"diminution" poems
Can't is a word I refuse to comprehend.
Can't does not exist in my vocabulary.
Not if I intend to live fearlessly.
Can't and Fear feed off each other like fire and air.
The two will dance and expand,
Spread to the last corner and inches of my land.
Can and Faith are the words I will invest into my mind, body, and soul.
Can't will not enter into my mind,
For it might sit in my mouth,
And slip off my tongue.
Can't is a poison;
The everlasting **** to my garden.
Can't will destroy every blossom created,
And seize the seeds yet to sprout.
Can't has the power to end the action of planting.
I will never again see a flower, if I let Can't grow.
Can is the remedy to imagination and ingenuity.
Whereas,
Can't impedes and blocks creativity.
Can't eliminates possibilities,
It drains and empties.
Even the most tenacious sea
Could not withstand the
Dehydration of Can’t
Can't ignites negativity, creating an immobilization and inability to try.
Can't creates an ending before there was a chance for beginning.
Can't breeds the misbelief of failure, even if there was never to be a winner.
In many ways,
Can't is the biggest lie created from out mind.
Mis-be-LIE-f
But if I were to look on the inside,
I'd rather give myself a fighting chance,
Then quit before I start
because of the word Can’t
We will be faced with new challenges each day,
New obstacles will arise and come into play
Life has an abundance of what we must overcome,
I would hate to make myself the enemy,
Be the one standing in front of a self-created machine gun.
If I were to approach the word for all that it is
It is after all,
Just a word.
I would let a word dictate and decide
The choices, risks, and chances taken in life.
Seems unbalanced
That one word can have full access
To my thoughts and actions.
There
The infinite possibilities
in the World and Me.
If the only difference between Can and Can’t
Stands an Apostrophe and T,
Then I choose to remove
The contraction entirely.
If you still don’t believe
How destructive Can’t can be
Here are a few synonyms for contraction as taken from Wiki:
“shrinkage, decline, diminution, decrease”.
None of those words seems appealing to me.
All of those words will devour my dreams.
Which is why Can’t is a word
I refuse to comprehend.
Jan 15, 2015
Jan 15, 2015 at 2:36 PM UTC
1022
I knew that I had gained
And yet I knew not how
By Diminution it was not
But Discipline unto
A Rigor unrelieved
Except by the Content
Another bear its Duplicate
In other Continent.
1.1k
The once snaking gurgling monster
Time-defying, ever-flowing oldster
Is licked near-clean by the quiet drought
Her diminution wrought distraught
Lain betwixt her hunger stricken arboreal hosts
Emaciated, unattractively scaring akin ghosts
Crawling slowly to die somewhere undismayed
Petitions unsaid and intercessories unprayed
The tranquil of the fresh breath of Nyamindi waterway
Is taken by the acrid gusts of aquatic decay
As her remnants lovers slowly but surely fry
In the fierce fast-falling fire from the sky.
Jun 23, 2012
Jun 23, 2012 at 5:14 AM UTC
Drastic self-defence,
Drastic in my linguistic augments,
The evidence of my attempts at trying,
To see any future where I’m not dying,
And it makes no sense
Tactic for offense,
Offensive in sarcastic defiance,
Ambivalence on a course for further premonitions,
Static fragments of my continual refusal of any medicinal diminution,
Please help me make some sense
Psychopathic friends,
Systematic traffic hence,
Pensive head and that will drive you,
Insane and round the bend if only they all knew,
I can’t see any sense
Automatic ends,
Ammunition diplomatic,
Suspense in its unanimously tragic situation,
Fate’s unenthusiastic in its conflict upon two cognitive nations,
That makes no sense
Anatomically attic fenced,
Just a poetic way to represent,
One’s combative mental condition,
An addict and the opposite always on the right and the left warring in attrition,
If that makes any sense
Plastic ornaments,
Plastic bottles left to lament,
As the alcoholic labyrinth in my life that cannot be broken,
To help wash down writhing thoughts forced to remain unspoken,
And an I that makes no sense
Fix it no expense,
Fixed monthly recompense now,
I am a myth of someone, whom I do not know,
Sickly pretence took me down a road that I never wanted to go,
And now you say I’m finally making sense
Panic is absent,
Absent the magic,
In the pills that in basic blindness I routinely swallow,
Dynamic in the worn out tools that continue to carve once whole now hollow,
Does that make any sense?
