28 Poems - 8

Regret

Regret is a country where brooding is
a self-creation, like a speckled egg
that cracks to spit a crow into a world
of starlings -- a crowded country where men,
bedeviled and be-godded by a pure
and perfect past, preach castles while they sit
on broken ruins, and their sermon is
If Only. They recall the one wrong step
and not the dance; their mind walks down the road
that never felt their feet; and their lips smile,
tasting the kiss they never dared to steal
as they drink from the wide bottomless wells
of words unspoken. Life here is not lived
except at one remove -- hands touch behind
tight gloves, eyes loom through tinted glass, and words
are heard and spoken through the microphone
of might-have-been. No matter where you look,
you see success and fame cling to the arms
of younger versions of yourself -- you hear
a lucky name called out that is not yours,
or see how talent's trumped by who you know,
until your senses, avalanched by all
that is not in your life, are buried under
the rubble of your aspirations; and
dispirited and dull, your edge worn down
by shaving the thin difference between
hope and reality, you sink into
renouncement and aimless abandonment,
watching the waste of time in every clock,
feeling the waste of breath in both your lungs,
and seeing only waste of energy
in action.

copyright 2009 Matthew J Wells