I am neither this nor that,
Neither here or there.
I do not talk too fast nor
loud.

My ego rides on me like
a rug. It needs vacuuming.
Today was a pretty dusty
day with lists and conversation

written with the accouterments
of my old age.
I am a fantasist.
It shows in my mistaken
choice of you.

You cannot hear me.  I am too loud.

Whatever I have to say is not
a flower or a song.

I am the avatar of she who
left.  The husk of intelligence.

If there are questions that
are unanswered  ask another.
I have the memory of a
conversation, an admonishment,
a loving reminder from someone
who was wrong.

And the reclining apneic
experience to

sleep. To say

my

prayers to the God of my
understanding


Caroline Shank
4.17.2024

I heard, the other day, a small
sound, a piece of gravely
noise.  To remember you
in the voice around the corner,
the right turn into the bathroom

where memory lay.

In the depth of a minute.
you came back.  I looked
to where you last called
to me.

The dementia still rooms away,
Your slanted smile lingered
like the Cheshire Cat's did.

All dressed up to cover the

bruises.

I began this poem to hold
you where the phantom
calls began.  To see eternity
in an hour and laughter has

it's own cry under the
lonely mask I wear.
I scan the room to
capture something as
ephemeral as yesterday

“When I was

young.’


Caroline Shank
4.4.24

You, Still There.

Picture me if you will,
like Minever Cheevy
leaning against the wall.

I thought and thought
about a kitchen you have
never seen,  my creamy
coffee, and the cat.

The blur on my face
is you. Your brown
beard streaked with
white..  No one can

make out the riddle
of you.  I keep singing
This is the dawning of
the age of asparagus.

You laugh and my face
crumples with the memory
of that, now nearly muted,
dear sound.

When will you be gone?
I scrub to no avail. I look
At myself, lost in the memory
of your death, standing by
for you to tell me something

about coffee.  

The blur
gets bigger as I rub

harder.

Your face clings to me
and I am lost

In the magic of your

song.


Caroline Shank
03.28.2024

I will tell you why I am
so
loud.

So you would
notice me.

I am
cluttered with images.

Images that swirled
while I slept,

long and
chipped.

Your voice
rocked me to

sleep and in the
morning

I sang.



Caroline Shank
3.19.2024

To whom shall I say
I love you
If not to you?

To my bent head
I close my mind
to paths windings,

And the sun’s bright
light steals the dark
secret of you.

To the nights signature
you lie with me.
I wrap my dreams
as hidden

in the shelf of my
breast.

Not to know this
is my gift to you.

The place upon, where
you
rest is the worn
In me the tragic

song.


Caroline Shank
03.17.2024

Did you find it?
What you came
here for?  
Into this land of
broken dreams and lies
you travelled with a weary
pack lying on you like a
moldy shell.

I don't have two pence
to care
and two pence….
In other words

the scar of your
indifference
raised the

white triangle of
sad songs and
Army jingles I
learned from my
Dad.

Slide it beside me
before the effigy

Me,
In a papier mache
page Turner.

I am a member
of the caste.

Namaste

Caroline Shank
3.16.2024

Where In the crates of

song

notes and of

lyrics

Is the one, the singular
The Q of Stephen

to find among the

Beer bars.

Release Me

The song lay
unyellowed.

Then the growl

A finger width away.

But it was the

jazz then, the windows
thrown open

And you left

your song

without

pity.



Caroline Shank
3.10.2024

The Winter Of Discontent!

I forgot
what blew the

winds  of another
Winter

coursing over me.
Tomorrow has eyes

on my child. The last
chance.  

Doomed
wind numbed the
underbed of all the

legends.  

Those it
could reach for a
quarter and some
salt.

I am happy

To know

you

I said to

God.

Goodbye


Caroline Shank
3.5.2024

My husband would have
told you I was

loud.

He
died then and through my
silence

I mourn the sounds of
his breathing.

I listened to the clouds
whispering
The trees swimming
sounds through my

tears

I scream in my brains
lobular desertion of

reality.

