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

One tear leaves, shiny vestige
of the brains transcription.
A movie house of dying
images scribes in cunieform
as I watch thru my prism
of memory

The racks of yesterdays
like layers of summer boats
in winter

of the claws of
sorrow,

the yank

of tears

Birth the ends of
sorrow when love

again

Walked

in..

You stood there
reflecting
my broken
healing, a

Refrain of

Saxaphone s.
Of love

In the

Tear s.

You Blessed me
from  your
so far

away.



Caroline Shank
5.20.24

Time Chimes

I call to you
from out the mullioned
window on the back
of my house.

Windows open to recent rains.  I feel the
soft air of yesterday before the crepuscular
failure of today. (I know, you hate that word,
crepuscular. You hate a lot of words.)

The last light of day lay like velvet
on my doorstep. A signal
to shake the lace curtains.
Wave to far years gone to
other lovers.  The vibrations
on my skin reminds me of you.  I am
old now.  These are memories of
when we were young and tan
and satisfied with a bed and a beer
and a joint shared in the upstairs room.
Now curtains slow as my breathing
slows.  I am comfortable in my
old chair here by the light.  The
mewling of feral kittens is music
enough.  

Night surrounds me.
The ocean is my song.
I am completed in my time.
You, my muse, are aware of
my souls quiet caring. The
sun sets where once we saw the
sky with blue eyes and shooting
stars.  Our destiny is a psalm
to missed timing and unlit
cigarettes.  

Hear me in your deafness
calling on the memories we
made like Michaelangelo.

Art is never a vehicle for
humans last only a
minute.

Time chimes in the
downstairs room
and I sing to myself.

Caroline Shank
2.1.22

I fumble with the days now,

humbly wonder the date, 

the time. Not you.  

You move with the 

alacrity of your age.  


I wrote on the

calendar when you were

babies.  I lost you

at six. Freud said so.


The chipped diaper pin 

that I still have.  The tape

of your first words I can no

longer play.  

Your rumpled memories, 

tumbled recollections.


I traipsed through 

the days of your 

childhoods, 

slowly moved

around the nights.  


Take me gently

through your lives.  


I am alone.


I nap everyday and wake

earlier than I would like to.


Go slowly

around my life.


I have seen my own

star streak 

and I am not 


afraid.



Caroline Shank

Things on hold
Bleeding in and the
flowers of surgery are
wilting  

Waiting is sand spreading
on the ground, slippery
and ever widening

My
determination is
rippled.

Morning is thwarted.

I am unmouthed.

Today is

unwritten.



Caroline Shank
5.6.24

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

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

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

Sometimes she is so tired
she can feel the trees grow.
The slow wind on the bark
draws infinite sighs.

Her breath is elongated along
the wood's facade from morning
until night.  She looks toward the
future with her eyes forever
drawn, wistful and cased with
time's awful drudge.

It is not about the wind she
thinks, but the weary sound of
silence until you return.

The circadian rhythm of life
will resume after the war.
Along the hours granted
in your reunion, she will move
with cellular efficiency.  

Time will beat soon,
please God,
in sinus predictability .



Caroline Shank

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

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

To live one minute the breathless
expectancy of life
on the brink of a world whirling
at you with joyous awareness,
is to know that every sunrise calls
the Imam to prayer,

and in you the the consent of
life, the Summer response,
that breathless gasp .  


Caroline Shank.  
12./15/21


Caroline Shank.  
12./15/21

Tomorrow the lights will go
Out
is all.

The bulb, a soft
corrosion in the end.
Only tomorrow will recur
A million light years,
over a future
unaccomplished.

The glow  is
Un normal.
Love Extinguished.

So u will have to be
Unloosed from the
alphabet. Ink in
space

dissolves.

The unrestrictions
of a love pledged
like Smoke and
Mirrors. The dusk
of
of Unknowing

spills.

The land of whispers,
of imagined Summer's

doesn't
exist.

Ever
.

Caroline Shank
7.25.24

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

Tomorrow

There is no forever for me
The pulse of death stopped
and I am limping, I am
stammering.   You took
forever from my catalog.

