"shrinkage" poems
For Al, who left us
With each passing poem,
The degree of difficulty of diving ever higher,
Bar incrementally niched, inched, raised,
Domain, the association of words, ever lesser,
Repetition verboten, crime against pride.
Al,
You ask me when the words come:
With each passing year,
In the wee hours of
Ever diminishing time snatches,
The hours between midnight and rising,
Shrinkage, once six, now four hours,
Meant for body restoration,
Transpositional for poetic creation,
Only one body notes the new mark,
The digital, numerical clock of
Trillion hour sleep deficit, most taxing.
Al, you ask me from where do the words come:
Each of the five senses compete,
Pick me, Pick me, they shout,
The eyes see the tall grasses
Framing the ferry's to and fro life.
Waving bye bye to the
End of day harbor activities,
Putting your babies to sleep.
The ears hear the boat horns
Deep voiced, demanding pay attention,
I am now docking, I am important,
The sound lingers, long after
They are no longer important.
The tongue tastes the cooling
Italian prosecco merging victoriously
With its ally, the modestly warming rays
Of a September setting sun,
finally declaring, without stuttering,
Peace on Earth.
The odoriferous bay breezes,
A new for that second only smell,
But yet, very old bartender's recipe,
Salt, cooking oil, barbecue sauce, gasoline
And the winning new ingredient, freshly minted,
Stacked in ascending circumference order, onion rings.
These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger, by force majeure,
Declares, here,
poem aborning!
Contract with this moment,
now satisfied!
Al, 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 poem more than most,
for its birth celebrates
my loss, your loss,
which cannot be exonerated 8/7/18)
_________________________________
written at 4:38 AM
September 8th, 2012
Greenport Harbor, Long Island
May 21, 2013
May 21, 2013 at 7:07 AM UTC
1.
A star-shaped
patch of snow,
achingly white,
rests against the base
of the little white
pine, wrapped
in glittering
golds and reds, gifts
for the Christ Child.
No claw or paw
or beak or wing
has touched the snow.
Only a hidden pitch
of grass pushes
it skyward.
It shirks
its shrinkage
north
of the pine.
It will not
winnow until
the bright star burns.
*I pass the snow
and think of nothing*.
2.
Lightning split
the hide
of the 80-year-old
oak that shaded
our little tan house
each summer.
Its bark ripped
apart like
wallpaper,
life leeching out
of its crooked limbs
in sap-soaked
streams of sorrow,
making room
for the little white pine
to thrive
in the dead of winter.
*Nature is not
our friend*.
3.
The pine prays to preserve
some piece of the oak
I used to love. Its needles,
like shark’s teeth,
fend off friend and foe
alike, granting it
the right to grow
wherever it likes,
even here,
at the foot of giants.
Dead, the pin oak loans
its beauty to no one,
boasts only of its hard,
straight wood,
an abiding abode
for birds and squirrels
and barking boys.
I climb to its top
each Christmas,
straining toward
the Epiphany star.
*The tree sways, and
I think of nothing*.
4.
The burgeoning pine
pines for such power.
You cannot cut it
without exposing
its darkened knots,
like aging spots
on my hands
and face.
It rises bright with
anemone-like cones
dappled on its coat
of single color:
evergreen,
ever young.
Ever gone,
my pilgrim oak.
I stretch toward the star
of Bethlehem,
dreaming my way
to Heaven, saying No
to the punishing
star of snow below.
Hanging high
above the Earth,
I sense the Christ Child
in my branches.
*Wet, wild grasses
brush His cradle,
push me skyward,
His star my home*.
Aug 20, 2018
Aug 20, 2018 at 10:16 AM UTC
aches in the old familiar way
that your heart once did
as a child, begging for love
as your mother's side,
to be quietly pushed away.
to have been shut up with
television, pills, food
(to think of your youth
well there's no word
to describe the guilt.
your mere birth was an
act of abuse on humanity,
wasn't it?)
this new ache though
leads to a progression
a growth in shrinkage
a strength in will that
you never thought was real.
this ache takes you
to a secret hidden place
full of the shimmering hope
that you'll feel whole one day.
