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“The Point of Regret” appears in my unpublished philosophical poetry collection entitled Embrace the Futility.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.
I received a nerve conduction study last week related to symptoms of my rheumatoid arthritis. The bearded electromyography (EMG) technician, Mark, had dark hair and an athletic build, and he wore glasses. We made small talk while he placed electrodes on me, stimulated the nerves with mild electrical shocks, and measured the results on a computer.
When I asked him where he was from, he said he grew up in Syracuse and went to a local high school. “It was a really good school,” he said, noting its academic and athletic excellence. “But I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I was kind of a screw up.”
He also explained that his mother was a custodian at Syracuse University and how he could have gone to college there for free, but didn’t take advantage of the opportunity. “I blew it,” he said. “But I had to find my own way.”
And then he said a jewel of a statement regarding regret. “If you focus too much on regrets, you don’t appreciate the life you currently have.” Or he may have said, “If you focus too much on regrets, you don’t live the life you currently have.”
Regret is a recurring theme in my poetry. I think it’s something all adults at a certain age wrestle with—this idea of ambitions versus reality.
Camera Angle
What would I choose
if I were given a chance
to lead a different life?
What mistakes
would I correct?
What new road
would I take?
But you can’t splice
the scenes of your life
to edit the past.
You can only point
the camera forward
and zoom into the future.
(The Truth I Must Invent, Poets Choice, 2023)
Formula for Success
Life can
be tolerable
when you
relinquish
aspiration
and settle for
acceptable.
(Outward Arrangements: Poems, independently published, 2021)
Shift in Thought
At some point
you have to
deal with the
Who You Are
instead of the
Who You Want To Become.
By now the
form is fixed.
You are
complete as is.
Don’t expect
anything else.
Don’t hope
for anything more.
(Outward Arrangements: Poems, independently published, 2021)
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?
Francis DiClemente 