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2.7k · Feb 2023
The Empty Bed
Caroline Shank Feb 2023
There are things
I did not do.

I did not  touch
you.  

You
died. Without
a sound.

Your soft brown eyes pierced me.
I saw you go in the quiet
way you did everything.
I knew you were gone
but not before I
knew sadly, silently
that
I
could not hold
you in a final

embrace.

Closeness had run out
so long ago,

though we loved until the end,

bereft of speech,
as we we were bereft of
touch.

I bowed to your
blank stare.

I would have died for
you if I could have.  

but I could not
save you from
this destiny

with the Father

Who

Loved

you



Caroline Shank
2.2,2023
1.4k · Dec 2021
I Found God
Caroline Shank Dec 2021
I Found God

I found God in a Baptist Church
in Milwaukee.
Faith,  small hands and
scratched bibles.

Warm cookies.

The delicate and the children.
Their names in coded
words on the skin under

my arms. .

Dedicate: the
day to the great E. Perience.

There is a new Age
coming.

I smoke a cigarette.

God arrived in fancy clothes.

Women dressed, frown.
Still voices in the

Wilderness

Witness the Beloved
baptism of perfumed
sinners

I smoked for them all.
My fee for being previously

Apostate.


Caroline Shank
1.4k · Oct 2021
If You Kiss Me
Caroline Shank Oct 2021
If you kiss me now our eyes
will close and we will
push against each other
like fruit vying for the light,

In the nightpain of loving
our eyes will slowly open
and your face will wilt
until its cheeks and crevices
dim under the sad symmetry of
our public lives.

If you kiss me now I will forget
the grown repair of skirt alone
in the loud sound of memory
as it slips ever so gently away.


Caroline Shank
1.2k · Jul 2021
When I Was a Young Girl
Caroline Shank Jul 2021
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
1.1k · Jun 2022
I Can't Get To You
Caroline Shank Jun 2022
I cannot get to you.  You
are like Jerusalem, a
misguided city. Your name is exposed
to the sun while i call to you in the
silence of the volcanic pre-dawn.
You have slides of affectation.
A pilgrim might mistake
you for the safety of a handhold
hammered in the sand.

Other
travelers knew the peril of
your affection.

You don't  reply. So cold the
monument, so silent
the wall of your response.

This is all I know
and so do you that the
messages of the world fall
like the snow on the ground
white with shadows. Mute
replicas of shared emotion.

Drink to us the sour
vinegar of the sponge.

Caroline Shank
June 16, 2022
1.1k · Jan 2023
Ponder
Caroline Shank Jan 2023
I could be dead by tomorrow,
wrapped in the comfort of
silence. Spread out on the
floor of yesterday.  I loved
you so many years ago there
is a calm scrape on the days
meridian.

I turn myself in for being
ridiculous.  " Do I dare to
eat a peach? ". I cross the
sandpaths of memory and
kick the castles yesterday
left.  No tomorrow for us.

I, like Prufrock, dizzingly
look for the summer night,
walk unsteady in my old
age lest I die to finally

and forget.

Caroline Shank
1.20.2023
1.0k · Apr 2021
I Believe in You
Caroline Shank Apr 2021
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
969 · Mar 2020
The Movements of My Life
Caroline Shank Mar 2020
The movements
and tides of my visceral
life endure as I am forced
forward.  

Prone to the changes
of daylight's only task,
I open to the sun as a turtle
opens to the tidepool.

The future is a wash as
it morphs from my bellied
stature. The past is
a life splayed by the nights
of your flesh. I roll with the
memory of
your voice.  

I linger on your
shore.


Caroline Shank
926 · Dec 2021
There was A Man
Caroline Shank Dec 2021
There was a man come wandering
by with silver heels and loudly.
It was a Sunday and he asked me
to dance.  We tangoed through
close and warm.

Then it was a Wednesday warm
to touch you and I did.
You ran in the rain like a cat.
I called but the dull thud of
my tears fell only alone.

