Sunny spot

brilliantly bright

my heart

becomes fair.

Two pupils

shaped like

sunflower seeds

in the air

Lover’s talk

piling up;

A big mass

entangled.

Time spent

together is of

unconditional importance.

But you’ve got to go paint your big dream

and until it’s done, I’ll just wait here.

I’m your lonely rolling star

Never stop the fight!

Your lonely rolling star

Never stop, alright?

The starlit sky

sparkling,

colorful candies

shouting,

sweet

yet painfully oppressive,

thoughts

mounting in strength.

Memories held close are dancing in the night sky

and nose-diving, I am falling back to you.

I’m your lonely rolling star

Don’t give up alright?

Your lonely rolling star

Call sometimes

Your lonely rolling star

Want to meet you soon

Ah, and then just one sigh

just one

bubbles up from inside

Next month, shall we meet at that one spot?

Your lonely rolling star

Never stop standing ok?

Your lonely rolling star

Think of me sometimes alright?

Your lonely rolling star

I can’t keep waiting

Your lonely rolling star

Just got to keep going

Slow motion and happy thoughts as my mind recoils from the satisfaction of finding a place to fit in for the night. A pubcrawl with my old college buddy Hide; a pretty large amount of Europeans (probably about 30% of the crowd).

The Spirit of Climax has seized these people and droplets of aromatic beer spread through the air around us, adding to the European vibe of the bar’s fresh-looking, wooden interior.

I cycle through the room meeting new people with Hide and covering up for my poor language skills with small dances and funny faces. We wade through the crowd, searching for the couple of ladies he planned to meet up with tonight.

Balding foreigners laugh with throaty gasps as cute Japanese damsels fresh out the wrinkles in their skirts, doing little bobs with their knees and blinking innocently. The more bitter men sit with arms crossed, watching the fools make a show; tough but feeling timid on the inside.

Hide gives me a disclaimer: the girls we are meeting up with tonight have a lot of energy apparently. Japanese dudes always talk about girls with ‘strong personalities’ negatively. Psh. We approach them and they are talking to a couple of bros -- assaulting, really, more so than talking. I see what he was talking about.

Gender aside, this girl has a thyroid issue or something. She’s in round three of her barbarian rage. Her personality was like a thousand-foot tall wave; wavegirl. No matter how vigorously I might have waved my puny arms under the shadow of her cresting power, I could not have faltered wavegirl’s vibe.

She nearly spilled an entire beer on me when Hide made our introduction. She still spilled a good amount, yes, but before anyone could react she had already begun to shout her way through the next leg of the conversation. She seemed to feel little remorse for her brazen conduct. I thought that was cool, and quite odd for a female in this country. I was in awe at her ability to go so hard; it made me harken to drugged up ravers and their ‘thizz faces’.

Mid sentence (about who knows what), Wavegirl notices me listening to her. I really wasn’t; even if I could understand her, my train of thought could hardly have been moved from the observation and speculation of her enormous presence.

Where will this night go… Gender double-standards… It’s fine for women to assault random people in the street I learned.

shaded homestead, burrowed night

emotions rise, and take their flight;

to poets they are like fireflies,

dazzling jars held before our eyes

but unless you are a clever pen

you’ll be bogging through a foreign fen

and for those whose pleats are lacking flare

nary a wayward man will care

And now I am passing through the narrow streets

girded with stone walls and thick foliage,

a gentle golden sunlight glinting off my bike.

I am excited and thinking, “now is the day!”

When I mount that known hill, so final,

with the paths behind me and a wide land ahead,

why, my heart is unfurled like a proud banner!

Then I run 1000 leagues in my excitement

over hills, bounding tumescence,

laughing gaily at the streams

I release my arms towards the sky

and when I come to my den

I am overcome with cheerful giggling

at the thought of sleeping time again

My young mind reveled in imagining dinosaurs to life,

sparkling star-scapes in watercolor,

crystal oceans unfolding beyond my bedposts.

