over the hill there's a shinning,
taking me from the darkness of the night.
Get yourself together
and see what you can find,
champagne toast
when I'm out of town,
golden daffodils hanging down.

Song

I am a metaphor for your loneliness.
Rigged out in sunshine and crowned
with blue skies I am your looked for
ticket to the cotillion.  You never
saw me before the imprimatur
of poetry.

I want to tell you the stories of
my life.  The daring deeds. The
mistakes that you hear in my
voice as a prelude to love.

I am the curlique of madness
that tempts you from the tropic
of yesterday. We were young
and wanton in blue jeans and
rolled hems.  I wore a shirt
emblazoned with your name.

You were perfection in gray
pants and pink shirts.  It was
the 50s and the air sang to us
carrying the music that we
knew as love songs.

We were young then unknown
to each other. Our old souls
were songs as yet unwritten.
Do I confuse you with my
symbols of forgotten requests?

Don't try on my song.   I never
wanted you to.  I am here in
the vocabulary of mistakes.
We cannot find the meaning
In the experience we each had.

Don't look for me to sign.
I am alone in my recent grief.
Don't wait for a sign that
has lost its true North.

You send me flowers which
do not arrive, candy which i
cannot eat.

Tomorrow dies,

as unwritten

song.


Caroline Shank
June 14, 2022

Napoleon stayed in Elba,
Pulling his bone apart;
Lenin was in Siberia,
So deep, none heard him ****.
Adolph passed his time in Landsburg,
Hardening his heart;
And Don's in Mar-a-Lago
Perfecting his Con art.
He's no Monte Cristo,
Righting perceived wrongs;
He'll fleece all his believers,
In stealth, like Viet Cong.

Imaginings

Midsummer.

My thoughts are
charged by
familiar memories.

It's been almost 50 years.
You and the heat
and the music.  A joint
between us and the
puppy running around.

I believed in you.
We danced in the
room above the bar.  
Mrs. Jones. The wick lit.
Tomorrow was a day
away.  

The blue smells of smoke.  
The beach.  The soft sand.
The striped umbrella.
Our music played for
a thousand nights.

Jeans and leather.
Together.

*

I prayed for hours.
In my chair, in the
sunlight.

"Love him my love" I repeated
for so long that July Sunday.

We belonged to a rift in time.
I excavated in the sand and found
you.

We were young then. The
sound of your bike is in
my sleep.

I never knew
it could hurt
so much.

You never waved

goodbye.




Caroline Shank
June 15, 2022

For death,all rights reserved.

~
Imagine a box
In shadow
Of utter regalia
Iris, dressed as a waterfall
She comes scattered

Imagine an eyelid illusionist
Praying for more palettes
Enters steelbook cathedrals
To a ministry of colour

For the street outside
Cannot offer as
Interesting a hue
As those fascinating within
The pigment of her imagination

It's compelling artistry
Like oil on canvas
A slight of hand
Smoke and mirrors

Her skilled fingers
Kohl mining
For soft medley
And the new liminality
Above the spectator's eye
~

I cannot get to you.  You
are like Jerusalem, a
misguided city. Your name is exposed
to the sun while i call to you in the
silence of the volcanic pre-dawn.
You have slides of affectation.
A pilgrim might mistake
you for the safety of a handhold
hammered in the sand.

Other
travelers knew the peril of
your affection.

You don't  reply. So cold the
monument, so silent
the wall of your response.

This is all I know
and so do you that the
messages of the world fall
like the snow on the ground
white with shadows. Mute
replicas of shared emotion.

Drink to us the sour
vinegar of the sponge.

Caroline Shank
June 16, 2022