People touch people in some
free-form folding of lives,
briefly, changing shapes,
always re-emerging against
new sides, blending like
figures on a screen, always
in motion, changing colors,
signifying some never-ending
continuum, floating in a
liquid teeming with
possibility, sliding
into each other, skin to
skin for the length of a
second.  Touch is the
brush of friends
at anchor.


Caroline Shank

I write you when I am labored
With forgetfulness.   I am
Unfolded. My drawn out tears
slip with a staggered downhill
run.

To my amazement I am dead.
The sounds of you pleading
have passed and in my relief
I rest on your letter.  

Time me Kangaroo down boy

I'm still in love with you.  Ha!

When you fell down the tunnel
was there a bright light? Like
in the stories? Did your mother
warmly call your name?

You didn't hear the hollow
hospital call from my torn
throat.

I will go smoke now. I picked
up the old habit from a rushing
rabbit. He said my time will
be soon and my sins scrubbed

off.

Why?


Caroline Shank
8.6.2022

I am fickle.  Let's face it.
I dated a lot of guys. I was
the girl in the red sweater.
Me and my saddle shoes.
I only wore Buster Brown
socks.

Look at me now. I am awash
In pink and sometimes yellow.
I don't like red and I don't like you!

Yesterday when we got married.
No 50 years ago.  Was it really
that long?  We pledged to love
Forever.  Now Forever is a
painful scar.  You were never
remotely interesting.

"so how did you like the play
Mrs. Lincoln?"

You say I can move on but
there is no place to go behind
the purple curtain.

Is this poem finished?
It would seem

that it is.  I will take

my bows, shed the
years and put the
memories in the

cardboard shoebox with
the painted scenery,

(please forgive the
Feminine endings.)

close the door and
see

my next adventure
coming for me.

I get pills

in the night.

I am in
San Francisco

to see Ginsberg.

I dream of
poetry and sand,
swimming
naked in cold clear
water…

and I sing in
my
sleep.


Caroline Shank

HI Sam. It's nice of you to
stop by the carousel.  I was
looking for a place to stand.
My hands are blistered,
and I am covered with the
salt of ancient tears.

You are welcome to taste
a slice of yesterday.

My poems are stones to throw
Into the lake of imagination.
You ask, from my lips, a song, which
I cannot fathom.

My writings are my culminations.
The detritus of my lover's stories.
I write for them, the sea grasses of
which I am composed.

Don't take away the tangles.

I write for you to stay in the
grass castle. I apologize for
the rumpled beds and bare
promises.

I am scarred by my lover's
last goodbye's.

But Sam, I am

happy

to see

you.




Caroline Shank
7.31.2022

I am sick in my self.
My fingers curl
around the stylus I keep with me
at all times.

A small black plastic taper with
which I tap out pieces of my
unwholesome history.  Do you
remember when I loved you?

The green moss grew only
on the north.  My sorry
adventures were always
South.  I mean to mention,

last of my breaths that I
have been sick in the
clever ways my sorry aim

took you to my lair.  I fed
the worm of imagination
with the cookies of my soul.

You are delicious and I
wore my plight in full
view.  You called me.
I replied in tattered
sentiments.

The rotation of the earth
holds me forever South.
I can never heal the disease
of attraction.

I will love forever the sounds
of love no matter who,
no matter why.

You are a beast of my jungle.
I wear your skin like camouflage.

I bivouac where you are and
leave at night, no note, no
whisper of sorrow.


Caroline Shank
8.30.2022

I am a slave to the sounds of
poetry. The rhymes of lovers
pledges, the colors of tanned
songs sing to my imagination.  

Poems drape over me like
dresses on women.  I see
colors and patterns reach
with tender fingers. Vowels
touch and with moist
lips, rhyme.

But there are no poems
here in Gilead,
no epic washing away of lines
on the waves of the

final

flood.

Lineman

You ride the poles of my
electric memory.  I feel
your grip on the wires
of my need.

I mourne at last your
absence.  The pulse
Is faint now.  You will climb
the last time soon
to dry the lines, wipe
the torn wires

and stop the
pulsing
of
your

aching name.

The pounding code
of a life

overturned.



Caroline Shank