"shank" poems
Break my bones;
cut my throat.
Pull me open,
learn the ropes.
Breath me in;
taste the fear.
Shank my skin;
stand and cheer.
Kick my head;
let me bleed.
Unbolt my veins;
enjoy the read.
Gouge my eyes;
punch my face.
Wrap me up
in your embrace.
Nov 13, 2018
Nov 13, 2018 at 8:58 AM UTC
I awoke as a tinder wolf
growling
a cut shawl man
dreaming of scarf’s
that left the world
drifting on infinite
dependency
I know I have
to wash
my human on
there are cigarettes
to be sung
could I be
a long shank man
a conqueror
or magician
No I am tinder wolf
howling,
hunting more
tobacco
Walking silent
forever
an assassin
Feb 27, 2015
Feb 27, 2015 at 10:33 AM UTC
Oh to wander down country lanes
Where ‘shank’s pony’ is the mode
By which one travels from end to end
Beating off the open road.
Willow-herb and cow parsley
Grow tall against the hedge
Where dandelions behave like kings
Growing wild among the sedge.
A toad pops out and then pops back
To long grass where he’s hidden
Where birds will sing a merry song
And ducklings scurry when bidden.
For these few hours you forget the world
And you feel at peace with yourself
But the lure back to your reality
Gets this dream returned to the shelf.
©JRW2014
Mar 29, 2014
Mar 29, 2014 at 4:53 PM UTC
We know you, and your little dark colors too. A picture book in your purse penned in mustaches on the full faces of your fare. We call you from bed, 8 o' clock in the morning, dog-light you slow wander the Peruvian darkness making jellyfish tentacles with your hands while you feel your way through Salem. We're colder than night and we wake thrice the bits of your day gig. You collapse in a green field of dandelion where thrushes drown you in Brown. We gorge ourselves on mango slivers, pineapple yolks, a half of grapefruit. We know you are close to your end.
On the tops of the cities you call to your lycan friends, the half-sick and muted bray allures them to you, from Bratislava and Mimon, the thoroughfare through the suq. We wait. The foregone untold, the beep beep jug jug swoop sound of the nightingale, in all her dun glory, we wait. Then, as if descending through the moor-lounging silver smoke, the cool stickiness to your fingertips; the fog.
We are there when the blue-less and smoky screen surrounds you, when you shank the auburn Scot hair of the sly fox that stalks, say, a cigarette from your lips. When you take the corners swiftly, gadding the streets. The prize king of vulpicide. You rub its matte fur against your bristly gray beard. And while you lay in your lumps of twelve carat flesh you bleat and you nag. One day you will never come home.
May 2, 2014
May 2, 2014 at 3:14 PM UTC
Nobody was born today
But you picked up a cake anyway
for five dollars fifty plus tax
Now you're watching
Criminal Minds on a couch made for three
and eating it with your hands
It vaguely occurs to you that
you should be sharing it with someone
or at least put on some **** candles
You're not even hungry
you don't even need to fill a void
you did good today
You hardly even miss her anymore.
You haven't thought about it in weeks.
If you just slept you'd be fine in the morning.
You consider it all
examining the red velvet
stuck under your thumbnail
Maybe you're looking for
a file or a prison shank
sunk beneath the frosting
Or maybe you just need
to make this a Night
The Night of the Cake
It'll blend in
with the others
in a matter of time
But for a few weeks
you'll look back
and remember
you are a member
of those romanticized ranks
those plastic or terracotta statues
Tomorrow you will feed the dog.
And after work you will pick up groceries.
And after groceries you will pay your bills.
But tonight is the Night of Cake.
Tonight
you become a stereotype
An unforgiving consumer
with chocolate-stained hands.
Aug 10, 2014
Aug 10, 2014 at 1:33 AM UTC
Oh beloved princess,
I'm just a commoner,
I just drink cannabis,
Lime & shank I have.
You are daughter of the king,
I lack any maids or servants,
You are protected by shawls,
I lack even a blanket or rug..
Get married to a moneylender,
Marry a lucky man...
I have pieces of purity,
But I'm just a commoner,
I just drink cannabis,
Lime & shank I have.
You live in the palaces,
I roam the wilderness,
You are not used to it,
I am used to roaming.
Get married to a rich man,
Marry a lucky man.
