words transcend themselves in that land without atmosphere:
the atoms of seconds colliding in my tissues
they arrive  in a living body with her inaudible pulses
the cry of an owl defies the noise without depth: the city descends into the nocturnal abrogation of its chimera
a sudden ripple in the density of flesh, this moment reveals its round edges,  the full potential of a feeling to mould itself into an acustic tenderness
fugitive thoughts denounce their orbit in a vertical intensity
an asymmetric perspective captures my hands : time is poetry. poetry, the descent into a living anarchy, an elusive certainty.
love, a mirror reflecting myriad forms & the insistence of stones. stones, the endurance of time caught up in its excitement,
a pulse untranslatable into other than oneself.

In my sickly delirium...
What started as a simple enough cold
Morphed into an onset of the GRYPA...
Or as I like to call it: the gryps...
or grips... should you wish to know:
The Y is a hollowed out Iota: yes for
Short: aye aye, pirate eye...

It's this analogy I have in my burning
brain...
A supposed beggar woman asked me
Once for 20 squid and I gave it to her
Because a storm was coming
And she sounded so convincing
But today she asked without any predatorial
cunning for the same amount
And I just barked: NO! NIET! NEIN!
I've stopped feeling sorry for these opportunists
As I walked into the store to buy
My remedy of a little whiskey for
The cough and aches and later some coffee
She quickly shuffled from the bench
Because I'm just, simply done with
All this fakery this victimhood mentality:
It bothers me...

I've had three attempts on my life...
One when I was a bambino is hospital
A nurse tries to choke me
Another time when a mother
Of my best fried tried to push me into a well...
A third time when I experienced
A brain haemorrhage when
A Muslim buddy of mine thought
It would be exciting to give me bad
Drugs and I stupid enough thought it
Might be soft LSD....
Aged 21 and then over 10 years
Spent in madness trying to figure **** out

See, but i love myself when I'm sick
And striving: i see the relentlessness
Of the self-will as the all encompassing
Self-preservation projection
And I'm under no illusion
Of a free-will... bandage throughout
Whether a slave to the passions or
To the necessity of labour and all
That entails the need for money
And why I'm not a plumber
But I can pay a plumber to do
A plumber's work...

In this weakened state I see
The supposed admiration for predators
In the animal kingdom, the quasi-nobility
Of the tiger etc
But predators are not unique
In that they are beautiful
But merely opportunistic
What's truly admirable
Is the animal that's having to employ
All the vitality in its abstract:
In essence... supra-intuitively
With heightened senses...
Why am I sick because I don't eat
Well enough I drink or maybe
My coworker visited a hospital recently
He's ill etc I'm not shifting blame
I just live being myself disinhibited
When I'm frail that's when I truly
Come to the fore when I can bark
At a beggar woman and feel not
Disney-esque repercussions of being
Chastised and made impotent or turned
Into.a beast and cursed
So be it! Have me as your beast!
And I'll make sure that third party
Of your God is to be turned into a Chimera:
Tell me of the "person" that is the Holy Spirit:
The PERSON... not the allusion
To the Christian Church or the Islamic
Ummah...

As a Slav I'm tired of the ****** and ****
Jokes... tired of them...
It's almost insulting in a way only
Hebrews might joke...
I was next on the list for extermination
And if we weren't forced to build
Auschwitz then we had the prospect
Of thinking our tongue to be extinct:
Genuine concerns...
And now I'm sick of Europe
And Europeans
Unlike that scene from the Last Samurai
Where the colonel asks Tom Cruise:
Why do you hate your own people
So much...
Well... you have given me all the right
Reasons... this diabolical all inclusivity
Mantras of pseudo-communism...
I'd rather live among the barbaric Polynesians
And see the world through the lense
Of Gauguin...
I don't want to live among Europeans
Simply for their sadomasochism
And lack of once existent bravado
And chauvinistic expectations:
I don't want to live among them
And I'm certainly not going to live
Among the Russians or my supposed
Fellow countrymen in Poland
Even though I speak the tongue
I'd rather retain than tongue for personal
Reasons of...
Playing a joke on psychiatry with:
Bilingualism is a another version
Of schizophrenia... didn't you know?