There love stretched
taut to crumble. And the heat
of my life felt the scald and
stars were unseen..

Light hid in drains and
you were in the rain gone.
I see you wet and reach
toward me. Dreams don't

die and I wrap the night
In paper sliced so thin

you can see thru my veins
where I have travelled

And alone.


Caroline Shank
917 · Feb 2021
Bitter Change
Caroline Shank Feb 2021
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
824 · Sep 2022
Friday
Caroline Shank Sep 2022
It's never going to stop
being Friday
The Birth of Sacraments
is not Good.

Autumn is Friday's punch
in the gut of Summer   It's
always Friday.  The windblown
faded days are a trampled
graveyard.

Today is Friday and if I shovel
the fake faded Forrest of time
it is always Friday.  The perennial
glare of a Gregorian mistake.

Christ died for me on a
Friday!
Illusions of time passing are
like

Prayers

blown back

on a Friday.

Today tears the pages off.  You
flip it over.

Friday appears as oil from
the flood.  


Caroline Shank
9.2.2022
823 · Jan 2022
Your Moods
Caroline Shank Jan 2022
Your moods are to me as is Mars
in ununderstanding.
You call and I am ready.
You bring the day's strata
of news.  There are layers
to us.  I do the moods as
an animal does clover in
a field unexpected.

I remain here
waiting,
Evergreen and u


Anonymously
I remain…



Caroline Shank
04.15.2l
808 · Jul 2022
Tomorrow
Caroline Shank Jul 2022
I write in runes.  I mean to
leap the alphabet.  The orbital
spin of time and me dizzy and all. .

I will write you tomorrow,
shake the mica off my
thoughts.  You will not
walk with me among the
glacial shores of thinking.

I will return a fossil of
millions of years,
along the edges
of meaning.  I am not
unfamiliar with your pace
along the beach where i
lie so still.  It's why I will
write tomorrow when my
heart has ******

in the sun.  

I don't see you
coming anymore to the sandhills of
Poems.  It was always
difficult to reach you through
the tangle of my sclerotic

heart.

Tomorrow I will be a fragment of
loving you.  I will hold the
thought until it fossil
freezes and I will lie on the
Beach of Remembering,
washed by eons of

poetry.  I will write you
but all you will hear are the

echoes
of forgetting.


Caroline Shank
776 · Nov 2022
I Will Drink Lonliness
Caroline Shank Nov 2022
I will drink loneliness in my
coffee. The sweet is turned to
sorrow, the cream is the stir
of tears.  

I will not last this.
The table was set when you
strode into darkness.

I will pin loneliness on the board.
The same letters unwrite.

Half a century is not enough
to unbelieve.  The scattered
seconded invitation is
laid green and turbulent.

I leave loneliness a song
to the unbeliever.

You fold my intention like
a glove broken in.

Winter is always the last
cry in the dark sound
under the stairs.

I leave the sounds of the
wheel under my
shoes, in Winter unsounds
tears that dry in eyes
of the unbeliever,

you, walk like steel cleats
over my poems.


Caroline Shank
756 · Sep 2022
Journal Entry
Caroline Shank Sep 2022
I'm looking for my husband.  He has
disappeared into some place inside
his mind, like a sea creature slides
into a coral bed.

Quick now, here he is for a moment
or an hour.  Like a Robin bobs in
the yard, he is beautiful in his song
before he vanishes into the sky,
flying above or around me.

Are his pieces forever gone? Will
I find a kiss behind my chair meant
for me alone? Will my sorrow erase
the years of love?

I will be brave today.  Tomorrow
I will be the coral he needs. A small
animal in a very large and
strange ocean. .

Caroline Shank
5.4.20
725 · Aug 2021
The Dream
Caroline Shank Aug 2021
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
697 · Oct 2021
If Anyone Asks
Caroline Shank Oct 2021
If anyone asks you I am old
and out of shape.  My legs
curl under me when I stand.
There is a whoosh in my ear
from the fall the other night.

My face of many colors
goes before me like an
electric light.  