Aug 31, 2013
Aug 31, 2013 at 6:39 AM UTC
billboard's calligraph --
past the haze of Manila infested
by car sprawls and belching machines.
magnanimous treatise of tarpaulins,
people chin-up asking God
with askance
something like this
"o god make this bearable
like a mound of fresh fruits
from ****** labour."
maniacal sensurround:
earth-shattering frequency
of footsteps trampling the mouth
of monolith shadows - the peak
of this quake is our complete silence.
rain's catharsis in effect
sousing us in the blood of unreal light.
this diastolic shrinkage
jamming the beat of constricting vessels.
the adrenaline surges
within the dermis of this pretension.
a collective of tired beings heeding
the recherché of voice metamorphosing
into form, a dagger-butterfly
paring us skin to bone, cranial
to visceral, soul to nothing -
catapult of a trajectory spit
plummeting in eased-up pace
from Taft Avenue flyover
to a subjugated wagon of scraps
and empty wine bottles.
today's paper reads:
"Palace hits hiring
of **** dancers"
fancying to fall right in the
spanked curved of this
insatiate melodrama - something
prayer could not save from
this land's mutinous ignominy.
we resume to fulfill our madness,
hundreds of tack-headed people
rolling down the streets of Makati,
drenched with rain's trilling aftermath.
squinting to look at
no sun, only the grieving of skyscrape,
thumbing down unidentified objects
in the depth of loose pockets,
desperate for home.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 12:39 AM UTC
With each passing poem,
The degree of difficulty of diving ever higher,
Bar incrementally niched, inched, raised,
Domain, the association of words, ever lesser,
Repetition verboten, crime against pride.
Al,
You ask me when the words come:
With each passing year,
In the wee hours of
Ever diminishing time snatches,
The hours between midnight and rising,
Shrinkage, once six, now four hours,
Meant for for restoration,
Transpositional for creation,
Only one body notes the new mark,
The digital, numerical clock of
Trillion hour sleep deficit, most taxing.
Al, you ask me from where do the words come:
Each of the five senses compete,
Pick me, Pick me, they shout,
The eyes see the tall grasses
Framing the ferry's to and fro life.
Waving bye bye to the
End of day harbor activities,
Putting your babies to sleep.
The ears hear the boat horns
Deep voiced, demanding pay attention,
I am now docking, I am important,
The sound lingers, long after
They are no longer important.
The tongue tastes the cooling
Italian prosecco merging victoriously
With its ally, the modestly warming rays
Of a September setting sun,
finally declaring, without stuttering,
Peace on Earth.
The odoriferous bay breezes,
A new for that second only smell,
But yet, very old bartender's recipe,
Salt, cooking oil, barbecue sauce, gasoline
And the winning new ingredient, freshly minted,
Stacked in ascending circumference order, onion rings.
These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger, by force majeure,
Declares, here, poem aborning,
Contract with this moment, now satisfied.
Al, 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.
___________
4:38 AM
September 8th, 2012
Greenport Harbor, N.Y.
Mar 26, 2014
Mar 26, 2014 at 5:06 PM UTC
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
On the first night of the Festivus All grievances were aired
But after a few cups of *** our feelings were repaired
The Festivus pole shone brightly, illumined by a single light.
The alcohol flowed freely, this would be no silent night.
Cousin Jerry in the corner was caught snogging with Elaine.
George’s girl was laughing as he struggled to explain
The cause of her disappointment (shrinkage was to blame).
Cosmo Kramer danced around the pole, making spirits bright.
Newman spilled the bowl of punch,( he never was too bright).
Frank and Estelle were doing well and feeling little pain.
She pinned him in the feat of strength, not that he complained.
When the meal was over and the holiday was done
They all made their donations to support the Human fund.
Dec 23, 2014
Dec 23, 2014 at 10:50 AM UTC
Our nation is
a living organism.
Alive with biochemical
pulsating cells.
Apoptosis,
a cell death
of our nation
are set and
already unwittingly
programmed.
Takes a
multicellular effect
if not checked.
Cell changes and
death is eminent.
Changes includes
blebbing,
cell shrinkage,
nuclear fragmentation,
chromatin condensation,
chromosomal
DNA fragmentation,
and global mRNA.
Apoptosis ,
a falling off occurs.
Our nation is
threatened and going
through same
process as above.
Our acts must
be put together.
There is a
suffocating,
crippling misery,
and destitution.
We are desperately
sliding both into
chaos and despondency.
We must get
out of this
cloud of frustration,
with a profound
physical presence of
sour people grieving
daily,
Don't let them
become too rotten
to infect everyone.
It may be
contagious.
All ships must
sail in one direction,
Or very soon
we all go down.
©2019,Emeka Mokeme. All Rights Reserved.
Apr 19, 2019
Apr 19, 2019 at 10:55 AM UTC
With each passing poem,
The degree of difficulty of diving ever higher,
Bar incrementally niched, inched, raised,
Domain, the association of words, ever lesser,
Repetition verboten, crime against pride.
