I want you to know things

I never had the strength

to tell you.  I am reminded of 

Zues, of the wisdom of 

Socrates, the guts of 

Anthony.


No, I have the soul of 

a chorister.  Back and forth,

strophe and antistrophe.

I wear the mask made

by decisions and revisions

that a minute

would reverse.


I repeat  to

myself the lines from

Eliot.  They give me 

fortitude to say the

unsayable.  You are

more wonderful than

a day at the warm,

sunred beach.


You tell me how you feel

and I dare to disbelieve

you.  I am upended

by the impossibility.

My throat is a naked 

slash.  My mind is

a tan tunnel.

I implode


at the possibility that

you are truly speaking.

That you measure me

by your kindness.


I will go first before

you realize that I am

the way the world ends.


I am a whimper in the room.

To you belongs my

hollow flesh.


I tear myself in half.

I begin the way up.

Charon sends me

to you whom the 

gods have released.



Caroline Shank

Never again.  Your voice like
thistles scrapes. It's tracks
unsteady.

Blood drains from the holes
dug by serrated edges.You
command the death of
Venus.  My throat expels
the vowels of the tirade
you unleashed.

To see, unleashed, the
ferocious silliness of
your torn words addressed
to the gods who long
before laughed at your

excavation of old bones
and misunderstandings.

Never again will you pillory
me, my torn lashings
       stung
in deep regret

for the years of meaning
now drawn closed like
curtains over a corpse.

One word bled from your
mouth, lifted me to my
knees.

Goodbye.

I laughed.

Never again.



Caroline Shank
2.28.2023

It's New Year again

Winter brings another flavor

to my lonely heart.


Caroline Shank

12.31.19

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

No matter what I will celebrate
the deterioration of my body.
I will forget the sacks of my neck.
The scarfs flesh burdens will
       not remind me that I have
six minutes to escape and that
I will fail.

No matter what you see look
closer.  I am only a ticking
clock away from myself
you knew then. I look to the
        calendar, truths that
my mother knew, the due
date is ordained.

I don't delay the search for
company, I am sitting on the
edge of my genetic map, Henry,
waiting for my skin to turn
tan, as it always did, every
summer. No matter what.

I am not gentle.  I am a kick
away from screaming. The
lies of every soap manufacturer
are written in my old face.
And I don't like it.
         I want to be loved
again, to rise in the warm
morning singing.

To be alone at the cracked end
of the sidewalk is to be tempted
over again as I was at twenty
seven. The last real estate is
sold to the younger woman.
          The light skin of my
youth is pasted on his memory.
I would no longer
           be of interest to him.

The tomorrows of then have
passed and I am in the window.
The mirror is not true, it sees
me old and alone as the last
            line of the play.

No matter what I want to
remember the suntan on my
ripe body
but gone. No matter what
I cry to be remembered
in a life of gone by

dreams.


Caroline Shank
1.29.2023

Noon
Turns
and night
Is the
Bridge.

You step. Forward.

I cannot sommelier
The moment
Of drunken sorrow.

We made love under
Lies and the trumpets
Were off key.

The question never
asked was when
did you know?

The tattered fragile
rain of love runs
out the window.

Where was i when
time leaked out?

A cold sidewalk.
A faded flower.

The remains of love
is an urn.  
Smashsd sideways.
Rolls away toward the
Avenue A terminal.

The sounds under the
Bus were all the
Music  we ever

Sang.


Caroline Shank
7. 11. 2022

It's the wartorn pedestrian
whose  tears fall on the
heart's side streets.

Veins of regret that curl
the same pain.  It's not
the sorrow that hurts, it's
the gullibility of time's
unlearn-ed lessons.

The old suffer
most.  The pandemic
of hope again in
the release of
lyrics left long ago.

The letdown lisps
it's own goodbye, prefigured
in the drawl of soft sighs.

Goodbye is muted
and falls to the floor.

It sinks to the power
of your poetry.