I just have purity in me,
Yes, I'm a commoner,
I just drink cannabis,
Lime & shank is all I have.
I carry on my austerity in incense,
I drink a slurry of cinders,
I tame hundreds of snakes on my neck,
I will scare you off my saturnalia.
You need a man with wavy hair,
A man with wavy hair.
My hair is dishevelled,
I am a commoner,
And I drink cannabis,
All I have is a lime & shank.
Feb 17, 2015
Feb 17, 2015 at 12:07 AM UTC
You're sitting across a table, in the next room- and it's the month of July.
And as the beads of sweat chip off your forehead
like a shank of butcher's meat,
your dorcel fin peaks through the sand where my toes peak through. The picnic table where I write letters; post cards.
I take photos, make reservations, and
even after I'm canceled on for walking around
downtown in my bright neon-pink underwear, I still roll to the
left side of the bed sit up and drop the cigarette I fell asleep on. You're just sitting, first entry: Stardom.
I don't have room for you in the corners.
The corners of this room, padded walls,
shifty vaseline sway- the white cotton stick
of a sucker pointing out of your mouth, its red numero forty dye shines
in the specks of light flicking
out of the horizon like a carousel ride
around and around.
I'm getting a bit dizzy, and even less honest.
If you want to see me spring,
like the silly string on my birthday, yellow silly-putty; molding the monster face,
I observe you through a kaleidoscope of dexedrine and morphine.
Your catastrophe with Xanax, passed out
in alien-green ******* at that party in the abandoned firehouse
on News St., how you could lay trust on me after that
(a daydream with sawing you called me)
sixteen-year-old mishap of an afternoon.
&
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 4:31 AM UTC
Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.
The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin *** help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!
Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit' hums.
Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that *** staw a sow,
Or fricassee *** mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?
Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro ****** flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!
But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.
Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis
Jan 25, 2015
Jan 25, 2015 at 9:37 AM UTC
Cock-a-doodle-do! Cock-a-doodle-do!
Cockcrow! Wake up, you poor humans!
The crazy, heartless sapient-irrationals!
You glug your cocktails in our names,
And slay, roast, and offer us to God,
And atone slyly your un-atonable sins.
Our lovely sickle tails, you used, once,
To concoct the cocktails you gulped;
And coveted our red comb and wattle,
The bright yellow of our cape and hackle,
The glittering blue of our wing bows,
And the violet-red of the back and saddle.
Oh no! Don’t strip us of our fair plumage
Our sickle, main tail and the lesser sickle,
Our fluff, hock joint, shank and the spur,
To the toes and claws, for you to toil
Hard, to fry--stir-fry—us, **** in your oil,
For your vain cocktail-less cocktail summits.
Dec 23, 2013
Dec 23, 2013 at 8:47 AM UTC
Cock-a-doodle-do! Cock-a-doodle-do!
Cockcrow! Wake up, you poor humans!
The crazy, heartless sapient-irrationals!
You glug your cocktails in our names,
And slay, roast, and offer us to God,
And atone slyly your un-atonable sins.
Our lovely sickle tails, you used, once,
To concoct the cocktails you gulped;
And coveted our red comb and wattle,
The bright yellow of our cape and hackle,
The glittering blue of our wing bows,
And the violet-red of the back and saddle.
Oh no! Don’t strip us of our fair plumage
Our sickle, main tail and the lesser sickle,
Our fluff, hock joint, shank and the spur,
To the toes and claws, for you to toil
Hard, to fry--stir-fry—us, **** in your oil,
For your vain cocktail-less cocktail summits.
Nov 7, 2013
Nov 7, 2013 at 11:00 AM UTC
There are things
I did not do.
I did not touch
you.
You
died. Without
a sound.
Your soft brown eyes pierced me.
I saw you go in the quiet
way you did everything.
I knew you were gone
but not before I
knew sadly, silently
that
I
could not hold
you in a final
embrace.
Closeness had run out
so long ago,
though we loved until the end,
bereft of speech,
as we we were bereft of
touch.
I bowed to your
blank stare.
I would have died for
you if I could have.
but I could not
save you from
this destiny
with the Father
Who
Loved
you
Caroline Shank
2.2,2023
Feb 4, 2023
Feb 4, 2023 at 5:32 AM UTC
“There you stood, in all your glory,
Feet apart”, begun the story,
“Flashing blade in hand you took,
Winsome smile, witty hook.