Al,
You ask me when the words come:
With each passing year,
In the wee hours of
Ever diminishing time snatches,
The hours between midnight and rising,
Shrinkage, once six, now four hours,
Meant for for restoration,
Transpositional for creation,
Only one body notes the new mark,
The digital, numerical clock of
Trillion hour sleep deficit, most taxing.
Al, you ask me from where do the words come:
Each of the five senses compete,
Pick me, Pick me, they shout,
The eyes see the tall grasses
Framing the ferry's to and fro life.
Waving bye bye to the
End of day harbor activities,
Putting your babies to sleep.
The ears hear the boat horns
Deep voiced, demanding pay attention,
I am now docking, I am important,
The sound lingers, long after
They are no longer important.
The tongue tastes the cooling
Italian prosecco merging victoriously
With its ally, the modestly warming rays
Of a September setting sun,
finally declaring, without stuttering,
Peace on Earth.
The odoriferous bay breezes,
A new for that second only smell,
But yet, very old bartender's recipe,
Salt, cooking oil, barbecue sauce, gasoline
And the winning new ingredient, freshly minted,
Stacked in ascending circumference order, onion rings.
These four senses all recombinant,
On the cheek, on the tongue,
Wafting, tickling, blasting, visioning
Merging into a single touch
That my pointer finger, by force majeure,
Declares, here, poem aborning,
Contract with this moment, now satisfied.
Al, 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.
_________________________________
4:38 AM
September 8th, 2012
Greenport Harbor, N.Y.
May 20, 2015
May 20, 2015 at 4:49 PM UTC
Only if I don't pay attention
I see my thoughts
reflected in the world
and myself as a full moon
in the light of mankind
with, here and there, some spots
of defects, blood
shrinkage and disability
and shadows of bragging
then I know myself so light
as if I were the sun
as if it were me
who makes the moons shine
and the seagulls scream out
the day over the canal
Only now that I pay attention
I see the moons of my life
we are old
my thoughts and I, my world
from the new to the old moon
Mind what you see
then you see your life
from the new to the old moon
Jan 22, 2019
Jan 22, 2019 at 2:54 AM UTC
*
*It is in my fall is your rise
It is in my dark is your light
It is in my lows is your high
It is in my small is your BIG
It is in my loss is your gain
It is in my night is your day
It is in my humiliation is your appreciation
It is in my descent is your rise
It is in my poverty is your wealth
It is in my begging is your charity
It is in my moon is your sun
It is in my clouds is your rain
It is in my internal is your eternal
It is in my stagnation is your flow
It is in my desert is your ocean
It is in my decrease is your increase
It is in my small is your large
It is in my hungry is your eating
It is in my cry is your laughter
It is in my absent is your presence
It is in my sleep is your dreamZ
It is in my heat is your cool
It is in my fire is your water
It is in my dusk is your dawn
It is in my blame is your forgiveness
It is in my sufferings is your help
It is in my last is your first
It is in my few is your many
It is in my slow is your fast
It is in my vulnerability is your empowerment
It is in my victim-hood is your assertiveness
It is in my earth is your sky
it is in my idiocy is your smartness
It is in my minus is your plus
It is in my foolishness is your cleverness
It is in my heart is your mind
It is in my despair is your hope
It is in my evening is your morning
It is in my end is your beginning
It is in my shrinkage is your expanse
It is in my silence is your talks
It is in my prisons is your freedom
It is in my solitude is your wander
It is in my unknown is your famous
It is in my sinking is your floating
It is in my ignorance is your education
It is in my demotion is your promotion
It is in my trivial is your importance
It is in my injustice is your justice
It is in my indignity is your human rights
It is in my leaving is my staying
It is in my being lonely is your friendships
It is in my sadness is your merry
It is in my dive is your soar
It is in my crawl is your flight
In is in my valley is your mountains
It is in my exploitation is your sustainability
It is in my rebel is your loyal duty
It is in my defeat is your success
It is in my scarce is your abundance
It is in my failure is your achievement
It is in my rejection is your acceptance
It is in my dislike - there is your adoration
It is in my retreat is your advancement
It is in my "against" the world is your "for" the world
It is in my dead is your alive
It is in my NO ONE is your everyone
It is my amateurishness is your professionalism
It is in my leaving is your arrival
It is in my slumber is your awakening
It is in my ugliness is your beauty
It is in my end is your beginning
It is in my end-note is your prelude
It is in my worst is your BEST