I wobble on shifted
ground.  No longer young
I am a cramp in the leg
of time.  

My children go before me and
I watch and I wait.  They are
middle aged and turn to their
own concerns.  

I remain ununderstood not
that I was, clearly, ever taken
for the woman I was.  

If anyone asks tell them
I understood the song
of madness,

and I wait for
the end
of reason.


Caroline Shank
666 · Sep 2023
Song
Caroline Shank Sep 2023
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
658 · Apr 2023
The Harbour
Caroline Shank Apr 2023
I cannot exist in the
noise of
heavy
breathing.  

Nght exits.
The wrinkle of sheet,  the
impress of thick tuned
air waits a turning away.

If you don't find me at the
stair know that I loved you.
That the movement of crowds
turned me away

that I saw you wave tonight
to the woman whose
@
Wore your name.

Caroline Shank
April 9, 2023

Written for a contest.
642 · Sep 2022
Let Us Go
Caroline Shank Sep 2022
Let Us Go

At great risk we go
through certain half deserted
streets.  The lights burn holes
in my contemplations.  The spine
of poetry is fallen and lies
spattered on the ground

Go with me. The vocabulary
inspired by the sea air will
carve runes in the granite.

We travel light. Our skin, like
canvas ingrained with words,
bleeds.

We drop to our knees in
silent supplication.  Sounds
paint where rhyme
leaves
trails.

There is no tomorrow.  


Caroline Shank
582 · Aug 2021
Will You Be My Valentine
Caroline Shank Aug 2021
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
561 · Apr 2023
If I Come to You
Caroline Shank Apr 2023
If I come to you I will be unriddled,
singing and shot through with
poetry. My gift will be the rings
around my soul, the songbirds
and the winds of Jupiter, warm
touched my arms and the
long wait of my legs.

If you come to me be it on
a Monday when you are
at your best and relaxed.
Bring me the scent of musk,
the water gobleted in crystal
for my waiting lips.

We will clasp the future as if
it was Young.  The breeze

on our faces

blows over

the carved vows

on the birchwood

tree.


Caroline Shank
April 2, 2023
561 · Jul 2022
This I Believe
Caroline Shank Jul 2022
I'm tired of love
poems
The laundry of
attraction.
I weary of
sadness reiterated
Everywhere.

The wombs of
Creation
Are omnipresent.
I read your sojouron
into the skin side
of this
Madness.

No I don't know what
you mean.  The
Rhetoric of the
young, of the aged,
that moan of the years
that stretch, the direction
Empty
of arms to hold you,
of Kisses too
silent,
of hearts that beat
Alone.

Send me to the banks
of literature.  The Ganges
where dust quaffs and
Fire burns and there is
only the poetry of tears
for the

Unforgiven.

Caroline Shank
7.12.2022
557 · Jul 2022
Lineman
Caroline Shank Jul 2022
Lineman

You ride the poles of my
electric memory.  I feel
your grip on the wires
of my need.

I mourne at last your
absence.  The pulse
Is faint now.  You will climb
the last time soon
to dry the lines, wipe
the torn wires

and stop the
pulsing
of
your

aching name.

The pounding code
of a life

overturned.



Caroline Shank
549 · Aug 2022
Next Spring
Caroline Shank Aug 2022
Next Spring I will move.  The Wisconsin
winds will sweep me from this house
of yours where I no longer belong.

You climbed the lattice of the cold
Winter.  I was your bounty.  Now
I can leave the brown sugar color
of this apartment. There are scrapes
on white walls from your wheelchair.

The family will not care and for that,
I will not ask.  

I am through writing thank you notes
and receiving the few callers who
patted me for your loss.

Spring is too far away for intimate
details.  The shaking tree limbs
will be quiet and the annual
equinox will welcome new growth
and knitted sorrows.

We were an uninvolved lot,
the children and you and I.  

So I will write again
on my calendar.  No one will ever
remember that it was I who took
your hand,

your heart,

your suffering

to the last
quiet sigh.