The end of my thoughts...

of

yesterday..

There is no reason
to explain the

desertion

of a life unaware,

of my silence that

now screams for the
end of my tears.

Caroline Shank

is time unutterably changed
from the stalk of language
to
mind’s repeating evensong.

The looked for praying;
look again.

I have not come here to
talk of the night's
kiss, the borrowed ladder,

the window.  But to
reckon with the
devil for my soul's white
blazer
.
typed on it for the world to say
You are.

And the dream
of Carroll and I stay here

On the beach of
vowels spelt

long ago.



Caroline Shank
2.16.2024

For Jon

My breath shatters the
frozen ice of all
distinction.

Tomorrow I will clean
   the corridors of my
thoughts but tonight
   I will wait for the
mordant memories.

The red roses, in the
garden you planted
for me over

fifty years ago
do not grow inside
the cold Wisconsin
   battering on my
    
window tonight

I have no Valentine
     from you today.

No nor a whisper of
the door
closing behind you
  By the quiet nurse

so long ago.


Caroline Shank
2.14.2024

Kyrie Eleison

(Tomorrow you can drain
the swamp behind The
8th street oak and the
copulating frogs will scamper
away, two by two)

But I digress  
To be me is
always to be
alone

Christe Eleison

I am the invention of
misdirected intentions
I scream inside the
private drawer of my
Keepsakes and truffles,
hiding apostrophes.

My sole sojourn is into an
old boat I found on the
beach of my meditations,

it trespasses on the lanes of
poetry and obscenity.

Lord lay me down, I will
be always in place and silent.

Kyrie Eleison.

I am sunbent and
I Crawl


Caroline Shank
2.8.2024

I am enough. I am bigger

Than 10 pounds. Enough.
That old saw.
I cannot pass for Shirley
Temple

But I am responsible for my
happiness Tom.
I danced at the graves of

Voodoo priests.  

In my imagination I was
lauded by Great Spirits.

I am enough to fly between
the Holy Days, the

Vatican of my mind is
open and I ply the

pages of my long life
from my fingers.

Caroline Shank
I.27.2024

The moments, the Big moments
drape or twist.  I am veined.
The philodendronas years

Lead me

     here

to you.  The loud years of
babies are simple maths.

Legs and arms no longer

     wrap.

Their smooth hands patted me.

I was a queen once, in the
Nile river.  I woke up here
to mental words.

I am happy in my way
Cynara.

I send you, love, 100 years
     Of gratitude.


Caroline Shank
1.26.2024


*In my fashion”


Caroline Shank
1.26.2024

My fingers separate the air
between us.  Spokes.  A draft
through each digit whistles,
and I fall through, let go
of my bones.  The sound of
crying splits into syllables,
a vocabulary of fine letters
spills on the soft brown
palette of earth.

Art oils out of yesterday’s
memory.  I leave, erased
from imagination, evicted from
form.  
thought from wonder.  We
meet on the flat sandhills
of reflection.

This thought, which by and
large constructed you, contracts
in sadness.  The distance
between us is spread against
the whitest sky.  Your image
forms like brilliance from
stone.

Cover me in brocade, white
brocade, and tan me under
the sun.  A little glass of
sherry and a Jane Austen

book to read.  

Mention the dances,
the kisses under raw
red crepe paper hats.

We were lovers then
the breathless of
early kisses

under the pink
percale.

We were young and
tan. We spread love
like butter on bread,
like a
summer
song by Chad
and Jeremy.

Clear the dance floor
I am on my way to
you

again.

Caroline Shank
1.6.24

I am reminded of Florida and the
sunshine. The heat of memory.
I loved the years spent with you.

The slant of time, the curls of
daylight. Walks on the sands.
You took my forever talking
with smiles.  I remember

the last days there, combing
for memories. Packing the
pictures to satisfy the cold

north screaming winters.

You were wrong to leave me
halting, grimacing, the nurses
alone your last

Lovers.

