~for patty m.~
and all the others that surrender their truths
word by word by word
~

get paid by the word.

nothing particularly relevant-familiar to a poet-revenant.

we the Falstaffs, the literate fools of the world,
pay and pay on, pay forwards and backwards

once eons ago, in a confession blurted,
in a moment of spent outrageous misfortune:

”what you did not ask was this!

With each passing poem,
I am lessened within, expurgated,
In a sense part of me, expunged,
Part of me, passing too,
Every poems birth diminishes me.”

this is our only pay-out & pay-meant methodology.