Now I’m really not making sense, by finally making sense
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 5:08 PM UTC
Consciousness is an appalling obsession headed for experience
Gone astray from all my existent associations
Buried implications within nothing I carve
Interpret alone and discern the unaffected me
Preserve dependence on cerebral traffic
It’s possible I am just a liar
Apr 24, 2011
Apr 24, 2011 at 8:54 AM UTC
"the guppy letters,
swim spring river current fast,
like little boys catch me fast who run past,
they cannot be caught and easy captured"
From "You, Your Best Poem"
~~~
the duo of little boys in my life,
a small percentage of my size,
yet,
somehow they are
Superman~adept
at getting past my grasp
just when I need to
precision tool them,
hug them air tight,
way way beyond just right,
conspiratorially whispering our
Socrates secrets
I cannot capture them,
for they caught me
a priori,
from the very inception of our
commonality starting line
yet when little boys hide and go seeking,
their diminution is ammunition
for their evasion and disappearance
from mine eyes
that lust for their touch,
their-skin-so-soft-it's-a-miracle
but persistence is an adult failing,
seek and ye shall find little boys,
giggling their passwords
under dining room tables,
the ceiling skies of the top bunk bed,
safe house places of young boys
take them home,
for a life-in-prison,
in the prison of a
adult's love for little men,
discontented by their never ending
growing up,
serial escape attempts
as they grow up,
and I grow down,
think that some day,
I will require
these skilled speedsters
(and their associated older sisters)
to
*"little boys catch me fast"*
happy in the knowing
that they,
now, trained so well
in the art of hugging,
will catch and capture
me
yet again
when I need it most
Jun 8, 2015
Jun 8, 2015 at 10:17 PM UTC
when blizzards rage and howling
arctic winds did blow
profuse precipitation packed Philadelphia
til white aery mountains did over flow
meteorological heft wrought pinkish glow
polygons pin wheeled and pirouetted
landscape imprint pure as driven snow
diminution of visual acuity
accrued from two score plus nineteen birthdays
still marvel at freeze-dried raindrops
reaction toward crystalline phenomena
continues to grow
kaleidoscope of multitudinous
hydrospheric blitz krieg terrestrial show
metaphor wrapped in supreme whiteness
from singular entities high to low
mother nature imbues testament
teaches to offer self for world to know
as corporeal of flesh and blood
we forget identity among human row
subtle riddle well hidden in molecule
two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen in tow
offer quiet sermon to cherish beliefs
and personal paradigms vis a vis status quo.
Mar 12, 2018
Mar 12, 2018 at 4:29 PM UTC
studied dispassion,
go about
the roundabout
of practiced ordinary living,
fully aware,
there are no open exits
currently available,
leading back to when,
all exits
led only bright forward
consensual distance
spaces tween
registered vehicles
but no longer
registering bodies,
legally maintained,
by all
outward appearances,
minor kisses
in a habitual habitat,
perfunctory
of the functionary,
"I love you's"
traded before
shutting off the
permanence of the
finale of the
now dimmed bedroom light
diminution
by the minute,
covertly clarifying
the ex-mission critical,
cutthroat ended
by consensual distances,
silent no speaking
empty spaces that
cannot be closed,
or
dispossessed disposed,
the sensual, desensitized
been down this
slow mo lazy path,
to slow ruin
before
the quick road to
The End
the questions
air hung but
unasked,
the words
unspoken,
they,
the ultimate
****** weapons
inevitably found,
getting at long last
a final hearing,
judgement reached
at the
reenacted scene
the finale resting place,
*the grave of spaces,
consensual spaces,
the gulf of no love,*
the pre-partum dénouement
Mar 1, 2015
Mar 1, 2015 at 8:18 AM UTC
~for you~
~~~
when I put
twosome of twisted lips together,
long dragging one foot clubbed,
agony before the other,
but one hand obeys commands,
the other disdains, ignores,
one only eye-seeing, vision impaired,
and the body laughs at the notion of
paired coordinates
tongue disobeys desires,
limping thru life's everything,
thoughts locked down on pause,
mid-think is a cassette tape
in a seven-second delayed,
a fist cannot be unbroken, unwound
chorus of mockers,
herd of haters
rejoice in my diminution,
using my weakness for ammunition
for I am a stutterer,
just another you,
misstepping, fracturing,
the minutes of a life disastered,
suffered, sadly, no gladly hanging about
but I do not forsake hope
repair each word with the honor
of a slow enunciation distinguished,
ungainly shaped, yet soldier-motion forward,
in small poems and with one hand holding
for I am armed with certainty
as I stutter thru living,
more than awaiting, comprehending,
you, you,
understand full well,
that we are all handicapped
salvation arrives when
a touching whisper heard in one solitary ear,
you sir, you, are not alone
for who among us dare deny
we are all stutterers
Oct 25, 2015
Oct 25, 2015 at 7:07 AM UTC
Hard to think of a stink as pungent
Without repelling those who sense it
Grand grotesque and sour smell
Beloved by all
In diminution
Nov 6, 2015
Nov 6, 2015 at 5:14 PM UTC
I view the future with much equanimity
And try not to rely on consanguinity.
