I've been to the
bitter, dark place
where dreams are
decorations in
dilapidated houses,
a building haunted by
the ghosts of spring.
I tasted the wine of
****** and convicts
there.

I've prayed with the
broken and wasted.
I spent
days and months,
almost forever with
the feral men and
women of America in
homes not fit for fleas.

Then one cosmic day,
while the wounded slept,
I chased a beautiful
moth that escaped the flame.
And that has made all
the difference.

The birds tell a story,
Of what we humans do.
Their chirps and their tweets,
Are confirmation of who and what we knew.

Though we may not see
It, their eyes scan the skies.
And other varieties capture
our uncommunicated idiosyncracies.

The birds in the sky,
Test the temperature of our times.
They hold our secrets,
And much more importantly, our lies.

And so shall I.

i am not a poet,

nor am i a poem.

i am not a writer,

nor a book.

i am not a painter,

nor a painting.

i am not a sculptor,

nor a sculpture,

i  am not the artist,

nor the muse.

i am an idea,

that exists

only

in your imagination

“Are you okay?”

Sweetheart, I write poetry
And some kindhearted people said I write it well
…
That can only mean one thing
My mind is an unescapable hell

“Yeah, just tired”

Write what I know?  I am pocked with
chunks of broken moments.
Bits fall to the ground, trip me.
The terrain of my youth is a
moonscape.  I know what I know in
the craters of this place.

Born on the darkside and thirsty, I was
cold.  I found the sun later when I
was tumbled out the door of my
Mother’s leaking house.  Her screams
had become tentacles of maniacal
music.  Or do not call it music for
if you heard it you would not dance.

I am old now.  The view from my landing
is filled with sunlight and children,
“There are children in the leaves,
laughing excitedly”.   (Eliot)
I am paused in this imagination on
occasion.

When she is quiet,
I sweep her under the porch
where she lies drunk and unlaughing.
I do not let her out.  Yet she
steers me.  Her corpse loud
in her ***** nightdress.  

The terrain of my old age is pitted
with the debris of this haunting.  She
unsings me, makes me lie in
craters from which I climb up
daily only to tumble back down,
to have to begin again
from the bottom each new **** day.

But I sing as I crawl. And
she does not like the sound of that

Caroline Shank