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To think about getting old?
Ay that is the question.
Tomorrow rapes the day
of sentiment, the curling
onion skin that never

unrolls.

Any mind cannot comprehend
old age.  The loose tooth,
of retirement falls out.

Hope falls from yesterday
when,  albeit time allows,
the young scalawag cross off

future’s possibilities as the
insensible droppings of
the cat who remain in the
corner.  The shedding of

youth’s romances.

Old age ponders through
rheumy tears the last
kisses , the shoulders
on which shawls

Droop


Caroline Shank
10.8.2024
Try me, myself, into
the last chapter of my life
Today is full of Autumn
The call to the Winter
Poet to change from love
to the song of nights long
trill of darkness.

Climb down the
ladder. Reach for the
blue book.  The days
shorter my longing,
my wasteland

I'm over the reverie
of the old lady.  I
meditate and wait
to go.  


Caroline Shank
10.7.2024
Work in Hell

Another Gaza poem

When you work in Hell,
children killed, mothers
stunned.  

No screams
allowed.

Red daylight is
a way to see the
ruts the trucks

leave.

There is no curtain
to raise.  All the
players are

victims

Red shirted people
rush to the cries of

despair.

Your life sanctioned
your participation,

you hold to your

mind.

Irresolute anger toward
God to do

something.

I knew you then in
all your determination
to

help,

show as you can
the ways

Out.

Caroline Shank
10.6.3024

KK

I remember prayers
from long ago
suddenly sounds in
the

Air.

Your guitar brings
music to safety,
always
calling the way

out
Stones.
Blue dancer.
On a beach
reach
Welcome.

Tomorrow's
Light
The.
Star is

bku+líyhú
In other
words
Loved killed
My mother

Scraped shoe.
Arsenic is
4.0 on
A scale of
death;   b bb bb;

Tomorrow's
Tattoo

**** up.
I am. Alone.

Tattoo
You said?


Caroline Shank
10.3.2024
Major experimental please comment-
Gaza

There is in the madness
of this planet a hopelessness,
a sadness beyond which we
cannot crumble.  

Scraps of inhumanity are
sweepings the winds of
Hell blow up to circle the
soft underbelly of
civilization.  

Nothing in which we are
to believe, is left on the
soiled platform of ignorance

There is no place for prayer,
the Psalms are lost.
No fires burn to heal
but to destroy.

There is one left that
Jesus loves who cries
in loneliness, the arms
that reach one time

the voice that, alone,
says yes to the flames.
You cannot burn my
heart

I love and you cannot have
the name of my beloved.
On my soul is written
the future
after the fires are out,
when the children hold
tomorrow

and I and my love
are free.

Caroline Shank
9.29.2025
The clocks,the ticks,
the chimes. people pop in and out.
In thrall with the missing

figures behind the carved
wooden sides.

On the walls were the
partakers of this vigil,
alert to the footsteps
on the stairs, the whisper
from one to another.  


Here
from the side door,
a piece of rhetoric,

offers the scribbles,

on
the
****** sidewalk where
I lay,so long ago,
counting my sins.

In me the balance,,.    
the ****** years

of a lost forever,
love, in the foggy
whisper,.

the sounds of

days gone by.


Caroline Shank
9.26.2024
Our Song


Narcissist that I am the
last quarter of my life is

filled
with you.

The dark
is my friend.

Old age
recapitulates
loneliness.
Life
is
slow dance .

I digress

Wrinkles and craters
belong to the
years of
oil and cigarettes.

I never knew you were
on the way.

Now time's ******* o
surfaces

The seaglass fractures
light
in the Son

There is a destiny
unclasped in the

Light.

You lead  me
in this

our

Song


Caroline Shank
9.17.2024


For Jack
9.17.2024
Song.
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