The Process

Everything starts in the field – some thistles, say, or a bunch of moss.
These get reformed into bandages. Then spitting cloths.
Then the ragman turns the spitting cloths into paper.

Enter me, the ‘maker’.

I purchase paper from the ragman by the hundred sheet pack.
I fill every sheet front and back, then I place the sheets in stacks
for the Nightmen.

When the Nightmen come they buy my jottings for a decent sum.
They don’t read them. No need.
They twist the paper into wrappings for tobacco, weed –

worse stuff – roofies, golden girls, bad bean.

When the Nightmen get arrested, as they often do,
no one ever questions you-know-who –
even when I tell them to.

Even when I stand in the station and ring the bell.

I say: I’m sure my words are culpable!
But the officers reply from their neon lair:
...