Fear



Fear falls.  I cry
and the mealy ground catches the
sound. I am old.  This is
a young person's dilemma.

The koan that
no one believes is
you and the clapping of my
voice are one in the
desert.  The old cat yawns.
She has heard this sorry
song before.
I mouth your name.

The wind has stopped.  The
cat licks her paws before
she kneads me.  I am alone
with this indifferent creature.  My
arms are around myself where
only the old cat sleeps.


Caroline Shank
9.1.21

That was a different dream, not the one last night where you couldn't
get the door unlocked.  The other
dream was when we walked east
on Capitol Dr. toward the water.

We explored the caves,
the hidden grottos of Lake
Michigan.  We walked so far with
torn experience and
unforgiven memories.  The sky
dimmed in the late afternoon.
We tried to reach each other
in the fading red moments before
awakening.

Last night you couldn't get to me.
The locks were made up of the
Crucifixion and a nun kneeled
before me.  You were frocked
out in gray and threw kisses.

We woke in the same bed where
you vanished quietly to your
whispers of regret.
I remain unseen and unloved.
A torrent of feeling sprang from my
soft and sorry, lonely gray bed.

Caroline Shank

Will you be my Valentine?  Next
year of course.  When the red and
white polka dots star out the
night and I am confounded
with your beauty.  

Why haven't I written, you ask?
I have dumped my life's colors
onto pages
and into notebooks for you.
I am a woman of many words.
I describe events in the shells and fossils along the beach we walked when we loved each other.

I am engraved by the events
of your stone hard meanings.
I wrap your adjectives in the
filo dough which lines me and
through which my delicate
remembrances filter.

You are the spoon with which I am measured.  Myself into your coffee and cream, you into my death defying
dare to life.


Caroline Shank

When civilizations die there is always
fire falling into the hearts of the
population.   Love is lost and minds
are numbed to the cries of politicians.
The ground shakes and generatïons
fall.  The loud music plays.  The dancing
never stops.

Poets are unheard amidst the bad
grammar and mushrooms of those
who have forgotten or lost the keys
to the kingdom.

The brightest lights are dimmed under the
laughter of ignorance.  It happens
in public places and private living
rooms.  Tomorrow the plates will
shake and coffee will spill in South
America and Norway.  Ubiquitous
on air personalities encourage
the madness.  

The drug of choice is television..
We watch the mardi gras
and swallow gin like
coffee to hail
the sounds of silence.

No one will hear the siren
of danger, or the whisper of
loss.  We fade
with a

whimper.

Caroline Shank

"Morning has broken". Every **** day.
Branson is about to fly into the sky. Fauci
tries to get politics out of healthcare.

But you, you are young and strong,
fine and holy in my eyes.  I am due
to leave soon. You are forever 22.

I saw a picture of you recently. It felt
like withdrawal.  Don't look for me  
I am unrecognizable
In my old age.

I am my name spelled backwards.  
My broken mornings travel and
I am uncircled.  I have chosen not
to be and at some
point won't.

If you must come to me, come in the break of morning when the cat is
kneading me and I long for you.

Caroline Shank
7.11.21

When I was a young girl I wondered
If I would find you.  I looked in the grass,
on the horizon, where the land woke
up each day.  I dreamed of your darkness,
of your hands sculpted by David, your
laugh.

I was younger then than I wish I had
been.  I saw your curls in the glass
of my future, your amber eyes stolen
from the Baltic. You guarded my time
telling me that of course I was happy
once but my mother took me
/
away.  She watched me for you on every corner of Chicago. Looked for your blue
eyes in the stranger she finally
married.

But he wasn't you and the penalty
was high.  My youth was her batter
which mixed with gin and
codeine she drank daily.

I found you in a hallway walking
toward me.  It was on a holiday
granted to me once.  I knew you
before the world was made.  The
glimpse of your silent betrayal
left me envying younger women
Before.  I knew you
In the hours of my life at last,

When I was a young woman you
found me. I was braille, you were
soft.  You left me in the tears
of another waif the dust blew in.



