Newmarket Part IV

Oh but the Rebellion was fun.

That made me think that I hadn’t lost my spark.

Yelling and banging on tables.

Compact!

Gold carried to the river and buried

To keep it safe.

Don’t tell—

I took it.

What fool buries pretty shiny things like that?

Too bad it was over in the blink of an eye

and snap of a noose.

Too bad indeed.

And maybe then I became less wild.

I suppose it was tolerable

in the grand scheme of things.

Same for the train.

A different type of noise and who cared?

Shops, canals,

drugs and malls and highways

and then I forget.

After so many streaks of movement on a slow shutter speed

it becomes hard

to reach the mind back.

Did I used to be more than an economy?

What was my secret name—

the name given at birth

to save me from death and illness?

Names are power.

You don’t know my name?

Death can’t find me.

When I start monthly bleeds,

When I can take on my own demons,

Then we can say the name out loud. 

Newmarket III

Part III

I live in a building named for a man—

always men with these new people!

I think he owned a newspaper

Or a mill

Or something someone thought was important.

I might have met him sometime before he died.

The nurses here say that’s not possible,

but they don’t know how old I am,

so how can they say?

They say I’m as old as the hills.

I seem to think I recall when the hills were just babies

Babies wrapped in short green grass

And swaddled close to the earth.

People would come through me then,

traveling from water to water.

Did it so often they made a trail.

Maybe we could have been friends

if I had cared at all,

but I really didn’t.

I was too busy just being myself.

What do I care about the mills

and distillery

and rows of carrots they forced from the earth?

It was a little pinch in my side,

nothing more.

Newmarket

Part II

I forget the name I had before.

My name now doesn’t fit.

Newmarket.

Ugh. How awful.

More like gluttonous slime of spiritually devoid

self-involved illusion

of economic success.

That’s what I’d call what we’ve all become.

Or something like that.

Oh, maybe I’m being cantankerous.

I’m sure there have been good times too.

And good people.

Small children playing at school.

High school students volunteering to sit with me for 20 minutes—

I wish they weren’t afraid of shocking me with their stories.

I’d like to know who these people are

But they just tell me that they study hard

And want to be accountants.

You can’t really know a person who lies so hard

Even if they believe it themselves.