“ESM”

c. 2023 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(12-23)

 

 

An odd encounter, I confess

Late after a day filled with emotional excess

I sat alone

Watching YouTube videos on my cellular phone

A search of Cleveland area terms

Where bridges break, and the river burns

I saw the demolition of a mall for an Amazon sorter

A space of seventies vintage, like a Chrysler New Yorker

It made me gasp wildly for air

Feeling too confined in my plush, office chair

This teardown of a generational shopping port

A retailing hub of a massive sort

Brought to an end

It was like losing a familiar friend

Hands clasped together for a final moment of shared being

I cried over what I was seeing

Then laughed at myself

For such an act of dubious mental health

How could I mourn this cycle, in effect?

A finality founded on deconstructionist wrecks

The ball swings and bricks fly

Facades fall, yielding to blue sky

This talisman of the ages, crumbling and lost

Vanquished by vandals and maintenance costs

A national trend, I have sometimes heard

This hideaway home for rats and lake birds

In-dash stereos with 8-track tapes

Vendors selling plastic bananas and rubber grapes

A mirrored, moving, Disco Ball

A Farrah Fawcett poster for a teenager’s bedroom wall

Star Wars before the cult was there

The oil embargo came to bear

A worth-withering on Wall Street

Vietnam toppling into defeat

Girders bent under the weight of market forces

Long aisles standing empty, with coin-operated horses

Wham-O novelties from Spencer Gifts

Platform shoes with six-inch lifts

Kiss and Slade and the Captain & Tennille

Pickup trucks with wagon wheels

At the stadium, a Ten Cent Beer Night

Browns and Steelers, a guaranteed fistfight

Cuyahoga County grinding to a halt

The City of Cleveland in default

All these ghosts attend the funeral procession

A collapse into comatose retrogression

One of these mornings, and it won’t be long

Trust me Black Label Mabel, they’ll be playing our song

Look up quickly my friend, and see

A carnival clown standing at the gates of eternity

Buildings blitzed into cinders and ash

A recycling of fates for a profiteer’s cash

One last prize offered as a gambler’s lament

While the rain falls over broken cement

Fazio’s foibles and Arthur Treacher in repose

A model from Halle Brothers selling pantyhose

Big Chuck and Hoolihan made it somehow

Ghoulardi doing the Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow

All these echoes ringing rapidly between my ears

Rightly, raucously, Reelin’ in the Years

With one last wave while rounding the bases

A gymnastic flip over beer bottles in cardboard cases

Stacked at a corner pub with the game on a black-and-white receiver

An enduring memory for a generation of believers

Dropping into drive gear, a positraction hack

Tires squawking on the wet tarmac

Big-block motor, spun up to redline

Jazzed on juice of a high-octane kind

That’s what it takes to escape mortal death

The sentence that wrought what closed eyes may forget

I’ll gladly take my pinball chances

While the Solid Gold girls dole out their dances

Vinyl platters turn

Big hair and sideburns

Sohio, Giant Tiger, and Tokyo Shapiro

Wallet crammed full with two-dollar bill notes

Farewell to this retail racetrack

A glam generation that ain’t never coming back

Driving away in a Monte Carlo, with a vinyl roof installed

The end of an era, for Euclid Square Mall

(For the bygone Euclid Square Mall, 1977-2018)