Caroline Shank

It was long ago, (I know
I've told you this so often
Craig. ) in a bar, in a night of
Sirius. He wanted only to go
home.  

He left me alone in the dark rain.
My calls refracted back. I ran to
find him. There was
only my voice.

You found my life boring, (Repetition serves those who are paid. ) It
hung over me like a dripping faucet
in a lonely home where once we'd
danced.

You remember now?
You allowed me a random
philosophy
(the therapy of Jung)
where once I'd died.

I am old now, my
memories stray, so..
I will leave
long before
You miss me.


Caroline Shank

It is not love that breaks your heart,
Craig, it's the blankness rubbed
against sunlight on the window,
when the smear appears.  

Or not that but it is the redaction
of a life organized around
a thought ordained. I keep
telling you, the evidence doesn't lie.
It was planned and signed,
that there was no future at all.

"Go" , you say, "you can do this"

But it's the mask I never saw you see,  
it's the slice of the night's
warm wind which once
caressed me that now leaves me alone,
the darkness between
breaths bewildered
by his speech.

It's not love that breaks your
heart, it's the scream
in the ephemeral

moment




Caroline Shank

My thoughts morph into
the stuff of a Summer
afternoon:

A long time ago, before
I grew white tendrils of age in my hair, and that still lone Gardenia softened our song,  you played with me in the sand. We opened up hidden evenings and my only thought
was to be touched by you.

Your rough skin was pocked with Marijuana seeds and the twigs of collaboration.  Sky-high and pinked our conversation was in your cupped hands on my soft walls.

Is it any wonder
that I loved your song?

Now I am stuccoed and old and it is in my heart alone that this explication of a memory
remains alive
in the

crevasses.


Caroline Shank
6.10.21

The clock no longer chimes.
The dinner bell no longer rings.
These sounds on which I so
depend
have
gone.

Your place is in the grave
with flowe#sș00rs down u ND er
A ND unanswered prayers¢.


Caroline Shank

Long days.  Night slithers through
the door and I reach for you.
I believe in the wisp of
twilight, the smell of dope
and your arm around my
shoulder. The cross we bear.

The map of night is written
and I must go.  Never, the
tears.  I stare at your mouth.
We kiss the chalice of each
others love.  The mass of
yesterday sanctified a long
litany of love unanswered.

I hate the sound of the bells.  
I am brought to my knees. An old woman genuflects, A tear falls.
I confess my sins but never
you.  

You, you belong to the
dusking dreams.  

Caroline Shank

Sometimes I see you dancing.
Your arms are strong and hold
me up.  I would have
fallen without you, tumbled down
like a doll flung away.

Sometimes I see your strong
walk. You were my bear in the
warm summer of my 27th year.

You are still playing
music in my old age.

Sometimes I see you
dancing
in the night,
in the rain.

Our
song,

floats away

like smoke

in the air that

I breathe.




Caroline Shank

The crepe paper days of late June,all of them, the Summer of 74, are on
a spinning boat  in my old imagination. I have ridden the warm
days and lingered over a shared
joint by the light of a satin moon
for so long now I no longer shake
myself to be sure you haven't
gone, like a stone on the lake's shore,
which, when washed up on the moraine, dangles in a wave and is
gone again.  As with you

on a raining night, running for
someplace to hide.  Death almost
did part us.  As the marriage
of two souls, destroyed, died.

Lest you ever learn of my long, lingering, pain, know how I loved you
old as when we were young and
ragged with the raw edges of an
impossible dream. But you
left me and in the undoing of myself
I woke alone from the sting
of unbelief.

Sorrow does not preclude death,
but it is in the years of grief, searching for a way across the long embattled
memories,

that we die.



Caroline Shank

Are you sleeping up there in
the stone parapet in which
you spend your time writting
letters and showing how you
can trip the light fantastic

with no one watching. You,
where you retreat to listen
to music. To read your books
and with wine dream,
like Miniver Cheevy, of the
days of roses.

Do you think of me? My
perfume you were so fond
of.  Oh, how I adored you!

I am not allowed to climb
the steps to your so private
sanctuary.  The locked door
reminds me of your pledge
to God to leave me and the
child.  

