Indians and Fillipinos,
no African or Asians present,
East nor West,
None Invited here,
Only Poets


even those hardy pioneer
West Coasters, a proud lot,
and my Southern family drawling,
and perhaps lessening the mourning
just a touch, a minute modicum,
all sit quiet in the admixture
of poets come to celebrate
the blessing to have been tasked,
to write from and of places we visit
in the cerebral,
and to imbibe each other's words


Three Hundred and Sixty Four Days ago,
I wrote :

We sit together in spirit, if not in body,
You join me in the Poet's Nook,
A few frayed and weathered Adirondack chairs
Overlooking the Peconic Bay,
Where inspiration glazes over the water,
And we drown happily in a sea of words...

I am exhausted.
So many gems (poets)
to decorate
My body, my soul

I must stop here,
So many of you have reached out,
none of you overlooked.

Overwhelmed, let us sit together now
And celebrate the silence that comes after the
Gasp, the sigh, that the words have taken from
Our selves, from within.

Once again, in your debt

Again,
I await your beckoning wave of hello,
greet you in your mellifluous native tongue,
iced drinks at the ready,
the opening ceremony already started,
when all are seats taken
we commence officially,
with a blessed

*"Now, let us begin"

"How can two souls, with their own wells of stories and fears and delights and tears, so far from each other's presence and premises and thoughts, look exactly the same?"--SC.

It all began at the end of another day;
On an evening with faint footsteps—behind the shy sunset,
With an eyes that were craving for sweet sleep;
I closed my day with a heart too tired to weep.

With him still in my mind, and a melted heart back again,
I frequented the bus stop once more—
But too thought I had caught a ghost:
A ghost of him trapped within thee;
You with his charms, and within his body;
You with his gaze, and the smooth dark hair he has;
You with his chin, and the faint blushes to it;
You in his jacket, with a bag slung loosely over your shoulder.

Nikolaas, ah, you reminded me of him at that instant;
Nikolaas, that perhaps even He has left behind;
Nikolaas, that once entertained my young artist's heart;
Nikolaas, that wailed and pleaded funnily like a young infant;

Nikolaas, that often woke me with his childish cry;
Nikolaas, that failed to sew a long brown tapestry;
Nikolaas, that held my poetry book over the literary summer;
Nikolaas, with whom I spent too much time together.

Nikolaas, whose calls oft' distracted my lessons;
Nikolaas, who at whose mischief laughed very charmingly;
Nikolaas, who to my words listened willingly;
Nikolaas, who in his brown pyjamas startled me every day.

But you were too realistic to be deemed artistic, Gianluca;
You were even more hopeful than the tainted earth grounds;
You lent to me a bashful terrific smile;
You charmed me, though with his charm, for a long while;

You are but his soul told in another way;
This I knew when with a bold smile you nodded at me;
A smile that was more melodious than the purplish skies.
The skies just sneered at our florid scene;
With insatiable glances they boasted of their silk;
Spat thunder onto the shivering glass beneath our feet;
Before they swore and took a chance to run and fleet.
Fleet, fleet away, like an unconscious, insane rainbow,
As if there would not be another day.
As if the world would end as tomorrow ended,
As if no rain would dismay the earth by its cold colour.
Gianluca, I was as wet as clouds—over there, by the bus stop,
My soaked hair had made myself turn grey; pale, and—before you came,
I had become again disillusioned, once more.

