Depression lurks, stalks.
My woods are deep to
hide these creatures
from

You.

I have no season.

No respite.

You will never know that
my life is not well lived.

I have you to bless my
days and none to bless
my nights.

Tomorrow's go away before
they reach me.  I'm am
eternally present.

My group would scold me.
All is only eternally

present.

Irrevocably trapped in
Unforgiveness,

I sluff off your kindness
as I am tired in the mud
of my conscious
observations.

You will risk nothing
in loving  me. I am
not there.

This poem is itself
Ungrateful, under
the sun of no light.

The paradox of your
love is to me

the vehicle that will
take me to you

fully  in love.


Caroline Shank
January 21, 2024

Forgiveness (2013)


I learned as a young young girl that there are things that are unforgivable, things that are inconceivable, except that they happened.  I learned that
no one cares
whether or not you forgive them, or her, or him.  Forgiveness is a NON issue, actually.

Life moves on, with or without our sorrows or bitternesses.  It just moves on.  We go with it, unless we choose not to.  Should we choose the "absurd" path of going on with it, it still makes no difference whether or not we "forgive".

Forgiveness is for God, whatever your relationship is to God.  Our job is to reach through the minutes of our days and to be the best or kindest, or not. There is no choice but  to "fare forth".  The pain of abuse or insult rides with us.  It just does. It's where we go with it that makes us, breaks us, or takes us on our way.  We become our best idea of ourselves because we know the difference.  All learning is from analogy.  If someone hurts me, do I not bleed (etc.).  Do I not know how to BE in this world with kindnesses because I have known cruelty?  Of course I do.

I have known extraordinary kindness and love.  I have known these things when I have least deserved them.  I learned how to love from the amazing love which has been shown me.  I have known Gratitude and it is the Mantra of my life in my last act.

Deception, in whatever its form, cannot cut us, unless it matters so much we are willing to dwell in some mire of useless opinions.  What is important to me is contained in a really quite small circle.  "The rest is not my business."   T.S. Eliot.

It is irrelevant, this idea we have about "forgiveness".  It's arrogance in extremis.   If someone causes me pain I really cannot do anything about it except to remove the source of it.

I am, beyond belief sorry for the pain I have caused others.   All I can do is fall on my knees in gratitude that the next minute or hour has pushed me into the next minute or hour and if I hang onto God I will go into the next flowing parcel of time with wounds that are healing, with sores that, Thank God, show me the direction in which to go to find, again, a place of peace,
people who do love me and whom I love.  
I have lived to know many many Blessings and Gifts.  (If I had waited to feel "forgiven" I would still be mired in pain.  It is the gift of Acceptance, unconditional Acceptance which sustains me.)

Grace is not found in concepts like "forgiveness" but in the constant acts of love.

It is not my place to Judge.  God knows this.  He most surely does

Bored little girl so long ago.
Red Keds and a sailor's
hat.

The roses grew by the
door.  Mother
didn't notice the lacey

frill of their demise.

Or hers.  The summer
of the song was hot.

Lions.  Teenagers fit
full of ***** and
Kent cigarettes.

There she sits behind
the school gym.  The
player piano

accompanying

the tap tap of the
ash.

Fourteen was a sepsis.

Was, was.  Was.
A heartbeat of
dark nights, taunts

gone wild.

Memories in the mind
now so
Long
Ago.

She sits still, her
pleas for please

to let go.

To my 78th summer
wires of time twine

before the tunes
played

Long ago still
fresh as the summer
behind the empty

school.
Over and over.

Plagues are breathing
still

In the wrinkles of

My

Memory


Caroline Shank
January 19, 2025

Grace

is breathed.

Life sustained,

without asking.

Today is Thanks

For you

The last time I saw
you
in blue jeans

walk toward
me

The Dove of God

Arriving.

Saecula Saeculorum


Caroline Shank
1.17.2025

I Cry

I cry for the new babies.  They
havA thrill for living.

From so small hands the
DAY is channeld.
Tomorrow has not

Yet

determined  the posture
of tomorrow

Tomorrow that will suffer
of Blue Skies and questions.
Long after the rules are

set like spoons
to drunken rules.