We are not yours, not anymore.
You with your hunched shoulders
crying "That is not all, that is
not it at all."

Your dead heroes replace me.
I should have gone away before
I knew you loved me.  But how
could I?  I will tomorrow shows
me a new place to hide away

Think of me when you are
inside with your plans and dreams.,
and I am on the outside scrolling
across the long years in which
I am stranded

in.


Caroline Shank

It's April snow on daffodils.
Yellow stains on the white sky.
Drops from God to salve the
feral pain.

I wait for tulips who are encased
in green buds.  A lot of
energy in the making of a flower.
It reminds me of a prayer.

I think my Azalea has gone for
soldiers, and the lilacs wait
for me to heal.  The faces in this
garden look to you.

I am all alone with my prayers,
this station is one before the
Crucifixion. My Garden waits
for our reconciliation as
snow floats on in time past
and time future.

Now is not our cup
of Salvation.  

Forgiveness is not
our business.



Caroline Shank

This long life has been
informed by love.  We shared
each other Oh! for so
short a time.

Like fruit we hung onto
the sweet drops of new
nectar's night.
We peeled each other
to the pink skin of sighs.

It was a delicate scent
when blown into the
stars quiet Space.  We
sped into the walls of
destiny and crashed
in the pulp of sorrow.

But I miss you in this
orchard of dessicated
memories.

I am rawed by the thought
of you.

Caroline Shank

It was a dark and dreary night.
I interrupted your journey.  Did you rush back? Your big green car traveling a familiar road you thought rolled up with me

outside.

I stood in the rain, calling.
You were unafraid.  So
many tears.  So many years.  The dizzying

speed.

My brown Chevy crumpled
on the side road where the
beach released pain
into flight.  I have no way
to reconnect the lost days.
The hospital of my bandaged


memory.

Forgive me for i digress
in my old age.  I cling like cellophane to the memories
I am alone

surviving.

Caroline Shank

So I sez to noone there.
Go in pease.
Noone answered so i
suppose you are hanging
around.  Let the day fold
into another night.  I no
longer cry for you I sez.

I bring back from you
the nurturing, the dreams.
So I will no longer go
wichu to the palace of
jewels that was your
hideout.  Only I was
allowed in until you
jest turned around and
disappeared.  

I known no other love.
I will not suffer for a long
the way I drop crumbs
for you to follow in cases
you look for me in the
undergrowth of the years
and tears of a life
mistaken.


Caroline Shank

Not your average cryin' in
your beer bar song. No
not at all.  In this tune the
wet soft plunk of falling
dreams lands in your lap.

Tomorrow will be infamous.  It
will ride in blistered and red from
too much *******. Sore
on the bottom, full
of whiskey. It's how I
do lonely.

I pick up the wet bar glass,
toss my cigarette as I
fall to earth.  You can always
find me, the drunkard of tears.

The cholera of grief.


Caroline Shank

Come and sit upon my morning.
Hold me close in sunrise arms,
whisper east winds
gently in my ear.
Wash my lonely night away.

Come and sit upon my morning.
Hold me close in sunrise arms.
Kiss me sunlife
through the window glass
between us.


Caroline Shank

Move it on over little dawg.  
I jump freight trains now.  
I sleep where i want.  
And I gnaw the souls of
better men than you

are.

I don't hear you anymore.
I write my own songs
and I wave away your
charmless melodies

alone.

I hum as I hear the
music of another

lover.

Move it on over
little dawg, the
big dawg moved
right

in.


Caroline Shank

The first inspiration of Spring.
Sunshine patterns the snow
and it is almost March.  The
bird's song is returning and
I am glad to see the
days ignite the flowers under
the garden

paths.

Remove the cold
chill of snow.
The Winter winds blow
for only a while.  I am ready
to be toasted by jonquils
and tulips which reach me
under the tattered cover
of darkness.  The cold
nights bear witness to my
vigil and I wait for

you.

Be mine and I will be the
best of warm on your
red arms.  Dance me to the
heart of Summer.  
We will be the songs of
Midnight

together.