Caroline Shank
1.1.24

I don't want to be this old
The fried crisp lips and
a neck with strings of
gobbled goop skin like
Christmas lights circle

the end of the days
like cookslices.  The
taglike things,

the straight hairs on my
chins, there are several,
poke into collars raw from
rubbing on butiful jewlry

I refrain my lament
Being 77 yars old
is like the inside
of a soup can
dried on the counter
corner for a week.

Caroline Shank
12.31.2023

I am an Elderly woman fit
Only for the company of fine
women and the occassional
fake Mimosa.  My hair is
white, the before longed for
auburn is past.  Bottles in
a old shelf

Today is the dreamed of
moment lived like a zoo
animal in the back cage.

I will eat cereal from a cake
cone thrown to me by those
without the wrinkles of my
experience.

Not given the dignity of a
place in the sun. My youth
mispent. I spend my time
cleaning which my dead
husband thought amusing.

I only smile when I think
Tomorrow will come to

Everyone.

Soon.


Caroline Shank
12.23.2023

It ain't gonna happen
no more

Ain't gonna be no kissin'
No nor maple tree.

Tomorrow ain't gonna

tell my story
'cause I ain't gonna
see no love'n

Cause you gone and
died away from

me.

There is a favor I called
in, a moment before

you died and the glass
covered your eyes.

I am not singing in the
Chorus.  The Angel's
practice better and

the music calls

your sacred singing
Baritone

No More


Caroline Shank
12.14.23

I Prayed that I would love
someone
again in this lifetime.

That he would
recognize
me in my selfness
and be glad.

Glad as primitively as a
single
glimpse
regales the saddest

crying echo of my
name morphing into
Song.

Have I found that
ecstatic moment?
Have you in the
moment's recognition
sung with me

tonight?

No The End is not my
Beginning. It is the

World

Which breathed our
names

Together



Caroline Shank
11.19.23

In the underbelly of
the greatest declaration,
a small observer
watches

The hills are
covered.

Burning bushes is a painting.  
Moses never even knew.
The gold in the
packs is where the

party hid. Weighted.
Brilliant under the
leather
covers.

Looking out now are the
memories that
live for a short
spring,

Look out back
The unwovem sorrows

of

No news spoken.

As for me

I buy the cereal

before returning.


Caroline Shank
11.5.23

262 555- 5555 and i
can see
well enough to drive.99 pages

I am swinging my arms.

I take my white hand
and in your freest moment
I will
dress wounds whose polar
regions,

like my heart, sigh with
slogans.

Be mine says the moments
transcendent.

Catch me through the rye.
You will hear the singing

Grass Harp telling you of
love and growing things.

"Love is a chain of love"
wound around the
farthest star.  

Listen to me.  December
Is a stone's throw away.

I fall and there are
little kindness especially
holding me. Precariously

I wait for a season's
diminish.  A cry of

     sadness
in the face of
Winter's approach.

         Stay me then
into June …

and. Beyond.



Caroline Shank
10.31.2023

It's not the fault of the stars,
literature or my mother,
The vague statues
The crenelatted fringes
Of half remembered
conversation that rest
in my imagination .

I look for, in you,
the long shadows of
memory scrolled on
the sands of literature

This
poem,

These choices,
       unfold.

         Love

recapitulates.


Caroline. Shank
10.28.2023

The rippling of the sand in a shoreline
pool is the shallow response to the

waves.

The sunshine's answer is to the dark.
Tomorrow always unfolds in the
prism of today.

Love unrequited lies on the heart like
tears on the page
Shiny shells

     Lie. Your hands
hold your face and
Wait.

You will find the
   Shift of my love

Onto

   Your beautiful

timeless moment.

Context will show you

The Way to my

      heart.


Caroline Shank
10.22.23

Why Should I

Love in you your crumbs,
the
humor,

the drip of tears from your
moist eyes.

The retro lip with which you
Spew your vision amongst
      pearls.

The climb to you began
early in the morning,

wrapped around and
  Called me

out loud.

