Love melts like chocolate on a face
on a hot Summer day.  You can't
capture it because it drains down
your lips to tomorrow.  

Love falls to the ground and colors
the grass a burnt orange.  The color
of my  heart when you left me
without sound.  

Words unsaid smear.  
Unrecoverable sounds of
midnight kisses elude.

Love remains in me,
before you ever left.

How do I say goodbye
to nothing in my hands?
The silence of
your leaving drips
as you
melt away.


Caroline Shank

Good morning Sunshine, roll over me
in that special way.  Bring out the
juice that warms me.  I see your clear
heat.  You are not invisible to me.

Roll over me Sunshine.
I wait on the day.  Gray days
you hide.  I know.  You are
Tantalus to my Sophia.  I call

you out of hiding to run your
fingers over my skin call
cry to be love touched.

Good morning sunshine. I
wait for your song.  Rub on
my skin.  I am open
and I hold hot hands with
the summer winds.

I am mellowed by your touch.

Caroline Shank

It's the end of another day.  Goodnight Moon.
The sun is gone now and it runs away
from me.  Hello long hours of Sturm
and Drang.  I don't sleep until, drugged,
I stumble into dreams.

I no longer dream of you.  I dream of
the deaths of friends.  I count them.
Some are pebbles, some are rocks.

I trip into my waking hours like a
Redwood falls in the forest.  I walk
forward with a limp.  

I no longer dream of you.
I save sleep
for unimportant things.

Tonight is a blank sky.
It is tears dammed by floats
of lost time.  Unrecoverable
time.

Are you still
softly singing

"Sweet Caroline"  

to the dark horizon.  🎼 🎶?



Caroline Shank

(Do you remember Columbine?  I do.
From Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris
straight through to Anthony Ferrill
of yesterday's Milwaukee nightmare,
the deaths like a drumbeat go on,)

Shooters like thistles crawling
in their dementia to our cities
leave trails as the unexplainable
cancer claws to vine into our
conscience.  We listen to the

words as waves of newspeak
write the epitaph of our known
society.

Deeds as gunshots slap the
faces of we who can no
longer sleep. The panacea of
Peace In Our Time has rotted
limbs.

I live in the branches,
the false years of  the 50's.  
The Days of Our Lives
are indeed shot with a

bang

not

a whimper



Caroline Shank
2.27.20

February in Milwaukee is a quiet time.
Waiting for Spring and trying to lose
weight for the usually beautiful
midwestern summer.

Shots ring out.  The brewery is a
Crime Scene.   Snow falling on
police.  People are dead.  The
shooter too.  No more information yet.

It's a cold Wednesday.  School
children are hustled away.  Hours
in lockdown.  The press scurry
like beetles.  Flashing lights are
blinking like scared eyes in the
crowd.

Over and over the sounds of
chaos are quieted.  Clouds fall
steam and noiseless tears
as people are released to
go home.  A TV reporter
asks banal questions of
survivors.

The brewery goes on melting
hops and grains.  Mash is
safe at least as Milwaukee
bars stock Miller beer to
complete the conversation.


Caroline Shank
2.26.20

You inspire me.  I am somehow
more when I am with you.  
You have given to me the
grapes and the branches
I need to weave my poems
around the ink and the paper
of my imagination.

You took a partial talent and
it blossomed by your fertile
mind.  You knew me as a
tattered vine and wove
my waiting dreams.

I drink to you,
a toast
of gratitude.  

A poet's dream.

Caroline Shank

"I have forgotten your love yet I seem to
glimpse you in every window". Neruda

The closer I come to your image as
I pass the shop windows the more
I can't recall your touch.  My skin
no longer vibrates as you once knew
it.  Do you remember?

I have forgotten your kiss.  Your
red lips in the glass do not resemble
memory.  They are the stain
left in my soul after longing
has gone.

"Because of you, in gardens of blossoming
flowers I ache from the perfumes of spring."
Neruda

I no longer look in the glass to see
you calling.  That I no longer
remember.

Your glimpse is a broken pain
to my still aching denial.

Caroline Shank