My loss of blood to NHS phlebotomists
Whose hides are thicker than hippopotomists
Or, if you prefer it, hippopotami
Exacerbates a lot of my
Concerns with the diminution of supply,
Reminiscent of Hancock and his cry:
A pint of blood! You must be mad!
That’s almost an armful. It’s really bad
If I do not have enough
Left to fill the smallest coffee cup.
But do not grieve excessively,
I’ve left a glorious legacy.
A double pocketful of books
Into which no one ever looks;
As well as countless music scores
That it seems everyone abhors,
Regarded by equal abhorrence
As evidenced by non-performance.
But one we greet with jubilation
Refrigerated Transportation
Beloved by transport chiefs galore,
Who hide it in their frozen store.
Aug 25, 2015
Aug 25, 2015 at 6:45 AM UTC
Through my own tyrannical enforcement
I spew insipid scripted statements
I do not support nor enjoy.
Afraid to be aberrant
Oppressed I am pushed to lecture repugnant contradictions against my own disposition.
Turgid loathing of the fear of dropping the expected facade
Supported by ego and enforced by group-think to mold a homogenous majority.
I hate self pity.
Here marinating in my own self indulgent sorrow.
I am a hypocrite.
Another one of my enemies.
But weakened by forcing myself to state the opposite of what I value,
I open myself to further self destruction.
Through this introspection I might be able to reclaim my social autonomy.
Possibly at the cost of diminution of social impression.
That is held at such divine standards today.
I might become a social martyr.
But at least I’d die complete and confident in my own voice.
It would open me to ridicule.
But I’d rather understand myself and be subjected to hate than to live objectively in a self confined contrived reality.
Mar 15, 2019
Mar 15, 2019 at 11:47 AM UTC
Spring is...
when you see the first flower
when love first blooms
what becomes when the snow melts
rejuvenation
Summer is...
when the world is bright and cheery
when the beach is the place to be
when the grass feels cool
bliss
Autumn is...
when the trees are golden
when the air is crisp
when kids are quieter
diminution
Winter is...
when tiny crystals make the world seem colder
when all the birds have flown south
when the sky is always grey
barrenness
Jun 27, 2014
Jun 27, 2014 at 3:10 AM UTC
I spent the morning
Looking at you
Every now and then
An old friend talks to you
You accepted them
One by one
See, they have returned
I told you they would
Like that story, a father to his son
You accepted them
I’m your friend
I lose a body part
Every time a friend arrives
And knocks a piece of me
An ear now, an eye later
A hand here, a leg there
No tearing of limbs
But a silent diminution
An erasure to an unwritten pact
I called your name
You hear me, a whisper now
Of a wind.
Jun 26, 2016
Jun 26, 2016 at 8:40 PM UTC
no diminution in tiredness arose
gnome hatter how off tin ma dis bows
Zoe let his bot tee succumb,
via mental application
of autogenic phrases
and/or counting crows
cuz upon awakening,
aye immediately wanted ta doze,
thus this artful dodger hankered to expose
extreme cockamamy idea incumbent,
where corporeal essence gets froze
zen, the scientific procedure named
emergency preservation
and resuscitation (EPR)
more familiarly known
as suspended animation
pursuant under the appellation cryogenics,
where living tissue no longer grows
old, a wishful yearning
approximating immortality i sup hose,
yet this copacetic drowsy
generic human struggled in vain
trying with utmost effort to stay awake
Swiss to hobnob among urbane
feeling helpless (fearing
he might be narcoleptic),
nonetheless aye didst train
intent concentration
(and/or feeble exertion mustered)
to swat away worrisome thought
this hypochondriac,
could be afflicted with mononucleosis
since lassitude less likely sprung
from overcast and rain
knee skies, which type weather
generally energies me
to conjure a quatrain
sometimes complex versus
written straight away plain
panacea hit upon finally
to ward off sleepiness,
whereby literary endeavor
boosted by a strong brew
namely fair trade
manufactured coffee chew
zing among socially conscious entities,
and hoping to do
some dollop of positivity
without fanfare I eschew
to fulfill personal hue
man conscientious anonymous impact
that some benefit will en sue.
