I cannot get to you.  You
are like Jerusalem, a
misguided city. Your name is exposed
to the sun while i call to you in the
silence of the volcanic pre-dawn.
You have slides of affectation.
A pilgrim might mistake
you for the safety of a handhold
hammered in the sand.

Other
travelers knew the peril of
your affection.

You don't  reply. So cold the
monument, so silent
the wall of your response.

This is all I know
and so do you that the
messages of the world fall
like the snow on the ground
white with shadows. Mute
replicas of shared emotion.

Drink to us the sour
vinegar of the sponge.

Caroline Shank
June 16, 2022

Imaginings

Midsummer.

My thoughts are
charged by
familiar memories.

It's been almost 50 years.
You and the heat
and the music.  A joint
between us and the
puppy running around.

I believed in you.
We danced in the
room above the bar.  
Mrs. Jones. The wick lit.
Tomorrow was a day
away.  

The blue smells of smoke.  
The beach.  The soft sand.
The striped umbrella.
Our music played for
a thousand nights.

Jeans and leather.
Together.

*

I prayed for hours.
In my chair, in the
sunlight.

"Love him my love" I repeated
for so long that July Sunday.

We belonged to a rift in time.
I excavated in the sand and found
you.

We were young then. The
sound of your bike is in
my sleep.

I never knew
it could hurt
so much.

You never waved

goodbye.




Caroline Shank
June 15, 2022

How long before you noticed
     I was absent?
Would you boot up expecting
     me to have my sunshine
     waiting like someone
     breathing in the air of your
     expensive cologne, alone?

That is the important part.  Would
     you pay no mind to the
     unspoken fragility of my delay?
Can you see me through the glare
     of my absence?

My hands, so still, make no move
to flex, the prelude movement, to
lightly brush the keys which spell
your name. The button I do not press to
start the bubble of exuberance, tingling. .
My chest contracts deeply and i
breath your name in a ritual obeisance
you might call a whisper.  I land
on the keys rubbed too shiny from use,
as a supplicant might continually rub
the Chalice.

I exaggerate, here,  the thought that
you would notice the omission
of a stain on the white cloth of my
restlessness.  I bow to yesterday.
Today waits.  Unexplain my
heart, call me by my name.
    

Caroline Shank

Song

I am a metaphor for your loneliness.
Rigged out in sunshine and crowned
with blue skies I am your looked for
ticket to the cotillion.  You never
saw me before the imprimatur
of poetry.

I want to tell you the stories of
my life.  The daring deeds. The
mistakes that you hear in my
voice as a prelude to love.

I am the curlique of madness
that tempts you from the tropic
of yesterday. We were young
and wanton in blue jeans and
rolled hems.  I wore a shirt
emblazoned with your name.

You were perfection in gray
pants and pink shirts.  It was
the 50s and the air sang to us
carrying the music that we
knew as love songs.

We were young then unknown
to each other. Our old souls
were songs as yet unwritten.
Do I confuse you with my
symbols of forgotten requests?

Don't try on my song.   I never
wanted you to.  I am here in
the vocabulary of mistakes.
We cannot find the meaning
In the experience we each had.

Don't look for me to sign.
I am alone in my recent grief.
Don't wait for a sign that
has lost its true North.

You send me flowers which
do not arrive, candy which i
cannot eat.

Tomorrow dies,

as unwritten

song.


Caroline Shank
June 14, 2022

"The Lion Sleeps tonight". Do you remember that song?  I hear it on the
radio over and over  again.  The time
has come…  oh oh I am about to mix my allusions.

I am, like Alice, small inside the music.
The cliff tops of sounds are passing
before my eyes, the wind in my ear
is loud. In the jungle, the mighty
jungle, the lion paws at my scarred
heart.  His claws rip my bodice
open and blood drips on the car
seat.

Have the courage to say goodbye.
You bore me with your growling
and your furry tongue reaching
down my throat. I sing to myself
blurred lyrics. You choke me
with time away and distance
travelled alone.

I will die by myself before you sing
to me of loneliness and crap
excuses. There was beauty in
the jungle before that song
wrapped around my memory.

You were not the first to ask
me to visit midnight, to taste
the hushed and slander of
the dark jungle.

I navigate paths you only
dreamed of in me.  I roll
the canopy away and I am
in my bed alone filled with
horror at the slashed path

I trod with you.


Caroline Shank
Jun2 12, 2022

You are lost to the waking world, a
denizen of the darkness.  I pry my
fingers from off the steel lock.  You
risk the deeping years, the early

yellow springing world laid for you
from my body.  I talked to you in the
corridor of my youth. You only tried
me for.a moment. You took the
pages of my determination and
threw them over the brick lined
walls of your selfness.

You made me witness your dance.
The song you sang, your lyrics
beneath my pillow, the
voice of ancestors not heard until
your music escaped the fences.

My mother did not live to dance
with you.  The songcoated signal
escaped between  your
incomprehensible affinity.

The dance of genetics in full
display.  I am still the Baffled.
The one footed dance  of
the broken, the chondral song
played every evening.

Go behind the schoolyard where
you and the lions of your
collective urges vye to be
the fitest ****** on the block.

My life is short now with my own
kicked addictions. I drowned in
the lake of desire. I have swum
the frigid surf and walked away.

You are not unique. Many sear
the letter of desire across their
bare forhead and cannot traverse
the concourse of the day.  

I will not declare myself aroung
your wheel. I walk through Grace.
If you choose me kneel for the
Benediction of God.

Caroline Shank
5.28.22

I love your fierce approach. You swash
at me.  With strong arms you cut the air.
I feel the breeze of your determination.
You look like a soldier.  The art of love
is a frenzy of intensity. You can't take
me without a battle.  

I am the rose-holder, you are the steel
clad rider.  You joust to win my favor.
I throw petals to path your way to
me.  The minstrels play.  Sing amen
to this afternoon.

You have won the day! I am the
receiver of your presents.  Fifty years
have passed. My trodden soul is
bare. You rode the steed of truth
and beauty.  

It is my turn to write your name
in a church of sorrow.  To try to
climb down my lofty seat.  I kiss
you fairly my true warrior.  The
last joust was now.


Caroline Shank
5.26.22