To be without a reason
to be.

To be a worn inside out
kind of being.  To miss you mostly
your absence, like
falling water,

puddles.

You make the tears
want to fall.  You slant from the
pictures .
Grant me Oh Lord a minute.

I am trimmed in half.  Your
consecrated remains on
the bookshelf.

Tomorrow is the Blessing
that holds the map of
living without you.

You walked in the Garden.
You never said that kissing
was underrated.  It's how

you left in your bed in a
May afternoon.  The
last time to say I loved

you turned away.  Was
life with me so hard?

You ran to God to save
your demented soul.

I watched from my window
As

you

Flew away.


Caroline Shank
6.24.2023

I want to travel with you
in Summer or a Winter along
the pavements
thick with the sounds of
falling feet, trampled dreams,.
The detritus of lives lived by
the thin soled.

I offer you old hands to hold,
Wishes warmed by heat.
The loved fingers that will
undo you In the theater of
your imagination.

We will talk of things imagined.
Our stories flung into the gas
fire of old age. We will go
places only books invite us
into, brush skin of
our fine lines.

We hold
onto the strings of time

for

as long as

galaxies of desire

rock us.


Caroline Shank
6.22.2023

There were always men
when I was a young
girl.  
Summer men.
Big
as trees,
loud as
thunder.  
Bright,
soft
round
eyes.

I loved the men of
summer.  They
breathed
in
warm
breezes

When I was young
summer men wore
soft
brown
skin.

They
glistened
sunlight.

Oh when I was young,
I did love
their
rub on
my tan
hands.

Now
I am
oiled by
memory.


Older men
are
happily
in
disguise.


Caroline Shank

We will have a moment to
shape voice and touch
around the space
in which our kisses find us,

so you turn to me when
reaching,

warm in two AM sheets
holding our breathing
tight in the night's sky.

We belong to the heat,
to the sounds
that run swift and
sure as the constellations
to our skillful embrace

and love.

perhaps?

Caroline Shank
6.16.2023

It comes from talking too fast.
Words from thought spill through
me.  I am unadorned with
punctuation.  I write in long
lines of ideas switching from
one to another like trestles.

Some thoughts get stuck or are
trapped under wheels. They rub
me clumsily.

I speak only English in a stomach
churning speed.  To tell you how
beautiful you are takes pages and
curls of rushing lines.

I am a jumble of ideas out loud.
A scorch of syllables.  I digress
of course.  I am a stumble of
sounds, a cataract of meanings.

Listen to the scrape of pen, the
words enlighten,emerge, into
conversation.


Caroline Shank
6.8.2023

It's quiet now. I hear the washer
from the next apartment.  Even my
birds

are quiet.

It's when I think of you that the
spinning axis of the planet
requires my attention. The
door that alarmed last year
still screams.  You turned
away from me.  I heard the

slam of your heart, the ram
at the end of your life.  I left

without a kiss.  I live without
your steel.

I turn to where your son
shines and I am guilty

of loving you

still.


Caroline Shank

Act 5; scene 3

You shuffled off your mortal coil
at the wrong **** time.
The  denouement Is not here yet.  
Your death left
footprints into ,Dunsinane with
your Lady,  Me.

We had plans and schemes.
We didn't finish the play.
Dunsinane was ours. Your
birthday of will.

The rescue was sold out.  You
we're a hit.  The Scottish play
was untroubled. Your crown
cleaned.  You stumbled into
the play's last act.

That I must go on alone out of this
creaking pasture, this mudhole,
to be traversed without you
is a remarkable lapse in your
Ordinary

My hands hurt for the rubbing
of them.  I am alive because
you aborted the play.

Return to me. I have paid
Dearly

for this ticket that was

meant for two.


Caroline Shank
5.10.2023