Take me into Summer like
two voices singing.
One note at

last.


Caroline Shank

I have a head full of bitter
change.  Shake me gently
or it will fall out.  Do you
like me enough to tally
the aged money?

You are a stream where
people go to pray.  The
Ganges of the soul.  Weary
of the candles floating on
the prayers of lesser sinners
you ask only for confession.

You send the lighted candles
downstream.  Forgiveness
is not for the weak, and
shy of life's detritus

you weary of all things that
I leave on the edge of
sorrow.  Oh! River of my
Old age why do you

need me?


Caroline Shank

That song, that miserable song
will never go away.  That night, the dark night of my soul, is not able to sleep. The pounding of the sound of it breeching the television speakers sends be
back in time.

You know what I mean? The
remnants of a teenage memory
is a sorry stream.  I wake up
every day not knowing if I
will be in that backseat, again. The Lion is awake
and my hands shake with
your memory.  

I am all alone in the space
between reality and nightmare.
My toes touch the floor of the
car, my hand disappears into
the upholstery.  I thought you
liked me.  Funny that.  

The Lion slept all night and
when he woke up he laughed.
My throat ached with the sound
of his roar, the music wimowaying on the radio and I was alone in that crowded
backseat.  

The jungle, the mighty jungle,
rained and the laughter of teenage boys circling the
beat up car smelled of stale
beer and the sodden remains
of my fourteen year old's illusions

died.

Caroline Shank

It's always a question of time
in the end isn't it? I mean
"Time present and Time past"
the Poet said, are embedded in
Time future.  No. In
my opinion, not either in Time Now.

Minutes walk away from me in a line of embedded beads,
choices appear like scenes filmed on plastic cameras.  They are cartoons of yesterday gone to the dustpan.  Celluloid clicks
deeply out of hearing.

There is no one to wind
the clock. It lies on the
ground in cinematic pieces.  
Tobey never could mend it.
  
Time future is not
all that eager to be born
only now that you
have exited the scenery.

Listen! the minutes are all
gone.

The wine and the song like
the minutes are all gone.


Caroline Shank



"Time present and time past/ Are both perhaps present in time future/ And time future contained in time past./ If all time is eternally present/ All time is unredeemable." The opening lines of TS Eliot's Burnt Norton, the first of his Four Quartets

To be truthful my life has
been a waste of space. I
have contributed no thing of
value. Not beauty, or trust.

I have shared treasured
moments with friends and
family, all gone to ashes
everyone.  I have struggled
with the toxicity of this ephemeral life and poisoned
myself.  

When I die the clouds above
me will flee to warmer climes
where I was happy once.

Caroline Shank

Virginia stuffed her pockets
with stones. I'm sure you have heard this before.  It was a
gray day.  I imagine late afternoon.

Cleared of all the syllables and punctuations she
was free to lower her so
skinny body into her shoes,
her bare feet covered with
crackled leather.

Another day and she would
have had a party to which
Richard would attend.  Perhaps
flowers, perhaps wine from
their favorite snug.  

The water was her aim, the
fruit of scraping glaciers her
goal.   I think of her when
skies turn purple with tears
windy days cascade
over me.

I haven't got the scenes rehearsed in my soul as
she must have done.  
Leonard heard her skin
call cry.  He found her pale
hand,

but


his tears were not enough.

Caroline Shank

Dance with me, dance in the unmown grass, the gopher
holes rise edges to unseeing feet.

Dance with me, swing me over the moon on a night I will never forget, rise me to the unseen images borne to fruit in Plath.

Daddy come back is the song
played over the sky's speakers.
You only loved me.  No, no one else.  

Dance with me, waltz to the tune of my lately mother's shod torn
feet. She of the crystal heel.
Her song died in November.

Dance with me Daddy, play
your horn to the tune of stars
banged on my dead ears.

It's over, the dance of tears ended in motionless held breath.
Air of pure delight under no one's grave ended long ago.

Quite funnily, so still the
sadness of the night.


Caroline Shank

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 not 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.


