briefly about the ode

I think that writing an ode is particularly difficult. Main reason being the simple fact, that praising something in the context of contemporary art, became somewhat unfashionable. Results are multiple examples of odes to tomatoes, socks or other elements of daily existence. As I had absolutely no intention of doing anything across that line I tried to think hard of something different. I did not want to fall upon any sort of cliché, be it an XVIII century one or contemporary. My first two ideas were like matches, they burned brightly, yet shortly. First, I considered writing an ode to all those who come second. That developed from the idea that the classicist ode was a form of appraisal dedicated to the winners. My second idea was writing an ode to the common sense. Both of these however bear certain humorous connotations that I wanted to avoid. While I do appreciate humorous poetry, I do not think I am very suited to the task myself. Finally trying to tweak expectations a little I decided to write an Ode to the Abandoned Places. While I believe it might draw from the romantic tradition, and their devotion to solitude, at the same time it is also very personal to me. Often I find myself captured by old buildings, overgrown gardens, ruins and other places abandoned in the course of industrial evolution. They might well be graveyards of memories but at the same time they are also breeders of inspirations and a food for imagination.

2. Ode

Ode to the Abandoned Places

When the darkness asphyxiates you with its dusty coat
I suppose one could make mistake of unseeing;
sensing the footsteps on the time impaired floor
The light could be ours within that wall
Your naked body is frozen yet; it still feels warmer than cold,
And less familiar than the apocalypse –

Was it ever a place?
or is it for now and always just an emptiness defined;
Defined by lack, in contrast to familiarity
its tears concealed in the ponds of misery,
staircases that taste of rust and midnight
While the wind steals my hair

Once even you were young - said God to the world –
immortality dwells in memories, but youth;
It is a matter of paranoid perspective and distortion,
like your impossible angles in the spiral dimensions of chance
Breathe the night when longing is undeniably music;
be a lonely note in the construction of solitude

Emotionally uncharged and yet blown out of proportion –
It makes you lean erratically against its suffocating spaces,
Plays suicidal hide and seek in the moist fogs of the dawn
Demands to adore its sick genius in ferocious longing for breath
And when you are ripped apart into unity;
there are no more words to convey –