I come from a town with no identity.                          
It had one, once, but I think it was                              
uprooted with Shales forest                                            
to make way for outlet malls                                  
and housing complexes.  
Every street, every tree, and every person
was like a wrinkle on an otherwise
unblemished face, marking our
individuality with age and experience.
It’s amazing how fast cosmetic surgery
can destroy the past.
                                            
I hail from the smallest                                                  
large suburban town of our area.                                  
Growing up, we used to know everybody
that lived on our block, and no one was
in short supply of a handshake or hello.
Now, social courtesy ends at the foot
of your door, before you step into the world.
When I was a child, every person had a sense
of purpose, a contribution to the street.

Mrs. Henderson made the best
chocolate chip cookies around, and
all summer long her house was filled
with the smell of melting chocolate
over warm cookie dough, a scent
that would sneak out of her window
in the late afternoons, when you
could still see the sun setting in the sky,
and find its way over to mine. Now,
apartments block the view.

Nick Potts had a key to the private pool,
which was members only,
but every weekend he’d find
a new way to sneak us in.
John Probst owned the pool,
and would sit in the same yellow
and blue striped lawn chair by
the concession stand next to the
diving board, laughing at each
new scheme we conjured up to
help save a few bucks on a
humid summer’s day.

Kyle had a trampoline, that
despite the stupidity of all
nine-year-olds, never saw a
broken bone. Carl had his garden,
bursting with shades of colors
that could only be mirrored by
the burning dusk light.
Duncan had a tree fort,
the Richards, a tire swing.

I never knew how fast the changes
would come. It started small, a simple
lift here, some aging creme there,
but this was just preliminary measures
for botox and nose jobs. As a town,
we soon became an obsession of trends.
Individuality was outdated.
Every driveway had a minivan, every home,
a schitzu and a soccer ball.

A skin graph covered the sun spot
that was Mrs. Henderson.
A face lift cured the sagging skin
of Nick Potts. The pierce
of a needle and flowing
injection of toxins smoothed
the wrinkles that were
Kyle, Carl, and Duncan. In what
seemed like a few hours time, the
town that taught me integrity, respect,
and the value of a hard day’s work,
altered to the point of being unrecognizable.

Manufactured and fake, we’re nothing more
than a shinning porcelain doll straight off
the assembly line, distinctively similar
to all the others that follow. Every layer
of cosmetics cover another part
of our character, another aspect
of our history. We became lost
in the crowd, and in our own way,
faceless.

down the ups of the very backs of streets
just skirting the very edges of napes
the cities slightly tickled little hairs rushing
up it's thighs, colluding thickly bushy
barely about it's "ooch!" it's "ow!"
it's youth rimmed slouching pocket
hollow fully bursting. empty so crowding
tightly packed cheeks, clumps of giddy
gurgling songs pumped lazy chords
they sickly punch the nooks and crannied
edges flourishing the rainbow bright
chatter of lungs that taste the air so
healthy and so long. "Tonight, as the day
goes 'Wee!' over the ******* wallop
we"ll higgle wiggle in it's corpse
our skulls and merry bones to
frothing jowls overwhelmed with boisterous
young hearts supping it's crudlicious
pillow, supple and rotting gums
the large lit teeth of whom bust
right to heaven while we fling about
their oblong towers our shales
of *** and magic;

i'm eighty pounds down and my skin is loose.  shales of empty casing hanging from my pelvis, upper arms.  

what will i do with it now?  

it is still excess, still too much, still my same old problem.  

hangs, folorn, from my frame, not sure how to be.



that summer i shop in stores that have never been mine to walk in to.  

it is entering a portal to a world i've only ever circumnavigated,

skimming round flesh-toned mannequins posed for the beach, the city.

wondering if pretty prints and flattering cuts can exist beyond a size 8.


bikinis on the rail threaten the illusion that i am slim and toned.  

their gaping homages to the idea that showing a little,
just a little
flesh, is the sexiest way a woman can exist, bring about a conundrum.

they will see.

they will see that i am still not it.

A perplexing trust for trial ends this endeavor, a blending blasphemy, of me this court does suggest.

As preening voids, the zygotes, blyme, they be gouging the eyes of the word; not hither then upon the afore, tenure observed as a state, which exiled is you.

Now begin in amorous help. Fiend, friend, to begin hath thou the gaul? To annex this; thus we will begin.

"Player, composite, Sauls of my own form... You can't believe how beautifully, grievingly misunderstood is all that a mutual sanctuary stands for...truly is... or unwittingly shall...and is not!"

Priests, clubbers, Demons, usurpers, lovers all envied of miscue(the default form). Their lives of shores of the Sea of Calamities, stern amuck the floam... temerity to continue their negations play.