In my weakness of nearing flu fatigue
I'm buckling, stomping: in a frenzy...
Unlike the predator
I'm in desperation mode and there is
Nothing unique or admirable
About a predators... it's the admiration
For the animal about to be eaten
And how it conjures a beyond freedom:
This ******* of freedom
Corruption by both
Happiness and misery
Sickness and health...
But health rarely gives permission
For the mind to overcome body
It's only in sickness they you start
Tripping like you might with some brushstrokes of illumination from
Despondency... bluish silver moon melancholy mischievous melancholy...

Still "reading" Jon Fosse...
It's not so much reading as meditating
And yesterday's interlude had Asle
and Asle poised together
With the DT's: delirium tantrums
The shakes
And i drink, I think:
But it never got that bad that I might
Shake... but it was like the Scandinavia
Adventure of the simpler poison
That the elaboration by American
Beatniks and the heresy
Of writing under the influence of
Plebyscilin or LSD or achuasca
and I don't mind being dyslexic
At the point....
I shouldn't be at work but I am
And I'm feverish and *****...
and probably a little crazy...
But that passage from Fosse about Asle
and Asle mistaking being on a boat
And all that snow
Made me want to drink a bottle
Of strong cider 8.2% in a public place
At a bus stop waiting with other people
Going to work and going to school
While I was like: 7am is 7pm for me:
I don't know why you think i might
Have a drinking problem...

These night shifts will end
I could do them in the winter months
But the day is creeping in
And my biology is rebelling against
The ******* econoc model: economic...
It would be plausible to do this site
On a 3 man rotation: 8 x 3 = 24 hours
But these 12h rotations are insane
And inhumane and I don't give
A flying ****'s fat *** what the argument
For capitalism, western values blah blah
Flux more blah blah
Christianity is better than Islam
Blah blah some more...
It's a 3 man job per shift...
Even the ******* communists knew
This when operating a metallurgical plant
They had 3 shifts... day... 6am start...
Night and graveyard!
**** your Mr Little Society Know It All

And as for the "supposed" lie...
And you will know the difference between
Good and Evil...
But I did dah that lie while throwing
The illusion of you being in a garden,
In paradise... seems like a small price
To pay compared to what God might
Have said: with you on a barren mountain
Side or in the desert
Or in the open sea
With not water to drink
Imagine the reality check
If God spoke to you, dearest man
And you didn't have the illusion of being
Spoken to in the garden of delights
But of course you had to **** up
That garden of being delighted
As the middle class Englishman
With a garden of your own Candide: tend to
No no... you had to **** that up too!
What wasn't reallya lie
Was the veil of the garden
Of paradise
When in fact you already knew
The nuance of knowledge with the conjunction
AND because good and evil
Implores relativism after all didn't
Your Savior say that it rains and shines
On both the good and evil man?
But where were you?
Stranded in a forest awaiting to labour
To uproot all those trees to
Make the land fertile and arable:
Arabs... spare me the desert harshness
Reality I'll ask the 'Skimo about
The reality of the freezing Tundra...
*****...

Even now it's so funny in England
The English might
But i won't be schooled in language
By some ******* Somali
About the term Aboriginal
Cf. Indigenous when
The ******* Somali knows
**** about ethnonyms and exonyms
Like how the English refer
To themselves as expatriates
When moving to America
And everyone else is immigrant...
Proper garden tools in this middle tier
Logic... class:
English society is so transparent
With the proper guise of license
And education and accent...
But Ghandi was right about the Europeans:
They set off glorifying the names
Jesus Christ for 2000 years
With the help of the H'americans
That'll leave us 1000 years worth
Of remembering Adolph ******...

Long before Einstein came
Along and gave man insight
Into revealing actual relativism
Of combining space with time
Man's inherent "flaw" was to settle
His ontological trajectory to fathom
Existence built upon "my"
Ethical Relativism...
Each time a deviation occurred
Something miraculous happened:
An original man was born...
One who could quench my desire
For harmony in the working progress
Paradox... the oomph and propeller...
Man was already sentenced to
Moral Relativism long before
E = MCsq came about...
The moral relativism of a Crusade
Or of Jihad... it's for the good: with some evil
Spices along the way....