Caroline Shank

I don't want to waste your time.
Waste, baste, taste.  Lick the *** clean, clean, bean, dream whoops bad rhyme.

I don't want you to read me
so closely.  Read, bead, seed.
I rhyme to know I am alive.

Like a bee buzzes, dances on
flowers, makes honey, bunny, sunny, money.

Don't try me out until you have tasted me, peanut butter and jelly on white bread, toasted me.
Bananas like Elvis.  Home schooled and everything, ping, fling, ding.  I love you.  

I don't want to sing, ring, bing,
ting.  Call me.  I will tell you
the truth.  

You don't love me really, dilly, silly way to rhyme your time

away.

Caroline Shank

I seem to be broken now.
Pieces fall as strangled
shapes to the floor.  
I toe them, looking
for the edges to rustle
back together.

Fragments fall.
Dried edges and shriveled
meanings.  (The torn
remains of my old age.)

I think I am broken.
My poems drift
off as blowing leaves
in a dry season.  
I rake them into
a pile.  The crackles
and snaps. The ends
of thought.

I write this to save the few
remaining poems I have.
Words fall from the
dustpan of dry letters
on a cold night.

Caroline Shank
1.20.21

Crawling up the building, blue
jeaned, backpack carrying bugs that looked like jacketed roaches reached the sills of power.  We watch as liberty is breached, as red floods the tumbled, broken
in windows.

I am stung by the chant that
passes for voices calling for
rebellion.  It is called a psalm
of ignorance and summons the
dance of termites who chew
our lives like woody pulp.

My mind cannot unsee nor
my ears unhear the shot
that killed. The shades are
unleashed.  Will we forever
crawl with the vermin of
unhinged politics?

I am deafened by the trumpets
of liberty, justice and the
conquest of infamy!
The triumph over the winds of
conquest will today lead the
Constitution again to wings of victory.

We Will embrace Truth in
the Arms of History!

Caroline Shank
1.6.21

Lie To Me 2021

2020 leaves with the devil
whipping it on. But it's not going anywhere.  It is full of sound and fury.  

We scroll through the signs.
We think we will enter into
time's free zone. There are no
promises. Death drapes
from the sky.

Time past and time future
are only pages and lyrics
sung from one year into the next.
We will all cancel hope
by March.

I hear the witches chanting,
"By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes."


Caroline Shank


Notes:
The Four Quartets
Macbeth
Faulkner

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my star to keep.


I see from out my window all
the patterns in the sky merge
for one moment to the sound
of Angels trumpets.

Tonight is the time for kneeling
and watching as the sky turns
dark blue and gives off a light
only once at the stroke of
midnight.  A Star reserved
for you, a motion singular
and unmoving.  And with
a closed eye the Universe
sings.

Caroline Shank

I never expected this.  That
in my 70's I would be ink
on a blank page. That my
life's work would be poems
on a shelf, written about
gone people, dead memories.

I never wanted them, the memories, the reflections
stored in old coffee cans.
Waterlogged letters saved
from decay to become themselves decayed.

I will sit forever in my chair,
me and my notebooks fallen
around me, incense laden,
curled around my slippered
feet, hiding the poems pressed
in the pages of my youth.

Caroline Shank

I sink into my waiting depression
as a marble into molten syrup.
My hair and face drip invisibly on the clothes of passers by.  For
how long can the strings of
sadness wind around you?

You listen to my sadnesses
but no longer hear me for
I have frayed your love like
rope in too many attempts
to tie and, having failed, lay
down to the inevitable dirge
of my unrelenting tears.

Daylight brings the last notes
of silence.  The clamor of
tasks hold me up.  The
progression to the end of
diurnal relief and I am balanced
on the truth of nightime's
faithless tones of remembering.

Caroline Shank

Sammy hides from me. He
wags his cognac tail under
the couch.  He peeks at me
through umber eyes and I melt.

Sammy runs around my feet,
careful not to trip me up.
He's not interested in my tears
but watches carefully to see
if he deserves a treat.

He wants the treat from me alone.  Sammy pants from
below and I tease him.  He
likes the challenge for a moment.