I cry for tomorrows
hidden like doors
the feral cats use


No work of small hands
can stop the

Guns.


Caroline Shank
January 9, 2025

Tell me


again about flush toilets and hot
water.

I want you to keep it up,  I
sit and sit and “think about

it.
How good my life is.
.
Tell Me stuff of legends.
How God is good.

How love is to one's soul
as rain helps the Garden
    Grow.

Beat It into my failing
feeling.  The heart is
only prescribed to the



Foolish.

Tell Me Again


Tell me to stop weakening
with each flash of you.
Each belly flop of

your caring.

My turn at sublimation
leaves tears on my vocabulary.

To be Wise for you  is to be
as the lonely clef

under songs.

Daylight drives me cold
into

the
Lonely

Night


Caroline Shank
January 9, 2025

My friend is gone,a way of
leaving, mirrors October.
    
A warning salvo is flat footed

against the failure to bond,
     A Bottle slips.

The Brandy puddles.

Where have all my

  flowers

gone?  Never a breath, never
a sigh even.

My Old is withered.
to wrong turns.
  To those who read
the magazines.

I persevere
the unwritten
untold.

There is Now.

The failure of laughter
at my expense.

I cry unheard.

The Silence.


.
Caroline Shank
January 8. 2025!


~~

She tripped over you in a
final wave of surrender.

You said
   meet me where

The white cloth waves

in the air,
today's laundry.

Time's stretch limp

       unworn

clock’s hands.

Future stopped in the
U.nticking

The lie in bleach is

rinsed .

Love lives in the

shadow....

Tomorrow.will be
a
      concept

w.rapped in a

fantasy.


Caroline Shank
January 4, 2025

Mother did you know I would
grow old alone?

That the crevices on my
face fell into the street

with used syllables?

Tomorrow you said
No
To my first boyfriend.

Mother did you know I
wouldn't care. Your scarred

breast
was not my fault.

The trail of your
Epithet does not hurt
As much as this

Old age
When you
tried to

sell me


Caroline Shank
12.24.2024

You asked me if I had
     Written
a poem today?

No I said.  You could not
have known that you are

     my poem.

My metaphors have changed.
You took my sad attempt’
'
to make of my life

     a story someone might
read, even for a moment.
Tonight I can tell you

     You are the meter
which steers the thing
I call love.

An unusual poem, filled
with all the things you are.

So I will know you when
     finally
we are met
and One.  

Caroline Shank
December 17. 2024

For Kinik

It's as if my life was a package forgotten on the side

of a back road.

The chance of being plucked out and found even interesting,

unconcerned.

The name addressed to Hell.


Battered by lifes footballs
the sunscorched wrapping illegible.
To love so much the
Contents arrive in Hell.
Go on. I am not done with you

So says the
Call of the Universe.
Your tears are large.
The last of my life.
I won't go on. I will
stumble through

the bramble and thistles.

You saved me once
when I believed

In a destiny.
For such a short time

No
chance of being plucked out and found even interesting, unconcerned.
The name addressed to Hell.

Battered by lifes footballs the sunscorched wrapping illegible.
To love so much the
Contents arrive in Hell.

Go on. I am not done with you
So says the

Call of the Universe.
Your tears are large.
The last of my life.
I won't go on. I will
stumble through the bramble and thistles.
You saved me once when I believed
In a destiny.


For such a short time.

Caroline Shank

Is there a line in the
lives of you and me

which

when Crossed is like
the Rubicon?

Is it when
stumbled and
bruised

the phone
dangles,
held by conversation

that one is compelled
to wonder did I say
too much?

Love newly turned
there in the lathe
of indecision

‘Cannot bear
very much

Realty.

Mr Eliot talks of
lonely people.

Do I dare to Believe
That in you
is

Grace.  You shelter
Me.

Love lives after all.

Speculation saeculorem.


Caroline Shank
December 11, 2024

I have a lot of stories but you are the truth

Faces in the dark.
All the same now

I rode the years with paper wings
The songs changed but the men didnt

I was along a dark path. Looked for the light

Strangers even after I should have stopped the wrestling

There Was only this
today
a perplex of pain and
searching.

