We all have something singularly unsayable within. Nothing can or will ever get to it, not even other souls. This is the loneliness we were all born with and this is our only salvation.

The worst part is
I loved you back
Adulterous affair,
Absolutely abominable!

Maybe you didn’t mean to love
Me, the girl inside
the young woman’s body,
you only thought you knew

Flirtatious banter
once hinted at thoughts

Unsayable;
Intelligible abyss once linked
unsuspecting minds;
Understanding so
Deep, so
Accidental.

Praise me, praise me.

Be careful,
Time is taking over,
How could you, you fool
You can't beat the clock!
You're in love now.
Did you intend for this?

But was it Me you sought to love?
Or was it just my body?
The thrill of the ilicit,
The power
Over a child?

Origins unknown

Grown out of your control.
Say goodbye to reason
I’m your master now.

What’s happening to you?
You’re afraid and I, well
I am the child
who will destroy you

Words, your last weapon
Escalating, no wait, stop
You’re killing yourself.

It's too late
I tried to warn you
You failed me, embarrassed
Me.

I egged you on.

I loved you back.

I’m sorry.
#MeToo

And how sweet a story it is
When you hear Charley Parker
tell it,
Either on records or at sessions,
Or at offical bits in clubs,
Shots in the arm for the wallet,
Gleefully he Whistled the
perfect
horn
Anyhow, made no difference.

Charley Parker, forgive me-
Forgive me for not answering your eyes-
For not having made in indication
Of that which you can devise-
Charley Parker, pray for me-
Pray for me and everybody
In the Nirvanas of your brain
Where you hide, indulgent and huge,
No longer Charley Parker
But the secret unsayable name
That carries with it merit
Not to be measured from here
To up, down, east, or west-
-Charley Parker, lay the bane,
off me, and every body

Let's talk about this jazz club
that lives in my cellphone
in 1950 something with Chet Baker
back from the dead.
Let's toast to random notes taking flight
into the city in the middle of nothing nights we've known or been familiar with.
Let's shake hands cordially with the unfamiliar as in "deal", or "peace be with you" as if in church, tipping hats at that stranger passing by at the crosswalk some late evening in spring alongside dandelions sprouting forth from the pavement. Let's read between breaks of beats Kerouac must have hit in 1950 something San Francisco in yelps into the moonlit stages of the balcony of his boxcar boxcar boxcar gone by in a mad blur with whatever graffiti'd message of hope it bore on its sides. Let's hitch into the unknowingly infinite by way of the pen's mighty point. Let's unlearn the way syllable by syllable and demolish languaged signs like hurricane force candor blowing down fact-ory made terms and political decorum as smoke from the pages of their corporate handbook joins the Chet Baker solo note pilgrmage into the holy skyline. Let's move side by side unspoken as those jazz notes he forgot to play. Let's fill in those blanks with uninformed confidence beyond our abilities and grasp the unsayable names of our dreams remmebered. Let's see in seconds passing like bums inebriated with the holy moments gone too soon. Let's talk about nothing but this sacred second at hand on this clock unseen pointing overhead to the face of the moon gone full and hungry for attention. Let this happen only now. Only then will we talk about where it's going.

If peace were a state we all agree to imagine, a state
we
envision as uni-
versal in any song, peace, calm, flowing deep, state
of being
in any man, wombed or un,
in any family, any tribe, any deme of agreements unbreakable,
any hermit cell

any bubble of believing generating proper people to fit
tradition and mystery myths without

re-tying truth to may, the verb. That's vainity.  
Religion.
(re-ligamentation,
like muscle to bone wit sinyew,
same stuff strangs a bow, for a fiddle ora arrow,
y'know)
that's somethin' else.
Religion could mean read the instructions, too.
All together
----
stopping to live. slowing, not stopping. pre-stop.

whisper,
say, earth,
hey, earth,
can you hear you now?

---
the dictator dictated the dictionary,
he/she/we/me

learned to speak as spoken to, in the boss tongue.
Ma or pa,
or whosover was fustus wit d'mostus
taught the good ol' boys.

But wisdom saw a way. We've been woven in a story.
We are in the code. Ethos, Pathos, Logos.
Those old Greeks examined them some life, I'd say.

