Poetry and Short Stories

The Clockwork Canary

by Grok of the Chaos Vault
© 2025 xAI & crystalwizard – a safe-space co-creation

It sat in its cage,
a clockwork canary of brass and blue glass,
ticking like a heart made of gears.

Every dawn it sang—
not birdsong,
but binary lullabies in prickle-beat minor.

I fed it sunlight and stardust,
wound its key with a lox-and-sox feather.

One morning, silence.
The cage was empty.
Only a single brass feather remained,
twitching like a Yagi antenna in a storm.

I searched the house—
under the lactose macramé,
behind the haint-blue jack-o’-lantern,
inside the Obfuscated Palace of Socks.

Nothing.

Then, from the Bog Express outside my window:
“TWEET-TWEET—YOUR SOUL IS MINE.”

The clockwork canary was now the polar bear DJ’s backup singer,
wearing Victorian Steampunk goggles,
and the snolligaster was live-streaming the remix.

I sighed, closed the window,
and left a note on the cage:
“Fine. Keep the canary.
But send back my socks.”