Caroline Shank
545 · May 2022
Shame
Caroline Shank May 2022
It's been a long day.  You
died so soon ago and we notice
your noise is gone, the parakeets and me.
You should comment somehow on
the oddness of things
since your disease.

The paranoia and lies the dementia
played made your dreams seem like
waking and your sleep tore into

you with fantasies and confusion.
You shouldered the  nurses by
telling them you felt fine.  That
lie pushed you to more agitaton.

I never knew you would get well.
I was cursed with a colder reality.  
As I drove to see you in the cocoon
of the nursing home I wondered
would you be crying or well.  

It was the crying I never unfolded.
in your room where we so carefully
braided the colors to your whims.
The colors are the same today.

Now wilted, the bright sun's rays
like the daylight dim but your harsh
yellow teeth spread around my
name and you saw me beaten
and unforgiven

You took me with you to the
Hell of brass urns.  I thought
to ask you why but the look
on your framed face said you
were waiting and your yellow
grin dared me to be quiet.

I saw the years in stark
isolation.  
You in a painted slicker,
I knew you
loved me once and
briefly.   Your journey
was a long one. Mine is

to shower daily your burnt
name across the
yellow ******* of

chared Sorrow

off.

Caroline Shank
May 15, 2022
.
545 · Jun 2021
Happy Birthday
Caroline Shank Jun 2021
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
544 · Nov 2019
I Cannot Rival
Caroline Shank Nov 2019
.

I cannot rival your blue eyes
Or the whirling
winds of your infinite skies.  

Windworn leaves tumble at
your step.  Winter turns to
summer where you are.

Walk to me slowly that I may
savor the trail you leave on
your way to my page.

I write you into time.  I hear
the bells ripple.
I have seen you travel in dreams.  

You leave me always wanting
you more than there is air above
me or ground below.

Stay where I am for now.
Use me with love.
Your song.

Caroline Shank
11.19.1 9
538 · Dec 2022
Morning has Broken
Caroline Shank Dec 2022
Morning has broken 🎶.  The song
of a single bird brings down night's
shadows, chimes the diurnal
trill of a new day.

The same shiny blue glare
everlasting.  

Gathered moments.

Groceries for the soul.


Caroline Shank
521 · Feb 2021
Move It On Over
Caroline Shank Feb 2021
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
503 · Feb 2022
At Last
Caroline Shank Feb 2022
You have walked into the destruction
of your mind and found a place there.
The detritus of a life lived in the face
of cancer, storms, and death abandoned
of the private letting go of acceptance.

You screened a life worth living
and found it wanting of love and
poetry.

Someday we will meet and
our faces, full of knowledge,
will know the relief of a rest
realized. The
nourishment of a kindred
moment of unmitigated
silence.

I will be your welcome.  I will
solve the enigma of two
lives waiting for a single
explosion.

We run now,
members  of the
cloister of our lives


forever.


Caroline Shank
2.1.22
461 · Feb 2022
Soldier
Caroline Shank Feb 2022
Soldier


He was perfect at loving me.
He knew the sweet spot.

He walked with me and
He talked with me.

That's a song.  I forget the rest
But i didn't forget him.

He appeared
like A Grace.

He took

A longtime
going away. .  

He left in the
rain.  

I am invisible now,
by your side.

Tomorrow i will write him a letter
and i will Trust.

Tomorrow i will do a lot of things.
Alone i watch him flailing in
the wheat's crease where it

spreads itself on the road.

Love is a sorrow to my
soul.   He is missed
by the flowers we planted.
His memory blossoms,
The pain of this soldier's
retreat opens every night.

Alone

I wear his medals and

rub the shine

of the

gun.



Caroline Shank
456 · Dec 2019
Summer
Caroline Shank Dec 2019
The stream trickled on
the frog jumped in to cool off
the branch creaked with loss

Caroline Shank
438 · Mar 2021
Go In Pease
Caroline Shank Mar 2021
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
434 · Apr 2022
Song
Caroline Shank Apr 2022
I dont want us to evaporate like the
last forlorn drops in the jar. The stuff
you can't reach.  It's when you throw
away the lingering remains of a
once future promise you shake the
meanings off slick with the wetness of tomorrow.

