Never again.  Your voice like
thistles scrapes. It's tracks
unsteady.

Blood drains from the holes
dug by serrated edges.You
command the death of
Venus.  My throat expels
the vowels of the tirade
you unleashed.

To see, unleashed, the
ferocious silliness of
your torn words addressed
to the gods who long
before laughed at your

excavation of old bones
and misunderstandings.

Never again will you pillory
me, my torn lashings
       stung
in deep regret

for the years of meaning
now drawn closed like
curtains over a corpse.

One word bled from your
mouth, lifted me to my
knees.

Goodbye.

I laughed.

Never again.



Caroline Shank
2.28.2023

Number 1.

February 24, 2023

I am using this as an attempt to navigate the last years of my life.

Number 1. February 24, 2023

I have faintly seen and
     suffered my
brain
to
blow into the next
life.  

(Oh, Yes I believe
            In Karma)

There are enough grains of
nosand now in charge of the
serious songs of our lives.

I digress

Or did I forget what I was
rattling on about.

I forget the how-to's.  I'm
on the road to Damascus.
My epiphanies are bright
shots for only a second.

I've lost direction.  The
compass of my life
tilts.

There are roads to travel
           Yet,
People to see, loves
to find.
  

But to mix thinking

this Busy
            badly
Mable.

Not until Now.


Caroline Shank
2.24.2023

I am as close to death as can be
before the Throne of the Lord
lets me kneel before Him who
ordained that I should live such
a little life.

There will be no tomorrow, no
prayers before sleep tonight.
I am in thrall with my journey's
ending and I wait for the Great
Kindness to take this burden.

I am alone with only tears and
this pen to sign off before you
can call me back.

You would do that, you whose
memory outlasts wars and famine
and the last days of America.
I have touched you in private
places and feel the warmth of
you alive.

I am cold tonight.
I bring memories
to the fire of sighs.

I go tonight to the last
long longitude of my
existence and send
these bones sans

thought

desire

and regret

to your address of sorrow.


Caroline Shank
2.17.2023

Your words are flung against
my heart.  In what little esteem
you hold me.  Wraith of
my poetry you know not the
soul invested in the words.

All critics are not so smart.
Your God driven determination
to divest from what I write
the soul behind the
runes, that lives.  

Back, my literary whip
snaps and I drive you
into the intellectual corner
from where you write your
own expert poetry, driven
by the analytics that serve
you.

I will write my doggerel
that, to you, are the scraps
of an unaccomplished
life.

Caroline Shank
2.13.2023

How many times have I said
I love you?  Those words to
express that for which words
expire on uttering.  My hands
alone clasp the urgency of
this expression.

I reach for you.  Touch is
explicit.  Your heart responds,
and I am your song.  You
who never sang Sing now.

The feel of love is a reach to
the stage your heart has hidden

in.

I am tactile over my self.

You no longer hear me  
as you have stepped away.
The hours have turned to
days, into years.  More
than 50.

Yet I move. One woman.
hasn't the  power to reach
for your booked and ragged
Goodbye.  

But I will go on because
something turns me that
way.  Like a spiral whose
Need is to turn toward
the sun.  

You illumine my life with
the memory that once you
touched me,
spelling the future
I declined so many
times.

I cannot walk away.  This
strophe will not
stop,

the message is in my

stride, without
you now
I am chorus

to the

play.

Antistrophe
for the gods

amusement.


Caroline Shank
2.12.2023

.

I wonder if He can see you?
Is it all you believed?
Do you know now that
believing is the cracked

cement of your time
here.  It was not new.
Are the streets of gold
and are you walking in a
white gown?

Tomorrow I will write in your
journal of the Jabberwock.
You know him now, the painted
struts of glove and spats.
He tells me stories while your
world ends.

His bandersnatch is not
what you believed. Beware
the marble veins of his
indifference.  He says he will
En garde and you will fail.

You will, to the ground, bleed
in your reminisces, as he
walks into the water to wash
your lies with ***** soap.

Beware the stance of shaking
legs, the bleat of strangled sheep.
He cannot see you in your
personhood for he would
crumble into mad bad shoes
and slither away to your
last poet's rhyme.

Snicker Snack.


Caroline Shank
2.10.2023

I've started walking with a cane.
I'm like an old broken soldier.
Under the sofa are parts that do
not fit in rusty sockets.  New
loops and strings cannot

put
me
together.

I missed muster again and
got the letter.

I am
not required
at table

any more.

I spend my days twirling parts
left over from first rounds.
My springs boing hollow
and I don't
see well at night.

What will happen
to
me
now
that I have
seen the moment
of my greatness
flicker?

(I can still
quote Eliot.)

I want you more to
more than move me,
you starting my gears
and I overflow with

Purpose.

Your attention goes
and
I

no longer

see my any
self
at all.


Caroline Shank
2.07.2023