To whom shall I say
I love you
If not to you?

To my bent head
I close my mind
to paths windings,

And the sun’s bright
light steals the dark
secret of you.

To the nights signature
you lie with me.
I wrap my dreams
as hidden

in the shelf of my
breast.

Not to know this
is my gift to you.

The place upon, where
you
rest is the worn
In me the tragic

song.


Caroline Shank
03.17.2024

Did you find it?
What you came
here for?  
Into this land of
broken dreams and lies
you travelled with a weary
pack lying on you like a
moldy shell.

I don't have two pence
to care
and two pence….
In other words

the scar of your
indifference
raised the

white triangle of
sad songs and
Army jingles I
learned from my
Dad.

Slide it beside me
before the effigy

Me,
In a papier mache
page Turner.

I am a member
of the caste.

Namaste

Caroline Shank
3.16.2024

Where In the crates of

song

notes and of

lyrics

Is the one, the singular
The Q of Stephen

to find among the

Beer bars.

Release Me

The song lay
unyellowed.

Then the growl

A finger width away.

But it was the

jazz then, the windows
thrown open

And you left

your song

without

pity.



Caroline Shank
3.10.2024

The Winter Of Discontent!

I forgot
what blew the

winds  of another
Winter

coursing over me.
Tomorrow has eyes

on my child. The last
chance.  

Doomed
wind numbed the
underbed of all the

legends.  

Those it
could reach for a
quarter and some
salt.

I am happy

To know

you

I said to

God.

Goodbye


Caroline Shank
3.5.2024

My husband would have
told you I was

loud.

He
died then and through my
silence

I mourn the sounds of
his breathing.

I listened to the clouds
whispering
The trees swimming
sounds through my

tears

I scream in my brains
lobular desertion of

reality.

The end of my thoughts...

of

yesterday..

There is no reason
to explain the

desertion

of a life unaware,

of my silence that

now screams for the
end of my tears.

Caroline Shank

is time unutterably changed
from the stalk of language
to
mind’s repeating evensong.

The looked for praying;
look again.

I have not come here to
talk of the night's
kiss, the borrowed ladder,

the window.  But to
reckon with the
devil for my soul's white
blazer
.
typed on it for the world to say
You are.

And the dream
of Carroll and I stay here

On the beach of
vowels spelt

long ago.



Caroline Shank
2.16.2024

For Jon

My breath shatters the
frozen ice of all
distinction.

Tomorrow I will clean
   the corridors of my
thoughts but tonight
   I will wait for the
mordant memories.

The red roses, in the
garden you planted
for me over

fifty years ago
do not grow inside
the cold Wisconsin
   battering on my
    
window tonight

I have no Valentine
     from you today.

No nor a whisper of
the door
closing behind you
  By the quiet nurse

so long ago.


Caroline Shank
2.14.2024