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.

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

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

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.

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.

Come on do The Locomotive with me
Shildon smoky days with black sheet cloud
terrace rows
buy some cheap beef shank for the dog
open shuttered butchers smell of blood
sit at the bar peel the sheets soggy New Statesman
by the glass
started reading it on the toilet at home
had to get out
sink the pints eat a chicken tikka masala flavour
pork pie isn’t that an oxymoron? and humour
Gappy slumped at the bar no longer violent new leaf turned
collects shopping trolleys in the Asda car park
he’s got a badge and a green jacket waterproof
which is nice
so come on do The Locomotive with me
roadside ****** familiar faces though not so many
these days
faded glory days wall images of train filled
old days of engineering and purpose and place
the starting point of a world phenomenon a
phenomenon that brought global joy and death
in equal measure but sod that
Darlington and Stockton
got all the glory.

i tried to assimilate, oh wait, i did, and i speak better native sprechen than the actual natives, and for that? you get the boot, because some camel jockey egyptian mongrel mixed with iranian blood gets the better of you... i guess the "natives" were fans of the eastern european *******, but not the eastern european males, **** it, i'm coming for the ride; can just see the ****** shouting: ooh ooh! their male counterparts are a'coming! and next thing you know, i'll be asking you to play the ******* banjo, with a toothpick!*

and it was always going to be torrential rain,
suspended in a prelude crescendo
of soulfly's song prophecy...
oh all the hoes come from eastern europe,
just like all didlo moulds come from africa,
gotta perfect that "pleasing of the white
******* honey cougar in plastic too, yo, bro..."
black people don't speak the current
lexicon, they are hyper-evolutionary
with their slang impromptus,
gets annoying after a while,
when you stop keeping track of their
ghettosprechen...
      ******* could have said custard,
meant margarine, but i'd still think of
jungle...
                     ghetto *****, get-a-go!
next time you mention all women of
eastern europe as ******, i'll mention
you in my charcoal wish-yo-were-edible
roasts... **** me... i'd prefer eating a leg
of lamb than a ******; shank.
oh, the word offends you,
but doesn't offend you in a rap limerick?
i.e. ***** ***** bab bab *****?
black people invent too much slang,
too much degenerate use of language,
      i try to keep it straight and universal,
off the orangutans go, talking orange is
the new black...
           i still find it hard to fathom
darwinism, who would be mad to begin
in africa, and end up in the arctic circle,
and no china?! common origins *******...
  tried looking for an eskimo in china,
all i found was, a ******* icecube!
      post-existentialism does exists,
it exists in the form of anglo-existentialism,
i.e. a darwinistic blackmailing...
    21st century existentialism is blackmail,
plain dumb & simple...
   and yes, i have a girlfriend, i call her...
sophia...
       and nietzsche was right:
the ugliest of the ugliest? atheists,
intellectually speaking.
       and why would you ever consider
the pristine sophia / ****** mary if not considering
aspasia, phryne, rahab, theodora,
   to counter philosophy,
   why not craft a:
    philospasy, a philophryny,
       a philorahabu, a philothedorum?
guess what, of the most famous prostitutes,
the contestants are philorahabu,
                     and philothedorum,
and all are famous prostitutes;
then the pristine sophia, my "girlfriend";
philosophy has a deity, that although
deemed pristine, has been touched by
many hands, and many strangleholds of ego,
time to turn this princess into a *****;
and the ones that visited a *******,
will look at those that haven't with curious
eyes.
let's not forget the siamese twin prostitutes
safa & marwa, and the matriarch
and true founder of islam ha-gar -
      the concubine of abraham,
  that ******* mother of islam.... hagar...
you really think men invented the islamic
attire for women?
              who's at the chanel catwalk,
straight men, or gays and women?
       you blame anyone, you blame: hagar...
running between the mounts safa & marwa...
islam, that totalitarian reinvention of
"repentant" / "revised" mode of prostitution...
and as i once overheard an englishman speak,
the niqab? satan's postbox.
- the craft began with treating the world as
solely inanimate, to make it as inanimate as
possible, and interact in it,
   as the sole animate agent, obviously with
the obvious hurdles of animate expressions,
nonetheless, these expressions being
outside the vicinity of integrated animate
actors, working around in inanimate surroundings,
conclusively,
  the "supposed" animate expression regain
their inanimate stratum by a repeatedly
predictable observation of
a prior re similis ad infinitum
  (prior to, again, similar toward infinity).
the point was always to make the world
as inanimate as possible,
    collecting books is a starter,
  collecting cooking utensils another,
the point being, to surround yourself with as
much inanimate reality, as to prove yourself
the animate, the "actor"...
             or more expressively: the puppeteer...
it still bothers me, grinding two prefixes...
the penta-      vs.        the tetra-...
   why? well, we are embodied with five sense,
but there are only four elements...