How could two beings look exactly the same—that I understand not,
But you made me gasp as I caught you first in my sight.
Your eyes, that were more European than the crying night,
Your hair, that was funnier than the unmet moonlight,
And your aura, that was more serious than a dream.
Ah, Gianluca, how could you be as numerous as him!
Tell me now, your stories from Italy;
And the city of Rome you had ridden across;
Ah, but my sweet Nikolaas is from Amsterdam;
In which all years are pale with white snow and dust;
And a scattered whiteness—a shrieking pale gloss.
Gianluca, Gianluca, still—you are all but a filmed mirror of my Nikolaas,
My little prince, that once attained and tightened his grip of my ****** soil,
My dear husband, that once entertained me with the brass and grass of his toil.
My naughty love, that ran jumping about the following morning;
My very own darling, with his own explosive moods,
But no tears once appeared in his moonlit eyes.
Ah, Gianluca, how I could see none but my lost prince in thee!
Gianluca, my dear, but are you perhaps more sincere than him?
Remind me that reality is but not another horror like dreams,
For my days, ever since he left, hath been a nightmare,
A nightmare my heart has failed to tease, and burn dryly away,
A nightmare that has fallen onto the top of my every single cell.
Gianluca, and your red mouth was as bright as the red sunset;
Just like the lips of my darling back then—which started to smile as our eyes met.
Gianluca, Gianluca, but tell me now—shall I ever meet thee again?
My Nikolaas might still be alive—but his image is dead within me,
He has fallen for his evil night aurora; an Aurora that, sadly, is not like me, Estefannia.

Gianluca, dry is my throat, hungered is my tongue;
But you fired me against those like a poem;
Your shadow was to me like a little ghost—and perhaps is still,
Your sight made me fear, and my stomach churn ill—
While your hands were just a few turns away.
Perhaps you can assure me again, that you are not him;
You are new, with an unsinned soul—and untainted;
Tell me that you are pure—that you are whom I have sought;
Even though you are still him to my ****** dreams;
With a voice within which he used to say;
With a smile within which he lived my days;
Ah, in my mind now, there is but a jumbled forest of thoughts;
A whole well of unheard mirages—that I shall craft into dear, dear poetry;
Ah, but who knows everything except that He gives to know;
And who sees everything but that He makes our destiny;
Ah, Gianluca, perhaps I shall see you again amongst tonight's traffic;
When days but grow low, and dusk reclaims its fair relic;
When dawn is prepared—with the night maddening about at hand;
As I return from my errands—after attending to my books and friends.

Gianluca, Gianluca, Gianluca no matter how much you are like him;
Perhaps you are better at luring my souls;
And the treaties by which they feel satisfied not.
You are the fallen star—that I have hoped for;
You are the sanguine angel I have never met before;
Ah, and if this was the case, would you always be there for me?
And thus, my dear, but can this time—you see me by unlasting daylight?
Perhaps you look only more like him by the night;
And as dawn greets, and noon appears fast;
I think you shall claim your own image;
Confirming that to me, your charm shall always last.

Gianluca, Gianluca, Gianluca,
How I miss, miss, and miss him in my sordid dreams;
I've missed him far too terribly—and at times, unjustly;
He, the son of storm and the child of mystery;
He, the lad of madness—the angel of scrutiny;
And to this day still but I miss him, my dear Nikolaas,
The little, little darling naughtiest—yet most beloved to my heart.
But still, show me what you can say onto my poetry;
Show me what you can see, and what you may keep in mind;
Show me, perhaps, the threads of another love story;
Another gracious tale—with him I shall never find.

One
Under the undeterred eyes of the sanguine, she offers him all her breath, a pale lily in a hackneyed October dress. He fills up all the space without question. For awhile, she considers coy eyes, or nothing at all. For a second, he considers her presence.

Two
The jolted stir comes on as a swell before real time, and occurs just after the establishment of a name, or a likeness, or pretty hands put to work, wiping crystallized adulation into her brow, and her repose was ragged and uncouth and far from her hands, but he would never know that.

Three
Fresh irritation spits at a target truly deserving the claw, charged under frivolity and tardiness, and enduring a verbal revenge at a collective likeness, revamping the smooth glass of his tenorly color into a crow’s call of little patience.

Four (before)
Forget the cold. Forget your pleas overseas. Take your hat, it’s cold tonight. Take a brunette, leave her in the dregs. Through to it, the music’s loud and the night has taken another's pretty hands. Covet the cloves and honey you smeared into your ashy fingers and pretend to give way, only slightly. Run into the fire, eyes closed.