At the quick turn of trained wrist,
(there was no chance that you had missed)
The blade sunk deep inside a heart,
That had never known a dart,
Nor been under lock and key.”
Your own affection was in a box, within a box, within a box
Each one closed with many locks.
When my wound began to sting, I still declared you to be king
But water in my throat did rise, and once’n even reached my eyes
I shut my teeth and looked elsewhere, but none I found to give a care.
No one measured up to you, a stark contrast like gold and blue,
Even your long drawn-out sigh, your walk, your talk, friendly goodbye.
I tried to pull shank out myself, put my love upon a shelf
The blade was wet from dripping life, and slipped back in, that horrid knife!
After times of intense pain, I would swear: Not again!
And slowly start to draw out lance, to go a week with a chance,
But on Saturday I’d often fall, hear my name as you would call,
I would begin to wish again, for a very special friend.
Where do you keep the Key? Why won’t you give it to me?
A tool of gold, my fingers hold, softly place it in the hole
And as my nails dazzle in your glow, I turn the lock and find your soul.
Oct 18, 2014
Oct 18, 2014 at 7:09 PM UTC
If I were tickled by the rub of love,
A rooking girl who stole me for her side,
Broke through her straws, breaking my bandaged string,
If the red tickle as the cattle calve
Still set to scratch a laughter from my lung,
I would not fear the apple nor the flood
Nor the bad blood of spring.
Shall it be male or female? say the cells,
And drop the plum like fire from the flesh.
If I were tickled by the hatching hair,
The winging bone that sprouted in the heels,
The itch of man upon the baby's thigh,
I would not fear the gallows nor the axe
Nor the crossed sticks of war.
Shall it be male or female? say the fingers
That chalk the walls with greet girls and their men.
I would not fear the muscling-in of love
If I were tickled by the urchin hungers
Rehearsing heat upon a raw-edged nerve.
I would not fear the devil in the ****
Nor the outspoken grave.
If I were tickled by the lovers' rub
That wipes away not crow's-foot nor the lock
Of sick old manhood on the fallen jaws,
Time and the ***** and the sweethearting crib
Would leave me cold as butter for the flies
The sea of scums could drown me as it broke
Dead on the sweethearts' toes.
This world is half the devil's and my own,
Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
An old man's shank one-marrowed with my bone,
And all the herrings smelling in the sea,
I sit and watch the worm beneath my nail
Wearing the quick away.
And that's the rub, the only rub that tickles.
The knobbly ape that swings along his ***
From damp love-darkness and the nurse's twist
Can never raise the midnight of a chuckle,
Nor when he finds a beauty in the breast
Of lover, mother, lovers, or his six
Feet in the rubbing dust.
And what's the rub? Death's feather on the nerve?
Your mouth, my love, the thistle in the kiss?
My Jack of Christ born thorny on the tree?
The words of death are dryer than his stiff,
My wordy wounds are printed with your hair.
I would be tickled by the rub that is:
Man be my metaphor.
2.2k
Texas Rangers' pointed stars he wore
as rowels on the shank of his spurs with pride.
The holes in the center punched with squint not
scowls and his .45 Colt Peacemaker true and tried.
Nothing personal against the Rangers,
they just didn't understand.
They chased him for the killing of strangers
whose whiskey tempers forced his hand.
He wore their stars upon his spurs not as a prize
for his skill in killing two of Texas' best,
but for their courage and their pride.
Now he spends his last years in Mexico
with his back to the wall and Peacemaker
on his side.
Playing poker, stealing tequila drunken
outlaws gold.
Eights and Aces they always stand.
An outlaw by default
never again to cross the Rio Grande.
r
Oct 31, 2013
Oct 31, 2013 at 6:52 AM UTC
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
Jan 31, 2014
Jan 31, 2014 at 5:24 AM UTC
If you kiss me now our eyes
will close and we will
push against each other
like fruit vying for the light,
In the nightpain of loving
our eyes will slowly open
and your face will wilt
until its cheeks and crevices
dim under the sad symmetry of
our public lives.
If you kiss me now I will forget
the grown repair of skirt alone
in the loud sound of memory
as it slips ever so gently away.
