Diamond Snowball

The Snowball is a poetic form in which each line consists of one word, with the first word containing one letter, the second word two letters, and so on. The variation of this form represented below is called a Diamond Snowball, in which, following the middle line of the poem, each subsequent one-word line decreases by one letter, such that the final line of the poem is only one letter long. (Somehow, Diamond Snowball sounds like an innovative new strain of cocaine.) If letters don't strike an author's fancy, Snowballs can also be written with a gradual increase of syllables, words, or any other morphological or semantic unit.

Imperial Passage

I
go
out
into
grimy,
random
streets,
imperial,
beholding
confounded
daytrippers’
functionless
perambulating–
unapproachable,
uncompassionate.
Metastatically,
schadenfreude
exterminates
sympathetic
appraisals
regarding
humanity,
cruelly
paring
until,
from
the
"we,"
"I."