Caroline Shank

You can't reverse the dying
of a leaf. Even if it is not fully
in the ripeness of its demise.

The yellow stripe of incipient
decay that rides the center
of the foliage is only the
beginning.  The curled
edges follow and if there
is a flower it will float down
very shortly.

Love like death takes
its time with all things.  
Toes and fingers curl in a semblance of sadness.  
The veins break
like old thread.  

Both leave in their own season,
in short gasps.  The last thing
to go is the stem. The *******
resonance of a long goodbye.

It rejects the unction
of extreme prayers
left on the
knuckle of loss.


Caroline Shank

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

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

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

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

****** reasons goes on.


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

“I have seen the eternal
footman snicker

and in short,
       I was afraid.”


Caroline Shank.        T.S.Eliot
10.22.2024.               Shakespeare

Now travels with me like skin.
It's always there.  I can't feel
yesterday.  But I remember.

I remember lp records and
playrooms for the kids.  Me.
I remember Mrs Cleaver
and Donna Reed.
Father knew best.

Make out parties.  Devil
or Angel.  Slow dancing.
Egg creams and cigarettes
at thirteen were a quarter
a pack.

Football. First in ten do it
again.  Cheers and jeers.

The lake behind the school
where we met to go to
the drag races.

Dancing at First **** on
Saturday nights.  The Dog,
The Bird, of course the
Twist.  

Bobby socks,poodle skirts
and crinoline,
boys in in pink and gray.  
Fads.

Getting my driver's license.
Big Boy and Bonnie Doon's
Driving the packed streets
in and out through the
circuit.  All kids all night.

Sleepovers and 35 cent
movies.

But I digress.  Now is
creaks and coughs.  Today
is viewed through rheumy
eyes.  

Now is like walking through
air dragging memory and
tomorrow's shopping lists.

That really is All There Is,
My Friend, said Mae
West I think.  If I can
remember.

Caroline Shank

Mother did you know I would
grow old alone?

That the crevices on my
face fell into the street

with used syllables?

Tomorrow you said
No
To my first boyfriend.

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

breast
was not my fault.

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

Old age
When you
tried to

sell me


Caroline Shank
12.24.2024

I don't have for you, a leaf or
a stone or an unfound door,
no not even
the sound of the gate's
clicking.

Angel of my once beginning
broken,
home, blown down
around my wrinkled feet.

You are not allowed.
The abandonment of a love
affair under your careful
vocabulary, can only but strip
the remaining skin shined
mind.

Where else should I go to,
gently or torn away?  To
dream of better days? To
round the corner empty
after all.

The same birds in blue plumage
sing a little tilted now.  Though the
pattern is the same.

You don't see the war between
myself and you. You see
patterns where I walk in the
garden.  I see the soft brown
of yesterday curl adoringly
once around the house
and fall asleep.

I am out placed. The Angel
in the square told of my
forsaken, washed and combed
recumbent  wisdom turn
to ashes on the winter
Manhattan sidewalk.
.
Will I see you in
September?



Caroline Shank
1.25.22

(Do you remember Columbine?  I do.
From Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris
straight through to Anthony Ferrill
of yesterday's Milwaukee nightmare,
the deaths like a drumbeat go on,)

Shooters like thistles crawling
in their dementia to our cities
leave trails as the unexplainable
cancer claws to vine into our
conscience.  We listen to the

words as waves of newspeak
write the epitaph of our known
society.

Deeds as gunshots slap the
faces of we who can no
longer sleep. The panacea of
Peace In Our Time has rotted
limbs.

I live in the branches,
the false years of  the 50's.  
The Days of Our Lives
are indeed shot with a

bang

not

a whimper



Caroline Shank
2.27.20

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

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

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

Now what? You might well

ask. After the halcyon days

in Florida? After the debt

of childbearing?  After the

years of budgets?  Now what?


Back in the cold, the kids

grown, the still unsettled

finances?  I'm old and faded.


What happens to this

country song that is 

my life?  I am going to 

dance.  Still hold out my 

card to you.


