Regrets Poem by Paul Jonathan Stertz

Do you ever wish that you could circle back,
And get it right,
And put the train back on the track?
Undo the terminal decisions,
And cancel vain ambitions that inhibited
The things that should have been?
Thought too late 'If only I could get it back...? '
Did you deliberate, rehearse
If you could play it in reverse,
And you wondered, and you pondered
What might be if you had,
But you didn't-and concluded 'It's too bad...'

I had a friend, people thought he was my brother,
We went everywhere together,
He was there for me, whatever
Sure, he had his problems but who doesn't ever?
Well he got committed to an institution
My intution said I should go and visit him, but I didn't do it...
I was too embarassed to go through with it
I finally said 'To hell with it, Ill go and see him, screw it...'
But he was gone, I had waited too long,
I found out way too late that I was way too wrong.
What was I thinking-I said I was 'too busy'
And I missed my golden opportunity.
I never said goodbye to my buddy,
Or even found out where he went,
If I ever saw him again I wouldn't blame him
If he told me to get bent.

I should be shot as a deserter, someone loved me,
She was special but I hurt her-
I never told her that I loved her, so I lost her.
It would have been far better, for sure
If I had never met her.
I never knew how much I missed her til much later.
I never could move on and shake her memory away,
I tried to hate her
Cause that would make it easier,
But I couldn't, so I tried to call her years later
But she was a distant stranger,
I felt a lot of things, but never anger.
I would give a trillion dollars, no, forget that,
I would trade forever
If I could go back there and do it better.

People say 'you gotta let it go, '
But if you never ciphered how,
You relive it in your head
The longer and the later,
The less it seems to matter,
Everything is scattered
You're a ghost, living in a shadow world that's shattered,
Conversating with the wind.
Well what you did or didn't do you can't rescind,
But you can change tomorrow.
Will you drown in your own sorrow?
Or will you pick it up, and kick and swim?