The shades of life

We know them well,
They who ruled our dreams and our nightmares,
The angel of white,
Of hope, of love,
A mother’s undying love, a friends’ unshaken belief,
Childhood’s caress, love’s unspoken faith.
The devil of black,
How well we know him.
The black loss of despair,
The swirling snake of hatred.
The empty seed of envy, the ruthless power of ambition,
We grew up watching them, Dancing to their tunes,
But where are they now?
And who are these shapeless forms, watching us instead? 
Unknown, unseen mass clouded by grey,
The mangled web of mediocrity, The naked face of fear,
The shaking hand of indecision, The laughter of cynicism,
The insipid lack of inspiration, The fake smiles of polite disdain,
All shrouded in grey,
They surround us. They engulf us.
We look for the known faces,
The familiar world of black and white,
But they recede further,
The quagmire of grey rises.
It shifts, it turns, the faces change, the faces leer,
You gulp, you gasp, you try to breathe, you try to run,
But your legs give up, you stand rooted, tranfixed.
It is too real to be a dream, too real to be a nightmare,
It is too real,
This endless, rising, blanket of grey.