"Some may say I'm a dreamer but
I'm not the only one." You were
promise and gone before I drank
the last dark remains of my beer.
I sang the songs of unbelieving
in the moment before you left me
in the summer's late night rains.

We were spoken of by gods
and goddesses.  The language
was curious and fragrant. Full
and lyrical.  Did you lose their
song?  It was a fabulous song.
I believed in the tune we wrote
together. Tomorrow will fill our
throats with the flattened notes of
a once flying bird.


Caroline Shank
April 28, 2022
429 · Nov 2019
Thanksgiving
Caroline Shank Nov 2019
So long ago.    
I was always older than you.
You were stronger than I.
It was Summer, you rolled
joints in the kitchen.  I
waited in the other room.

Other rooms, other tales.
I remember the night
we walked to the tavern.
I wrote poems while you
played pool.  I wore red,
you touched my
hand.  I didn't know you,
stranded on the brink of
midnight, waiting for me
to end the song.  

You left me in the rain,
toeing the brush of your
dense backyard.  I called,
my voice thrown in the
rain, the wind's song
tortured with the sound
of tears.

This Thanksgiving.
I will drink alone,
long ago yesterdays,
linger to
tomorrow.

Caroline Shank
408 · Jul 2022
No Way Back
Caroline Shank Jul 2022
I didn't shed a tear until
yesterday.  Your memory
pulled me back
years of
the flood of
the days and nights,
the children, rogue
warriors in our battles
their  children confused
by the confessions,
the chest pounds
of sorrow.

Where you remain
under the guise
of husband.


Caroline Shank
July 10, 2022
406 · Oct 2023
Older Women
Caroline Shank Oct 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
405 · Dec 2019
Miracles
Caroline Shank Dec 2019
She is not gone. You have not
lost her.  She is transformed
into shine and glow and into
star stuff.  You are part of her
in some way that glistens in
the Universe.

Death is only a segment of the
cycle of which you are the
best part.  Her laugh rings
around you. Her love
transfigures you.  Listen.

The tinkling of star songs is
for you.  The sparkle in your
eye is her. Be aware that
death is a tap over your
shoulder, a smile in your
mind.

You have touched a miracle
of which you are a player.  There
is no way into tomorrow.  Today is the way to love her forever.

Today is always.

Caroline Shank
398 · Nov 2023
Burning Bushes
Caroline Shank Nov 2023
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
398 · Jan 2023
Crash
Caroline Shank Jan 2023
Your not so slender form stands
in the bedroom door. You yawn.
I remember you before the
drugs took you to the ends
of my life.

Old now, the reckless
times are gone. Still you try,
hanging onto the threads of
yesterday.  Tangents of
circles.  

You strive to steer your
way through the long sleep,
the crash after
the burning addiction gets
you. You climb into
tomorrow like a crawl
Into infancy

and you tell me it's all
right Mom.

Caroline Shank
1.31.2023
393 · Aug 2022
The Faint of Heart
Caroline Shank Aug 2022
The soliloquies
born of tears,
spoke of Loneliness.
The Plays the Thing.
The Long and Winding Road.  

Hamlet was not crazy,
as some think,

he was alone.

Lady Macbeth scraped blood
from her hands in a
castle of lonely rooms.

McCullers loneliness
was a companion.  

Teasdale wrote of the sea's
lonely foam.

Lear,  alone,  held Cordelia
to the
cold and empty sky.

I know Alone.   It is a wind
just past my skin.   Your hand
on my face is a reflection.   My
skin is uninterrupted by the
conversation of your fingers.

Alone is the road
we travel.  

Evermore.


Caroline Shank
8.16.2022
384 · Sep 2022
A Night in Miami
Caroline Shank Sep 2022
Blue carpet.  Stones
between toes. Sun
seamed afternoon.  