Who needs geneological testing...
I know where I'm from:
Based upon what my mind is
Responsive to, unabashed and disinhibited...
I don't need to know what I already know
When I succumb to Scandinavia literature
And abhor Jane Austen's private
**** sensibilities
Since I already know she's playing
The victim cards with Pakistani ****
Gangs and fair enough...
But this is my proper chance to get laid
By flying ******* off to Kauai
And finding myself a Mayan bride...
Because the girls really didn't take
A fancy to me so
World's your oyster, matey...
Just wondering why Jimmy Saville died
before this phenomenal news came about...
Sorry? Who am I feeling sorry
For when Eastern Women ask
The question:and where were these girls'
Parents?!
What am I to seriously believe:
I can understand moral relativism...
What i don't understand is the media
"Moral" inflation / conflation...

And some notes:

The subconscious is not a petty domain

I miss the beautiful parts of you
Tender moments
And fresh air breaths
But you’ve got ugly parts, too
Angry, mean, and lots of mess
I can’t have one without the other
It’s just who you are
Uglier than beautiful
Unkind words bashing
In my skull
Pushing away against the pull
You can’t be what you are not
And I cannot be blind
I refuse to go through
Thickets of ugliness
To find a tiny field of kind

PLEASE DO NOT ADJUST THIS HUMAN

The verbs all slide 'bout
in my mouth but

I just can't get 'em out!

I swallow all my nouns &
adjectives & curses

clinging to
my soft palate.

I think "ouCH!"
but can't say it.

"*******..." I think some more
"*******!"

as my swearing doesn't seem to be
working!

"Well. . ." I think
"...at least I can still think..I think!"

I try to string a
couple a words together.

Somehow manage to
spit out some vowels!

"O!" I oh. "Eeee!" I eeee.

The consonants mutter to themselves
"...gggghhhhh fck t!"

The bump blooms
on the back of my head.

Blood laughs all over
my hair.

A notice appears
in my mind.

My mind's eye wonders why it is
written in double.

PLEASE DO NOT ADJUST
THIS HUMAN.

NORMAL HUMAN WILL BE
RESUMED AS SOON AS

...POSSIBLE!

WRITING MY BROTHER

I create a world
of words for you
to believe in

see I give you
verbs
you walk...you talk

I surround you with
the necessary nouns
sustain you with

adverbs and adjectives
split
an infinitive

I adjust the past
make it last
longer than

a future could be
change my mind
change time

tinker
with the
what-could-be

here I have us
a cloud of words
emanating from

our Christmas faces
making angels
the newest snow

on the tip of our tongues
on the tip of our tongues
or noses

awed by an Aurora Borellis
my breath
mingled with yours

a star glows
trapped
in a window pane

as if it only
shivers there
a prisoner of itself

now I change
the weather
see...it's summer

autumn whatever
I want it
to be

I reach for another
the next word
another page and

another page
until my pen
runs out of words

leaves you alone
upon a page
the blankness
terrifying

"Brother
mine
...Brian!"

"Shhh. . !"
Death admonishes
". . .enough!"

as I try to
keep you
alive for ever

*

I wrote this on the eve of the New Year....4,000 miles from anywhere in the middle of the Atlantic...emotionally it was like that too.

He had to come back.

On a December afternoon
when the sun was more to west,
he landed on the most favorite place of his house,
the roof.

Just as he had imagined
the still winter air was abuzz with life.

Doves were pairing for a home
Green bee-eaters swooped on insects
Two herons kept following the grazing cow
Crows were busy with twigs and wires
High up beyond where paper kites could soar
Storks slow sunned their wings wet from the jhil
The cats warmed their furs before the cold night
The stray puppy gamboled with its mother.

Each piece had perfectly fitted the other
including the silently sleeping house.

He was tempted to walk down once
has she changed any little way?

He smiled to himself
then breezed away from the roof.

LOOKING FOR A GOD
( for Shyam )

I pray only
to the God
of this poem

for free passage
from word
to word

as I journey
through the vast space
between thought

& thought
speak to the sound
trying to translate

syllable by syllable
what the moment
is saying

what the moment
wants to say
and see that

it says it
in its own voice
or as near as

I can
get it
...******!

Who are you to take my
Life
between
your drive to
change the landscape?

Do you unholy man seek to
save me? Are you constant
and believing in the Rightness

of your sanctimony?

For What is your Purpose?

You misunderstand my wrath.

Not in this world are you

Anymore

The mute destructive act
was not from caring sprung.

But

from the tongue you spit
Out

the ordinance

of my destruction.


Be out of my Poetry

Forever.

Forgotten



Caroline Shank
January 29, 2025