The dance we have left

is slower, but the music

still travels up my spine.

Yes that's what.  I 

save the last dance

for you. 


It's just the way I roll.


Caroline Shank

1.2.20

Number 1.

February 24, 2023

I am using this as an attempt to navigate the last years of my life.

Number 1. February 24, 2023

I have faintly seen and
     suffered my
brain
to
blow into the next
life.  

(Oh, Yes I believe
            In Karma)

There are enough grains of
nosand now in charge of the
serious songs of our lives.

I digress

Or did I forget what I was
rattling on about.

I forget the how-to's.  I'm
on the road to Damascus.
My epiphanies are bright
shots for only a second.

I've lost direction.  The
compass of my life
tilts.

There are roads to travel
           Yet,
People to see, loves
to find.
  

But to mix thinking

this Busy
            badly
Mable.

Not until Now.


Caroline Shank
2.24.2023

October's nights
lay on us
like wet skin.
Leaves everywhere.
Gold soaked medallions
in the early dark.

We walk the city's
sidewalks.
Shadows hold
daylight under drains,
to be released into
tomorrow.

Dusk now rinses down
foggy wells.  Deep
grays baton the
process.  God's promise
released in a
quotidian embrace.

We go on.
Each to another.
The whiteflash of the
walklight sanctions
movement.

We cross the street,
bridge the evening,
listen to the cafe
music as we pass.
Rainwet faces.
Smiles that dim at
the ends of days.
We kiss.

October's evening
shuffles into night.

O Domine!

Caroline Shank

I have seen the marble arch
and was not afraid.  The
comeliness of it's curved
surface paused me. Your
song whispered of birds

felting by, of fallen kings and
reasons.

I have time on my hands to
listen. Hallelujah.  For my
steadfastness in love has left
me

bereft.

I swore to all the kings in the
Bible. I offered my skinned
knees, for solace that I was heard.

Hallelujah

There are cracks in my head,
my ankles are shackled.  No
music but a laugh echoed
side to side.  

I will go down to the river to
find God.  Your repertoire
is complete.

Why a monk Leonard? The
music of the ages was written
without your melody and
I sank beneath the river
like a stone.

But you're not there.  Your
music sustains me.  I walk
out, wet and cold.  

Hallelujah.

I am redeemed from the
nightmare.  I step on your
music as a soft petal.

I am for a moment, relished
and shriven.  

Hallelujah


Caroline Shank

The Story

Hey Wall.
Are you there
to hold me up when
old age conquers tomorrow?

Between my layers,
are my flaws.

Not the Greek Islands
again, Wall.
Not where my last glass of
Summer wine
was drunk?

The tears slide
on my face.

The wine is finished
and in

your dusty corners
gathers moonlight.

I toast to you
Wall.  

Nothing ordinary
ever was
so still.


Caroline Shank
8.7.2022


The 1970's movie
Shirley Valentine

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

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

I miss the real photographs.
The leaves of pictures I turn
over. The names and dates.
The high school graduation
memories.

My babies growing up when
film was their reflection of
summer and school. The
birthday parties slightly
blurred, a little out of focus.

The didital cameras next
with their zingy zoom.  A
little clearer now blurred
by tears.  

I hold these images to be
self-evident memories. I
hold them to my face to
smell the suntan lotion
and the scents of pine and
snow.  The birthday candles.

I choke on school pictures.
New haircuts each year. The
leather of first days.

The photograph albums are
stored for space.  I miss the
luxury of turning leaves. The oh wows of yesterday's Kodak
captured babies little butts.

My phone has a thousand
pictures In the palm of my
hand

I never look at but can
share in email in a
solipsistic minute and
click to the end.

Caroline Shank

My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,
dressed in the beaches of  
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.

Caroline Shank

My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,
dressed in the beaches of my
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.

Old Roses and Summers


My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,oses
dressed in the beaches of my
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.


102592

I slow danced in the living room to the
memories that were even in the 60’s,
old.  

