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Thanks for birthing me!
   If not for you I'd be an ink spot.
   The only thing I ask is you
   reduce me to my essence.

   Rid me of ******* verbiage
   and self absorbing preening.
   We know you've suffered in
   ways known only to you.

   Show my unspoken words;
   The ugly truths of shame
   that will send me to hell.
   Expose the heinous me.
Every time I take a step forward,
Every time I wanna hold someone's offering hand,
My dear mind, why do you keep telling me that they are gonna shove it off,
I'm not getting tricked, Am I?
And As if I need someone to hold me. huh?
Maybe, my soul answers, which I can't escape.
But Why?
 Jan 2023 SUDHANSHU KUMAR
irinia
maybe the earth knows or
the body knows first
what he or she dares
immersed in sunsets
and adverbs
lions make themselves
prey in blue windows
outside the fle/ash  of words
the verbs of the world
inside a shepherd whistles
a love song
to the sweetness of grass
see exhibitions

quiet slow and uneventful

& lasting impressions

a simple drawing out

no fuss

and sometimes late in the evening

think of it

leave the house

and return to the simple line drawing
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
There we were
sitting on a chair
because we only had one,
later on
when we got richer
we bought a picture
to put on the wall,

as I said to her,
it'll give us something
to talk about.
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
A polka dotted
Volkswagen

an impression
done in smudges

swipes

swaths

and such as life
they say

a journey
with little or no points of reference

or context

but that's what makes it
poetry

so they say
Cracked and gray
with green blight on the spokes

it leans against a tree
the one where I carved you and me
into the bark

it's purpose

plain and simple

to remind us that once
we were something

for such a short
brief while
A word painting with a straightforward message.
The slit between the roof and the abandoned house gets me—the moon drowns in his own mystical clouds, wavering and so full of light.

I squint my eyes as the moon hides his presence from me. Almost knowing I had captured it with my own eyes and the grey clouds scattered like waves, consuming my breath and taking it away.

He knows it still haunts me from time to time and he gave his best to give me an embrace—even when my very own existence is running cold and dry and my breath thickens with the mist of unwavering thoughts coming from the night and the stars twinkle at the sight of people looking at them—like a mirrorball entertaining strangers from the club and they shine in their spot. Even when I close my eyes, the moon peaks in its stillness. All the poets used him as their muse, radiating this mellow one could think of when the sun sleeps in her slumber. The poets had perfectly described him in thousands of words and painted him over the mural where I can see him directly and the strangeness of him calms the raging waters in me.

Even when peace is quite chaotic and chaos is peaceful, a trap between the slit on the roof and the abandoned house, squinting my eyes as the moon hides his presence from me. And she haunts me as the sun begins to show herself in ways I am blinded by her light.

In some ways, she shines even when it is night.
In a way, she looks over the moon when he wakes up from his slumber.
In a way, the stars and clouds enveloped her with the warmness of their breath.
In some ways, I couldn’t look at her for too long.
In some ways, I am silenced by her beauty.
Wrote this around October and as I’m scrolling through my notes, I found this. Glad I still have this poem.
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