when a heart is lonely.  mind is in despair
need someone to talk to nobody is there
love that you once knew no so far away
sunny skies above now have turned to grey

you can turn it round meet somebody new
happiness again will return to you
put the past behind then make a brand new start
say goodbye to lonlieness mend yout broken heart

262 555- 5555 and i
can see
well enough to drive.99 pages

I am swinging my arms.

I take my white hand
and in your freest moment
I will
dress wounds whose polar
regions,

like my heart, sigh with
slogans.

Be mine says the moments
transcendent.

Catch me through the rye.
You will hear the singing

Grass Harp telling you of
love and growing things.

"Love is a chain of love"
wound around the
farthest star.  

Listen to me.  December
Is a stone's throw away.

I fall and there are
little kindness especially
holding me. Precariously

I wait for a season's
diminish.  A cry of

     sadness
in the face of
Winter's approach.

         Stay me then
into June …

and. Beyond.



Caroline Shank
10.31.2023

unleashed to roam without
a chain have a home, to shelter them
from the rain. This amour was
growing from a pup into a great

Dane. He pulled tight on my black leather
collar. I was spent like a dollar squashed
inside his billfold. He didn't hold me
for long in his quivering hand. Passed me

up for a cup of dark coffee at the
newsstand. I just wanted a soft
warm lap, a spot to curl up
and take a nap. A smiling

face to greet me at the end of
his day. A ray of golden sunshine
when the sky is black as coal,
and the clouds are grey with snow.

One Man demands in the name of religion, on pain of death, you cover your hair
how mind boggling, surely God would have made all women bald, cut out the middle man,
to satisfy a potential insult such as 'hair'

"IS IT YER SELF THAT'S IN IT?"
( For good auld Bud )

'Howya? '
said the stone

(in a thick Irish accent)

'How's it goin'? '
said another stone
to the left of the other one.

'So, you decided to
come home? '
sneered a passing breeze.

'Ah...leave him be! '
shushed a familiar tree

& an auld sod agreed:
'Let bygones be bygones! '

There I was
thinking in French

& gesticulating
in Italian.

'Are ya...sure...
...it's himself? '

enquired a changing cloud.

'Sure...I'd know him anywhere! '
spoke up the road
that led in(& out) of here.

'Ah, Jaysus...
...he's cryin''

sniffled an old
gone-to-seed house

& then, it started
crying itself.

"This place grew me! '
sobbed my tears

& now
(somehow)

either it or I
had changed.

Only the ghosts of ghosts
remained.

*

Going back to Ireland is often referred to as going 'back to the auld sod' and so it is that I have the landscape of my childhood question me as I remain silent in the face of fixed places such as houses melt into literally thin air and I walk through what is there but isn't there anymore. I am my own living ghost.

The Irish greeting of 'Is it yourself that's in it? ' always amused me as if the greeter was making sure that your corporeal shape hadn't indeed been taken over by the Devil and that you were now a man possessed! If the answer was 'Sure...aren't ya seeing me with your own two eyes ya ejeet or is it blind ya are or what! ' then that indeed was you. If a deep dark voice that smelt of sulphur boomed 'I am the Lord of the Underworld earthling and you will rot in Hell if you don't buy me a pint! ' then it was more likely the Devil himself or somebody with a wicked sense of of humour. Anyway and anyhow the Devil you know was always better than the Devil ya didn't know. Better to err on the side of caution rather than be having a hell of a time in the place down below.

1000 poems
Good place to be
1000 and that's
all to see

Best wishes
to all ,

Goodbye . . .