early yet

I have to tell you
that

i went a different way
to avoid the usual

some mirrors sewn by my hips
some sewn by my hands
some inside my mind
cause I am strange
some songs remain the same
I hear this again
I am too sensitive
too serious
too vocal
too tired
too absent or too silent?
too crazy (but what do you mean?)
I am scarry, she said, but fascinating
well, loneliness is not fascinating
I wanna shout but I refrain myself
from this refrain
it can be a blessing, I agree
but wait, there's more
cause I speak some bizarre words
bizarre as in the byzantium
although I try to keep it as simple
as the milk foam on your lips

yes, this is my language
and these are my days
to be too much of myself
exactly as I am in each breath
each step and each cry
as strange as any creature
that has ever walked under
the light tide

if you find me too strange
you can look the other way

Tide arrives

Take a breath,
Deep

Engulfed within the Ocean,
Unconsciousness

Let it

Tonight is soft, the Wisconsin
winter's chill is tame and I am
practicing for queen of today.

I am lit inside.  Determined,
I breathe.  My familiar scorn
is put away. I walk the city's
street remembering, the
calming soft breathing.

Tonight is almost over and i
approach tomorrow in silence.
I walk some more in the

chilly drizzle. So soft the shadows
smile back from the store windows.
There are no don't walk signals.

The neon sign in Maxwell's flags
me, lures me inside.
I walk on.  I want to reach the
seventh block.  It's a good
number.  I stop at the gate,
a small park.  I pass it by.

My serenity is a soul sculpture.
No longer a passage in some
one's book. I author me.

Thanks to the moments of
shared caring.

I walk on enthrall of the soft
winds that bring me home.

I am returning to MySelf.

Caroline Shank
1.17.2023

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

how you leave,
door or window
I won't grieve.

It doesn't matter
how long it takes
weeks or days
just go away!

It doesn't matter
if you tell
ever man or woman
I put you through hell.

It doesn't matter
all the lies
you weave.
All that matters
is you leave!

in my poetic attire
these combat boots worth the ciggarete im holding,
these braids spun to make myself approachable, to fill my face in, to frame it as alluring
im watching the rain fill the crevices of the pathway, one drop hits, one wave away from drowning.
my hands glide on jawbones, neck, shoulders to conjure up enough warmth for another day
to simulate company.
you see the echoes of solitude, when heard, turn into ache and i can only take...
when i ask around the house "don't you feel lonely?" im met with appearances
yet they never really occupy the lack, they encouraged pretenses around this hollowness
i've been feeling myself in frills and pleats
beaten by this hungry wind outside
of course im self soothing
it's the only thing I'm doing
who else could if not me?