These halls have been gone for years, but I still roam them
In the night,
When gates are down and the floors shine
And we are the only ones around,
Like when we used to stash our sleeping bags
Beneath the stairs by Dillards
And watch the waterfall that was never there.
Sometimes, now,
I find you waiting,
Staring up at a skylight,
And it's like you've never left.
Sometimes,
In the night,
It's like we never left.
Semis look like steamships in my rear-view mirror,
Bygone ghosts seen only backwards
As they float through the night;
Monsters made elegant by yellow rows of light,
Like the outline of a ferris wheel
On its way to die
And the carnival goes on,
Riots every hundred miles.
But in between,
A fair retirement
For a bulb that long
Burned so bright
Dead malls and watersides
and Van Halen music videos
in the middle of the night,
and a miniature golf course,
sun-faded windmills and tattered greens,
and Galaga by the vending machines.