Short Stricture Poems

Blow by blow, my gold goes — get the picture?
My hand so weak, I can’t breathe through stricture.

What is next? This is greed! Please, no more nails!
I have no more room on my walls this sale!

1/8/2018...

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A clearing vision fails.
Nothing is what it seems.
Your inheritance, scuffed
lenses, ammonia, sins
of a grandmother’s house.
Of a grandmother’s house
nothing departs unchanged.
Elbows, knees and knuckles
scraped raw by scour-pads,
solvent, sting of scrubbed air....

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Is your greatness unendorsed
by godly symbols old and new

Is your strength contained and held within,
as broth begets the stew

Is your message clear with no defense,
either martial or sublime

With freedom at your beck and call
—all stricture cast aside

(Villanova Pennsylvania: October, 2019)...

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Gravity is
and gravity isn’t
Based on who’s looking
perceptions command

Less for the physicist
more for the poet
Science self-serving
two feet in the sand

Pulling us forward
pushing us back
intrinsic within us
as natural as air

Inside each moment
the stricture forgotten
Transcendent surrender
—polarity spared

(Dreamsleep: January, 2023)...

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Inhale


my heartbeat slows,
blood sluggish
through stenotic vessels
unwilling to expand,
to breathe
to let blood flow

untenable, this suffocation
this dampening
it speaks of tired eyes,
of stolid limbs,
of stultified need

torpid blood,
when will you give up
your self-imposed stricture,
your closely guarded fear,
your wariness

and inhale...

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Swiftly faltering, the fabric that bonds
Bovarism intrudes, with stealth it hides
Conjuring depraved for all to bear oath
Longing for days past, dignity and pride

Severance now square, local youth here wage
Declining in part, our moral picture
Sheltering family with bitter cost
As decay increases so does stricture

September 22, 2020
Writing Challenge – Decay – Poetry Contest
Sponsor: Constance La France...

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Once I sat upon your throne
to visit a familiar chair
I am the Empress overthrown
I no longer rule or scare
My face is in the picture
since 1968
There is no kind of stricture
I'm sitting at the gate
I stand for birth and promise
of a new dawn seeping in
and of gifts awmous
refraining from any sin
So lay out the cards of ink my friends
and see me sitting there
you need not for to make amends
I'll grant your wishes fair....

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Wrestling with time,
an illusion supreme

Its trinity empiric,
three masks to deceive

Past, future, and present,
our dreams undefined

Outside of their stricture,
new presence unrhymed

Rejecting convention,
short sighted and slight

Imprisoning our vision,
with capture and fright

In seizing this instant,
its moment sublime

All truth flowing freely
—unfrozen in time

(Villanova Pennsylvania: September, 2019)...

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By Mark Raymond Miller © 1/04/2018

Brace into frail wisp sleep
To own fear's blind belief

Undertow foils sunrise break
Through misty green storms

Born of censor fatal shade
Smother sands coil space

Hidden present ready fogs 
Distant past regression

Under sun drenched sky appears 
Matters born unspoken

Covered infants alloy thrown 
Under trapped ice overture

Sounds solvent stricture screams 
From children lost at sea...

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I read an atheistic book and it almost validated my life -
My desires, feelings, ambitions and dreams;
It was as if a person was actually speaking to me,
As I entered into his world of god theory.

The author painted for me the right picture, 
The scene I was born into of religion and stricture,
Such that after I read it I could handle my life,
And more comfortably cope with long-term strife.




The God Delusion is by Richard Dawkins 2006....

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