I would stack the spindle with several picks
from my library of “crooners”  Andy, Jerry,
Jack, so many memories.  Listening to the
music of the 50’s would sop my mind soggy..
Johnny Cash walked the line all over me.

I drank the music
of my youth like warm milk.  Time was
I danced to the sounds of American
Bandstand, everyday after school.

The race was on to get home to turn
on the television and watch as ****
Clark and Justine or one of the
Regulars would rate the music that
had just come on the airwaves.

“It's got a good beat and you can
dance to it.”

33 ⅓ records, 45 rpm’s would stack
up on our playroom record player.

My Dad put headphones on my
radio in an attempt to find peace
from the horrible, to my parents,
sounds of the likes of Elvis.

It was the 1950’s and all of
it was so new.  The era of the
Teenager was born.

We had our own money from
lawns and babysitting and could
buy the song and songbooks,
The clothes and cigarettes we
consumed like soda shop
malts and and nickel cokes.

You may not know of these things
you who are the children of the
80’s but we started it all.  

We strolled and twisted before
our freaked out parents.

Now I can still do the dances
But it’s more like a crooked
back and shuffled foot.

But I remember you,
Makeout parties and
Sloe gin in my coke.

I remember being kissed in the
backseat of your car.
so drunk with beer and music.

I remember the long play albums
That are just now coming back
into the stores.  Oh! How I wish
I had my Bob Dylan “Freewheelin’”
album.

I gave them all away when cd’s
took  the sound of the
needle as it ripped across the
grooves of my youth.

It was the best of times.

The worst of times
came later..
.

Caroline Shank
2.17.20

Once I told you not to explicate my life
like this.   Don't tear me apart as when
the grass grows too high.  You mow me
and I am cut to my bleeding bones.

I receive your blades into my sanctuary
of flesh.  A little more of me to spill out
and I run.  There is a bottle of gin
waiting.  I forgot it very well when
you left me.

I don't want to be your friend.  I don't
want to wash in the same cracked sink
as you do.  Wear me on your last

trouser pocket, the blue one from
the New York tailor we could not
afford.  The abortion remains
too fragile to be spoken of.

The crackling of the shutting
door is all I can hear.    


Caroline Shank
January 12, 2015

I have rebuilt so many times. Every
love is a dispair.  I have room for
none but the lonely, the broken
pedestrians of time's sidewalks.

How old I am is irrelevant.  I
am tuned to the rhyming night.
I listen to the frogs mating in the
swamp, the crickets and, in
season, the cicadas who do not
love but for a breath.  

My house is now a ramshackle
of old memories, songs that
burn my fragile skin, and the
sloe gin of my youth.

You retain me, and in the end,
the currency of my life
is writ of you.

I have rebuilt so many times,
love's fires ring the sidewalk
around my memory .
I write of the past that
is in runes.  My thoughts enact
in me that youth that was always
yours to have and to hold.

We are all phantoms of our pasts.
We are rubbed with it. For you
my skin sings of the tight tan
you knew

once upon a time.

Caroline Shank

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

Ilse told of many things:
The noises of the casbah,
ululations from the musky
throats of the wasted women.
Tent smells from a hundred
hookahs.
She had her destiny all wrong.  
It's the same old story.

Cold drinks, a hot town,
thwarted love.  
A kiss is still a kiss.

Bombs mix with the
night sounds.

Louie didn't call off the search.
The suspects lined up

The enemy blurred.

Ilse left.  
Her stillness is forever.
The gin is always cold,
the fedora is slanted
and for the moment
of the last Act:

A kiss goodbye.

Casablanca is in the night's
glare. I hold my glass.

I will always toast to love. .
ft
Goodbye is never
forever.

A kiss is still a kiss.
    
       As time goes by.


Caroline Shank

Our Song


Narcissist that I am the
last quarter of my life is

filled
with you.

The dark
is my friend.

Old age
recapitulates
loneliness.
Life
is
slow dance .

I digress

Wrinkles and craters
belong to the
years of
oil and cigarettes.

