Mall Rats

The cell phones came in colours

Red, silver, blue, white and tangerine,

Twisting or flipping, bricks and sliders

Bought on reviews in a magazine.

Our meetings were a matter

Of weightiest import,

Peering as we did through crowds and chatter,

The first-come holding fort.

Bus and sidewalk calculated,

The hour collectively set;

The painful parking hour-rated,

Each owed the other his word and time in debt.

The attended face, the hoped-for hail-up greeting

And our conclave shall begin,

The bustling crowd concealing

Us as we seek to sate our hunger, somewhere beyond the din.

The DVDs were pirated—

Anime, crime, or horror flicks—

At the arcade we’d be riveted

To the Street Fighter control sticks.

Fast food and long conversation;

Suburban philosophers, we discoursed as we’d roam;

Children of imagination

Who’d soon not know this home.

Consumerism meant us nil:

We played, we fought, we wandered wide-eyed

In the sanctuary where we’d hide

From a world confusing, cold and ill.

Whatever the academics write,

They know the buying, not the Being

Of silly youths sincerely seeking out the Light,

Nor the savour of Dreams tasted, however fleeting,

On a breezy, moonlit summer’s night.

Some folks had forums, the square and the temple hall;

We had our great bazaar: the mundane, magic Mall.