You were Jesus
to my
mutiny.  A Promise to
carry me on wings.

There is no ******* Garden.
The reference
only works on those who
are too drunk

to stand up.

In your day I partied
beneath the walls

of Gethsamane.

I wore leaves and
saw

your name

Victorious.


Caroline Shank
10.21.23

The trees shadow and
Un bark, our initials flaunted.

The yellow hue is baked
And naked are the letters.

Undone are alphabets of
stories. Tomorrow doesnt
exist. The flaf is torn and
washed.

Spelling is wasted on the
young.

Today sheds minutes on your own words
grave, dappled letters
ride down the sidewalk
and I am forever mottled.


You took away


your name
, written with the wind

and songs


unsung.


Caroline Shank
10.20.2023

It is the ragged ends of tonight
that my pen hovers over lhe
linen pre drawn the colored
lines. Oh tout le monde.

The heavy scent of patchouli
after all the years….
Folded bell bottoms in
flowers splash and i

bend at the waist.
******* fall cold touch
the air that I breathe
swept my wait against

You as the scramble

began.


Caroline Shank
10.18.2023

Older women look around,
say wait a minute,
We are required to have tea.

Older women
wear watermarks
where kisses
first were placed along with
lilacs.  

Flowers are the truth.
Older women whisper
in petals. The scent
rubs into the soft
underbelly of
years gone deaf into

yesterdays.


Caroline Shank
10.14.2023

To be acutely that is, to be, alone
is a topic phenomenologists
ravish.

The dialectical imperative at
least requires two souls
reaching for the strands, like
light waves, the flash food
of the Universe.

Tomorrow I will meet the son
of Master Albert and the laps
of the twirling firmament will
strike dumb the song of
gods.

Mea Culpa Mea Culpa,

Tomorrow you can drain
the swamp behind The
8th street oak and the
copulating frogs will scamper
away, two by two

I digress   To be me is
always to be

alone


Kyrie eliason


Caroline Shank
10.11.23

I did not do that. The blotch
is the size of the sun
Methods of communication.
Failed mornings.

You saw the results of my
conversation before I did
Information quarreled with
meanings.. What should
be is not a reason to be.

Again the day begins with
prayer.  The end of prayer
cannot be its beginning.
The early morning empty

verses die of loneliness.
I die of repetition, of
stomach crunching fear.

I cannot find the night
in the car, the ******
shorts, your silence
drills me a lobotomy.

All this be the ends
of days and thought
moves slowly
backwards.

Caroline Shank
10.9.2023

Time stayed behind and
the fire lit evenings warmed
the cold room in which my
heart tattooed to you. Your

touch was never so warm
as the early days of parks
and coffee shops.  The ends
of Summers and we raked our
leaves, painted walls and
there was never enough

coffee.

I am touch without your
feeling without

your warmth.

hollow without

your

voice that said

me to

you.


Caroline Shank
10.5.2023

Old and timewrinkled.
Thoughts ripened,
fall from me.  

You lean
on my vocabulary,
I felt your initials

carved on my fragile skin.

Torn syllables
scatter.  The floor is
bone and blood.

It rearranges and
once shapes are
spill
into a forgotten

well.

Syllables on a clean
tile. ,
writhe.

Caroline Shank
10.3.2023

When the years are more than
77 I will have the God of old
age come over.

I will ask him what he can do
when the battles begin. My
brain staging a fight between
the god of old age and the
god of remembering.

Will I serve tea? or scones?
'Will I walk upon the beach"?
My notes fly everywhere in
the melee. And I think of

You.

Not the new you
But
the you of notes and
tablets.

I am torn.  Like school
Notes in a poem or a

song.

I am not old. Younger
than a fresh catch today.

Big mouths gathering for the
Benediction and the

Blessing of the quiet and
Softly.


But not soon.


Caroline Shank

Don't leave me alone with my
sadness, my madness.  I am
in the dark side of grieving.
Call to me from this side of

living.  Talk to me of the years
we spent collecting things which
still mount the shelves and table
tops of this place.  

