Malls

 I dream or derelict malls

spreading for miles,

deserted shrines

that still, in their day,

could put up a fight

and managed a slow 

decline and silent death,

as inside a cocooned illness.

 For years yet

we insisted

in keeping working

to spend our money there

under the benevolent glare

of neon billboards

and digital everything.

 By then all shops

had sensors and AI

and knew more about you

than you in your dreams,

than Jung sitting 

in the back of your mind.

 We roam the endless night

like lost uber drivers,

and for a second consider 

jumping from bridges

like Chinese delivery workers

or Foxconn employees,

our mindless screen time like

GPS on fentanyl.

 I dream or derelict malls

like in a novel by Ballard,

escalators with weeds,

lifeless dark poodles 

of stagnant water,

like living tissue,

and plastic remnants 

that will outlive us

for alien archaeologists

to examine

and be puzzled by.

 The malls were a cosmos

in themselves,

echoes of the piped muzak

are audible in the middle of the night.

 We are not used to nights this dark

yet creaking.