There is so much in the shadows,

the photograph of abandoned things,

shuffling old men on once glory filled streets,

holding hand written placards, nothing changes,

now filled with the discarded everyday

that rots insidiously

like teeth on sugar high diet,

old decomposing trains stations, haunted

by the clatter of memories

and stolen lovers kisses

watched by steam

and the jealous porter,

now all gone;

I love shadows like this,

faded memories I can linger in,

it gives me a melancholic high.

 

It is not morose

neither is it a course of complaint,

it is a moody aphrodisiac, the cheerful

wave surrounded by sweet darkness

and as the photographs of a by-gone age

litter and copulate and give rise

to a celluloid heaven, a digital paradise

filled with ever flowing rapture

dressed in sepia and chrome,

I breathe in the dust,

I leave a footprint in the agony of the past

and I feel an exotic bliss of sullen duty

to care for the abandoned,

out of love,

out of time,

this melancholic high.

 

Ian D. Hall 2016