Don't turn your back as you
left me that May day.  Not a
glance or a cough. Your silence
drives me. I am about to leave
you for a second.  Stay in the
chair.  

If I return and you have gone again
I will know you didn't love me
after all.  


Caroline Shank
9.29.2023

On Sitting Alone at Costco Eating a Hot Dog

and wishing you were there, the
strong maleness of you,  Your
daily grip on my loneliness. The

wait for you to get out, call me.
The beef flesh taste so long
forgotten on my tongue.
Tonight will be too late.  You

will not find me there   My old
walk out the door will never
find you looking

I sit alone knowing that this
long, left over afternoon will be
the last warm memory of

today.

I will go home from here and
prepare the socket of my own
life to leave this place

Forever.

Caroline Shank
9.28.2023

What is a tear but a rip in the
Universe? A jagged hole with
edges into your soul.

No not that but a tear that drips
from the ceiling of the house
that we built.  The clay of the
beginning we wrapped carefully

before tossing loss and tears
before prayers.

I pray with bent neck and closed
fists to hold the chaos out into
some facsimile of normality

while tears tear at my soul
and hope drops down the face of

yesterday.


Caroline Shank
9.26.23

Your song, like fire, burned into
the daylight skies over Mexico.

The cactus words stripped my hands.
These hands which held the
Universe above you for a long
Steel barrel you called Daylight.

I heard you when you said you
loved me, saw you ride away.
The cactus leaked and I watched
Your name form on the sand.
You turned and mixed me with

Jose Cuervo until I was footed
and could say goodbye.
The skies, painted by numbers,
wolfed down the landscape

In which I have been

erased.



Caroline Shank
9.20.23

More fool me. You named the
earth a green planet, the sky
often ten shades of punk.  You
told the Angels to leave your

scorecard at the door.

The Angel of abuse to the
Angel of love.  

Much of desire is so short
an afternoon.  

The bulls are running and they
Look to you to have

The answers


Caroline Shank
9.16.23

Vacation

Florida stretches from nose to
fingertips.  The bold noise of up
here relaxes into  saltwater
beaches.  

I walk along tidepools and search
for wildlife burrowing in the sands
outer banks. The sun is my
companion. We know each other
well.

My tan hands reach for you and
we are stones in the wind.
To love is enough.  To touch
is the breeze of  night.  We
stay still in a swirling mass
of gulls.

Tomorrow is Return,  Today
is the prayer for the birds
to bring their young  to my
castle.

Castles fall,  Dreams lie for a
moment where the seas spilt
the sweat anxźd salt of love

lost  


Caroline Shank
9.14.23

Sounds In Silence

Tomorrow comes like a slap
on my cheek.  It waits in the
drains of today like a cat, reaches
for my footstep. Trips me up.

Yesterday slithered into the
cesspool of memory.  I am
a flag in your stand of
cardboard in the window
in Chicago, at the corner
of Rush and State.

Today I set my feet to
find the last place where
the countless clocks struck.

There is no sound in the
Universe today.  All the bells
are open sockets without time.
I am looking for the trigger.

The last walnut cracked under
your weight without warning
and I stand here again

alone.

Caroline Shank
08.27.2023

I miss skin that doesn't crinkle.
The kind the doesn't matter
what I'm wearing.

I miss beepers. The 7730 hello
page.  The calls from people
wanting to go out to eat.

I miss moving like the wind
blowing daisies and spoors
of dandelions

What about singing in the
snow you ask?
The farther my poor article
could reach in the total
silence of the winter.

Most of all i miss warm
saltwater swims in the
early mornings, coffee
strong with sweetener.

I miss.you kissing me
with the wayward wind
playing.

The sirroco of my life
began in a dream.

It will drift like
phosphorescence
unconfused with

Poetry


Caroline Shank
7.28.2023

Your crotch seared into my
afternoon.

If you must wear shorts on your
fat legs please pity the members
of your audience.  

