Christopher Hopkins writes

Looking into the shadows on Llewellyn Street (The want of use)

Climbing the hills 

leave a breathlessness in chest.

Reaching the high of heaven’s first step.
The whitebait coloured streets,
a wishing uncommonness in the doilied
rows in our glare of noon.

In lilac and rust, the land,
matching the width of sea.
Eye, caught the line of the carriageway
from east and west,
to the whirl-pooling slip roads,
screwed into the belly of town.

All set in light and dark,
all divided in the silver, 
with the shimmer crown
against the brine tide breaking,
and a sky’s beaked egg shell blue.

Lift up the shadows on Llewellyn Street.
Peal back the liquorice stencil map
and use the flooding light to look
into the blood of our own love,
wrapped in brick, prayer and paper.

In the white sun,
see the burden of the shadow men,
pooling in rooms of drink and doubt,
where the future only goes as far
as Christmas coming.

The blood turning fat in chest and arms,
like a sea reclaiming its land,
on their crutches in mind until all they taste is the brine
in a dreaming embrace of their purging flood,
thickened with our sinners' panting bitter luck.

The longing for purpose,
like the want of plastic bags that ride the oceans dreaming,
ghosts of use,
ghosts of men.
Spirits downed and drowned for good,
set under lilac hills and the rust from salt burning.

 Shadow People -- Eric Stockslager