Writing Six and Ten Moons of Twelve

[Gambit]

Burnt my first cigar
and sat in solitude,
gazing at the blinking bulbs.
Foreign music played somewhere behind me,
words I couldn't understand.
How ironic
to feel so much in words
when you couldn't read them.
I've been doing this for years.
Here comes the next cigar.
I was only trying to write something.
And yet,
I feel as though I've already lost my craft.
Perhaps I never had the talent to begin with.
Perhaps, in hindsight,
I was simply trying to impress someone
many years ago.
I drew my inspiration
from old scriptures
and masters of rhyme—
prophets and poets,
playwrights and dreams of the night.
Interlacing the omnidirectional threads of words,
I watched them entangle themselves
in fragments of memories
I've already forgotten.
The Grand Escape begins to play.
And I'm still stuck.
I should write something about Tayama.
Pretend, for a moment, that I'm him.
I already know her flaws.
It changes nothing.
My feelings—
all the same.
Right.
I'll hold on to that promise
as the universe stretches
into eternity.
Until then,
I'll be by her side.
Ha!
There.
It's easier to say something
when it comes straight from the heart.
I spent years
trying to solve this mystery.
Perhaps there was never anything to solve.
Perhaps there is some magic
in simply flowing through time—
realizing our own foolishness,
letting it change us,
and becoming
someone different.
The cigar has gone cold.
So as the Stars
of the 7th magnitude
I never really finished the poem.
I was thinking of lighting up another,
but sometime between who I was
and who I became,
I realized this:
I would surely choose this vow
if I could leap back in time.
Six and ten moons of twelve ago.