While I still breathe, I write to save my life
in compact form; mistakes, the lessons learned,
triumphant days and nights of needless strife
brought on by willful dreams and bridges burned.
One day too soon, a final page will turn,
the book will close. My fine and fragile chain
to life will break.  A loneliness unearned
will mark your passing days in ink of pain.  
Then if you wish to hear my voice again
one silent morning when you wake alone,
I leave you songs and poems.  Each refrain
will resurrect the soul you've always known.
So when my fated moment shall arrive,
my words are here; come read me back alive.

The air is cotton-tangle thick and
thoughts are heavy.

I unpick a hem of memory -

The quiet pip-pip of a broken stitch
gives way to raw.

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

“There is no exquisite beauty… without some strangeness in the proportion.” -Edgar Allan Poe

We're all sick animals, tied together
on this clouded ball. Wet snow erupts
on a Sunday night, a gray flake navy,
mobiles above a black crib -

snow loosens into shaking sleet.
There is no one here - not even me.
The night is pink and orange,
under an anesthetic dome.

Don't we deserve more, better?
The streets are filled with taillights,
red rivers of light, salted, frothing,
as the freezing drips spray the pane.

Maybe we don't. Look out there,
at the wet world. We're just seeds
that open a root to the flood, swept
away into the teeth of the past.

Blind, inconstant love:
you rose up and shattered
on me like the burst salt wave
over the night promontory.
I was so unprepared...

And then you receded,
back into the sea, impossible
to differentiate from the rest,
the only traces of you
what remained on me.

He picks at the fray of her gaze
‘til she frowns. Sews shut her mouth

with too many questions.

We grow roots.

Sun shines hot through a tall window, and
she curls to me like vine.

We wind together, sway ‘til her small hands
whisper at the nape of my neck -

Finished, done.

I'm busy busy busy
I'm late I'm late I'm late
I've got to meet a rabbit
I've got to meet my fate

For if you trip and stumble
And take a long long fall
You might take some comfort
In the writing on the wall

It says the cakes a lie!
The roses never were red!
Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
The last words that they said

There's no time for fantasy
The world's out of hand
Visit Alice another time
Curse that wonderland

We're living in the matrix
Dot dash, dot dot dot dash
We just have to accept it
As we wait for it to crash

One foot in and one foot out
Abstractify, you lazy lout
Yes, I'm sure reality's an illusion
But I can't afford to live in confusion

Your bird-spine curves to the roof of my mouth, confetti-skull sticks to the back of my teeth. Your wet heart beats on my tongue, small lungs press in for sleep.

In silence, I carry you. In words, I carry you. I hear you breathe. Feel your dreams furl and unfurl, fern-like to term - and I miss you. I miss you. I miss you.

In pieces, I carry you. In love, I carry you. I feel shame. Not for letting you go - for letting it in. I know what happens to children like you, with fathers like him.

There's no more romance
in this February world,
but we can still miss each other
and say little love yous.
Night will still drop on us,
it will still flake away from us,
& I will still curse the distance
from my low, black chair.
I may only be your halfway darling,
but I'll gift you lakes of kisses
until the screen goes dark
& the evening covers my name.
The moon is so still,
like a removed lung.