Sammy comes when I call
him.  He knows my smell.
I promise not to get another
amber colored puppy licking
my fingers for more. Always
more.

Sammy doesn't know my
heart.  He just dances for
his supper.

Caroline Shank

I am surprised to discover
myself in old age.  
I repeatedly find myself in
the 50's or 60's
as if I never left. It's truly
shocking, the image in the
mirror, the chubby, no fat
old lady I said I would never
become.

Here I am.  Looking young
through old eyes, wearing
sensible shoes thinking
spike heels and fancy hose.
I am still 27 not the 74 I have
inadvertently become.

I am flat shoes and sweaters
in the summer. No hot
tan or sun bleached hair.

This is the time for rocking in
my chair not the dance
floor.  My, I was good.
When the music made sense.
I have my favorites still.
A playlist we danced to.

You kissed me in the dark
and left me in the rain.

I must rearrange my baggy
pants and sweaters. I shy
away the summer breezes
and shiver in the sun.
I look for you in the night,
find you in dreams,
a dear lost
moment.  

It all went by
so fast.



Caroline Shank

There are things that I have done.  There are songs that
I have sung.  The Beatles
said it best.

I have been pregnant twice.
It was a long time ago.  Now
my grandchildren are grown.

I have held a few jobs. I did
them well.  My bosses were
pleased.  Well not Tim. He
was a *******. But Joyce was Amazing.

I have been friends with
wonderful people.  All except a few have left of no accord.

I am lonely in old age, barren
of thought. Yet still I write you
my phantom friend.  I hug
myself and long for the cigarette days.  The nights of Tia maria
and wine.  Do you still put
your lips around the bottle?
You said not to spill a drop.

The summer's by the lake.
My tan self at home in the
suburb of my youth and
middle age.  I was startingly
free and loud in laughter.

Everything in my plot of
Summer smelled of you.
Years ago when you lied
lovingly so as to keep me
in the cocoon of your
conversations.  I was
unfooled. I remain in the
mind of Narcissus, your
willing amanuensis. X the
night of unremembering
all these years of you.

Caroline Shank

What will you share with me?
You who have been gone so long?  Will you speak of
everyday things?  "Caroline, the
weather has been so cold."

Will you touch me on the hand
that once curled around you?
"Caroline you always had
such soft skin."

Will you sing your songs to
me again? The notes of which
lay down their sound on my
lonely face like kisses.
"Caroline do you remember
how we danced that night
to the music playing on
the revolving colors of
the jukebox?"

Will you bring me
your Roses of Sharon for
all the years of desolation?

Will you kneel into my lonely
night of years of nights?
Will you share my tears,
all my fears, across the
darkening skies?

Will you take the evanescent
light and write joy in
my blue eyes?  
"Caroline do you still light up
at the sound of me
moaning your name?"

I will share your smile with
smiles of my own.
What will you ever share with
me in the flowered landscape
of imagination?

Will you share your thoughts
like petals thrumming on the
wind of your return?  
Or will I awaken
to the unslept on pillow faintly
smelling smoothly of
marijuana, in the raw
morning of remembering?

("Caroline!" the unheard of
to no one there.)

Caroline Shank

I am tumbling downhill
like an Autumn leaf
disarranged from the
pack.  I am caught by
the wind of your disease.

I allow your sickness to
flourish in you.  I have
no choice.  Broken is
what you feel, sadness
is my experience.

I am crisp with failure.
A small dry vein
along the tip of today,
I owe you my apology.
You have not earned
it.  But still I cry.

You, who do not see
me, cannot capture the
desiccation of my
soul.


Caroline Shank

I will kiss you last before
I shuffle off, though you
will not know it.
I write your name
with a cloud's bent rod.

You will not know me,
old and fat, but I
owe you an engraved
allegiance.

You left in the rain.  And I,
I ran home to bare my
pain on the palm side of
tomorrow.  Always you,
young and warm. Still
my old heart beats
with your

goodbye.