    vision
audition
gustation                       yes, but there's only
  olfaction
     somatosensation

                    air, fire, earth, water...
      this is almost gagging a schematic,
  we can see fire, earth and water,
  we can hear fire, air, water and earth,
      we can taste...
      we can smell fire, air, water, earth,
we can touch fire, water, earth...

this, by the way is crude...
   and is limited by not adding particular
observations...
   but the ratio 5:4 is in place, akin to
the mad hatter's 10/6 = 0.666...
         and that missing one is: ad infinitum,
might as well call it the lazy eight with 4:5...
since the elements came prior to the senses.

i'm guessing the "fifth element" to compliment
the five senses is a far greater posit than
a sixth sense, in that, this "fifth element"
is a plagiarism of kierkegaard,
  i.e. the "changelessness of god",
namely the eternally immovable object,
an object of constantly perpetuated friction,
so stationary that it moves all things,
which also precipitates into an eternally
recurrent subject matter,
immovable, ergo, inexhaustible.

- and i will die believing that anglo-existentialism
is an argument from the perspective
of blackmail, esp. since it's overtly-repetitive
and unoriginal,
  and if the english found continental
existentialism boring, a continental european
like myself, will find some hidden interest
in this "boring" artefact of time,
   but nothing can redeem repetition,
not even a boring artefact of writing,
   since when reading a boring "effort" of
writing, you can actually wake up,
and yawn...
  but when the same "effort" is repetitive,
you never get a chance to yawn,
you're still asleep, "apparently" enthralled.

- and to give a conclusion...
if an irishman thinks you write akin to
the psychiatric slang of "word salad",
ask him if he has read any james joyce,
if the answer is no, and he replies that he prefers
video game narratives, and has ambitions of
writing a book citing the cliche moonlight sonata
of beethoven... it's one of those times
you can't even laugh, internally, or externally.

- eventuality vs. actuality -
whereby actuality is a reactionary stance
that drags past events into present and future
events...
   whereby eventuality is a liberal stance
that drags past events into a wall,
   the present into a status quo,
  and the future into a snooze button phase
of a clockwork orange.

- no, i don't like this darwinistic blackmail of
continental existentialism,
  this monochromatic monolith...

- better start calling philosophy by its proper name,
philorahabu / philothedorum
(were not underlined on the pixel canvas,
thereby bypassing the oxford dictionary panel
for nuo-verbum acceptance) -
      keep that ****** of yours sophia
in a cage, because your thinking,
like your body, will become contaminated;
but one thing is for sure,
that concubine hagar running between
safa & marwa looking for water...
    can't imagine any other grander matriarch...
a reformed *** slave, who gave birth
to the niqab...
            i really can't imagine jannah
that way... i think it looks like:
1 man + 72 prostitutes,
              and 1 woman + 3 holes stuffed.

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.
                                                                                            &

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

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

****-a-doodle-do! ****-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.

****-a-doodle-do! ****-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.

On the corner of 8th and Fleet
A man plays a drum with a funky beat
He uses two thigh bones as sticks in his hands
And aspires to play in the coolest bands.

He beats on a drum made of flesh and bone
And boy, let me tell you, I swear it moans
It cries out to other goblins and ghouls
And pleases the zombies leaving their schools.

This man is a mummy, no pun intended
Through all of his bindings he smiles so splendid
And plays until morning without any sleep
And he never seems to miss a beat.

Rad-a-tat-tat-rada-tat-rada-tat
The coolings of music and things such as that
Then out of the blue walked a single vampire
“You, my good pharaoh, are up for hire.”

He picked up his drum and his sticks and his hope
And followed the man to a bar called The Rope
And walked into chaos and fire and soul
Except for the dull and dumb-witted trolls

“Get on that stage and give us a beat
On top of all this, I'll give you a treat.
Instead of this run down and ***** old drum
Sit down to MY drum set and have some fun!”

The mummy was shocked and slightly unrest
But he promised and hoped that he'd do his best
He got on the stage and the lights came down
And he thought, with his talent, he'd go to town.

Rab-a-dab-y-splat-da-boom
All he could see was his certain doom
The crowd was mad, a troll threw a bottle
The mummy high-tailed it out at full-throttle



What was he thinking, he abandoned his heart
And lost his drum made with his own body parts
And alone he was, no hope and no drive
He had to find something more fun to survive.

He tried to become a family physician
But he knew this wasn't the right position
He refused and argued he'd never give up...
His bandages for anyone's nasty cuts.

He joined the circus for almost a day
But again, he knew, this wasn't the way
They unbound his bindings but he never spoke
Until they used him as the tight-rope.

