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I see myself in light and shadow.
I wipe away “always and never” like spilled water,
when the paradox bothers me.

I dissolved my soft boundaries,
in the name of unreal faith.
So many places, so many faces,
yet another beginning.
I keep rolling a big stone beside others.
The home I dreamt of now exists in my world.

I have found this time, this place
describing what cannot be translated:
a room for uncertainty,
farewells and returns.

I like to stand in the last row,
to see tired bodies.
I whisper good words,
to make the world a little better.
My sovereignty is a willingness
to be an echo,
the symbol, the myth,
or a meaningless element
in the chain of woven stories.

I love metaphors.
I find myself in a forest of ellipses,
that bring unbearable truths.

Tensions, contradictions,
awareness that everything that lights
brings unseen weight.

I am a part of stories,
to vanish into oblivion—
the done past.

The Earth still breathes with me,
or without me,
among blooming linden trees.
So, I want to stay,
to open my eyes,
and be with what remains.
To my Father
NM!
No more performing —
No more presenting —
No more people-pleasing,
And seeking attention.
Can I do that? With no treason?
Is there a people-pleasing anonymous?
PPA?!
Dismissed from long ago,
When? I don't really know.
Wallowing can now wait
It’s time to live, not hate!
Wounded,
But loved —
Coveted;
Beloved.
From the archives
Tomorrow creeps it's been
said.
I have nothing to offer as balm.

The hours tritely signal the new
est

hollow minutes.  The breeze
through my shabby thoughts
finds no place
to rest

Will there be a

another song?

Someone will sing it

so wrongly yet familiarly
time you carved

into me?⁰

Just past noon on a summer day
today  is fighting to let me go

I am trapped in a

vortex from
which I will never be let go.

I beg to be forgotten
by

you

the prying and the Poetry
I writ

before pity turned our

journey to

Salt..


Caroline Shank
July 1, 2025
I shall go down to the dump today
to pick up a random thought
and translate it into
a first language
It is more than fine to say No.
Nothing behind that necessarily
You will find your way hopefully sooner or later
Make it an adventure no matter what that might be
No excuses just go for it
Do it your way
Enjoy yourself one step or leap at a time
prayer of hope, for young and old, who suffer from the slings and arrows sadness and the loss of love; I offer up this prayer of hope and offer you my hand around your shoulders until you no longer require it

more than once,
for lengthy periods,
by events, other people,
my self was eradicated
and limping from day
to night, and J faced
absolutes, choices choking,
alternating alternatives that
offered zero, or even less
than zero, and the inkwell
wasn't refillable, and I could
point to nothing yet encouraging a mystifying purposed existence

then came a woman

who asked nor proffered
conditionals
pre, prior post or otherwise
and
offered up the miraculous
drink, human kindly notice,
snd it
drained the bitters,
began fluid replacement,
and slow resuscitation

and then
poems rebirthed me,
 liberated the angry sacred
gory sadness words devoid of glory,
with a reworded score, and
the eyes could write without
a patina filter of jaundiced hatred,
and whispered private internally
many times a beloving
hallelujah

and when ever the remembrance of
the near misses are crackly occasionally appearing, the surge dissipates intact quick
into a netherworld for suppressing
and bid "away with you," and a
thin lipped smile part sneer
for having survived
even
prospered when
                    then came a woman

and the self, the my self,
returned
after an absence of destructed
decades...deadening decades

and I smile when
the grandchildren tell me
knock knock jokes
and gently knock me on the head,
to make sure I'm alert,
then came woman
who had already~all ready
knocked me on the
heart
lipstadt  reflections of self
Light on the water
the clouds shape
sheening the swells with pearl
before the wave.

How used are my eyes
to the immediate, to the
limits of a bent neck.

The salt and light conspire
to force the challenge.

And I sit here, clutching
them to me, for too often
I have fallen away like
the foam,
retreating, without
in my turn rushing forward
to prove the immovable.

A young man’s stand
for I am yet too young
for wisdom to mean
passivity.

I will force the challenge.
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