can i tell you a secret?
some days, when the sky is its darkest hue
and the clouds are a light gray-blue
i write poetry.
it's all about you.

I Found God

I found God in a Baptist Church
in Milwaukee.
Faith,  small hands and
scratched bibles.

Warm cookies.

The delicate and the children.
Their names in coded
words on the skin under

my arms. .

Dedicate: the
day to the great E. Perience.

There is a new Age
coming.

I smoke a cigarette.

God arrived in fancy clothes.

Women dressed, frown.
Still voices in the

Wilderness

Witness the Beloved
baptism of perfumed
sinners

I smoked for them all.
My fee for being previously

Apostate.


Caroline Shank

You, trying to convince me i was hard to love, when i drip of sun and sweet magic

I'll never be more disappointed in the words
Their job is to conglomerate into cohesive, coherent expressions
Always, they've done this for me
True, their message has changed
But their capacity to carry out meaning, order, and a clear, articulate thought has been unwavering
But I turn to them now and they are clumsy, weak, light, and foreign
I fumble on these useless and tiresome words as I think up a way to communicate to you just what it is you mean to me
I love you
Is white noise
Every combination is an understatement
Photos can't capture it
My paintings can't replicate it
This love demands to be felt and that is all I can do
With every intracacy and nuance of my existence, every book I ever read, every lesson I've ever learned, everything I was, am, and will be, ever aspect of my being, every ounce of my soul, all that I have
Because I can't translate it to words, I will have to suffice in keeping it in it's rawest form
And while I will never be able to express it to consummation,
I feel so wholely and genuinely in love with you

he walks around suburban streets afraid of breaking things; toys, bones, lives
she sees herself as the problem because that's all her mother ever yelled at her within paper thin new development plaster
they get it implanted deep inside them somewhere along the way that everything they touch is tainted and I don't know how to enable them to see the radiance that is exuded by the things they presumabely ruin

I've been sinking back into old familiar negative spaces
Missing him is home and I've felt so nostalgic tracing fingertips along the abandoned walls of the place
Missing him was not once such an empty promise, but rather a means to an end.  The end came and left but the missing didn't.
I'm letting myself miss him once again, this once more

And every time I'm left or every time I do the leaving
there is change
there's new music on my sleep playlist
there is the imprint of words shared, or maybe not shared
theres the loitering of scents in the deepest particles of my cloths

And every time I'm gone from his life or he's done the going
there's his name doodled in the margins of my notes for a while
there is the shadow of his hand on the small of my back
and the trace of his lips on mine
there still remains the sound of his breathing, of his heartbeat

Whether I am the leaver or the left, the heartbreaker or the broken hearted, the winner or loser: there is always this time of transition.  This testament to how intertwined our lives were for a period.  But with him it never ended.  I am still so utterly haunted by his absence and as the others fade I watch his absence become ever present, ever growing.

Why do we so long for that which we do not know?  Why is it the knowing, the safety, and the comfort drain us and the only way to fill up and live again is to be fighting and scared and so consumingly unsure?
Why does she go looking for trouble in all the right places?
And why are some days so very much heavier than others?
The light ones almost seem to drift away in the memory taunting the mind to recall whether they were real at all or just existent in the crevasse between sleep and dreaming where all misplaced and beautiful horrible things go to linger a while

the sickly soft and sentimental sensations of yesteryears seep into the sequentially searing scars of last nights mistakes
and the smoke simultaneously serenades my soft tissue into sorrow soaked sleepless sunday mornings
and we silently seek solace in the safe haven of wordless songs

I wake up and put it around my neck
something someone gave me once when they loved me
and while it is sweeter and more nostalgic now
while it is no longer burning or complicated
it's still warm and now I can just find it comforting
how sweet