Outmoded Horses

More than a few years ago, I wrote my first book of poetry - not published, but that is not a necessary qualification for something bent and poured into book-shape.  It was titled Outmoded Horses, and I realize now that it was largely about what has remained my most constant of obsessions: what happens to all that has been overcome, negated, or surpassed, yet which has not been obliterated?  What does the dialectic leave behind?

It is not known why he wanted to transport the animal on the train.

As if one needs a reason.  As if it was his choice.

[There's something gorgeous in the CCTV still, in that it is the same format, immediately familiar, used to disseminate grainy stills of other crimes, of the last recorded blur of a kidnappee or the smeared face of someone robbing a bank.  We've got our man, Sergeant.  And he's not a man.  And he's trying to flee to Holyhead.]

And lest we forget the gravity of the situation, remember: we are speaking of a weaponized pony -

which may pose a risk to the general public

- forbidden from circulation.

The immeasurable loathing of the equine for cats and dogs and things allowed to ride the rails.  And then, for those rails themselves...  Of course, when the oil runs low and the brownouts come, to whom will they come begging?  To turn back the clocks, to drag their rusty hulls, with names and pictures of dicks scratched into the plastic glass, with fast-food bags wedged under the seats, to pull the pink ones to their steadily disappearing jobs?  

To go back past coal and steam, to look to me to be draughted once more, to pull us out of this mess?

And then, then, I refuse, but I will not shake my head.  I won't even give them the pleasure of hearing me say "neigh", like they so want.  

I will give them nothing more than a site of my rear, as I shit casually, precisely, leaving them a mess of my own, and trot away from their idiotic enterprise of motion and speed, which should have stayed with me, my haunches, my flight, all along.