An Old White Male, Inconveniently Still Alive…
https://artillerymag.com/an-old-white-male-inconveniently-still-alive/
October 19, 2022
Publication in the age of Negation pt. 6
July 13, 2015
UNDIMINISHED
From now on I’m going to be a shadow
of my former shadow:
Living in the present, negligibly,
and regretting the past, sweepingly.
As for the future, I’m not sure if I have one.
But I’ve been saying that for a long time,
and I’m still here, even if I am
ten years behind my time.
Make that fifteen.
March 23, 2014
CVI
Contact with anybody
who has produced work of quality
fills me with an air of thwarted yearning empathy,
an implausible sense of fraternity,
a melancholy sting. Regret and resentment
gnawing at me, eating me alive.
This is what you reap
when you haven’t sown anything.
February 21, 2014
Chair, Sofa and Bed
Between these three points of love
and sloth (mostly the latter),
I flounder. Resting, without laurels,
restlessly. Pausing between pauses,
to inventory this harvest of regret;
to consider from every angle of unease,
this permanent rut… to forever name remainless,
staring at a curtain.
January 9, 2014
Requiem for a Fallen Racetrack
Has it really come to this?
http://artillerymag.com/tottenham-corner-4/
March 25, 2013
A Lifelong Brush With Obscurity
Contact with anybody
who has produced work of quality
fills me with a thwarted yearning empathy,
an implausible sense of fraternity,
a melancholy sting. Regret and resentment
gnawing at me, eating me alive.
This is what you reap
when you haven’t sown anything.
December 13, 2012
past, resent, future
Living in the present, negligibly;
regretting the past, sweepingly;
and speculating upon the future,
incredulously.
December 4, 2012
Second Blush
November 21, 2012
Living Too Late
It is pointless to have reached this point:
this summit of finely seasoned staleness.
The callow negativism of youth matured to a dubious vintage,
with a voluptuous bouquet of regret
and a lingering aftertaste of self-disgust.
November 10, 2012
REGRETS
I don’t understand people
who claim that they have no regrets in life;
who insist, out of gratitude, pride or ignorance,
that they wouldn’t want to change a thing.
My life is a raging river of regret, flowing
into a sea of shame. There is very little
I wouldn’t do differently if given a second chance.
I always knew I’d end up feeling this way:
It was a setup. Regret was something
I worked towards, something I felt I had to earn.
And now, naturally, I regret that too.
John Tottenham 