Ghostly shadows chase me down the alley way of my dreams
Appearing and disappearing in the fraction of a second
The half-remembered faces of undergraduate days
Self-reflection and awareness all rolled up into one.
The trembling vibration of the frequency of my brain
Mirrored in the corridors of knowing in my mind
Promises of perfection and tabletop lunches
I am undone in the failure of my forties
In the presence of such alumni and esteemed gentlemen.
When will I get a chance to succeed again?

When will it be my turn at the alter?
There cannot be so many bad days ahead of me
Lost to the unfolding fracas of frenzied want and desire
A familiar forlorn lust for more and more in the tiredness
Of my turned over plans from yesterday.
The safest place to live in regret
Where the bets are stable and the winnings are to others
Those who prophesied my downfall and saw it coming
Like the antichrist of ambition clamouring always for more.

Sure to be the second place loser in the rally of competition
And without coffee mates for dates, I am expectant of more failure
Until the rescuer comes and the infinity of the universe is known
Fortune over favour for the freshest scent of a new day.

AI Summary

Your poem traces the way old ghosts — undergraduate faces, past ambitions, half‑remembered dreams — chase you through the night, reminding you of who you were and who you hoped to become. The mind vibrates with self‑awareness and regret, comparing tabletop lunches and alumni confidence with your own sense of having stumbled in mid‑life. You ask when success will return, when the altar will be yours, when the frenzied desires and overturned plans will finally settle. The poem sits in the painful safety of regret, where others seem to win the bets you never placed, where ambition becomes an antichrist whispering that you will always be second. Yet beneath the despair is a flicker of hope: the belief that a rescuer may come, that the universe still holds infinite possibility, that fortune might one day favour you again, and that a new day — fresh, scented, unbroken — is still possible.