Tomorrow issues from out of
a cauldron.  There are no voices
in the wilderness.  St Paul
come to me. I am short of
goodness and love.

Teach me oh Lord to skip
stones across the Jordan.
I will drink tea in a mug with
your name on it.

Brown is the color of my true
love's hair.  My white hair
shapes the Ganges on
your chest.  I told you I

would write.

Tomorrow's fortunes feature
you in some farther

field.

I awake from this deep dream
of sleep Abou

Where there is no wind, for
tomorrow never ever

comes.

Forever and ever
(Saecula saeculorem.)


Caroline Shank

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

Your early inborn magic did not
fortell the whirls and winds
of the future.  The shine of
youth ended in turbulence.

Dismania, like fingers, touched,
you.  Ivy on brick, the tendrils
pierced.  Walls of
uncertainty nourished
and you, welcomed the

future.



There were no tomorrows.

Pulling you through the
mirror of myself you tore

into
uncertainty.

No Magi, not even
with gifts of surcease
brought by the force

of love
released you.


Still the running child
you crash into a future
whose spiders claw at you.

Tomorrow waits
protected
by your addiction.

Reach into the future
all you want,

you cannot tear the
crawl of your destiny

away.


Caroline Shank
10.13.2022

I am as close to death as can be
before the Throne of the Lord
lets me kneel before Him who
ordained that I should live such
a little life.

There will be no tomorrow, no
prayers before sleep tonight.
I am in thrall with my journey's
ending and I wait for the Great
Kindness to take this burden.

I am alone with only tears and
this pen to sign off before you
can call me back.

You would do that, you whose
memory outlasts wars and famine
and the last days of America.
I have touched you in private
places and feel the warmth of
you alive.

I am cold tonight.
I bring memories
to the fire of sighs.

I go tonight to the last
long longitude of my
existence and send
these bones sans

thought

desire

and regret

to your address of sorrow.


Caroline Shank
2.17.2023

For us it was pure recreation, the
flap ends of days at work
We saw the night sky lighten to
the moon’s yellowed ends.

Our signals were these - -
the free
formed contacts of those who
worked in the dark.

Every time thru touch we
exolored the tiny motions,
the fingertip braille of meanings.

Then the scattered
motions slung across
the disarray-
the darkness of
lamps shutting off,

of
beds silenced, sheets
unmoved

ever again.

Not to return uncovered the
indifference, the mistaken
edges of a vocabulary grown
only
in my carved thoughts.

Feeling  blurred into
the dim haze of

indifference.

Touch

slid

away.



Caroline Shank
2.29.2024

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 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

Would you choose to deny
me?  I can't breathe.  I am
filled with love for my family,
for God.  I am only old.
You will be too, you who
would triage my life out.

I contribute to my family.
I dig with both of the
hands God gave me in
the soil and grow beautiful
things.  I am flower fresh.

I am not broken.  No one
is broken.  You who think
you can save the life of
a younger person.  

Save Me.

I could be your mother.
Save her.  When you
make a choice remember
I was here first.  The Universe
is Random.  Tilt your
thought to  philosophy.

I have miles to go before
I sleep.  If you choose
the old ones, the infirm,
the besotted the young

Will remember you also

In

Time.


Caroline Shank


Prompt: the ethics of
triaging ventilators.

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

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

Hard to remember the events
of a life so differently lived.
So short a time, barely cut the
grass.  She was fabulous for
half a summer.  Like a lady
in a perfect hat.  She was
glossy.

For half a summer.

Her voice cleared.  Her body
flew about the air like a breeze.
Music played constantly.  Her
humming a decible over the
bees.  She sang.  She dripped
over the sunlight like honey.

When he left she became
wax.  Her life melted in the
rain.

Twenty seven gone to
long.  She wished, her
whole life, to be twenty
six forever.

Still she sits.  
Uncomprehending
Looks for the wet
where she opens her face.

Just walking nowhere,
Bound for a song
she hears daily.
Her tattered memory
drops with every step.

Caroline Shank

The birds sit, goofy and slake.
Feathers drift, sift, settle on
chairs like soft shells shaped
by whisps of room air.

