Boredom opens the door to walk-ins.
Floats, like spoors in July, little
umbrellas of disaffection.

Tomorrow is the tattered breath
of the day before I met you.
It is the same.  The film is
crinkled on the closet shelf.

I clean around the thought
of giving the lash to tonight.
It is the last resort to
things unable to disseminate.

The hero shrinks of yesterday
are gone for soldiers everyone.
It's the hymn that keeps them awake.

(My mother shrieked through the
night.  In Summer the frogs in
the back shrank.)

You left with the rain.  I have
said this before.  Late afternoons
dredge.  Not yet suppertime
the waiting for night's numbing
power is interminable.

Sit there where I remember you
so I can lapse into stillness

that will bring the words sliding
songs.  

I

linger

Into drugged

dreams.



Caroline Shank

Panic spins.
I am a dervish without
a prayer.

Air pounds in my chest.
Sound is a slap.  
Thought is scrambled.

Breathless is a **** in my
stomach.  Flight is the
option.  Feathers fly.

The air is sand, filled,
unbreathable.
A storm screaming.

A rope
chokes me
into another
space from which
I fall disgraced.
.
Recovery is a movement
of clarity I receive from
your

lips on my

hands.

Caroline Shank

I have never walked here, like
this, before now.  Moist
footsteps follow me as dreams
follow after the
pain when the rains came
finally into the desert.

I have never knelt here like
this before now, by the sand’s
edge where grass grows
like green singing in a scenery
by Dali, perhaps.
This place with its
small hands combs the bodices
of trees. You run
fingers through the desiccated
leaves of my soul, water me.

I have never hiked into the
territory of your country
like this.  Day runs
down my face, drips off
soft moss which is your voice.

But I am here now.  I unfold
this poem of yours as the wind
blows which, when you open your
arms, releases the simple sounds
heard in the branches and leaves
of a friendship whose fertile
landscape grows its own singular,
philodendronous song.


5.1996

Plath wrote in a frenzy
just before she died.
She put all of the world's she held
so fragile into the sauce she

brewed in the London of her
despair. Her last thought was
Daddy.

Another ten years.

She was to complete her
poem's anniversary tome.

Plans fail.  

Au pair arrived
to no one answered the bell.

Plath, while her babies
napped,

waited.

She never knew.


Caroline Shank

Somebody burned the house
she said.
Frying steak.

Long live smoky kitchens
and those who are
called to the cause.

We are all molecules
in motion riding a
colossally failed experiment.

Non sequiturs abound in
my world.

Smokey kitchens.  
Metaphors.

I hang my head.
Slowly clear my
thoughts.

The kitchen remains.
the Abode.

There is nowhere

else

to go



Caroline Shank
9.26.2022

Tree limbs spike the
air.  Fingers
shred summer skies.
Wind is the
sliding movement
realized.

Life is rhythmmm.

Wind storms sand.
Red is the color

of skin.  Touch
forshadows response.

Bodies remain.
Awareness
regained.

September's shreds,
tears, shells.

Tomorrow hides
in snow.


Caroline Shank
9.25.2022

is a circle.
The
minefield of
breathing.

I inhale.

The rasp of a door

hinge.

Gone to rust.

Pieces of
time.

Jigged thoughts…

clang of
chains.

Soggy Days.

Lie wet
leaves.

Rain..

The air pushed.

Behind me a
young woman

falls.


Caroline Shank
9.24.22