What Might Have Been Poem by James Papastamos

Whom I could have become:
I think about what I might have done

A famous poet
Whose pen could draft
An array of mixed emotions,
Its armies ever ready to
Battle my wounded soul;
Or the single beat of a lonely heart,
Drumming a chorus of passion and rage,
Adding rhythm and rhyme

To an otherwise bland existence…

I think about what I might have done
Whom I could have become:

A starving artist
Whose brush might visualize
A stately yet solitary cloud,
From which a single drop
Might harvest an ocean of tears;
Or, perhaps, a rising son,
Making its divine ascent,
If only to expose and thus burn

All those who’d lie in its growing shadow…

Indeed, what might have been!