So alone he walked, bitter and sour
Back to his home in the Haunted Tower
The town turned gray from the lack of spice
With nothing to do this would have to suffice.

“Poor drumming mummy, he offered such joy
When he banged and played on his favorite toy.”
“If only I knew where this mummy would be
I'd give him my bones and my flesh for free!”

Surprisingly this conversation transpired
Outside the place that the mummy retired
He heard everything that was said by the man
And he carefully formulated a plan.

He distracted the other and grabbed a big knife
He decided he'd end this wise man's life
He crept up behind him and whispered a, “Thank you
I hope you don't mind 'cause I'm going to shank you.”

The knife plunged deep with a raging fire
And to his surprise he just killed that vampire!
He laughed with a howl that scared the beast
That was running away down the street.



“Irony tastes like the finest wine.”
The mummy had very little time
He carved up the vamp and took what he needed
And to the heavens he calmly pleaded.

“My torment has turned me completely numb
But I promise I'll make a better drum!”
It only took minutes and was finally done
When, behind the horizon, fell the sun.

He set-up his station at his usual spot
Right next to an empty parking lot
He closed his eyes and picked up his sticks
And pleased the masses with his tricks.

The sound was as cold as the soulless vampire
But raged with a hot and terrible fire
Everyone cheered and screamed and howled
The mummy has bared a magnificent child

“Your drum, however, seems not the same
Does this new drum even have a name?”
“You better believe it,” said the pharaoh
“I think I'll call it the Ugly Sparrow.”

And with that he played for days and days
And played the music the people crazed
And forever and more he sat with his thought
And never again left this spot.

He turned down all offers and turned away work
And people called him a mindless ****
“That's just the thing, to have all the fun
You can't have a brain while playing the drums.”

“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.

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.

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

The world is just waking up
And I finish the dishes
Ceremonially sweeping the floor.
Clearing the energy of last night
Making room for a new day to
Waft in
Over the fire escape.

Last night I was part
Of a Mini Passover Seder
Complete with Yam Shank
“The Vegetarian form of lamb shank!”
My quarter Jewish friend says cheerily.
When the Jew and the half Jew stare at her--
“Jewnet.com told me I could do it.”

I’m the Catholic girl in the room
But I’ve been that way since I was three
Attending my neighbor’s Passover Seder’s
Enjoying parsley with salt
And frequently finding the motzah
Lamenting that the body of Christ
Never tasted this good.

Our meal is on an old sewing table
Surrounding by books of Audrey Hepburn’s
Bambi eyed face forever staring,
While we laugh about a hairless kitten named
Pimple.
Or the fish named
Turkey and Pumpkin Pie,
Who once upon a time
Lived in a Salad Bowl.
“They were thanksgiving themed!”
“Did you get them on thanksgiving?”
“No, on my birthday in May”
Giggles erupt again.

The lesbian couple coos and
Lovingly congratulate each other on a great meal.
The roommate alternately sulks and
Makes a boisterous scene.
A character from Friends come to life.
I’m watching mostly, couch surfing for the evening.
“How do you know No-No again?”
“We went to high school together”
“Ooo- you grew up together!”
Yeah- sort of.

We’re about to have dessert when
The roommate grows quiet and grabs a cigarette.
Noelia interrupts:
“You’ll throw up Anna”
After a scuffle of youllregretthat’s
Noiwontleavemealone’s
“Fine, you’re an adult”
“Yes I am”.
Noelia exits with girlfriend.

Anna stares at me, smoke wafting out the window.
“You’re interesting”
The third time that’s been said to me in my life.
Each one as memorable as the last.
When I ask what she means--
“You seem full of secrets.”
“I’m shy at first” I explain
Wondering why it is that quiet
Is meant to be interesting.

I’m intrigued by the giggles, and the laughter
Zoe’s subtle jokes
Noelia’s loud need for things to be just so
How Anna says exactly what she wants.
…I am quiet.

It always happens,
When I’m staring at people
A little too closely
Or mulling things
In the distance.

I am not honest Anna
QuirkyClassy Noelia
Witty Zoe.

Interesting Sarah.
Implying there is oh so much they,
The audience of the world,
Do not know.
Interesting.
Unknown.
Sarah.

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

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

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?
*******, 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 *******, 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.

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.

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.

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...

So does he thank that deep down there sa meaning to my stuff?
Or maybe you think this is all off the cuff

Rough
Tough
Buffy fly like a bird out a the sky
Do yo think I'm high,

I'm a cool such a cool guy

Yyeeeee!

