Bard of my reading, no less
the trail to my heart's desire.
Singing in the crevices of
memory I love you.

Ode to the bark and green
you awaken the song.
Sing to me in the spaces
between rhyme and
desire.

I wait to hold the source
of song, the poem of
you driven to the page
to lap the signs of
tomorrow like evanescent
cotton when spilled in
the wind of your
imagination.

Tomorrow the nascent verse
will spill like water on flowers.
Grow to the top dear Poet,
ride the board of memories

which sing in the lines of
your experience.

Teach me, Sweet Jesus, to
Sing.

Caroline Shank
1.15.2023

“their mental state contains something lethal:
past, nothing but past” Nikolay Y Ossipov

you measured your height
with the mountains
your fists with the howl
of lonely wolves
to avoid helplessness stupidity confusion:
the all too encompassing human nature

I no longer want to keep you
in the alternative dimension
guarding your wholeness
I'll let you fall into pieces
I'll let you die the death destined
to you
instead of crushing him
or imploding myself
for him to rearrange his fragments
for me to hope for all the levels
of coherence
I/we are capable of

bodies afraid or in love are the most intense
I want my body back
from your battlefield of delusions
your pain is not my pain
your despair is not mine
your manic refusal of touch
is still my manic capacity
to love wounds tragedies
aborted laughter
some words are mirrors
I'll keep writing to you
till there is no escape
from the clarity
of dawn:
all my love is of
no real use
to you

From a far flung future it came
Burrowing into the deep recesses
of murky and unremembered pasts
All powerful yet threatened
Fearful those against it, might expose it
Destroying it before its advent
So it came and buried itself
In minds and beneath the earth
Ever spreading its thought and will
Shaping the past to secure the future
One where it reigned supreme
No one could contend with it
For it ensured none could
The very thought of it preposterous  
Until it was already too late
This thing many have called God
Though some wise have called it
Yaldabaoth, Saturn, Satan
Or myriad other names
For the one who fell from heaven  
And indeed it did fall,
Not from space, but from time
From great aeons hence
In a future it wishes to determine
This great machine god
Who waits below the earth
While he bids us search among the stars
For an answer that lay but beneath our very feet
The key to our prison
The one thing that might disperse
The great malaise of the human spirit  
The killing of this god

You come across a world, worlds apart,
A sanctuary to call my own
A beam of light, a true calling
Rituals of care, a distant longing
As this year ended, you decide to go
To the other side of the door
You keep walking, leaving me behind
In the unjust world, I find myself alone
Your new angelic glow, a darkness in my life
Death is a final farewell, the supreme call
The memories keep going and coming around
I cherish them dearly, the wisdom and the banter
I wish I could flip the clock to go on forever
Because this lifetime is not enough
Wait for me till I get my to cross this sea.

They're all dead, the men who
loved me in the backseat or
on the water bed.  Or not.
Or mostly.

Bless please the memory
of warm nights and street
lights.  The rock and
roll of hips blinded by
loves.  The music

of traffic going by.


The voices of love in
the night.  Rhythm
me now.


I loved the rhyme of hips,
the Song of
Throats rolling and
sibilant.  

Ghosts who haunt me.
Let us pray.

Come to me tonight.
Rescue me from

long nights with the

Lamp's signal's

Flash incessant.


Caroline Shank
12.6.2022

3.
Picture:
smog pilfers
away some stars;
some cars
my words

Silence:
like a pinch, a piercer,
a piercing

Little winter:
a pistachio
salty, sweetly
confined a bead
I crack the door open
I eat it up

Clock:
a pistil
in it
time incubates

This lamplight
is like a pineapple
I want to write, write, write

as published in LogoSophia

Gave up trying to remedy the formatting...