Caroline Shank
11.1.20

I am almost 74.  I sigh as I type
that out.  I remember the first 45rpm record I ever bought.
Sonny James. "Young Love."
I played it for forever on the
old record player we had in the
basement. $.79

The sunshine of those first
moments of fiscal liberty
burned into my mind.  
It is a fleeting moment
still turning, singing
"they say for every boy and
girl"...

We all whirl in the dirndl
of time. The dances were
named then.  The slow songs
my favorite.  I have no idea
if people dance now.  What
Blue Skies and Wine and
Roses are there today to
weave the time.  

I live in a Lonesome Town,
with a dwindling number of
friends.  The only thing left
of the lovers who slow-danced
me are the grooves across
the face of a long life lived

across a jukebox of illusion.


Caroline Shank

Can anyone help me? Is
there a minute particle of
a sympathetic soul in the
residue of a life loudly
lived?

I don't really have a
syllable of rain to tell
of the need of personal
experience.

Someone run to me with
an outstretched hand
that I may not flail
in the cold.

God knows of my need
and He cries at your
indifference.

Go away from me, I will
struggle to keep from
showing you my unrequited
solitude.

I am called The City of
New Orleans.



Caroline Shank

Now you are there where
the time turns out to be a
mixture of fear and joy.  
You live between the lines
and spaces of my mind.

We root for all the people
left on the battlefields
of this ****** war
on which we will either
sacrifice or lose to make
the last days of memory
and the dance of the day
our hymn to the silent
future.

We suffer, you and I, the
days of darkness and
strange things that are
coming at us like leaves
twisting off the trees.  We
arrange ourselves between
the dates that crawl from
the calendars. You say
we are going to get, in
the last days of autumn,
the first rays of Spring.

When I Think of you
I pray.

Caroline Shank

Let me go Lord.
Save my memories in an old
coffee can. Tie it with string.
Give my bed to a homeless
woman who hasn't reached
the turning.

Take the white out of my hair,
and take my blue eyes too.
I have seen pain's
kaleidoscope. And
I was afraid.

Return what tenderness
survives to the flowers
lest I wilt them with
careless whispers.

Take me out of church
before the offertory.

Scatter the ashes of
a life sorely led on the
edge of the pond where
memories, like
sargassum, trap me.

Bring to me a dram of
whiskey.  Mix it with
the remains of my
life's last call.

Time Gentlemen.

My song is done.
Let me go Lord.
I am an image
wrapped in
Saturday.
.


Caroline Shank

The curtains hang over widows that have not been opened
for years.

I am scared to raise the yellowed
shade.  Behind the grime of ages the half rolled up crackling
fabric has tales to tell.

Yesterday is gone, tomorrow
may not fall from the transom.
I am aware of this other space
above the dust and mouse
droppings on the sills of
yesterday.

If you ever come here again
you will find the splats where
my tears have spilled.  The
view from the second floor
window is distorted by my
sad eyes.  

I will be near, ever near, to
you here in this place of
memories where once we
swayed to music
from another room.

It was all so long ago when
we were young and dancing
to the sounds of
unrequited love.

Open your eyes.
I am standing by the window
abandoned to the rains.
The streaks of your young
face never fade no matter
the years.

The shade remains in place.
My thoughts steam
on the ***** glass.
My breath never distorts
the singular mission to
redeem the past.

If you return here you will
find me dreaming
alone by the marks
of yesterday.


Caroline Shank

I am the next wind
which crosses your neck.
The raindrop on your cheek.
When you wake up
tomorrow I will be the
crease on your face, the
tangle of your blanket.

Know this then, I will
never leave you.  The
scent of me lines your
breath.  

So now I lay me down
to sleep. I pray my soul is
yours to keep


Alt ending

So now I lay me down
to sleep.  I know your soul
is mine to keep.

Amen


Caroline Shank

You’ve spilled like light through the glass. Your
poems are in front
of me as I write.

I break through.
You are the Spring
in which I have grown
green.

Your poems are fertile
lines growing in
through open windows.

I write because your
poems show the way.

You are the teacher,
I am the scribe.  
My poems are born

and

I write while your sun
beams light
on my page.


Caroline Shank