Restaurant's wooden warm
summer tables,  A patio for
my pleasure.  When in you
came. I never saw your face
until the squirming crotch
across the nearby table,
where you sat, friends like:)
you who couldn't see the
dance of fat falling out of
your shorts.  The camel
toed and the chats of friends.

Poured & drunk with no
where through the
sorry exhibition.

Caroline Shank
July 23,  2023

Absolved of all guilt I have
passed the threshold of
old age.  I am a Crone and
I choose who to love.  

I choose you.  Unintentional
as this late in life emotion is, I
follow it to the rise and
fall on the tides waves that

rock you to sleep
My younger perfect
Incarnation.  You to
whom I cannot touch

I rest in the God of
my unreason for out of my
heart stepped you and

I rise each day just to see
you pursue a life out of

all unknowing

me.


Caroline Shank
July 17, 2023

Things On My Living Room Wall

I collect things, clocks and chickens
mostly.

         The secret to things is the
way they (you) fit in the space
wherein my life, refracted like a
          Kaleidoscope on a
winter afternoon stretches to
touch me.

        Day (Love) is a mirror, a silver
lined looking glass placed like a
trophy over the catchall mementos
          of (you) the times (we) spent
leaning over the bridge.

My frames
tilted to the downside of yesterday
.        
          I thought the assorted colors
were (our) memories until someone

          traced the lines of (simply)
life between the slats of my

          memory indicted of
your coins to pay the porter.


Caroline Shank
7.4.2023

To be without a reason
to be.

To be a worn inside out
kind of being.  To miss you mostly
your absence, like
falling water,

puddles.

You make the tears
want to fall.  You slant from the
pictures .
Grant me Oh Lord a minute.

I am trimmed in half.  Your
consecrated remains on
the bookshelf.

Tomorrow is the Blessing
that holds the map of
living without you.

You walked in the Garden.
You never said that kissing
was underrated.  It's how

you left in your bed in a
May afternoon.  The
last time to say I loved

you turned away.  Was
life with me so hard?

You ran to God to save
your demented soul.

I watched from my window
As

you

Flew away.


Caroline Shank
6.24.2023

I want to travel with you
in Summer or a Winter along
the pavements
thick with the sounds of
falling feet, trampled dreams,.
The detritus of lives lived by
the thin soled.

I offer you old hands to hold,
Wishes warmed by heat.
The loved fingers that will
undo you In the theater of
your imagination.

We will talk of things imagined.
Our stories flung into the gas
fire of old age. We will go
places only books invite us
into, brush skin of
our fine lines.

We hold
onto the strings of time

for

as long as

galaxies of desire

rock us.


Caroline Shank
6.22.2023

There were always men
when I was a young
girl.  
Summer men.
Big
as trees,
loud as
thunder.  
Bright,
soft
round
eyes.

I loved the men of
summer.  They
breathed
in
warm
breezes

When I was young
summer men wore
soft
brown
skin.

They
glistened
sunlight.

Oh when I was young,
I did love
their
rub on
my tan
hands.

Now
I am
oiled by
memory.


Older men
are
happily
in
disguise.


Caroline Shank

We will have a moment to
shape voice and touch
around the space
in which our kisses find us,

so you turn to me when
reaching,

warm in two AM sheets
holding our breathing
tight in the night's sky.

We belong to the heat,
to the sounds
that run swift and
sure as the constellations
to our skillful embrace

and love.

perhaps?

Caroline Shank
6.16.2023

It comes from talking too fast.
Words from thought spill through
me.  I am unadorned with
punctuation.  I write in long
lines of ideas switching from
one to another like trestles.

Some thoughts get stuck or are
trapped under wheels. They rub
me clumsily.

I speak only English in a stomach
churning speed.  To tell you how
beautiful you are takes pages and
curls of rushing lines.

I am a jumble of ideas out loud.
A scorch of syllables.  I digress
of course.  I am a stumble of
sounds, a cataract of meanings.

Listen to the scrape of pen, the
words enlighten,emerge, into
conversation.


Caroline Shank
6.8.2023