It is in my death is your birth
It is in my bitter is your sweet
It is in my blame is your praise
It is in cursing me is your blessing
It is in my timidness is your bold
It is in my being weak is your strength
It is my being at bottom is your being at top
It is in my idleness is your busyness
It is in my tears is your smiles
It is in my captivity is your LIBERTY
It is in my sad is your cheer
It is in my child is your adulthood
It is in my innocence is your maturity
It is in my adolescent is your aging
It is in my gulp of helplessness is your courage
It is in my spark is your lightning
It is in my destruction is your creativity
And over and above all what is said and written
It is LOVEz understanding and realization of YOURS
That WE are two bodies and ONE SOUL
OUR togetherness makes us YIN-YANG
It is in my veins is your blood
It is in my pulse is your breathe
It is in my womb is your cosmos
It is in my heart is your soul
It is in my LOVING you is YOU LOVING yourself
It is in my LOVERz is your BELOVEDz
It is in ME is YOU is me*
*
Oct 11, 2019
Oct 11, 2019 at 10:21 PM UTC
Easy to love
And easier to hate
Oh how things changed
From our first date
That cute little giggle
Once had the heart all a float
Now when it's chortled
Wanna rip out your throat
I once was " the biggest"
And always " the first"
Now my genitals have "shrinkage"
And I'm " the worst"
Thought you were a treasure
My good morning peach
Instead you are fool's gold
An emotional leach
With feminine hygiene
Of something washed up on a beach
I'd say I'll cherish our memories
But that would be lies
You're evil incarnate
The bowels of Satan
Wedged up in your thighs
Mar 1, 2018
Mar 1, 2018 at 9:06 AM UTC
This heart will last me a lifetime
If only because when it fails,
I fail,
But this heart, barely half way through its span is already much damaged,
For whilst the attack that did not claim me
Left no visible disease
The slings and arrows of emotional assaults, betrayal
And cunning, low and savage attack
Have left an invisible mark,
Every selfish unwarranted ******
Leaves a hole which heals slowly,
Oozing my life's essence all the while
Until the damage is patched by a layer of hard scabrous tissue,
A crude patch to mend a hole
Yet limiting the function once there found,
A tiny or not so small area which is not quite the same
And cannot fully carry its load any more,
A small damaged piece of me,
That fails
One such part? Hardly worth the notice and
Already as always forgiven,
But it is not just the one small part is it?
It's a fine network of such holes with the occasional larger ****
Where the stab was sawn and worked and
Widened with savage glee
Yet still healed or healing and still already
And as always forgiven
But the whole of me that part not stiffened and dead
Is smaller now
That shrinkage is not visible to the outside world
Nor will it be yet the shrinkage of useable
Worthwhile working tissue
Leads only one way and at this ever increasing rate
Of damage the end is coming close,
But who cares?
Well no one it appears
Because the attacks and the wounds are neither slower
Nor stopped,
So soon instead it seems
I will,
My heart will
Stop
Stopped
Oct 27, 2021
Oct 27, 2021 at 8:23 AM UTC
The happy carefree girl that is roaming the outside
is no match for the demons living within
and while she tells herself she’s not crazy,
everything else convinces her she is.
I can’t count the days on my fingers that I didn’t want to care
I can’t tell you how many times I said it’s not worth it,
and I certainly can’t tell you the number of days that I pushed on,
because those, are still being counted.
And while the pain and anger is still being mounted
I just can’t see the light.
For every “It will get better,”
all I want is one proof.
One proof, that will make me see that staying is worth it.
One proof that will make this dark cloud part.
One proof that's’ cry is loud saying,
“You are strong, The end is near.”
But I live in fear.
Everyday I live in fear
that my tomorrow won’t come because my only enemy,
was the one I couldn’t stand up to.
That the only reason I couldn’t confront it was because it was inside me.
The fear slowly turns into a lurking shadow surrounding me,
The shadow of anxiety relentlessly digging its claws into my heels.
The cold gnarled hand that grabs onto my arm and pulls me around like a rag doll.
The same shadow that makes me feel like I’m 10 sizes too small.
And the shrinkage continues
as the judgmental looks of my mother and so called “friends” pierce me
like I will later do to my skin with the blade,
liberating me of the heavy cloak for moments at a time.
And the cries that scream are all but silent,
sometimes they reach the surface and although a hand is offered to save me,
I bitterly refuse it, because I’m all too stubborn to admit I need help.
Deep down that strong girl is still there
She waits in a cage longing for the day she is set free.