I never knew you were
on the way.

Now time's ******* o
surfaces

The seaglass fractures
light
in the Son

There is a destiny
unclasped in the

Light.

You lead  me
in this

our

Song


Caroline Shank
9.17.2024


For Jack
9.17.2024
Song.

Pandemic


Time folds into itself like a
hand wraps around its own
fingers.   Minutes go into
seconds, the reverse of
times own practicality.

I waver between the worlds
of sleep and starking
wakefulness.  I move
during the disconnections
of place and action.

I will arrive, as Eliot said,
at a place of beginning.
Not to recognize my
neighbor is a conclusion
forgone as the inversion
of time depletes me.

This is sacred time
ordained by nature.
I thrive or succumb
and in the end I will
be very different.

I morph as the virus
spreads nature.
That time will end for
me is its only goal.

The pandemic is
unbleached.  I
sacrifice myself
to the gods of
unknowing.

Caroline Shank


Prompt:. Covid-19

Panic spins.
I am a dervish without
a prayer.

Air pounds in my chest.
Sound is a slap.  
Thought is scrambled.

Breathless is a **** in my
stomach.  Flight is the
option.  Feathers fly.

The air is sand, filled,
unbreathable.
A storm screaming.

A rope
chokes me
into another
space from which
I fall disgraced.
.
Recovery is a movement
of clarity I receive from
your

lips on my

hands.

Caroline Shank

I am bent in half, sitting in my
chair.  My arms are covered with
crawling things.  My face itches.
My folded feet are cramped.

My stomach is collapsing and
my lungs gasp for air. I walk
upright so you won't hear
the breaths that tear ever so
quietly from the deep place
where terror thrums the
center of me.

I get up everyday
to the steel strings of my
unconscious.  My head
listens for something
I cannot hear.

Panic, like a guitar,
strums in my gut.  
It plays me and
I shake.

I pick this up, my
shattered life,
and I go on…

Dear Jesus, I go on…


Caroline Shank

Tomorrow creeps, no wait the
Bard already used that line.
Let me say that tomorrow slings
it's way into me. It's like an
arrow from the Promised Land.
Tomorrow whips across me. I
wipe the sweat of it with
a damp hand.

Panic wets me like rain.  It
waits for tomorrow which,
collides with today and my
fists ball in terror.  Sleep
never soothes this breast,
it barely makes it in the front
door.

I breathe deeply, or try to.
What will help is greatly
misunderstood.  A prescription
for today to stop tomorrow.
Which will slam me to the
floor anyway.

I shake myself awake.  

It is always today.
I stumble on.

Caroline Shank

Tomorrow creeps, no wait the
Bard already used that line.
Let me say that tomorrow slings
it's way into me. It's like an
arrow from the Promised Land.
Tomorrow whips across me. I
wipe the sweat of it with
a damp hand.

Panic wets me like rain.  It
waits for tomorrow which,
collides with today and my
fists ball in terror.  Sleep
never soothes this breast,
it barely makes it in the front
door.

I breathe deeply, or try to.
What will help is greatly
misunderstood.  A prescription
for today to stop tomorrow.
Which will slam me to the
floor anyway.

I shake myself awake.  

It is always today.
I stumble on.

Caroline Shank
10.27.19

Time eclipsed.
The hours
dose the day.
I am ungood at social
graces.

For what are we to do?
Knowing this?

Apologies skip stones
across thought. I drown
in regret. I am older
not better.

I chase all the live-long
day, calm the tired
minutes
Frown the ridiculous
heart.

But,

I bloom for you.

Caroline Shank

Patterns

The first bell tolls
White noise in the
green dawn.

Are you awake? The daylight
throws up on the rug images
of time refracted.  The
shape of bodies
satisfying a long cry.

Peace slips under the
door, spreads like an oil
stain,  

Time becomes the Apple
Tree.  The future is
truncated.  You walked

away

and I, I lay across the
weather and bury my

head.

Your poem covers me

Like

     a

       shroud.