"Therein thinking a theory of thought. The theory is Daemon of poverty, the emersion of hope, empathetically ill 'con'.. 'truaght'. As
I had thought. Now be seated, all and sovereign thimbles on tinders of papyrus, tinders on kindling, fires of the vanities...so.."

The Judge said, "We begin again."

I warn thee now, Saints of lore didn't enjoy the mentioned or the heretofore.

"Neither Satan nor God, Fairy nor Preacher could'st so understand that I said, ' I couldn't take it anymore, I cast my very last spell and found myself in bed'"

The chamber abruptly decried of calamity and doom. The sanguine despot of evil's charm pleading for mercy. This tale did not end...

"Of majority I inform 'The persecution had formed a **** and shales of deviance of Heaven's abrupt roofs, feln at no mercy...a request.'"

"A mentor is nor promiscuous and the dabbled in victory is ours in study and form!"
So reckoning for further remorse, no time off, no deliberations for jury's recourse.
Cont'd
"Settlers with lanterns, the mocking Tern with letter did bring'st. A written confession entered this forth for duly appropriated evidence..."
Should mercy do require of
my plea, then bickering, is
of how many, of killed. Which
Jury member, flauntingly, tauntingly
it should be!

Another fluster. Time consumed. Wits prancing on Hate's Gate made deference of the decree, but not for the court, of whom, we entrust all our wit!

"Now, now. Simple folks we've all had our drinking sessions and fancy empaths, who lie on erudite chagrin, not the actual words for which a Daemon does hold within." The defense tried falseness, perjury in the evening debate; as cautering of word with unholy terror should be met with.
"If no further evidence is to be beheld, the deliberations can pass into the hasty congress which we hold honored and true. Be returned by the midnight hour, for it's then with this Daemon, dear folks," the Judge complained, "we'll know what to do."

Valkyries, Cavaliers, Angels, innocents wept as time upon the throne, the jury, until churning of clocks, the jury was kept.
Gathered were children, vixens, nobles and common citizens, as abrupt, did begin this midnight hush.

"Have you found a contempt, a fortune 6 for 6 plea 6? A jurisdictional deliverance of which light can not alone ***** the passings allotted by thee?"

"We have your honor"

And so the final waves, as durational salient crying vows, were set to broken upon virgins, churches, and broken tree boughs.

"Not...entirely...perpetually...free.. Guilty is the Daemon, no mercy to be shown. The sentence is passed, a proclamation which we defend as appropriate, all noting to the taken of, spoken of in the heretofore."

All were quieted of vices with meals made for axes and guillotine, as somber looks denied those unfortunate to find; Skink a friend not a fink. Then the words resounded, a damnation did sound...

"Implored of a vice that shant be similar in any such derivation of a humanity which we call binding, the voracious need to be freed under the conviction of the guilty Daemon's bidding."

And so we awaited kilter to the proud. A slurry of legions both curious and in an ironic way evily proud.

"To scour the Earth in no other form than that of the distraught and unwanten, and begin again the vicious cycle of death with no life till thee's crime is forgiven."

Ordinance and plethora's of charm shall never question the Daemon of said name and claim.

They did'st disarm.

As surely as to the very day until in the future no other sentence could take the place of understood powers of the court whom you have been advised of and; if adversary crosses your path you must invoke with no alarm.

Promise to everyone
No more war
Promise to everyone
No more poor
Promise to everyone
No more torture
Promise to everyone
No more corruption
Then turn a blind eye
To bombs and shells
Then turn a blind eye
On the collusion on shales
Turn a blind eye
On secret centers
Turn a blind eye
On homeless shelters

THE FIRST BALL OF BOOST
WAXED THE WALLET OF THE SPIRAL TOOTH

THE TWISTED THE PULLING LIKE TEETH A GRIN
I IMAGINED IT ALL EVEN THE GRIM

I FEEL AS THOUGH BEING TRICKED OR HAVING SELECTIVE MEMORY GOING BACK IN TIME TO PREVENT AND ENEMY

SEEING THEM SCALE WALKING ON THE ROADS AND SECRET SHALES

ROOF TOPS THEY WONDER
PLASTER THEY LY

UPON THE FIXTURES THE LAMPS AND HAY

NEEDLES FOR FORTUNE WASTED AWAY

CAMELS FOR CARBON
HOW SMALL THE NEEDLE

IS THE CAMEL SHRINKING OR AM I THE GREAT TEACHERR

Neitzche said we are doomed

to live each life over and over

again exactly the same way.


I differ.  Our lives of flowers

and yes, of nails and pain

will live once in the pocket

of the Universe unshed of

all memory.


Tomorrow is not predictable.

We shovel today's minutes into

the jeans and skirts, the

pockets of yesterday.


We are trialing this day and

have not yet decided 

what to tell, and what to bury

under the rocks, the shales, 

of memory.


We will not recur 

but we will live on

together

forever.



Caroline Shank