         (after)  
         Even if it was just for this moment’s settling. Even if it felt like the whole and final truth. Even with the valved smoke singinga round you and the crush of bodies folding you closer, and the moon shining directly behind your eyes, it is as if all you’ve ever known was the dark reverence layering her skin.

Five
  Can you impale a dream? A dream may not be gripped, but it has a place of its own. A dream may nest in the ridges over time, and may arise as inexplicable color, but it will ravage the ventral cavity until hope crawls up and over her shoulders, masking the eyes to see something never there before. Can you spot-treat a want so fully self-invested in a recalled series of impassioned pseudo-happenings and fervent miscommunication? Can you **** off the interrogate latched onto each one of your senses? Are you divulged within each unlasting augmented beauty?

Six
         He remembers moments when everything seems to slow down. He remembers how strange it is, to whisper over the grind of a herd. He talks of distillation, as you absorb all this, how in total fairness, in total want, you deserve it. It will intoxicate him, but he shall not let it.  Only in circumstance is a cheap cup born by trembling maidenhands, unbound by hometown lovelies and swerving.

There’s a difference between what something is and what we think it is. Rather, there’s a difference between the idea that anything is and the awareness that everything is illusory. It sounds abstract and impractical, but it’s a truth that runs steady through the things that seem to matter most to us: we don’t get over someone just because they’re gone, we get over them when we get over the illusion that we still have to grieve. We don’t wake up one day and start loving ourselves, we start realizing that the reasons we didn’t were false beliefs illogically held. We compare ourselves to others to craft these ideas, we narrate our lives through the minds of others because the illusion of their perception, when we create it in our minds, is one we can control. Imaginary things are easier to see because they don’t need to be in front of us for us to believe in them. They always exist. They’re always there to comfort us and let us live the lives we imagine we want. But that’s the problem: when the illusion isn’t the truth, the two collide eventually. The illusion just limits us. Until the letting go leaves us in the illusion of nothingness. And so we create another one.

The intangible things that are present in our lives are the things we don’t think we can go on without. The illusions we have to live with so we can go on with living.

We eventually realize that all things are myriads of expressions of distorted ideas, and that all things are the simple alignment of the illusions we perceive and how the world reflects them back to us. That happiness always came from getting the things we thought the illusion would like, and that unhappiness was realizing that receiving them filled the void and then we crafted another illusion to replace it. All unlasting, false things are products of this, and the only way to transcend them is to simply be aware. The greatest secret of life is realizing that these things aren’t part of us. They aren’t natural. As easily as we created our illusions we can get rid of them, we just have to be aware that they are just that. Ideas.

If you don’t, you end up living in the illusion that others have created for you. And you’ll call it “reality.”

When I’m dead like here and now.
Like before and present, as I’ll always be portrayed
wound within the fabric of my birth.
I'll stammer through the phantom beastly of society,
as I always have I will phase
beneath the day's skin,
flower and splatter
amongst the phantom passerbys
and click my blooming tongue
behind your blind ears.
And chant one lasting whisper
against the back bristles of your shivering neck,
my breath pluming against
and within your porous skin.
One lasting, one altering statement or phrase or acknowledgement
I give shackled in the chains of a gift wrapped present
within the corridors of your perking ears
and there to be unpacked.
You as every other soul will misplace my memory,
will forget as a ghost dissipates against the breeze.
I was never anchored here,
indistinguishly as the phantom I am composed of
I may sputter the words farewell,
farewell only to be met with farewell and forget.
Farewell as my pattered steps flutter within the distance,
dead as here and now,
dead as my unlasting memory.
I exist as but a farewell.

I feel an empty darkness
a hole within my heart
A missing piece
that has been torn right out
Why can't I heal myself
why can I move on
Before the heart I have left
blows up or falls apart

I hear the echos of past
they taunt my thoughts
with the pain they cast
Haunted by an unlasting love
my heart the house
My soul the home
so lost and all alone
The ghost in my heart
the unwelcomed guest
The love I have lost
an unconcored quest

Back then, I have been listening,
I was watching your eyes,
Blinded by a silver gleam.
You, you stood in the blessings,
With your sincerest lies,
Wounding me to my deepest seam.

