Howard Firkin
Regrets? I’ve had a feud with my past life.
We hate each other; each one wants to kill
the other—but we don’t and never will—
the ties that bind too strong for any knife,
and so we hobble on, me and my past.
Because I drag around so much of what
has gone before, I’m clumsy and I move
like something viscous, like I disapprove
of youth’s fluidity, of what they’ve got
that if I ever had, could not make last.

I’m growing slowly but enormously.
My flesh is pooling, fat lies wave on wave
around my belly, heart, each artery;
caught in its undertow, I can’t be saved.