Flu

The flu short-shrift of kindling.
For as a fever goes
the body follows, straining
after the healthy ineptitude we all know.

Wading, thinking always
of the pant leg.
Is this the hairsbreadth
to threadbare? Clearly

each use diminishes
the usefulness. Rack
of greenware
having gotten wet; wick

drowning itself in wax
and is extinguished.
Once mendicant
in a sea of other mendicants

until possession breadth
comes back up.