God doesn't make mistakes. If we listen. Forgiveness is a flower. It only blooms in our singular embrace

Caroline Shank
7.6.2024

The syllables of conversation
scatter like Shore stones.
The Gulf prefigures you
as a dream prefigures the

child.

Salt water runs through our
toes as we walk. There are
birds and wind like kisses
lick the sides of yesterday

when the screams of love

reached

Heaven.


Caroline Shank
7.6.2024

Not so, really, the seat of spring,
a car of dark cloths, the voice of
boys and whispers.  Do it.

Do it, the lion sleeps tonight
playing on the radio.  Do it.

Forty years the lion is awake.
I remain in the back, handblack,
churning.  My stomach is den
solid now and hungers for the
shallow response.  The song
played then shouts out loud.

Do it.  I wrestled with it, and drowned.

The lion sleeps not I think.  I see
the mane of his black head, the
italian tomorrow of my fourteenth
year roared from him.

I did it in the maw of that music.
I held onto the ****, pretended
to feed the wimoway.  Never done.

I did it to the music of the *******
who whispered to me of the jungle.
I did it to the tune of the ***** that
pinned me to the mighty song.

The lion sleeps.  I think not yet.
Snickersnack the wimoway is
whacked low and I drown in the
song.  I did it, like a nun who fears
perdition if she drops the rosary.

The lion sleeps tonight.  In the jungle
the ******* NewYork night
pads on and on.  I don’t sleep.





Caroline Marie Shank

March 9, 2001

Old Roses and Summers


My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,oses
dressed in the beaches of my
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.


102592

Witness

I don't remember the last
kiss
that swept me away
arch of my back
slip of language

Kiss

The aged are forget,
are watched.
The threshold of
the past

is never crossed.

Wrinkled  like
yesterday is blown.
is

fallen.
The floor
is

scraped across
planks of
blond colored

dreams.


What you see is the
Last dance,

of the  only
music

left.


Caroline Shank
6.26.2024

UIt's not like Dinner where you
Tell the maitre d to give you
a different slice of prime

rib.

You can't slip the pastry
into your pocket this time.

Called out for your writings,
for the chains of thought

You were
heed less in your

Society

Today's the day for
the bells

to ring. The justice.

Please EXCUSE me

I Abhor the convenient
L

To learn is to
scrape the jug.

of

The Grains

Of conversation

s. No. I cannot
marry you

Like this.






Caroline Shank
06.20.20.2

Is it too late to watch the
To see the
cracked burns
of the elderly

the disappointed vocals
of the women in
petticoats


It's a game, Eric
The stringy sounds of
Yesterday. A calliope
Of Summer's by the beacň.

Hold my hand Mr soldier
if you can, take the whisper
of those who read the lips of
those who, like me,
slide it down your pants

To Hell


Caroline Shank
06.20.2024