You are my Knight of
Shining

The days of pain are
behind the trail of
memories.

You are my wind
and my salvation.

I Honor you.


Caroline Shank
December 10, 2024

That's the way the cards
were dealt.

You on the other side
of the planet, me here
underneath
the subterranean
wheel of my mother's
lousy
life.

Her abuse,
the sins of her
violence.

wrap her voice around
my memories.  

There she is now,
aboard the ageing Ship
Caroline, docked
down by the stones on the

cobblestone
   of dreams.  

Look
my darling,

another love
slips
away


Caroline Shank
11.25.2025

Tomorrow creeps in its own
******* way to the last syllable
of recorded time.

It is this that worries me,
the notes i will write
around the corner..
Those metaphors that

wait

for me when love is
not there.

There are witches too
and chants.

Walk with me into the
copse

Save me my love.

Caroline Shank
11.20.2024

I'm going now,
you can call me
at the number
here.

I am one with the
once me never
again remembered.

I'm the mother, the
grandmother and
the, now, widow.

Whoever said i should
give thanks left no
calling card.

No hello, no goodbye,.

Buddha, he of no
regrets, spent his
life ignoring the pain

of even the women.

He did not say give
thanks, he said be
still.  For eight
years he sat.

Christ said He was
not of this world, so
no wisdom from
the Christian Miracle
of the World.  He is not
talking to me now.

The Rabbi stays alone
In a Shtetl, or however
it is spelled.

I lived sans companion,
no being to give me
permission to inhabit
this or any body.

My music
was lost. I played songs
over your name.
I dont know what
that means
My love.

I  lay in
this tangle of
placques
and convolutions

on the grass
of your words.

You tell me
now

that love always

was your

Song.



Caroline Shank
11.8.2024

My soul must be reincarnate.

Once upon a time, to wit,
in the past,  l was a
prisoner of lost love’s
leer.

Time was
A gun shot through my
dreams.

Yet still i love.

Again.

Love once
collapsed.

You called me.

My smile

unwrinkled.



Caroline Shank
11.8.2024
.

Cruel is the silence after.
the love goes.
The nights when the
breeze

freezes and the frogs
lose their croak.

Silence like the stillness
  of a child's bare footed
  climb into our bed.

Midnight is the silence
     after the rain goes.

I touch the silence with
      my mind.  I map the
      road  to a

tomorrow I don't want,
never asked for.  

The place is quiet.
      There was a stop
       a ways back.

You left me by the Willow.
       I couldn't call your name

You left me by the sand dune.
       and when I looked back

you never saw me

again.


Caroline Shank
11.03.2024

I cried because I'm old.
You said age is just a number.
I cried because I'm ugly,
Age has collapsed me, taken
     from me the looks of
     interest.
I cried because the end is near.

You have given me the looks
my soul seeks.

I cry now because you are
     far away.

“You Raise Me Up” plays
     on my heart.

There are tears of longing’s
     frustration
now until you happily walk
     off the plane
  
  toward our life.

when we will sing
     together happily

in
  
   God's Grace.


Caroline Shank
11.3.2024

Reflections
Those whose singular licks
of love grow aged and
Holy in the light of old
memories,


whose hands trace
lines on her body
in the grooves and
branches of the


forgotten, laden
with the names of
the unborn possibilities
call me in the night.


I am the listener who
Never sleeps.
I have my own stories
which trouble my pen
to widen the nights


of loss, you, and the
dreams of my


Old


Age






Caroline Shank
11.1.2024

Raw is when I scrape my
bare knee.  While the curl of a
bleeding bone can be seen
in bas relief beneath the
red blanket of the aid
worker.

Will a bandaid help?

I think about the war, well
any war.  The rude smears
of blood, the silence that
carries voices across
continents.  Television
surpasses even what

my imagination imagines.
I think about you in the
doorway to the aid station.

The world according to
CNN.  Children's screams
form a sound blanket
over which you must
scream just to hear

your many secret sounds.