Exclamatory you


Clinton is a complete hack aye shank you


And the is die his tort my

Mien omn thiosulfate. The sanity yo
it's tots out the window





**

When I was a young girl I wondered
If I would find you.  I looked in the grass,
on the horizon, where the land woke
up each day.  I dreamed of your darkness,
of your hands sculpted by David, your
laugh.

I was younger then than I wish I had
been.  I saw your curls in the glass
of my future, your amber eyes stolen
from the Baltic. You guarded my time
telling me that of course I was happy
once but my mother took me
/
away.  She watched me for you on every corner of Chicago. Looked for your blue
eyes in the stranger she finally
married.

But he wasn't you and the penalty
was high.  My youth was her batter
which mixed with gin and
codeine she drank daily.

I found you in a hallway walking
toward me.  It was on a holiday
granted to me once.  I knew you
before the world was made.  The
glimpse of your silent betrayal
left me envying younger women
Before.  I knew you
In the hours of my life at last,

When I was a young woman you
found me. I was braille, you were
soft.  You left me in the tears
of another waif the dust blew in.



Caroline Shank

From Qeshlaq-e Chukhli Quyi Bahadruhamat to Abraham's Woods
(Tom Brown's Schooldays)
William Bleakes' Wind on the Water at Guishan Island
or Telladevarapalli struck by 13424 Margalida
heard in the Somam Rural District by The Monk
So now Minister Samuel Shaw watches Nakshatratharattu
and eats Beef shank taking Action Against Medical Accidents

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.

I cannot get to you.  You
are like Jerusalem, a
misguided city. Your name is exposed
to the sun while i call to you in the
silence of the volcanic pre-dawn.
You have slides of affectation.
A pilgrim might mistake
you for the safety of a handhold
hammered in the sand.

Other
travelers knew the peril of
your affection.

You don't  reply. So cold the
monument, so silent
the wall of your response.

This is all I know
and so do you that the
messages of the world fall
like the snow on the ground
white with shadows. Mute
replicas of shared emotion.

Drink to us the sour
vinegar of the sponge.

Caroline Shank
June 16, 2022

I could be dead by tomorrow,
wrapped in the comfort of
silence. Spread out on the
floor of yesterday.  I loved
you so many years ago there
is a calm scrape on the days
meridian.

I turn myself in for being
ridiculous.  " Do I dare to
eat a peach? ". I cross the
sandpaths of memory and
kick the castles yesterday
left.  No tomorrow for us.

I, like Prufrock, dizzingly
look for the summer night,
walk unsteady in my old
age lest I die to finally

and forget.

Caroline Shank
1.20.2023

where ironically I had met two good people,
they like me got caught up in the desires
of too much too easily, turned white powder or green buds
into easy money, got ratted out by some bad dudes.

Time and space compressed into six by eight
and seconds so vast , made you question  god
sanity your preferences and friends. Made me dream of cigarettes.
Lit up then disappearing as I tried to take a puff.

forgot desires dreams tomorrow, it's the way
the condemned survive. Gave up the thoughts of revenge, tried to
stop the constant dread of closing eyes
seeing your two year old or wife crying.

made a way around the baddest cons, gotta face them
eye to eye or be their ***** forever, and the iron did not ever
take that from me. It stole my soul pride independence future
kids hope and religion, never made me ****, never could,
make me that.

I was told what to eat when to talk walk sit stand speak, yeah
like a dog, had my fill of thugs guards wardens parole boards
the rec room the basketball court the scene,
then came across two of the baddest dudes

quite like me who took their lumps, showed me how to
make great tacos out  of commissary crud, how to roll a
toilet paper cigarette , how to hide my shank and my pencils.

they told me of the dudes who caved in to the feds
and got off for turning them in. What they once had plans
to do to them. But got smart. So smart they became teachers preachers
jailhouse lawyers superfly calm and confident inside.

And I got out.
I had never fallen for the jailhouse Christian ****, the hail mary's said by the crack head murderers who thought JC might get them out. The child rapists, house invaders, lower than dogs, who promised, with
that emptiness of eye that they now were saved.******* weak hypocrites. ******* electric chair heros, crying I am sorry. Fry them.

It was Saturday night. They gave me a set of clothes and twenty bucks.
Pushed me out into the night, clutching a small piece of paper that held my two friends  names and jailhouse numbers on it. I had something.
I walked as far as fast as I could. No destination in mind, no course plotted, I walked up hill this time though. The hard way I had been taught.

I arrived at a fancy Cathedral in town at ten the next morning. Marveled at the well dressed people and fancy cars. Everything seemed
shining. Until I saw all the well- heeled turn around and gasp as
I sank wearily alone into the back pew.

I woke up with people washing my feet.
Now I gotta write Jimmy and Bubba in jail,
and profess, there is hope.
Tell them there is more than us three
good people on earth.