There is no thought, no plan.
Two white birds in two cages for
safety. The trill of calls penetrates
the living room air as if waiting
for the cue to caw to begin.

I hear you release the still
blue note, the crying color  
of the muezzin to my sleep.

The birds raison d'etre is your
morning blue creamy face.
My arms stretch to you.

Our blue
skies dawn and
the song

begins.

Again.


Caroline Shank
07/25/22

Your words are flung against
my heart.  In what little esteem
you hold me.  Wraith of
my poetry you know not the
soul invested in the words.

All critics are not so smart.
Your God driven determination
to divest from what I write
the soul behind the
runes, that lives.  

Back, my literary whip
snaps and I drive you
into the intellectual corner
from where you write your
own expert poetry, driven
by the analytics that serve
you.

I will write my doggerel
that, to you, are the scraps
of an unaccomplished
life.

Caroline Shank
2.13.2023

She got him all wrong, the strong
arms gone to brittle.
Clay is troubled to form the
impression.  And longer the
art of your dented and salted
mire.

For nothing like a walk in the
boneyard of the cheap motel
of her imagination.  

You are Rant and Ruin.  The
Remains crust and smoke
Tomorrow of her old age is
the rat trails of her poetry

I know this because she told it
to the murk and creep of your
deteriorating smoke.  The last
**** was unimaginable.

Run far and away from the
wrinkled visage of memory.
You are red and ruins in a
slot of yesterday.

Today runs through her like
wine and bread.  The table
is set for never again your
chair is broken silt.

Caroline Shank
3.22.2023

We walk a little in joy

Then we fall to the grass.

You touch me and I reach


for the stars. You whisper

and I feel your breath

In my sighs.


Don't be afraid, but be

careful of the lights

that cover the evanescent

moon.  


We are beautiful in the night.

And when we wake our tryst

will end.  I fade always

in the sun.


Caroline Shank

How long before you noticed
     I was absent?
Would you boot up expecting
     me to have my sunshine
     waiting like someone
     breathing in the air of your
     expensive cologne, alone?

That is the important part.  Would
     you pay no mind to the
     unspoken fragility of my delay?
Can you see me through the glare
     of my absence?

My hands, so still, make no move
to flex, the prelude movement, to
lightly brush the keys which spell
your name. The button I do not press to
start the bubble of exuberance, tingling. .
My chest contracts deeply and i
breath your name in a ritual obeisance
you might call a whisper.  I land
on the keys rubbed too shiny from use,
as a supplicant might continually rub
the Chalice.

I exaggerate, here,  the thought that
you would notice the omission
of a stain on the white cloth of my
restlessness.  I bow to yesterday.
Today waits.  Unexplain my
heart, call me by my name.
    

Caroline Shank

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

Dear, You Know Who You are.

Bless me Father for I have
sinned.

It has been twenty four
months since last i

looked
in the mirror.

Forbid me not the long
vowels of my
Poems, the

caesura of love in

the Winter in Wisconsin.

Summer's in the
Lake.  There's fire in
my old dreams

And you.


Caroline Shank
4.26.2024

Thoughts on a Sunny Morning


It's a sad **** day when
Memories fail and
leave without
a tool
for poetry.

Ric holds
the gate
but not the

key

Soulless longing for
the accidental brush
of synchronicity.
The breath of destiny.

Drunk on yesterday,
Without the touch
of indifference

memories under
consciousness
flay

me.

Bleeding,
the
pressure of
old promises

Unwright

me

Caroline Shank
5.15.2024

I'm pretty easy to find.
All you have to do is
think of me.  I sigh
in your soul but you
can't feel me anymore.

I have started to move
now. Can you tell? I am
limber again after all the
years you have me buried
in your memory.

I come to you on a breeze.
I wake you up this
anniversary of our melody

and I sing about the air that
we breathed.  The last time
that we shared a joint

adventure

Caroline Shank

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

You’ve spilled like sun on my
shoulders, like light through
a glass. Your face is in front
of me as I write.

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

The poems are fertile
vines growing out
through open windows.

