Damp Polaroids

from Northern Sketches by Gary Bunting

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lyrics

Damp Polaroids

I stumbled across a photo album today
Discarded or lost, I don’t know
Open on the pavement, the Polaroids damp
Water damaged weddings and soggy birthday celebrations
Some images irretrievable
Cheshire cat grins floating through bubbles of distortion
The photographs given brown frames
Creeping towards the centre
A slow creep
For they’d been there a while
I flick through the landscapes and the backyard fun
The birthday cakes and the setting suns
The bun fights, the one of granny
The coastal sights and a pint of shandy with cheese’n’onion crisps
It reminds me of a time when I came upon a backstreet book shop
It had cats lounging on the shelves and a bell tinkled when you entered
There were spiders in the poetry section, books sprouting in all directions
My eyes were drawn to a box of postcards in the bay window
I flicked slow
Picasso paintings and Pink Floyd album covers, ‘Whistler’s Mother’
Images of Che Guevara and Cleopatra, Sherlock Holmes and Marilyn Monroe
Billie holiday and hidden away, between these images were photographs
Memories
Spitfires and Hurricanes with an old man stood between the planes
Medals pinned to his tweed jacket
A war hero, no doubt
And when they cleared out his house there was nobody to claim them
And they ended up here

I’m not a reminiscer a wisher of going back to the past
But I do like the old photographs
The childhood holidays, my dad’s moustache
Mum’s huge glasses, my sister’s goofiness
The memories, celebrations and special occasions

Of course, time moves on, as it should
People pass, sometimes too soon
And all you have are the photographs
The sentimental value of otherwise worthless things

credits

from Northern Sketches, released October 22, 2021

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Hello America Stereo Cassette

A new record label releasing audio recordings of writers' work. Poems backed by noise. Novels as audio books. Stories on cassettes. Curated by Adam Gnade. Currently accepting submissions.