Happy Birthday

My son is brave, kind
and good.

He slid into the light,
caught by uncertainty.
Out of the Dim and
Quiet he marched the
one thousand days.

Mute mother and crying.
Exhaustion.
Life was always in the
next room.

My son reached for the
barre of imagination.,
Cries of indignation.
The room reverbated.

Music of my youth in
his mouth. He ******
the flowers.  The walls

folded around him in
a swaddlle embrace.

Lordy lord the past of
my anthology cries.

Birthday is to Kevin
as life is joy to me.


Caroline Shank
7.19.2024

Sometimes

Sometimes I just sit. Wading
thru thoughts.  The cells
of my future
capture
the nonloves of mythical
proportion

I have clocks all over
the walls.  We tic
together.
White sheet rock,
flat line.  Everyone’s
story is coded in the
cells.

The walls are
dry. I see names
Scri+++ names.
Thought comes and
GOs.

Tomorrow will slide over
me in an ecstasy of

feeding.

I will sit and count the
days until my sorry

***

goes….. .



Caroline Shank
7.17.2024

Beware!

The air reflects me.
I circle the bright
light of you.
Undulating slowly.
I am the
stare that praises.
The hum you
hear is the splash of my
approach.  I will love you with
the palms of my hands,
like fins,
barely brushing your face.
I soothe your possibilities with
possibilities of my own.

The soft forest of your
unbelievable skin is before my
eyes and I am a girl dancing
in soft clouds.
All you ever saw
in the secret interiors of fantasy.

I swim through you, in and out
of breathing.  Watch for me.  I live
to love in you the sounds of you
whispering my name in rasping
syllables.

I  linger like tomorrow.


Caroline Shank
Posted to AP 3 MOS ago
Today is 10.23.19

Always

(medicine in the
deserts of
burning flesh
sorrowing souls.)

People to treat.
Lives lost or given.
The cold winter sand
forever in your shoes,
your pockets.

Your mouth the harbor
for the grit of every day.
You spit it out in the

***** cups, cracked with
the rush of
hurrying mouths.

Tents breath in and
out, their ***** flabby
from pawing hands.

Today is always unknowing
if the sky will save this
planet of death.

This day of unforgiving.

The supplications of
hands

covered

In blood.


Caroline Shank
10.15.2024

So it all ends not with a
bang but

With

A

# *******

Whimper.

Sad night's in prayer.
Shriven of guilt.
On the freshly vacuumed
Floor.

Not the sounds of sad
crying but the whoosh
of stifled prayers

Of course. Penance
For crossed lines
In the ashfalt of
propriety.

Lord I know not

What

I have

Done.

Posters say travel.
I will crumple my
Not so sea-worth
weighted with
Soul. .

Whisper

Will you still
love me

Tomorrow.?


Caroline Shank
07.10.2024

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