Lately I have been shrinking,
the keg I once proudly was
now trickles down to a pint.
For the numbers flutter off the scale
like hail violently pelting the earth.
I've lost 30 lbs in two months
and I hold my chest a little higher.
I am noticeably skinnier
such that my enemies quiet.
The weight of my stomach hardly droops
but the weight of the world
seems to have only been growing.
The world has turned into a mess
The dept has surpassed my ears
and the expenses only get taller
The pressure of marriage and family
to satisfy the woman I love requires,
the atmospheric pressure of society
and my internal pressure to become someone
has created a density difficult to bear
For every pound I have lost
Gravity gains ten thousand more
And yes my body is shrinking,
But so is my wallet, my belongings,
my spirit to keep on going
my life force that keeps me awake
and the energy I have to think straight.
Yes, my whole world is shrinking.

The Shrinking Season
by Michael R. Burch

With every wearying year
the weight of the winter grows
and while the schoolgirl outgrows
her clothes,
the widow disappears
in hers.

Originally published by Angle. Keywords/Tags: schoolgirl, outgrows, clothes, widow, disappears, winter, time, shrinking, season, atrophy, emaciation, bone, loss

Hope is shrinking
Light is dimming
Walls are caving in
and everything seems to diffusing into blue.

It's all heavy and dark
draining and enveloping.

And all I want to do is put a pause on life
to make everything stop moving on
dragging me along with it
as the abyss is plunging me
in like a dark hole.

I’m fading away, backing off from life.
Echoes of joy and faults pass like falling stars.
Every day has a few drops less of strife.
Silent shrapnel crashes in soft and witless shards.
And I’m shrinking from the Now;
I couldn’t even tell you how.

Moments of ecstasy and pain are sealed,
Like shrines to a life I still know.
Etched in summer’s softness or in steel.
I am vanishing, but I don’t know where I’ll go.
My once-beloved and my son are here.
One ignores me, while the other
Watches in helpless fear.

Five A.M and I am by myself…again.
Sun washes in with sorrow in its face.
For the thousands of times, I have slept alone,
I feel like a stranger in this place,
I once called our home.
Now it’s a cage to me,
Filled with broken promises and mis-matched lace.

I am going now, heading toward the West.
Leaving memories and pain behind with a sleeping wife..
Every day brings me closer to an end
Leaves fly in the road behind me, remnants of a life.
I am crying for the misspent years.
But no more of those; I am changing, switching gears.

September 17, 2010
Edited – January 5, 2016

My mother likes to hang bells
On the front door,
And I always wondered
What they were for.

They would jingle
Whenever someone
made entry,
and glitter
With the light
from the lamppost
On the street.

But they became dull
Hanging all day,
And the giggling clatter
Mulled and dulled
to a brassy bray.

Mom has a small wedding bell
Of a silver boy
Holding flowers
With a smiling grin.
He’s asking her to ring him
And bring back memories.

But father’s guitar glistens
Whilst the sun lays low.
With one pluck
The vibration hums
Smooth and mellow.

But can you hear it
Sitting on the steps?
This house is so large
But there still lays unrest.

And through The corridor
Clacks the patter
Of greyed canine feet.
But some of us
Lay silent
And reap the past
From the sounds
That do dare speak.

the living room clock
Drones with That of a distant chime,
Because the living arrangements
Have changed overtime.

sometimes i think
that if, perhaps,
i could shrink myself down into something a bit more beautiful,
then maybe you would love me.

in the ugly, unafraid, truth-telling part of my mind,
the part i seldom dare to visit,
i know this is not true,
know that you could never love me,
not now.

i can make myself,
as much as i like,
into wood to be whittled,
but i cannot make you crave those carvings.

you can lead a horse to water,
or whatever it is that they say.

but i fear i will always be a well run dry in your eyes
(or perhaps one that never had water to begin with).

so i combat this fear in the only way i know how:
by turning away from it,
pretending it does not exist.

by shrinking.

and sometimes,
sometimes,
when you don't seem as far away,
i think that if, perhaps,
i could shrink myself down into something a bit more beautiful,
then maybe you would love me.

(a.m.)

tips of my toes
pressed own
to the chill of
ceramic, i sit,
        shoulders barely
        peaking out
        from the thin film
        of what hours ago
        were bubbles,
scared to drain
the tub because
right now,
i feel so ******* small–

small enough to
circle the drain
and slip right through
the holes
in the grate