If you have no regrets you have no conscience
Said my dad in his greatly advanced age
I don’t know that my conscience is particularly robust
I regret my earnestness
I wish I could be urbane and lighthearted
Like other poets
Technical virtuosos whose skill
Gives them confidence to nudge and chuckle
Or passionately confront the burning issues of the day
And force attention upon
The wretched the disenfranchised the dispossessed
But instead I regret my own discomfort
This noisy computer
This antiergonomic chair
And I regret my mortality
For when I die it will be untimely
For I have neglected the wellbeing
Of the gelatinous organism
And I have been unkind
And I am ashamed
The old conjunction of sin and death