Caroline Shank
Oct 3, 2021
Oct 3, 2021 at 5:48 PM UTC
Staccato's of clasping chains.. feverishly flaying your wrists...
As a rabid dog chewing off its own limbs to crawl away.
You hide in my shadow.. The only place where they cannot get you...
While your children burn...
A sour scent of ***** floods richly within these forsaken walls...
A tranquilizing melody of ****** gargling
I will mutilate the memory...
I will stain the status you built...
I will pluck your fruit and devour it with voracious appetite
Gnawing your rotting tongue bit by bit...
i drink sepsis that drips from the shank of your thighs..
My hunger everlasting...
Ravenously, depraved, my claws rend and maim your angelic wings...
A carpet of feathers gusts at your final gasp....
A cold lick on your eyeballs...
We drag you into our grave...
Rats...
Swarms of rats...
And i wear a crown baptized and blessed of your blood....
Adorned with warm and beating entrails of the defeated and the devoured...
Bricked in walls....
I can still hear you clawing during the most sleepless of sleeps...
And taste your rotting tongue...
Jun 10, 2015
Jun 10, 2015 at 9:07 PM UTC
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
Dec 14, 2021
Dec 14, 2021 at 8:13 PM UTC
It's never going to stop
being Friday
The Birth of Sacraments
is not Good.
Autumn is Friday's punch
in the gut of Summer It's
always Friday. The windblown
faded days are a trampled
graveyard.
Today is Friday and if I shovel
the fake faded Forrest of time
it is always Friday. The perennial
glare of a Gregorian mistake.
Christ died for me on a
Friday!
Illusions of time passing are
like
Prayers
blown back
on a Friday.
Today tears the pages off. You
flip it over.
Friday appears as oil from
the flood.
Caroline Shank
9.2.2022
Sep 2, 2022
Sep 2, 2022 at 12:57 PM UTC
Alright fella, how’s you mate?
Just heard back from the hospital innit.
They got you that liver now?
Yeah man, sorted. Ahh yeah-
did I tell you ‘bout the other day?
There was this ******* mug
by the chippy and he mugged
me off. And I was like mate,
don’t mess - you’ve picked the wrong day
to be a ******** innit.
And he was all like, “Yeah?
**** off, mate.” And right, now,
well, I’d had enough by now;
I wanted to teach this mug
a Life-Long Lesson, yeah?
So I said, “I’m not your mate,
and I will end you if you don’t **** off, innit.”
Ah man – this was not his day.
You remember back on Tuesday,
when I got that knife that I still use now?
I had it on me, and I shanked him, innit!
Serves him right for being a mug;
*sounds like one less ***** on the estate, mate.*
Too right blud. Was well funny too, yeah –
cause he was just round the corner, yeah,
I just walked into the chippy like any normal day!
Just like, “Nah, no vinegar please mate.”
There’s never any filth around here now
so we can just shank mug after mug;
and we’ll make it a better place to live, innit.
Oh yeah, and I can get smashed now, innit!
We’ll get some pills and that, yeah?
Have us a party, but don’t invite Gaz, you mug –
he shagged Tracey the other day,
so it is gonna be well awkward now.
*Ahh **** I am well excited, mate.*
And mate, make sure you bring some fit girls, innit.
You wanna come round now? Nah, got a check-up. Yeah,
but it’s not gonna take all day! Shut up, you mug.
Jun 6, 2011
Jun 6, 2011 at 3:07 PM UTC
The great blue heron haunts the reedy bank,
and combs the midnight waves with razor eyes.
He trolls the river shoals on spindled shank
then beaks his prey with sudden, swift surprise.
In shadowed silhouette his figure begs
my mind to plumb the depths of darkened mire.
But diving there, I rise with naught but dregs,
no meal of meat, no answers to inspire.
The heron pauses thoughtfully mid-stride
to preen his dusky feathers in the glow.
He ***** his crested head to leeward side,
then darts, once more, with certainty, below.
Aloof to prying gaze of passersby,
he lifts majestic wings on moonlit sky.
Apr 6, 2015
Apr 6, 2015 at 7:21 PM UTC
Inside, Your cancer's beating heart
My ******* shakes, dirt dust gone
I swipe the sand away. For every ounce of ****
Laughing out meaty red raw steaks and size zero thighs.