Secret for the breadth it
takes

to reach your caring
embrace.

I want to die in your arms.
If I have to fight for the

Singular look of a love

No one can

damage

I Will.



Caroline Shank
10.30.2024


.

When the Universe lies
once

the vellum
of the Book of Life

fades.

The ink (always there is
Ink)

Sours.

You are my Page ;
play me.

You are the

Voice in my sleep.

Crying.


Caroline Shank
10.26.2024













⁹)

I am an American woman.
Rough and oddly strange.
I rebel against Dandelions,
I celebrate the omnipresent
Ladybug assault every year.

My age is irrelevant.  The
patterns in the gardens
of thought are my friends.

Some of the night’s whinning
winds wake me before
I remember you.

Time slaughters thought.
No syllables amount to
clarity of forgiveness.

I am an American woman.
I cry in private places you
know nothing about.

My God is still overseas.
In time the laws of
Harmony

will send you

also

Home.

And what will you do
with me then?

I am an American woman.
Here are my credentials…

Don't just walk on the
pages where it talks
about me.

Briefly.


Caroline Shank
Was here.
October 25, 2024

!.

Dark Matter


What if love itself were a dark
hole?  Love is blind is
a metaphor for the unloved
to concentrate on.

The lucky rabbit’s foot that
saved creation.

Birth and Rebirth

into the density
where we who love each
other

do things in which dream’s
direct the play.

There is no escape from
the known only world in
whose pulses we frolic.

Tomorrow is.
random.
beats

in a soundless
Universe.

Only to have
reality served

cold.

Caroline Shank
10.23.2024

There is still the rocking of
decisions amidst the myriad
daily tasks of which the
true label’s my conversation .

If Macbeth is the analogy
du jure no doubt the
witches will once again
sing the single syllable
their vocabulary utters.

I toil while the firelight remains.
The maps of my skin are
particular, I choose you.

Skies clear deep blue ever
present in the unsleep
washing over the signature’s
toes, I go on.  The petty
pace of time like the
seasons regurgitating

****** reasons goes on.


Never before has the
changed Bible paused in
it's slouching toward
Bethlehem.

“I have seen the eternal
footman snicker

and in short,
       I was afraid.”


Caroline Shank.        T.S.Eliot
10.22.2024.               Shakespeare

Today is Fr



I ponder life and sometimes
the whole solar system.
Why am I here? for what
purpose except serendipity

did God figure i should walk
the hallowed hills..  I was not
included.  But to be part of
the ******* experience
of Bill and Rita.  That did
not work out very well.

I digress that is not the Way
of Things for me now that
I am 78

So. I ponder.  That's a
silly word for the cogitations
I spend God's time with.

For instance I am presently
in the doctor’s office.  

This
poem i
read
frequently.  


I take the minute between
light and napping to be
with my friends.

I am about friends and
sharing stuff.

“I don't know much
but I know I love you.”

Aaron in the dark with you
And I slither into
reality.

“Love don't come easy”

It found me writing
the last love song.

To you.

Caroline Shank
10.17.2024

There is no world without
you in it.  The climb up times
ladder
is empty of rungs.

There is fire in my mind.
There are clinging bones,
clogs
Of dislocation.  Tomorrow
rests on the slippery south
of today.

If you deliquesce there where
you daysay
I may slip on what remains.

The rest is not my business.
I have two worlds
to choose from
on a bare basis of
belief.

There is no sense to science.
Blow up the universe
to your expectation of ruin
and

I never knew my own
legend.


Caroline Shank
10.22.2024

When I die I want to be
in love with you.
I want to take with me
your tender care.  I don't

want to leave you without
you knowing that a large
piece of the fabric

of me

was you.

I want to experience

you,

the breathless catch
which surprises me
everytime I think

of you.

The thought under the song
of you loving me   The words
of prayers, in so many
languages.  We were
Blessed to know that
love was our predestined

Minute.

We for whom God planned,
in the beginning, a banquet
of days.  Not years.

When I die I want to take
your voice breathing
our names,

over and over again.