May 27, 2018
May 27, 2018 at 6:27 PM UTC
Wealthy people have a knack
Of making contributions
They don’t let trials get them down
But focus on solutions
So don’t let anger conquer you
Or seek out retribution
But seek to take the higher road
And offer a solution
Of several ways to undertake
A problem’s diminution
The best by far is simply choose
A mindset of solution
So cultivate this daily choice
There are no substitutions
To making it your daily goal
To seek out good solutions
Feb 28, 2020
Feb 28, 2020 at 8:54 AM UTC
The world takes it’s time
Leaves dance slow
Dancing in a static world
My face is different to me
Can you tell me whats real?
Jun 10, 2019
Jun 10, 2019 at 4:58 PM UTC
There is, I admit, no small attraction in the possession
Of the wand--but invariably that becomes obsession,
For magic bewitches all it touches, and woe to the man
Who, having discerned its methods and secrets, believes he can
Employ it yet stay unfettered and unscathed, without effect,
(As if the mere claim of enchantment would not make one suspect
Both the man and his motives), all sweet fruit without bitter rind.
Such men may find the verdict of peers and gods to be unkind,
(There exists no single point in time we fail to comprehend
That no simple act of wizardry postpones our mortal end)
For who among us remains impervious to Nature’s whims
Or time’s ravages--our concentration wanes, the eyesight dims,
Our hands shake, every bit as unsteady as our convictions.
So we carry on, with our exceptions and contradictions
Expertly hidden, in the hopes that, at least for a short while,
We can offset, through the employment of parlor tricks and guile,
The diminution of our gifts, fading of our faculties.
So, as we reach our denouement, what have our abilities
Brought us in the end, save the knowledge that our reputations,
No matter how great, serve as no match for our limitations?
Oct 13, 2017
Oct 13, 2017 at 1:26 PM UTC
Forged while in utero (the crucible concocting conception),
the fluke of biology begat
me – a happy go lucky boy, whose vulnerable uber travails
susceptibly sprung sly as a cat
on a hot tin roof, where the faux pas survivalist diktat
burrowing into my figurative,
elusive, and divisive gofer hole decreed éclat
where solitariness didst a ford
driven psychologically by obsessive fiat
a compulsion to grip tightly
with distorted, dispirited and disgruntled guilt
evasiveness where schizoid personality disorder
rudely rued the day halt
ting natural development
of body, mind and spirit, a rampant insult
finding thyself as a kid alienated, deviated, and gravitated by jolt
like electric shock from how peers responded to knocked
down confidence, egoism, faith, et cetera within self locked
and linkedin to an identifiable causes
(which said malady) – marked
by painfully being shy, debased fortitude,
and intimidation noted
prominently when thee papa found him walking toward me,
where he orbited
from the dark side of me noggin
with no intent at harm, yet a portent
welled up inside
mine chromosomal maternal and paternal quotient
whereat this unease generated an unspoken radiant
cowering reaction training thyself crouch with silent
body language that bespoke volumes expressing torment
with nary a clue (meaning approximately
xl plus years ago) only the unguent
of magic powers to disappear
since silent springs restrained thee to vent
and only when this sole son started a family of his own and went
back to visit parents did a diminution
sans cower take the shortest xing
in heyday of inferiority spurred (a veritable bee line back
tummy honey combed hive), or if feeling especially intense – a yurt
would answer the call of duty, and once inside
close all the zippers.
Oct 3, 2017
Oct 3, 2017 at 2:46 PM UTC
That's part of me
You do not have to give me
The third degree
And that one did as a kid
Falling off a swing
The one on my head don't remember a thing
The one in my heart
Did that on my own
The diminution you did to me
YOU did
And yet I did nothing to you.
Dec 30, 2014
Dec 30, 2014 at 4:27 PM UTC
Diminution is a formal word that refers
to the act or process
of becoming less.
To the point
pastless
at once
upon an instance
Aug 28, 2025
Aug 28, 2025 at 7:19 PM UTC