Her soul aches to fill the body of that happy carefree girl.
She begs her captor to let her again give insurance to that personality.
Silently she prays to the God she long gave up on.
One that the person she so desperately wants to embody, does not believe in.
Yet that God seems to be too busy,
creating bombers and their victims,
mother’s separated from their children,
and most importantly, ones suffering from none other than themselves.
Don’t try and tell me I’m not crazy.
That I will get over it,
that’s it’s just a phase.
Because now, its more than just a phase.
Depression has become my full time job.
One with no health benefits
and long grueling hours with less than no incentives.
Depression has become my full time job, and as much as I want to quit,
I have no idea how to write a letter of resignation.
Oct 17, 2015
Oct 17, 2015 at 1:13 PM UTC
the woman buzzes in and out of her woman head like the thing her husband didn’t swallow and so became
fly
for the second time
in its short
fly
life.
but if I am back to the woman’s body I am in the kitchen eating portions so small the house misses itself only in passing and is able to deceive its ego with work being done on its ego by inhabitants of such stunted shrinkage they collar me as a child and threaten me with residence for as long as my skirt can avoid the breeze
and
or
cover the insect that holds my water for the blunt force trauma of self preservation.
Jan 16, 2014
Jan 16, 2014 at 9:56 PM UTC
Hot
Roll
Heat
Repeat
air dry for the poor
or energy efficient
shrinkage obsessed
or long life wear weary weirdos
Wandered Around The City
got 15 new stains
a little bit of sweat
and one more hole
Now You Need A Washer
Now You Need A Dryer
but all you got is
a toilet, some dish soap, a hair dryer
May 15, 2019
May 15, 2019 at 1:25 PM UTC
The toilet roll is narrowed by at least an inch
The kleenex box is shorter too.
The tuna can is lighter by an ounce
And applesauce has followed suit.
They take some costly spices out-
Call it improved and new.
The fancy wrapper doesn’t hide
That this is only one big *****
They want to keep the prices low
At least that’s what they say
It’s all to pad their bottom line
And we’re the ones to pay.
A stylist says that less is more-
That may be true with art
But when it comes to merchandise
It stabs you in the heart.
Nothing lasts past warranty-
It’s obsolete next week
There is no point repairing it
The bottom will still leak.
The Doctor has no time for you
His patient list is endless
Insurance pays him less and less
That’s why for tests he sends us.
We all complain and grumble on
But yet we pay their prices
We need to get a rumble on
And cut their scams in slices.
We need to knock upon their door
And bang upon their table
We need to stomp upon their floor
As hard as we are able.
Then maybe can size once again
Will fit the recipe
And we can live with things that fit
No matter what the fee.
ljm
Nov 5, 2019
Nov 5, 2019 at 9:00 AM UTC
brain shrinkage,
dialating eyes of confusion,
the molding of stress
in the pool of sobriety,
receding hairlines and
developing obesity,
the awry rationalization
of everyone's
depression in controlled economics,
the weariness in a blackhole,
sore feet,
sore body mass,
the lower backs breaking only for Moloch,
the lack of enthusiastic sense
to search for enjoyment,
for everything and anything,
one dead end leads to another,
the lights out hour
and
its deadly suffocating bed box
sadness machine;
as/while my relentless contemplation
for suicide delays,
I think I am more concerned
that with no savings at all,
the could/would-be bills for a funeral
may matter more than the death itself
but yeah,
this little enumeration
of a poem does no help
at all
but
a bottle of brandy
may help to make
it clear,
even for me.
Mar 1, 2018
Mar 1, 2018 at 12:43 PM UTC
I feel I'm getting smaller
and one day I'll disappear.
Aug 14, 2021
Aug 14, 2021 at 8:17 PM UTC
The bitter self-awareness
Of the vicinity of death
Encompasses a trauma
In a shortness of the breath,
An intellectual shrinkage
Spans diminishment of time
In impending dissolution
Of this treasured life of mine.
But mortality is mine to face
A hymnal to my fears
In that acceptance breeds compassion
For the irrational disappears
A passionate observation
Paints great empathy for life,
A vividness of being,
Of consciousness run rife.
Beyond articulation,
Beyond the poets song
Lies the grail of self-possession
In a Byzantium throng
Where the veil of comprehension
Sails upon a placid sea
And the glorious-ness of living,
In bright light, descends on me.
M.
29 October 2019
@ Foxglove in the warm, Spring sunshine
Oct 28, 2019
Oct 28, 2019 at 5:40 PM UTC