- For everythingsobad. You rattle my dream box with your sweet blue face and your gauges for neither being an idiot or being human. Too cute of you booboo. Captivity claws at you, you big bafoon, intolerant, shuffling your predicates back and forth during your 12am nonsensical ******** So long as it doesn't interfere with your curfew.
Like soggy altered-state popcorn. Your butter catches more flies than knives, the inauthentic gestures spattering over the rhythms and rolls of your fingertips is torture to watch. Kitchen countertop influenza. A tired dictionary of sad words, poor misfortunes, tired eyelids, silty and sandy crusty inside corners of the eyes
.rearing privilege
countertop crawlers. inaudible coos used by muses who can't keep their musings from tangling the long distance dial tone soaring through the ears like an Italian operatic melodrama. A horse, three brides, and a funeral. One woman, a sick child, blindness, blinding caused by toxins of the body stuck inside your gelatinous fishlike eyelids. Where's there an eye bib and a lance when you need one? A nifty electric toothbrush shank with extra reach and plaque protection. You're the kitchen sink they threw in, a budget meeting with a data analysis staph infection. A government where nobody wins. All the kids grow up with thin skin and an aorta with no ventricles in it. It's like the cynical prison system that we had to survive in our 8th grade basement dungeon. Thundering, curmudgeons drugging sluggishly, **** teen thugs. Preteen pornstars sluicing cash through their meaty canals, ******* the ******** and ******* the back bare in a messy afternoon of **** ******* Crusty infectious rumors made worse by brothers and moms, eating handfuls of Norco just to keep the family strong.
May 1, 2015
May 1, 2015 at 7:16 PM UTC
A mountain, a range
Carved from
everlasting ages
Did not crumble or wilt
to sand as it shook
from under my feet.
The granite face stood
Like statues
To manifesting
Into the space
around it.
Reminding me, that as weak
As I feel,
Inside of me
is a similar Persistence
Unmovable
From the capricious whim
of man and imbecilic masses who follow.
I will seize your sharp shank from excavators
trying to make me into something I am not.
A woman with equal
rights in the same air
you breathe
With dignity far beyond your pompous attempts
to roil this
robust range
down.
Your facade will crumble
when the mirror knocks
at your midnight door.
Here,
look at yourself.
Apr 13, 2024
Apr 13, 2024 at 10:50 AM UTC
Tomorrow’s sausage rolled along the road
And just beyond my hasty, tasty want for a drink.
Amidst giggle and sigh, my cohorts,
my companions and others
Muddle the horror, or meal at ends, most likely
Come this little pigs jump from the truck
Leading butcher.
In silence, I admire the –
Entrails on the highway; jump opposed shank,
Surpassing my seventh mile for a
Seventh heaven,
Leaving me simply seconds prior Shenzhen.
Sure, little piggy’d never made it,
To the market, to the feast of it all,
But he’d met his end, and on his own terms.
He’d met his end and frolicked upon the
Fields lacking pans and bacon grease,
In opposition the role, the role we force, enforce
And devour time and again;
In silence, I admired the escape.
Oct 26, 2016
Oct 26, 2016 at 11:32 PM UTC
Can you hear that sound
Like a tiny whining
You're a sad eyed puppy
Inside
It's a kind of yearning
When pining
away, wanting someone or something
So expensive beyond reach
The mind begins to fantasize what it's like,
Infantilize what's real life.
Enlisting unreasonable scenerios
Creative now with lies
And denials and exit strategies,
Scapegoats of close members of family, accusatory..
Blame all but yourself
Inflammatory story's demise
Because the lost moments spent
Pining away
Will die unknowing your real life self.
Inside that fog of fictitious false depictions
Who dat?
Starving yourself blind
See there on that podium
Your bad phat shines
Always in first place--gold medal favorite
Hooray it's not quite you or even true.
If pining were a sport
Having lost your minds
You'd all be winners.
Celebrity famous, go on
Crave being extra, so street savvy
"Hey Alexa, Google, Suri
Define obsession."
Pining turns dangerous
In absentia dysplased
Souls are stolen,
Human replicas.
Still carrying on pining
Away.
Killer lover blank.
Got brain? Bullets?
A shiv or Shank?
Sharp as a pine tree...
(Please,
Don't forget to give
Thanks.)
Jul 22, 2020
Jul 22, 2020 at 11:27 AM UTC