I think the greatest tragedy one can experience is to become ever so slightly aware of his or her creative or professional potential, only to have any chance of ever achieving it ripped away. This has been my experience as a poet, and no other pain I’ve endured comes close to comparing. For me, to develop my potential as a poet requires the time and attention of a career profession, yet I am forced to work for a living, which leaves my creative potential sheered from the light and rotting in the soil.

Unrealized

This poem has been published in my book an inkling hope: select poems, available in Kindle and paperback formats. Out of consideration for those who have purchased a copy, I have removed it from this post and online viewing in general.

I have often contemplated suicide as the only way to escape the torment of knowing I have this potential to realize while not having the freedom to pursue it—For the quarter-measures afforded by the trifling free-time left at the end of a workweek are grossly insufficient. To live as potential unrealized because it has been made unattainable by the structure of society is in many ways worse than death itself.