Cloaked in gray, o’er the lit screen, sits my teenage brat,
The ‘literati’, unmoved by stink of dead rat,
In vain, I wrap my thoughts to know what he’s at.
Nonplussed, broom and I barge in for a sanguine start
My hopes crash on the table soiled with gooey tart
He beams with pride at this hideous art.
Wry days of hi-tech, hi-touch gone in a blink
I try hard to restore the missing link
Wait for the awkward hug to brighten my ink.
This poem was a winner at Penmancy’s October contest. It is a diminishing verse.
Diminishing verse offers no origin and very few rules.
In fact, the main rule is this—remove the first letter of the end word in the previous line. So, if the last word of the first line is “grace”, the last word of the second line would be “race”, and the third word of the third line would be “ace”.