Playing for hours, the forest my domain

away from rational thoughts.

Then I grew

And trodded,

through expectations,  and doubts..

a prisoner with walls rising about

the bars narrowing by the day.

My mind working on naught

But a million better possibilities

ever-basting itself in sticky regret.

Broken recursions of ‘what if’?

A destiny chained in neurotic providence.

The artist knows well the pained barrier

between his mind and hand,

Dancing beauty in a lover’s eyes

brought into watercolor

Begot from

Bony fingers, a wooden brush

and stark effort.

And then I paint you,

your wide arms taking this world in embrace.

Together we lived out this dream,

never afraid of the next day,

never imagining another destiny.

I would toil my brush at every star,

conduct a symphony of crickets, 

plucked with my fingers by piece,

So that you might have a good night's sleep. 

And I would read to your innocent ears,

in such a way that you might know

the truest blanket of my soul.

We blasted off, faster than light -

lifetimes through the void.

We spent years,

with our machines and

long darknesses,

star speckled silences,

nebulas drifting by like lazy clouds,

egos atrophying into emptiness

sadness falling.

Your departure brought us the will

to live another day.

For you our love grows by the minute,

cruel, as you are not in this infinite universe.

Waking, sleeping, three minute songs;

a sailor without horizon.

the day you left us,

The memory sticks like blackness to night.

How long it feels, when we’re alone.

You once inspired, w’thout light or hope

the souls of this intrepid crew;

we yearned to fight,

to earn our stars,

and we learned all of that from you.

I loved you, star-lad,

and I know you loved me too.

So I carve out another mark,

another day,

another chance -

to say

goodbye

to you.

At last we spied some ruins through the dense growth. Covered in vines, the once-sturdy masonry now lay in tumbled heaps, engravings all but faded away.

“How-bout it then fleshy one?” chimed the little sprite, “can you read these characters?”

I looked closely, “no, not at all. These are unlike anything I have ever seen..." pondering the strange question I blurted rudely, "of course I can’t read this you cactuar, I’ve never even been to this world!”

“Alright alright, sputter away all you want angry one. I think you may be closer than you understand.” And with that, the sprite flew about, examining the many runes, and settling upon a heap of crumbled stone it turned and called with chiming voice, “Help me out with this, won’t you, muscly guy?”

Heaving aside the rocks took the best of my strength, but with great labor I made progress on the fallen archway. Brushing away the dry vines that had choked the stone for eons, I examined the runes deeper, desperately, but to no avail. The slick, jungle mists coated my skin, and my swollen eyes ached with sweat. Never dipping, the sun shone still from that same position, illuminating the twin moons ahead (which direction ahead I knew not), and pure light filtered in through the canopy the same pretty way it had when we first crossed into the jungle’s borders.

“That should just about do it, big one!” chimed the sprite excitedly. It breezed past me with a trail of glitter, showering the ancient structure as it passed, and igniting the runes into a voluminous glow.

Before I had the chance to react I witnessed a great reaction. A central runestone, taking on a fey energy at the apex of its archway, unfolded into a rippling blue miasma in the empty air.

“A portal, how exciting!” the pixie teased me, giggling at what must have been a look of extreme relief painted on my face.

I swept up the little sprite and demanded: “to where?”

“Where indeed, and what will this one become on the where that is on the other side!?" a mad giggling, "Oh nothing excites the spirit more!”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m just a spirit, twinkly eyes. I haven’t a body but when I pass through this portal...”

At that moment, as if because of the very suggestion that I was the only body in this ethereal world, I glimpsed a shadow creeping within the obfuscating growth. I narrowed my eyes.

“You there, show yourself!” I called out. But I received no response: the ambient noises of the jungle droned on.

“What’d ya see big guy?” the spirit inquired.

“Another body, I think.”

Producing a curious note, the sparkling fairy drifted around the canopy, “Nothing out there I can see, scaredy snoop. Let’s hop in this portal then right?”

I gritted my teeth, “right.”