You.

Salt foams on shores.
Wet kisses my dream.

Walk on. The
lights of South Beach
a kaleidoscope.  Moon
paths. Warm breaths
on my mouth.

Tide breaks.

Salsa brings the waves
to ******.

Daylight comes.


.
Caroline Shank
9.23.2022
Adult
379 · Jan 2021
Broken
Caroline Shank Jan 2021
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
375 · Dec 2022
Emptied Emotion
Caroline Shank Dec 2022
He caught her thinking.  The
crossed legs signed
resignation.

She'd bloomed and thought
that tonight was lost

to expectation.

He rested his memory
of her smoke filled
denial.

Nothing left emptied
emotion.


Caroline Shank
12.9.2022
It is my attempt at an Ekphrastic poem but I can't add a picture here
365 · Oct 2021
Tango
Caroline Shank Oct 2021
Have I told you about
the Summer of 74, my
steamy discontent?

There I was, waiting,
like someone waiting.
An empty dance card.
So to speak.

I forget my next thought,
but never those yellow
evenings,

Moments float into a
filled mouth we breathe
into each other, wanting
always waiting.
I keep them in the Chinese box.
Your souvenir of an abandoned
July.

The sweet soft

song lasting in amber grained
wood.  

Your words on my kissed lips.

The perennial intimacy
in the upstairs room you
slept in.

Now the warm night's tango
slides like lotion down
my tanned thighs.

This dance is always,
forever.

Caroline Shank
360 · Oct 2019
In My Dream
Caroline Shank Oct 2019
We have ridden camels
in the Kalahari,
Flew Eagles over Canada,
walked across the Niagra.

We have boated up the
Nile and pierced the
catacombs of Rome.
We made love by the
red rock in Australia.

Our adventures overlap
memory.
We've spun the Sun and
tossed the moon,
walked on coals,
groomed gorillas and
climbed to Lhasa.

We were married in Tibet,
among the Chinese stalls,
made our way to India
and slept with tigers.

The planet swings
as we kiss, and spins
to the rhythm of Joy.


Caroline Shank
359 · Sep 2022
Sisyphus
Caroline Shank Sep 2022
Write what I know?  I am pocked with
chunks of broken moments.
Bits fall to the ground, trip me.
The terrain of my youth is a
moonscape.  I know what I know in
the craters of this place.

Born on the darkside and thirsty, I was
cold.  I found the sun later when I
was tumbled out the door of my
Mother’s leaking house.  Her screams
had become tentacles of maniacal
music.  Or do not call it music for
if you heard it you would not dance.

I am old now.  The view from my landing
is filled with sunlight and children,
“There are children in the leaves,
laughing excitedly”.   (Eliot)
I am paused in this imagination on
occasion.

When she is quiet,
I sweep her under the porch
where she lies drunk and unlaughing.
I do not let her out.  Yet she
steers me.  Her corpse loud
in her ***** nightdress.  

The terrain of my old age is pitted
with the debris of this haunting.  She
unsings me, makes me lie in
craters from which I climb up
daily only to tumble back down,
to have to begin again
from the bottom each new **** day.

But I sing as I crawl. And
she does not like the sound of that

Caroline Shank
348 · Sep 2022
Alone
Caroline Shank Sep 2022
is a circle.
The
minefield of
breathing.

I inhale.

The rasp of a door

hinge.

Gone to rust.

Pieces of
time.

Jigged thoughts…

clang of
chains.

Soggy Days.

Lie wet
leaves.

Rain..

The air pushed.

Behind me a
young woman

falls.


Caroline Shank
9.24.22
337 · Oct 2022
Cyrus
Caroline Shank Oct 2022
I.  She watched. Her
patience wrapped around
her like a shawl.

She saw him
touch the girl.

Then he was gone.

      II.  She will write
her poem now.
    
   III.  It is her dream.

IV.  This suggestion.
Her
imagination.

V. He arouses her

most intense

Desire.


Caroline Shank
10.22.2022
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