I am bent in half, sitting in my
chair.  My arms are covered with
crawling things.  My face itches.
My folded feet are cramped.

My stomach is collapsing and
my lungs gasp for air. I walk
upright so you won't hear
the breaths that tear ever so
quietly from the deep place
where terror thrums the
center of me.

I get up everyday
to the steel strings of my
unconscious.  My head
listens for something
I cannot hear.

Panic, like a guitar,
strums in my gut.  
It plays me and
I shake.

I pick this up, my
shattered life,
and I go on…

Dear Jesus, I go on…


Caroline Shank

I have seen my shadow lying
on the playground of your
mind, and I was aware.

I have heard you sing my song
and I was taken.  Have you
seen me running to the beat,
beat, beat of your steps tapping
on the paths where we stopped
that day we made love in the
garden of the old house?

I'd have chased your music
into that tomorrow rain if you'd
asked.  I slipped behind the
tree to wait.  I saw you
running on the sunbeam,
down by the river, dancing
like a dandelion spore
on the breeze of evening.

I called you and you waved
your panama in the vestiges
of my dream.

Was it all imagination then?
running down my mind.
Touch me again where
you counted my pulse
leaving me breathless
in the corners of my soul.
It was a sweet dream.

If you ever find me running
toward you stay for a time.
Turn around elusive piper,
my body moves to your song.

Dance with me when I am
dreaming. Throw me a kiss in the
Summer breeze that tastes
like forever in the space
before awakening.


Caroline Shank

I am the Audience.  I write
to hear what I have to say.
This jumble of verbs and
adjectives, this conglomeration
of images is my body.

These warts and crevices, the pocks
of my life roll up into
words.  I copy them in the winter
and I write with them in the
long summer mornings.

But you, you predate my vocabulary.
And I say to myself you Are.  I
make you from the letters of
experience.

How else to tell the world, and
I must tell the world, that I exist,
that you live.  You are the noun.
I write to keep myself formed
into the story we made.  You
are the Subject of this
safari through my bones and I
am the Author.

My pen spills, a diary of tight
lighting firing through the
ink.  I write to say you
exist.

I scribe this plot thralled
Gothic romance.  
The story is always the same.

You, you are alive somewhere
in the world of words
I create.

And I,
I am your god now.


Caroline Shank

Do you remember the rain?
You were soaked and the
only thing you heard was
my voice crying in the
wildness of that starless
night.

Later you were so calm.  
I was in a void,
medicated to save
my life.  We saw
each other across
the cigarettes of
scarred conversation.

Do you remember
your hands on my face?

Personne ne se souvient

Is it too much, this drought
of time? These long misted
years clutch the past
like a pout of pain.



Caroline Shank

fingernails blackened from scraping in the moss
a soul of blood, dirt, grit and change,
tendrils of Fibonacci, curving ivy in our jewel-veins
lips that have been bitten and blow among reeds
deep in the forest where our feet touch the riverbed
and our heart thunders like the rain.

My Daughter Near Drowning
  in Lake Michigan
     Seven years old



So cold and still her eyes looked
up at running me.  Glass is like
the water between us.  I am
Christ.  I never felt the wet
and never sank.  I reached
her through the mirror of
myself.

I am her god now.


Caroline Shank