          God give us a lifetime,

          for a minute.

         You and me.

         A prayer

         Returned.




Caroline Shank
10.8.2024

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

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.

So the days fly by, the migrations
begin again. The Geese
flying in all directions
except South

Winter is chewing the edges
of daylight.  Tomorrow it will
be Summer for the last

vestiges of the northern
calendar

My boots are in the rack.

Christmas is an afterthought

Jesus’ saccharine journey
through leather covers

trails the ribbon of His
birth.  My house needs
a cleaning.  There is
no coffee.

You will be here in the
fullness of time
We will close the door
on these infernals.

I am taught to be strong,
to not invite you to my

party.

My sadness is only a voice
In the wilderness

You wipe my tears


Caroline Shank
9.14.2024

Unnamed

Unnamed she listened to the
unsung. No talent escaped
her no song unsung.

Only tomorrow was interesting.
The unbuds of Spring's tomorrow,

no

song of Engelbert’s or Waylon’s*
ever happened in the Time
of the fullness” of time

Did salvation arrive? What
was the white chariot being?

Elijah did not stop for her.

The dreams only patted her
head under the pillow

she placed

Over

her face


Caroline Shank
9.11.224

Somewhere I Started to Cry.

The bus pulled out.

He didn't notice.
There were chunks of
concrete slabs big
enough to hurl.

The last one lands
away from me. I shout!

Tomorrow! The War will end
Tomorrow.
Hold my hands, my mother

is dying.

The phone is ringing out
the news that I am now
Bob Barker's next
contestant.

I'm not given a paddle
or number. My shirt

Is Unwritten.

You came to save me from
the
Hell

Of undone promises.  

Evocation of a snarly
life

at your feet my deah.



Caroline Shank
9.10.2024

The classic curves, the map
Lent from God carried on
the mitochondria, the map

lives on brushes of sable
(If you are lucky) Or even
straw. The curves which,

denied to me,

send the lumps of my

age

over to you with

fear.

of love again under

covers.

The last supper of my

dying.

The caves of mirrors

are your eyes

And the locks on my joy.


Carolina Shank
9.8.2024

All my trials Lord
soon will be
stumbling,

Hopscotch
Red rover

come over

Do you wanna
dance

Aphrodite?

It's a long song,
story

Day O

Trial me O Lord
With Your

Love.

Sans punishment
Sans forgiveness

Secular seculorem

Amen.


Caroline Shank
9.5.2024





¹

I know some things. I know that
entropy is unusable. I know that
hot is fast spinning molecules.

That my love is true to my
heart.  We spin together.
We look into a Heaven of
swirls.  Light captured between
us is always in motion.

We, Tango dance through the
eons.

No this is not a good poem.
This is what I mean:

You are the half of everything
I am, the play’s denouement
My song’s tune.

Tomorrow will always be
today, love will always
wrap the vowels dancing

between us.  We R.
There are many powers to us.

We spin.  Kisses on a white

Wing

Destiny is soft. We have lain
in love and thrive

forever.


Caroline Shank
9.4.2024

Recruit

She slept briefly, the reach,
too long now, gone.
Too many sloe gins.

Fifteen.

Brought  the
inevitable.  New York
was never a lesson

learned.

You were not born

yet.

Her poetry in her belly.
Rumpled beds. Blanket
on the backseat.

A no adult zone.

To remember Is to lose.

Again.

The rustle of the
rubber
tree.  Cat calls,
loud farts.

More, pulled out guns.

The bulge was
caused by a
magazine.

She, on the floor
of the aforementioned
seat of springs, could

not stop the
whack of boys

whose underwear
was washed by
a mother of

some, as yet
unknown,

red handed chapped
and oh so tired

Former

Recruit



Caroline Shank
9.1.2024

Who Will Miss Me

Who will miss me
anyway?
The Autumn’s imperative
signals the
long division of my
mind.

Under the geography of
Love is a fear that
nothing

Matters.

Longhaired dreams are
features of the young.

It's the Emblem of the
70's.  The crusts of the
untried. No matter
tears on the rheum.

Why wait for love?