And that's how childhood passed away,
With elves and villains that we thought would stay,
Maybe it was peace we had, this day.

Hello you, my unlasting best friend,
Hello you, my vision is still blurr,
Hello you, for you I can stand 'til the end,
If you don't forget who we were.

And now, you weren't listening,
You were caught in all of them,
The blind people in your heart.
You have kept on hiding,
You've been setting all the blames,
On my love from the start.

But don't take it seriously,
The time and I will pass, if you just wait you'll see,
You know that now you don't need me.
Oh love, that is how childhood passed,
With great wishes that couldn't stay or last,
And love, maybe I held you too fast.

Hello you, my feather in the ink,
Hello you, the sea in which I sink,
Hello you, I can stay with you, that's for sure,
If you don't forget who we were.

I whispered it when I left this morning.
"Tonight I will ask the question."
I’ll asked her to a film, I’ll say
“This week, we could see Yesterday?”
Although nerves melt me away
As though a burning silhouette.
"I swear my voice is always stern,"
I say, "What harm's another day?"
With my voice on a squeaking fret.

The haunted concretes creak without a sound
And trains rattle to shake the way of dying candlelight.
Avoidances dance, twirling round and round.
The haunted concretes creak without a sound.
Words gust heavy and unprofound
While I must be this wavering kite.
While trains rattle to shake the way of dying candlelight,
And the haunted concretes creak without a sound.

Here where they dissect creatures that once scuttled
And pull them limb from limb,
And pour wine beside, which swirls in the glass before it's settled.
The creature's gravestone a girl with a smile grim.
A dim expression that deflates with the next plate,
As she surrenders to digging in.



Nearby seniors' droning threatens to drown
My mind with inescapable numbness.
Again, I take a glass and swallow it down
Praying on a secret unseen finesse.
I say a joke that to her seems lost
As though its ghost just went past.
I butter my tongue with liquid as though toast;
Regret all I've said and call for a glass.
I tighten my tie tight around my neck
The tangled knot neatly risen up.
Joke as though throwing cards straight from a deck.
By dessert feel numbness on my tongue’s cusp.
Dreaming she would not be one to beguile,
She and I
Evacuate the chatter with a stretched smile.

Passing lanterns looming on a night walk,
I begin to her a conversation.
Yet only dare to make the smallest talk,
Not risking she leaves an awkward situation.
I haven't the courage to encourage
What may enrage nor leap near isolation.
What would the forefathers say?
A man wouldn't wait nor hesitate.
But I stutter before I can state
Whether I'm a hasty man
With fast unlasting thrills,
Or willing to wait
And understand.

Which question is it?
But why is it this?
Perhaps it's better I ask with lips,
And without words.
So let soft suckling be heard.
But why is that?
I can't possibly, probably.
But may I know facts exact?

Then dawn rose with the sun alone and untimely.
I whispered it when I left this morning,
When I was returning home suddenly,
"Tonight I will ask the question.”

Since she waits there for me.
A young tongue is spinning and spiralling.
Lips collapse into antique whispers.

I'm certain she waits there for me.
By delirium and thoughts lost.
By flowing fountains draped with moss.
She folds fingers round the thorn.
Th'evening lingers, for golden light has lit it.
Scolding any scorn that drops to forlorn.

She has gone now.
But she'll be back soon.

Death to conscience
Booster of ungodliness
Playing chess with the devil
Dropped in his den of evil
Sold the soul for pleasure
Shadowed by greedy desires
Dancing about with satanic attire
Commanding  demands falling in other
Unlasting joy in the pit of sorrow
Inhaling smokes of abomination
Proud in their delusion
As though they own their lives
Casting spells
Swimming in concoction
Due to fear of the ancient enemy
They are diabolic dancers
Submissive to the devil for answer
Enslaved in time and after
Their days as short as second
Their existence will be wiped out
Their memorial stories wiped away
Yet their miseries are eternal.