Caroline Shank
6.18.2014

Can I ride on the
colors of your conversation
to the door of tomorrow?

Can I glide slowly away
from the syllables of your
wisdom and philosophy?

Can I go now? leaving you
my soul on your plate?

Caroline Shank

Do you remember the rain?
You were soaked and the
only thing you heard was
my voice crying in the
wildness of that starless
night.

Later you were so calm.  
I was in a void,
medicated to save
my life.  We saw
each other across
the cigarettes of
scarred conversation.

Do you remember
your hands on my face?

Personne ne se souvient

Is it too much, this drought
of time? These long misted
years clutch the past
like a pout of pain.



Caroline Shank

She tripped over you in a
final wave of surrender.

You said
   meet me where

The white cloth waves

in the air,
today's laundry.

Time's stretch limp

       unworn

clock’s hands.

Future stopped in the
U.nticking

The lie in bleach is

rinsed .

Love lives in the

shadow....

Tomorrow.will be
a
      concept

w.rapped in a

fantasy.


Caroline Shank
January 4, 2025

Philos:

The question of

existence has
recently fallen into
the house of

insignificance.

You have no tiles to hang,
no metaphysics to
conjugate.  I am substance.

Actuality.  The froth of
conversation opened
into the accident
of birth.

Remind me. of last
night.  The
bedsheets are stretched.
The conversation of
sheep, grazed on
the syllabed

Of significance.

We love in the green
Over lament of
Civility.

You are the brand.
I am the name
that shail

never be

Spoken

Caroline Shank

Forty five years gone by and still
the dust motes
fly from the philosophy you casually
taught her.   She paid attention and now
the syllables of Truth are battered
and worn. Your truth Ben.  You were
her  wheel steering corners of her mind
onto streets of pure reason.

She sat in jeans and tee shirt,
wrote vessels of your words
and swatted her feelings around
your black hair.  She could not
get enough of the meal and
wealth of your knowledge.

All that is left is you
crying into the phone that
you might lose her.
She who was so new
and young.

You left a message, cold
as ice.  You were gone
and she was never to
understand
your soggy
remarks.  The risk was
like magma, you never
came too close again.

You taught her truth
and slammed her
against the wall of
your ambivalence.


Caroline Shank

this:  a round frame, a seascape,
no one is there.  A Sting Ray
burroughs in wet sand. Three
gulls fly low over the shore.

The oils display the sky over
the scene in shades of
blue, yellow and pink.

The wind howls across
the dunes and the seabirds
screech.  Hear them.
in the wayback. See the
sun struggle with the oils
for just a little space on
the canvas

Colors hang on a cancer
patient's hospital wall.
He sees the spread of
colors through the
morphine.  It is for
him a movement in
between the waves
where the relentless
pain remains.


Caroline Shank

Plath wrote in a frenzy
just before she died.
She put all of the world's she held
so fragile into the sauce she

brewed in the London of her
despair. Her last thought was
Daddy.

Another ten years.

She was to complete her
poem's anniversary tome.

Plans fail.  

Au pair arrived
to no one answered the bell.

Plath, while her babies
napped,

waited.

She never knew.


Caroline Shank

I'm tired she said as she drifted
away to the sky of someone
else's blues. The sun of pure
understanding regaled her
until her sentence ended.
Oh God of desperate climes

rescue her before the clifs
of lost dreams win and
she dies in her dreams.

Caroline Shank
1.11.2023

With all your expert mouth and
tongue of many tribes you
call me to the dance floor
of your poetry.

I ear your accent, I tongue the
vowels of your incredible name

which blossoms every morning.
I bed to your brown eyes when
touch begs rest from incessant
breathing.

You are wheat chaff and I am
the wind which blows over the dead dreams of aged memory.

I understand now the satiety
of your love.  The desert of
uncertainty where the bridge
of your wanderings
crossed my month
of ecstasy.

You are the list I take to
mind's far places when
thoughts of you are

exhausted.


Caroline Shank

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