Tag Archives: life

Some Days

Some Days

Some days I love my life.
Some days I hate my life.
But I’m thankful for every day
I receive the gift of having
A life to complain about.

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The Point of Regret

I have a terse poem published in the Summer 2025 issue of The Soliloquist Journal. A paperback version is also for sale with a 15-percent discount code: RE5RQ6G15.

“The Point of Regret” appears in my unpublished philosophical poetry collection entitled Embrace the Futility. It’s similar in theme to another short poem, “Resolution of Existence,” which appears in my 2021 book Outward Arrangements: Poems.

Resolution of Existence

You must
Live the life
You have
And not
The one
You want.

 

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Fragments of the Living (2015)

My experimental documentary short Fragments of the Living is now available for viewing on YouTube. The film is composed of public domain home movie clips. It is a celebration of the American family, a nostalgic salute to the past and a meditation on the fleeting nature of life. It was screened at the NewFilmmakers New York Screening Series (2016), Athens International Film Festival (Athens, OH; 2016), and Syracuse International Film Festival, SpringFest in 2016.

 

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My New Year’s Resolution

I usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but this one came to me amid my battle with a post-Christmas stomach bug (maybe norovirus). In my febrile state, I told myself, “I will stop looking back on the past with regret.”

As someone who writes memoir, I often live in the past—reviewing incidents and conversations that occurred years and decades ago and trying to cull sensory details from those moments to make scenes come alive on the page. So I spend a lot of time on yesterday. My office is overflowing with manuscripts documenting countless yesterdays.

A tree in my neighborhood, observed on Dec. 31, 2024.

But for my 2025 New Year’s resolution, I will attempt to stop that negative line of thought regarding “what could’ve been.” I will instruct myself to stop replaying the poor decisions I made in my progression from boy to man.

And I do have regrets. Many. Most nettlesome are the ones where I let fear stand in the way of opportunity—when I was too frightened to take a risk, either professionally or personally. Some of those decisions still haunt me. In this previous blog post, I wrote about my regret about not moving to California after graduating from college.

But in my sickened state, while I tossed and turned in my son’s twin bed—separated from my wife and son so as not to infect them—I thought, “What have all these regrets done for me?” They certainly don’t make the present more bearable or the future more promising. So why hold on to them?

So in 2025, when I get that tickling of regret inside my brain, I will try to shut it down before it festers.

And one of the poems from my collection The Truth I Must Invent seems fitting for me on this New Year’s Eve. I wish everyone a safe and happy New Year. The poem follows. And I apologize for the profanity, but a clean word replacement wouldn’t have the same effect.

The Wanting is the Hardest Part

Tom Petty was wrong.
The waiting isn’t the hardest part.
The wanting is the hardest part.

Wanting fucks everything up—
wanting a better job, a better marriage,
a better house, a better life.
That seed of desire fucks with your head,
makes you think you can be something you’re not.

What if I discarded desire? What if I stopped wanting?
What if I no longer sought a better life?
Can I let go of that fantasy
and accept who I am right now,
without seeking a better version of myself—
the idealized me I hold inside my head?

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Illuminating Poem: The Thing Is

I want to share this poem I read in a Substack post by Maya C. Popa. It’s entitled “The Thing Is” from Mules of Love by Ellen Bass (published by BOA Editions in 2002). I love the language, clarity and gut-punching delivery. Some snippets that jumped out at me: “the silt of it,” “grief sits with you,” “obesity of grief” and “a plain face.”

“The Thing Is” by Ellen Bass from the book Mules of Love (BOA Editions, 2002)

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Birthday Note

I celebrated my birthday yesterday by relaxing at home with my family. As kids are wont to do, my son, Colin, blew out the candle on the cake, so we had to light it twice.

Colin Joe getting reading to blow out the candle.

I snuck in a couple of wishes, but mostly I felt enormous gratitude for still being here for another day and another year.

The night before I reflected on my recovery from surgery and my birthday, journaling for a few minutes while standing near my bedroom dresser. I am not a habitual journal writer, but I have notebooks scattered throughout the house to be available when the urge strikes me. Often my journal entries—which I always convert to a long-running Word document—contain mundane facts and banal thoughts with no potential to become raw material for a poem, story, or essay. However, sometimes the act of moving my pen on paper will lead me to a line that initiates energy.

And this is what I came up with the other night. It’s not a great poem, but I was happy I wrote it in a spontaneous burst and finished it in one draft.

On the Eve of My Fifty-Fourth Birthday

There has to be more
to this life than
just what we see.

Or else there isn’t—
in which case
death won’t be
so scary.

It’ll just be a
harmless place
devoid of life.

And you and I
can handle that, right?

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Pigeon on the Sidewalk

I saw a dead pigeon on the sidewalk while walking to work yesterday. I moved around it, heading along Fayette Street toward Salina. But I decided to turn around and come back to the scene and observe the dead bird.

Dead pigeon on the sidewalk. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

I also snapped a picture—my motivation being I wanted to capture an image of the lifeless form as a reminder to myself that my time on earth is limited, that death awaits me. We can’t escape mortality. In one way or another, we all become pigeons splayed on the sidewalk. And while it’s a sobering thought, it helps me to value the life I get to live today.

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Life is an Ice Cream Truck Parked on the Street

While waiting for the CVS store to open this morning, I saw a Perry’s Ice Cream truck parked on the side of the street. The wording on the side of the truck read, “LIFE IS A BOWL OF PERRY’S ICE CREAM.”

Ice cream truck. Photo by Francis DiClemente.

The statement seemed like an invitation, or a conversation starter.

In my head I took the first two words— LIFE IS—and filled in the blanks. The result is my stream-of-consciousness list:

Life is blissful.
Life is finite.
Life is fleeting.
Life is futile.
Life is wonderful.
Life is hysterical.
Life is sorrowful.
Life is bland.
Life is fine.
Life is OK, sometimes.
Life is full of laughs.
Life is a pain in the ass.
Life is what you make it.
Life is all we’ve got.
Life is a gift we’re given.
Life is something we take for granted.

How would you fill in the blanks?

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More Coronavirus Poems

It seems like nothing but coronavirus occupies my mind these days. And so here are a few poems I’ve fiddled with in recent days.

Coronavirus Plan

If I fall victim
to COVID-19,
if it appears
I will not
survive the
coronavirus
pandemic,
I will:
Submit.
Resign.
Accept.
Relent.
And try to die
without infecting
anyone else.

Getting On

You get one more day.
One more day is all you get.
So take a deep breath,
Count your blessings
And get on it with.
Make an attempt to
Live today like
There is no tomorrow.
Because with coronavirus
On the prowl, there may not be.

Coronavirus Kid

The child may not
see tomorrow.
Yet he lives today.
So let him be a child,
full of laughter and play.

Harrison Street, Syracuse, New York.

A Coronavirus Poem With No Ending

The reality of a pandemic
heightens our fear of death.
Today it’s you.
Tomorrow it could be me.

But I can’t grasp the figures,
can’t imagine 100,000 people dying.
I wonder how far the victims’ bodies
would stretch across America.
Would the line of corpses reach both coasts?

And with the world in crisis,
everything nonessential drifts away.
Nothing matters now but survival
because we can no longer picture
life untouched by coronavirus.

We’re in the midst of this crisis
and my reflections prove
frivolous and inconsequential.
I offer no gleaming insights,
and my words flounder on the page
as I try to wrap up this poem.

I’m unable to extract the perfect line
to deliver a tidy ending.
The fact is, I don’t know
what coronavirus will bring tomorrow,
and so I won’t pretend that I do.

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