Short Shrunken Poems

Trees of shrunken heads
A community transformed
A grave horizon...

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Imagine how small our heads will be when they replace the brain with an AI chip.

©7/21/2023...

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the sun struggles
to get out of bed
on dismal gray days

we shrink from each other
lower our heads...

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Haiku – 6/29/2016

white heat - yellow glow
dehydrates shrunken shadows
baking city streets


John G. Lawless
6/29/2016...

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There once was a pretty pumpkin
Grown purposely for consumption. 
	Snatched from its cozy home
	It was brutally cloned
And now sits withered and shrunken....

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She rises
In the darkness,
This burdened woman
Shrunken by
Weariness and regret
Like a black rose in winter
In the icy rain,
Like a wind-swept rose in winter
That has yet to raise its neck
Again....

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The brains of our children are shrunken.
They stare into phones — as if drunken —
all day and all night.
They won’t read or write
and soon will be dumb as a pumpkin....

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PASSIONS
progressed
  info
of
urgent fruitfulness
encountered
in
 abundant
profusion
yet
  mysterious
in substance
obsessed
&elaborate
sheltering
in a
wilderness
of shrunken
shaped
  instincts...

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i don't need
a shrink 
i don't want
a shrunken
head but
quite the
opposite

to expand
my mind
take in
information
download
the weight
on my 

shoulders
assimilate
the asylum
while simult
aneously
singing
Sinatra...

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it's cooling my nape, 
this damp collar 
of my coat.

by neither water nor gale 
i'm cast adrift, 
set afloat.

the ocean swells in my mind, 
my shrunken brain 
starts to bloat.

dizzied by the toss and yaw 
of my imaginary 
boat!...

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Bora-Bora seemed exotic 
  Bali and Mal -- tempting,erotic
The Arctic tundra, far away 
  The Congo, steamy: Stay away... 

Now the world has shrunken so
  No place is too far to go
That Star is but a parsec near
  Time to go; my ride is here...

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Communication explosion's legacy 
                                 ~ shrunken, annoying world 


                Picture #1
            March 28, 2018

Entry in 'Monoku Pick a Picture What Cha See #2' Contest
      Sponsor:  James Edward Lee, Sr....

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Love boosts and blossoms
With praise begotten,
Releasing beauty locked within;
Child,adult,large or small,
Mis-shapen,shrunken or flowering tall,
Each the product of love's call;
In affirming whispers fond,
First,love binds then bonds,
Thus love grows,as it flows....

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strelitzias die -
shrunken birds of paradise
sag between green leaves


* It is now autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.
Strelitzia is a genus of five species of perennial plants, native to South Africa.  A common name of the genus is bird of paradise flower....

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How come 50 cents bags of chips
taste so much better,
than their big-bag cousins?
Or 7 oz. nostalgia coke soda bottles
have such a taste, oh, so devine?
I puzzle over such things,
I guess I'm just the wondering kind...
So it follows I should be happy,
To have this shrunken mind....

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at the   end   of a life 
the conversion should be complete
{under constant pressure
from a pressurized society}
a diamond in the shape of a shrunken being
should lay at the bottom of a gaudy grief box
accepted back into the cold black hopeless earth 
forgotten depressurized fossilized-soul coal...

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Beast retrieved
who vowed never
 strive...
Couldn't abide by words
gambled floods 
Livid lethal lava 
parched essence dwells
furnace no sedimentary
tar loiters. 

Optimistically optimises 
For future further
Luminous loop of life 
Clear inscribed circle 
Promises which to amend-
Shrunken....

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Gulpin’ kelp, keepin’ me trim…
Fill it to the rim!

Vagabond dope
Don’t do dope

Thriftydrift Frank
Never seen the bank

Sillypill Willy
Sportin’ shrunken lily

KellyJane Superbeg
Win the game, show the leg

Sandy Candy
Not too dandy

Beachnymph scrapeape
Frictionwitch lacergrate

Fishydish squishywish
Krabknish quitedelish...

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A shrunken, bitter fruit
dropped from a brittle branch;
the summer rains have passed it by;
the harvesters have let it lie
and Winter stalks the field.

Numb through long days and star shy nights
beneath a void of trackless snow;
dull passersby may never know
the bounty death will yield.

© 1987, Faye Lanham Gibson...

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Alice

Shrunken
By this mysterious man
Who keeps calling me
"The Alice!"

Thrown in a tea pot
With my long dress
To only hear 
Distant barking
With knight armor clanking.

Trying to push my way out
Of this prison
To soon have the top
Open to his colorful face.

Oh how Wonderland
Is a brute
Yet my heart can't leave....

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not even a shift in the night
or a bass chuka-chuka;

they will darken the humble sellers
of shrunken, dusty oranges

maybe a bad mouth,yellow teeth,
passed words to the birdmen

to crack open the sky,
a black walnut, half-brained

a ball of string,the smell of fire,
bags of sudden song,burnt shout of

hot and hot and hot;
nothing to put back together...

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The boy in me entangled
So many footsteps we cannot retrace
So many words
To make us what we were not before
So many places
And always behind us the gaping door
So many people
To stumble over in memory
Shrunken by the tragedy
Of their lost
And the boy moping
Exploits the man's emotions
But he cannot find again
This precious thing
In flight from him I lost...

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COLD BLOODED

Summer grows old
cold-blooded
tree’s scant
leafless twigs 
bend and break
creek and whither

Anaemic the suns
pathetic rise
and fall so soon
the rainplunge of
icedew sickens
to greysludge gloom


Winter takes hold
cold-blooded
labouring storms
iceflesh to bone
sallow and shrunken
we faceforce doom


© Kim van Breda—29 September 2015...

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My pillar a dying log, 
had stood firm through tireless tides. 
My pillar a shrunken log, 
her skin depicts all her life journeys. 
My pillar shall break soon, 
She promised not to break so soon. 
With grace i had polish her frail skin, 
Fed her all chance had granted me. 
Her ground cracks and shall stable her no more,
If thee perish,curse the soil and its greedy mammoths....

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Sometimes we get stuck in place
And all the dreams we used to chase
Have vanished, so it’s time to face
The fact our world has shrunken.

The plans and goals we’d once embrace
Have left without a single trace
And looking forward, we must brace
For hopes, once high, now sunken.

However, there’s a saving grace – 
We simply have to slow our pace
As lofty futures we erase,
Not letting any funk in....

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