You know me better
than I know
how to be.

Caroline Shank

She could not abide the
accolades.  Every syllable
scratch and poked through
her.  Layer after layer the
thorns of praise tore her

until one day she stowed
stones in her pockets.
She walked along the
side of the water, not
thinking now, not even
the recitation of reasons.

Thousands of words
behind her and she
did not think they
mattered.  She walked
along the bank and
gathered pieces of
granite.  She hoarded
these like treasures

until she had enough.
The first step was
cold but unnoticed.

She walked into her
death like a nun who
no longer feared the
confessional.

Her hair floated around her
like seaweed, fingers
like fish.  She stopped
the flowers of language

until there were no
more petals.  She died
consumed by a
brownness welcomed
after the lighthouse
darkened.

Mrs Dalloway
never gladly held
another day.


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

I confess all my Sins.
But I cannot Atone to you in
your far away and never.

I lost you to Wind and Grace.
You were Silence when I
was Loud.   Always Polite
when I was Rude. No not
that only but say my Excursions
into Life were Alone.  You didn't
Ask.  I was not Infected with the
Desire to Tell.

Now you are Dead and i am
asked to Atone.  That I
Loved was the Death of my
Soul.  You did that.

I Cry now when you are
Gone.  I was not Kind as you
lay unfolded.  I loved you
in uncounted ways.  We
Touched the Edges of your
Dementia alone in the same
room.  

I Write this with your Kindness
to me like some Damoclean
Event about to Unfold.

Tomorrow will be the Currency
of my Poor attempts to

Apologize.

Death has worn me out.

I Write because i cannot
Speak.  Cry because i
cannot Forgive.  Life has
broken open the Capsule
of Reality.  

I am Fettered
and

Alone.

Caroline Shank

The sky is blue, the water green,
the sand is white and the Seagulls squawk.

The squish between my toes is friendly.
Try as hard as I can I find
no joy.  

The children dash about and
mother's call.  The red
bathing suit of the toddler
shines and is beautiful.

The lovers on the blanket
kiss, oblivious to my gaze.

The sun is strong, the breeze
is glorious.  The lifeguard
watches the bathers from
a ladder high off the ground.

I walk, alone, along the shore
holding no one's hand.

The salt air is filled with the
smells of Sunday.

You are off to the wars and
I am walking to Tipperary.

Caroline Shank
10.18.19

I can't write when I'm coughing.
The spill of sound from my soured
throat, distinct  as brittle glass
when squeezed, the waiting
martini loosed into the air

Woof of bark and warp
of ice into the long inhale
of winter.

I write while you sleep, the
Soft cotton on my breast,
breath of forgetting denied.

The morning rasp awakens.
Another wasted day filled
With the.
    Loud call of
cough and bark.



Caroline Shank
June 4, 2024

Did you see the one about the
serial killer?  Or the making of
Die Hard?

Laying back in my chair the TV
drones on.  The world as I
know it spins out of control.

It's going to be a landscape
of empty restaurants and
breadlines.  Of bad hair
and toilet paper.

Don't feel safe in the
tribulation.  A white horse
is about to wait at your
locked gate.
.

Caroline Shank

(Nothing happens unless first we dream.
Carl Sandburg)


Wet leaves leave traces
on the stony path to
Dreamland.  I Have
slippery intentions.

Tomorrow will decay these
thoughts.  Mind's tricks
pretend that the wet
leaves slip

up.

The dream ends.

Nothing
happens.


Caroline Shank
10.11.2022

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

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

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

What is happening to me is
Irrefutable loss. The end of
my days, the vestiges of
an unpaved life.

Without you I sank into the
mire.  The mundane years
show in a thick neck.  My
shoes are unpatched and
where the buckles were

are scars from the uncaring.

My neck reaches now to find
the last vestiges of my over
weight.

The lane I have walked on
has no line but a footfall
indentation of a size 8
shorn shoe.

No to the voices calling
you.  I wrap my scarf
around the memory,
young and death defying
important and the now
dreaded
journey for naught.

Caroline Shank
1.15 2023

REC

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.

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

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