Shrinking Poems | Examples

Shrinking and Shrinking

Shrinking down now,
With each passing day,
Figures fading,
Slipping away.

Diminishing slowly,
Bit by bit they wane,
Until just,
Numbers remain.

Sitting on pages,
In ledgers and books,
Only a trace remains.

Diminishing,fading,
Almost out of sight,
Reduced to mere digits,
No longer alight.

A Financial Phantom,
Once bold and so clear,
Now just a number,
Devoid of all cheer.

Accounting's faint echo,
A numerical scar,
Vanishing softly,
Quiet and far.

A Boy's Fantastic Voyage

He began a voyage to a land afar,
But on every step in his journey, he shrunk. 
He wanted to go to a far distant star, 
But soon diminished to the size of a skunk. 

He climbed up on a slippery curtain rod, 
Now just the width and breadth of a dappled mouse.
He slid off the rod into the hair of a dog 
Who skipped and danced all the way out of the house. 

He got smaller yet and befriended a flea 
Who said, “sail the green sea to a secret land 
Where creatures are much smaller than you can see, 
And a million can live on a grain of sand.”

So, he then disappeared, getting smaller still, 
And trekked through a forest of golden and brown, 
And followed a twisty, turny trail until
He came to a window on the gate to a town. 

The hinged portal opened, and a head popped out. 
‘Twas an atom sized, gay and puppetty dog 
Who hailed him, as a fish on a water spout 
Said, “please sit down by this cranberry bog.” 

A boy, from his sack, gave him a magic bean, 
Which he put inside a stained-glass rainbow jar, 
And got so small he was only again seen 
As a gold ray of light from a distant star.

Shrinking World

Safety, comfort, food and offspring
Is that all they need ? Could be!
Doggies bark, the birdies sing
Feeling happy, they can’t see
Anything that spreads disturbance
Evil species of wrong kinds
Cause it would disrupt concordance 
In well balanced little minds
They don’t need minds fluctuation
Taking life without complaint 
I don’t have such consolation
In the shrinking world I gained
Hard to boast about the mission
Of the restless human race 
Who believe that competition
Is godsend, and fall from grace
much too often, in their faith
That the fittiest survive
And the weaker must obey
If they plan to stay alive
Wars and troubles, nations power
Tallest towers, I can’t bear
I am jealous of wild flower
As it grows without a care,
Living free, until some soldier
Tramples it by accident
And my world gets little older
In accordance that was meant.

Shrinking Verse

An interesting form indeed:
this one’s the Shrinking Verse.
The more you let your ink pen bleed,
the more, stanzas get terse.
The opposite, I must concede,
for sure, would be much worse.
I can’t draw forth the words I need,
an older poet’s curse.

From eight to six to four to two,
so goes the stanza’s count.
Like run-off rain will often do,
a trickle from a fount,
and when you’ve pared to pairs, you’re through:
time for the big dismount.

The rhyming pattern does repeat;
’Tis just an ‘a’ and ‘b’.
The ‘a’ line always has four feet;
The ‘b’ line, only three. 

In truth, it’s not that much to ask,
so I will not shrink from the task.

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The Shrinking Verse has a decreasing number of lines per stanza, typically 8/6/4/2, but you could start at 12 or 10 as well.

The rhyme pattern, 8a:6b, repeats as many times as is needed for the stanza.

The exception is that the final couplet is 8a:8a

A Shrinking Culture

The forest was shrinking
But the trees kept 
Voting for the axe
For the axe was cleaver 
And convinced the trees
That because his handle 
Was made of wood
He was one of them
And they bought his story
And they believed him
But the time the trees realized
The axe has destroyed them all

The Shrinking Sky

Visiting my childhood home
standing on a patch of grass
I called my back yard.

Looked up into a tiny sky 
with an even smaller moon 
and little stars.

Thinking there was a time that 
sky appeared as the vast 
never ending universe, 
The great proliferator of 
this boy's imagination.

My perception of the moon 
and stars all those years ago 
seemed so much bigger

Older and devoid of adolescent 
innocence, “the belief that somehow 
all my hopes and dreams 
will magically come true”.

I realize now, like that tiny sky
I gazed upon that night, my life too-
has become smaller...

Shrinking Bill

Dollar bills flying out of the air
Trillions for all of us to share
Best send some more
The fast food store
Took a million for my dinner there

No Shrinking Violet

Violet used a walker
Who was followed by a stalker
Violet was old
But very wise and bold
As she asked for help, through her walkie-talker

Borneo Pygmy Elephants

Borneo Pygmy Elephants are listed as, endangered
and they were isolated, about 300 thousand years ago
from their cousins, on mainland Asia and Sumatra
and they are known as, the smallest Asian Elephant

They have shrinking forests, with human settlements
and there’s a lot of logging, with a conveyor belt running
There are palm oil plantations, creating a lot of sediment
and a lot of agriculture, destroying their natural environment

Shrinking

average people pass rank and file
learning in their third decade
of the training cell

how long for psychiatrists
to get past the alphabet soup
of their learning 

when all research studies
can prove false positive
or negative


stan sand

Shrinking

I “talk” to people on the web
From countries far away,
A few I’ve been to, others that
I’d hoped to see one day.

By telephone or FaceTime
I connect with those I know,
Some frequently enough I’m up
On all their ebb and flow.

Despite all that, the world that I
Inhabit has begun
To shrink a little more each day;
My travel days are done.

The prison I’ve created,
Though much better than a cell,
Is the confines of my home,
The rooms of which I know so well.

My neighborhood provides me
With some peaceful walking streets
And a bench besides the river
Gives me afternoon retreats.

Once a week I’m granted freedom;
To the suburbs we do drive,
Spending time with kids and grandkids
To remind me I’m alive.

Other people are expanding
In the things they choose to do
But I’m stuck without the tools I need
To help me break on through.

The Incredible Shrinking Middle

It has always been a fight
     to preserve the middle ground
   between the shouts on the right
     and the screams on the left

   Now that both sides are right
      fight's become flight

The Shrinking Season

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: Time, Year, Years, Weight, Wait, Waiting, Weary, Wearying, Winter, Girl, Schoolgirl, Clothes, Grow, Grows, Outgrows, Outgrowing, Widow, Disappear, Disappears, Disappearing, Age, Aging, Loss, Death

I'M Glad I'M Not Shrinking

If you were only one inch tall
You wouldn't be able to see over the dashboard,
Life would be a blur of fast moving colours,
My cat would be a monster
And you would probably sleep in a shoe.
If you were only one inch tall.

The Shrinking House

Vacuum
Sucks Room



11-21-17

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