There is a
whisper
in the

afternoon.

Only the sad
know

Literature.


Caroline Shank
August 31, 2024

The magic is in the jewels,
or in the swing of the
pendulums, the ubiquitous
kneading, itch

that pushes me..

No.
I stop.  I transfer my
packages, the balance
of the task I have

is

to love you on the wind,
to salvo a minute
the sound

neither bang nor whimper.

The lick of the tick of
the groin tingling
anticipation.

You are Beautiful in your
distance where I cannot

dance.

Moonlight light the place
wear we should

Believe

The Word.



Caroline Shank
08.26.2024

It's a quarter after six, on an August
evening of my 76th year.   I drink
a sherry.   Here,  my feet
are free of the socks I insist on
wearing,  I am smoking.

The entertainment
for tonight is planning tomorrow.

Tomorrow is the last mention of
Summer.

You took me into custody, left
my life's belongings behind.
Sans identification,  sans valuables,
sans feeling.

Now there is only the zeitgeist of
this age.   The long lobes of wise men
and the sagging ******* of yesterday.
I write in cursive so you will have
to talk to me.  

I am the last syllable of my family.
The seventies remain as a bastion
of understanding.  Do not blame

me for remembering you.

I have forgotten many things but not the warm Summer night.   It creeps over me like your

hand.


Caroline Shank
8.15.2022

⁷⁷
Destiny

I want you to be with me,
to lie on beaches thrilling
to those parallels whose
loving has called us to
attention.

Wake is a carnival of
flat sand The sun.
breaks in half .

I feed on the acres of raw
loving, our bones dance
across the catcalls of memory.

They who know not
at all, the long songs,
whose tendrils ofʻsoft
salt spray are fitted

into our destiny.

wait quietly
while we dance

the finished final
notes of our

song.


Caroline Shank
8.23.2024

Godot

The space between love
and tomorrow harbors
the lost, the arbiters
And the waiting.

I am waiting for Godot,
But he is not coming.
Noone is..  This place,
where's dialog plates,
where the audience
sees failure

My heart
beats a
Tattoo, a

small wine glass.
A swallow lefť,

An initial fades.
Love

Rubs off
With the
Cleaning

Cloth


Caroline Shank
8.2.24

Walk the Gulf side
Steals your love and back

The ubitiquos lure of sand dollar,

the caw of the gulls piaint
Statements.

We will make, love.  The vow
is Absolute.

Clouds form a canopy.

Tomorrow's walk will
be another step in
the sea call to us,

love crossed,
We bow

to our loves
own

Destination


Caroline Shank
8.1.2024

I learned early that **** was the form
of choice for ***.  Not that the act was
named or the ****** ugly.  

Where in the world are you all now?
you mealyworms.  How like you to
teach me violence as love and leave
me to learn the lesson so well.

I recline.  **** is the sharing of two
faces.  Your face smells of beer and
your pounding hips ground me.  I
lie.  You are a broken bottle smacked
against a building on a hot summer night.

You are the cigarette before left in the
weeds.  I learned from you to trust
the backseat of cars, to wait for calls
from the garbage man’s son.

Trash man, black car, you hung
on a tree.  All your sperms dangle
in the light of the bowling alley, shine
in the rubber.

Old man, pound on me till you think
I am satisfied.  Old man.  Eat ****.
old man eat ****
old men eat ****, grow bald.
Remember me in the dashlight
I was the fifteen year old rubbed
drunk, sunk under the haze of
horror.  You were the gun.


Wednesday, September 26, 2001


Written over 20 years ago  interesting in light of my evolution

What I’ve Learned

Today, the mind meld is
spewing the kava of
my thoughts over
this place where I live.

Metaphorically.

I”veI learned

That I am egotistical.
That my vocabulary
   is DIFFICULT.

The years of myself.
The coffee, and the
   conversation,
   reading.

The dialectics, like coffee
and cigarettes, the years
over writing, revisions.
Books, sometimes 2 a day.
The Great Gatsby in an
afternoon

I Was not unusual.

There are more things
in Heaven and Earth
Horatio...

But I digress.