I Found God

I found God in a Baptist Church
in Milwaukee.
Faith,  small hands and
scratched bibles.

Warm cookies.

The delicate and the children.
Their names in coded
words on the skin under

my arms. .

Dedicate: the
day to the great E. Perience.

There is a new Age
coming.

I smoke a cigarette.

God arrived in fancy clothes.

Women dressed, frown.
Still voices in the

Wilderness

Witness the Beloved
baptism of perfumed
sinners

I smoked for them all.
My fee for being previously

Apostate.


Caroline Shank

There was a man come wandering
by with silver heels and loudly.
It was a Sunday and he asked me
to dance.  We tangoed through
close and warm.

Then it was a Wednesday warm
to touch you and I did.
You ran in the rain like a cat.
I called but the dull thud of
my tears fell only alone.

There love stretched
taut to crumble. And the heat
of my life felt the scald and
stars were unseen..

Light hid in drains and
you were in the rain gone.
I see you wet and reach
toward me. Dreams don't

die and I wrap the night
In paper sliced so thin

you can see thru my veins
where I have travelled

And alone.


Caroline Shank

I search for
rooms
that are lighted.  
That belong to
mornings.

I have beacons.
I search all the time.

On a
pebbly day.  My feet
run away with
the thought of
tomorrow .

I travel crests
of waves. In storms
I have stones for toes.

I am salvage of an unused
life.  Minutes,
hours, seconds left over

from the lover you
were ...

I run through
cold and
hard
gull screaming thoughts

of city lights and smoky
bars and poetry

unwritten.

Caroline Shank

I go where you go.  
I am  in your pores.

I am woven into the  curls
of your red hair.  I push memories
daily through your substantial
mind.

You are host to all the

years of our exile.  I am the
itch you wake to in the
long night.

I will be with you and
when you make love to
your wife I will be beside you.
It will be the secret you can
never tell.

We are the dreams in which
we play when night comes

and the cigarette smoke twins
memory forms, ephemeral
as the love which wraps the past
into the omnipresent

We.


Caroline Shank
12.3.21

They won't come back to me,
The dreams.
Fine lines of memory.

I dreamt of you recently.  I
kissed you,  I don't know
where we were but the taste of
you mouth took me
away to the beach of
winds.  The
warm sand.
Soft summer skin.

I lay over sleep  like
a coat
I hide in memories.

Return to me.
The night stretches
and reaches
for you.

I wait again, me,
holding onto the ashes of
love.  


The
night elongates,
that song.
We danced.

I dream of you and the
past lives again. Lights
silver me.  For the time you
hold me I SURRENDER.

Softly.
I walk in your footsteps..

Still.

The detritus of sleep  

remain scattered.

Caroline Shank
November 29 2021yy





They won't come back to me,
The dreams. They curl.
Fine lines of memory.

I dreamt of you recently.  I
kissed you,  I don't know
where we were but the taste of
your flavored mouth took me
away to the beach of
winds and seagulls.  The
warm sand. Your
soft summer skin.

I lay over sleep  like
a coat
I hide in memories.

Return to me.
The night stretches
and reaches
for you.

I wait again, me,
holding onto the ashes of
love.  Burnt.

The reels of
night elongate,
That song.
We danced.

I dream of you and the
past lives again. Bright lights
silver me.  For the time you
hold me I surrender utterly.

Yellow burns. Softly.
I walk in your footsteps..

Still.

The detritus of sleep  

remain scattered.


Caroline Shank




…

With all your expert mouth and
tongue of many tribes you
call me to the dance floor
of your poetry.

I ear your accent, I tongue the
vowels of your incredible name

which blossoms every morning.
I bed to your brown eyes when
touch begs rest from incessant
breathing.

You are wheat chaff and I am
the wind which blows over the dead dreams of aged memory.

I understand now the satiety
of your love.  The desert of
uncertainty where the bridge
of your wanderings
crossed my month
of ecstasy.

You are the list I take to
mind's far places when
thoughts of you are

exhausted.


Caroline Shank

Have I told you about
the Summer of 74, my
steamy discontent?
The suicide that fell
from the dusk of your
goodbye?

There I was, crumbling,
like someone crying
in the empty midnight.
Erased of sound, i
waited, with a sorry
silent cry.

I forget my next thought,
these aged dry days
but never those early
yellow evenings,

Moments float like a
remembered kiss into
a filled mouth.
We breathed
into each other, wanting
always promising.
I keep them in the
Chinese box. Your
souvenir of an
abandoned July.

The soft song lasting
in amber grained wood.  

Your words there
on my kissed lips.

The perennial intimacy
in the upstairs room you
slept in.

Now the warm night's tango
slides like lotion down
my tanned thighs.

This dance is forever.


Caroline Shank