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 Sep 2023 Caroline Shank
Mote
what can i say.
in one dream you ate my brain.
 Sep 2023 Caroline Shank
Edward
Your love is always perfect, it is always real as well.
You have brought me close to some Great poets ever.
In fact I would say the greatest poets that live today.
I appreciate that I can really enjoy their beautiful writes.
So one thing that I am asking you O Saving God tonight.
You are already using them mightily double that portion.
In each of the make their poems twice as beautiful please.
Also make their poems twice as powerful as they were before.
Bless them with doubling their poetry talent in every way now.
 Aug 2023 Caroline Shank
nivek
river of love
constantly flowing

river of love
a heartbeat
~
Bergamot morning

the astronauts are sleeping

and she dreams like a mannequin

ceiling stars abound

like hummingbirds in celestial flight

about the nectar of

young bodies, young machines

we drew a map together

from burst to bloom

from fever to neckline

from scale to mirror

pretty scar, a thing of awe

when the curious girl

realized she was under glass

raining in time lapse

she traversed me ad rem

with might and main

I didn't have the heart

to wake us from

her brainchild's motif

~
her hesitating beauty
over a hundred days
each a silk thread
each a dark pearl

kissing specifics
in the empty space of a matinée
hologram of the new sun
burning like prime meridian, the hunter's star

ripples of inhibition, making waves
and confessions in
the deep end of a pool

always submissive with a smile
like holding her breath underwater
~
lost library books
and broken lunchbox thermos,
her childhood under a forgotten
leaf on a pond.
she's attracted to the sound
of the breeze through her hair,
inner-city birds recommending
she listen with her head underwater,
to experience it as a fish might.
this is inescapable.

blood roses in the snow,
her unemployed martyred
fingers in the factory.
the manufactured years go by
at a price too great to recover from.
for every flash of beauty,
there is a hint of anger; a dash of violence.
this is inescapable.

her sleep-flower recital
in a dew-swathed spring morning hospital,
some kind of faraway pink funeral for
dead trees and traffic lights.
treasure impaired clouds capture
an isolated moment in time.
perhaps several moments.
perhaps several parts of the same moment.
this is inescapable.

~
coloring inside the lines is impossibly bleak,
with a hissing noise
atomic locomotive
rounds the bend,
extrasensory perception is not
a mindless gift,
it's a train station in the clouds,
tracking all my starting points to you,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.

you leave in opera
with secrets and grievances
under the radar,
and your ready-made
wings catch in the power lines,
you're coiling like smoke
in the arches of my cathedral,
a sense of elegant decay
while sweeping up the debris,
committing arson
with the paraffin of my temporal lobe.

yesterday's fairground waltzes,
ghosted lullabies,
and woodland hymnals,
set in a context not of
resolution and closure,
but of contradiction and assimilation,
break the bond,
away they float on purveyor belts,
one too many molecules,
one too many departures,
always on the surface of everything,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.
I am too old for this reckoning,
I am too old NOT to reckon
     with past promises,
     Of life outside myself-
The shadows call me home,
yet where exactly do I land ?

Only words define the substance
   of Art, Growth, Humanity itself;
I dare to tell tales of which I know
    very little,
But imagining them is how
   I conquer fears,
   create escapes,
Follow my own footsteps through
a tunnel of RECKONING--and REPOSE.
Dedicated to the Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman who recited her piece, "Call Us What We Carry" at Pres. Joe Biden's Inaugural Ceremony. I tried to write as if it were Amanda herself speaking to us, in her own unique voice.
 Mar 2023 Caroline Shank
Crow
take me to that shadowed place
past all the songs and tales untold
for none can ever see a trace
in domains dark where souls are sold

chill thoughts in solemn darkness tread
outside the sun’s beguiling spell
through barrens deep in mortal dread
of endless night and frozen hell

my voice lies mute in lifeless cold
where twilit lands may hide my face
beyond my youth and dreams of gold
conceal my wretched fall from grace

with stone and star I now will dwell
and grieve alone for words unsaid
leave bone and dust my fate to tell
weep silent tears that must be shed
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