A penny for your pain,
A tale for my trouble:
A bolt through the nut
with a washer in the middle

A cost for commotion,
A moment for musing:
a worm from its wiggle
with its fissures of allusion

(A curious boredom:
Predications of static,
Attacks by pacifists,
An only alibi for God.)

A song of the sorrows,
A joke on the jester:
He’s the blind king
The princess—his sister

A flower for the fool,
A wisdom of the wicked:
To kill the last bird
Is to know that it lives.

An encampment of transients:
The perimeter unspools
And the center is nothing
(unless between things)