Halcyon Nights

Behind the shuttered doors,
the headline graffiti
saying Terry loves John,
there is a room,
two stories down
that housed student nights.
The inebriated DJ,
wanting to play the big clubs,
doing it for the laughs on a Wednesday night.
The stained carpet, not cleaned since 1983.
Mavis the cleaner will be in in the morning,
her trusty buckets and mop hard at work
before the students who made the mess
have opened their eyes.
This is the ironically named Halcyon club,
the place of thousands of wasted nights.
Shuttered down for fifteen years now.
The halls reverberate with the sounds of the ghosts,
the missed opportunities, the throats sore from shouting.
Middle aged people walk by, remembering their own youth,
their own wasted times, working in offices,
thinking that was the best time of their lives.
Knowing, that it wasn’t.
The DJ moved on, Mavis retired to a little bungalow by the sea.
She still thinks about those mornings, pillaged by teenagers,
thinking they were Vikings.