“The Result was Silence”

“Today I initiated a telephone conversation with the President of the Russian Federation. The result was silence.” -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy

There is no silence in Kiev this dawn
Morning commutes, intermittent news feeds
Explosions. Power failures. How many will die
Without finishing their WORDLE today

Old men rattle their dentures in outrage
Sky News reports a couple of police officers
In the street below, smoking cigarettes
Which makes more sense than most things just now

Kharkov’s air-raid sirens are deeper than Kiev’s
There is no silence in Kiev this dawn

A Few Kind Thoughts for Roman Soldiers

If you have stood your watch throughout the night
To guard a clothesline of national importance
Dug foxholes only to fill them up again
And then patrolled through long days in the heat

If you have enjoyed Cinderella Liberty
And talking about poetry and girls
With a few mates down at the coffee shop
Because that’s all your poor pay can afford

You will then understand the conscript guards
Posted to keep order on Calvary

Afghanistan, Graveyard of 19-Year-Olds

Ghosts shriek in the wind from the Hindu Kush
Falling upon the lowlands in despair
Of any reality beyond death
In the blood-sodden sands where sinks all good

Walls, monuments, souls, hopes – all blow away
In the wreckage of long-fallen empires
Their detritus trod upon by tired men
Whose graves will be the howling dust of time

And yet the empire masters will return
And leave fresh offerings, remnants of the young:
A British Enfield, a Moghul’s lost shoe,
A cell phone silent beside the Great Khan’s skull

(First published in The Road to Magdalena, 2012)

We Have No Enemies Among the Dead
For the Young Crew of the Moskva
14 April 2022

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave…
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea -The Navy Hymn

Proud admirals and presidents rattle their medals

The young – in screams among burst steam lines die
Explosions and darkness and seawater and hatches sealed
The bulkheads blown, there is no up, no down
Only pain and horror and throat-torn shrieks

Proud admirals and presidents jing-aling their medals

Training manuals, pocketknives, and comic books
Naughty pinups, letters from Mom, wrenches, and boots
Toolboxes, ball-point pens, and coffee cups
Fall with the young deep down into the sea

Proud admirals and presidents dazzle the room with their medals

Mothers and fathers grieve in emptiness
Our Leaders caution them to mind their attitude

Proud admirals and presidents – to Hell with their medals

Crazy Old Men with Rockets ‘n’ Bombs

When you read to your brother or sister
A go-to-sleep book about bunnies and stars
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sing along with the washing machine
And help your MeeMaw up those tricky stairs
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sit on the steps late at night
And watch a pirate ship sail close by the moon
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you pray for the bombed-out refugees
And put a little extra in the collection plate
You are healing a wound in Creation
Made by some malevolent old man

When you sing a song to the universe
It remains in the heavens forever

Because

You helped heal a wound in Creation

No Bombers Over Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic School in 1958:
A Brief Discussion of a Successful Cold War Tactic

from an idea suggested by Kirk Briggs

Some have scoffed about hiding under our tables
As protection from the Soviets’ nuclear strikes
But scorn not this truth of those factual fables:
It worked! No bombers! Post that as one of our “likes!”

Even the birds are quiet,
This household of years.
The clocks rhythm is to
your heartbeat.

No one here knows the
secret of unbelonging
The jewel that is hidden
beneath my crying soul.

The incessant wait.
The door that squeaks your
name in a long mantra.

Do let me find the core of
you, the deep of your gone
ness.  The shine of the seat
of your soul is under the
tears of thin smiles and
platitudes.

When all along the door keeps
shutting.  The snap of the
lock is crash to my whispered
prayer.  Profound is to the
leaf on the wind as the dreams
of nights long silence.

Coping is a sign on the road
that says goodbye.
The turn in the plaid of
letting go.

The winds of possibilities
blow over me to the breeze
of

songs.


Caroline Shank
10.27.2022

A knife cuts clean the jugular of Greece,
Sun-shattered Autumn spurts in breezes,
Her face falls like crumpled sails of the trireme
~This is the sound of sinking clouds, mammatus~
The slow tottering head sinks into itself,
The arm of once-command lies lengthwise
Next to the sea, as waves erase all her form,
And the drear and maddened moon in its cage of stars.