Nostalgia

How I miss
those old worlds
that exist now
only in my head,
like when Elvis
was alive and
everybody knew
he was the King,
before videos
were rotated
endlessly on
music stations
and new young
kids disrespected
any sound that
wasn't computerised.
How I wish
I could return
to legends of
the 1950s
re-enacted by us
two decades on
in clubs where there
were always fights,
walking home along
the back roads
trying to roll
like Danny Zuko,
our parents home
waiting who had
been there when,
and understood.
Elvis, rock and roll,
our parents, these
were constant
points of reference;
now the reference
can only be
our memory of
what has passed,
ghosts of universes
once everything
now absolutely gone,
and substituted
by scenes, people,
alien to me,
conventions I
don't wish to buy.
I feel homeless,
as if cut adrift
in unfamiliar waters
remembering
the life I had. If
only one could go
back! I'd do it now
and walk on
safer streets tomorrow,
heading down to
Dix's with the
boys for chips,
pissing contests out
the toilet windows
in the Arndale,
our silver streams
descending on
the people waiting
at the bus stop
on Commercial Way