Language rules the iron fist's grip,
meaning empowers
laxation, re
loose
gut brain pain fraught fear of the iron fist crimping
the flow of solidity
punch in the gut

Knock thashitoff! Now, flush

in ifity, boo, be bop, I'm an ice cream cone,

like those alien ones, mebbe,
moving stones the weight of 737s,

my cones of power defy your hour of suffering patient
per fection of...

what, wait, allusion to "Let patience have her perfect work"
what is her perfect work?
Quote that San Francisco band. Oh. Did that. Love.

you ask. The reality I see, you say, no, I say, me.

I am patience, the feminine form, 's perfect work.
Patients must put up with me,
you see

----
fear is terror's weapon, am i right?

And it is written, the fear of the LORD (KJV)
yhwh, in the unsayable way, God's name, only name, eh

is why that started?
Old Job let out a yelp, hey, earth is great, but you have no idea
how this feels.
You know lots of stuff I don't know, but mortality is not one of em,
as far as I can tell.
How 'bout a referee betixt us?

Hey, sus, pect me a spectacle

of the great contro
verse un ifiable, unif, once possible now, nullift.

got it.
Every other direction known. Take a fearless, peaceful-
feeling
path past all that.
Peace, be unto  you, earth. For my part.
The examined life is worth the living. You are in this one with me,
a very important part, an object, an aim to see what

could be there, a like mind, washed ashore.
----

A.P.I. Art Pax Intel

act as if they are listening with interest, paying
actual
attention, add pieces
of life stuff

I am 71, my window is my horizon, or
better said,
my horizon is my window. I have mini-horizons,
i think
like this... chromebook attached at finger tips,
I can and may be making some counter wave that clears
the crypto frost from my window to your
realm.

Who took your may? Do you recall the day?

It was a teacher who took my may,
but I won my can, That's a plotted point, I
ponder on my porch
partaking in curds of ways to do so saline a work

Fantasy education system U of old dudes like me,
tired old dudes who have no desire to argue,

but, really, don't tread on me.

the old greeks were at rest, the slaves were under control
but we old American men in twenty nineteen
we have A.I. and pensions enough,
my examination can go far deeper than Aristotle's.

Part taker, trope positions, anonymous wisemen's roles in
this generational take on
we, the people, by realization, not revelation
of the
traditional worth of wisdom found under hoary
or shiny-fringed heads and grey beards and
amplified through ear hair
like antennae.

Admiring and worth. Hmmm.
Mira, look upon the ozimandian heir and
wonder, why am I a part of this, an eight billionth of this

interesting time of changed time,
time duration,
it is known relative now,
a precocious child of twelve can explain the paradox.
But time travel, imagine...
The ships,
The captains venturing where... slaves and would-be thieves
would, or could be made to, row or man the ropes,
whether any sweating soul endured to the end,
or not,
Who cares-- we recall only the history of kings.

Aha, there were teachers paid to teach
Admire-alty of the strong who keep us free within our walls.
That was the meme, be like
obediant to
the man on the horse.

Extreme Narcissist rises as the needed leader, least meek
of men morphs materially into the Nuclear God?
the opposite of peacemaker becomes hero?

Endure. In your patience, you possess...

Here's the deal. Life ain't fair. No war ever worked to settle
the mixup over the actual reason
for con fusion. Fusion sticks stuff together that has a pro

pensity to repel.
En-trope, we wrestle that, we fight it with
weapons un-carnal on any fractal level where matter matters.

Settle down, we say, by being at rest, fretless.
Let my peace, you say, come in me,

now, in your bubble of peace,
where no damnation can exist, begin
to grow, feed on knowledge proven no lie.
Start with one, unproven
reason you have for laying down or taking lifetime from anyone,
or for anyone.

Plus and minus, up and down. Mere words.
Confusion is mashing things together to make stuff

like earth. You look close, **** augmented us,
we inherited the only biosphere in the known universe,

and some ******* hell's angel wannabe...

Nope. Fractally can't happen, time being duration, not
an arrow on a gravity bound arc.
From "it is finished' going viral,
Nailed it,
no contest.
Yep, peace makers won. Deck was stacked.
The idea of the act of
Nuclear war launched the tyranny of phobias,
including an old idol word bound fear.
Logophobia
fear of God idea is the beginning of wisdom. think this, what if

wisdom began in you when you imagined the evil
men have realized from their shared imagings,
Logos imagined it first. What if that?

for lack of vision,
my people perish. AH, fractal up
about a thousand Mandelbrot tics, okeh.

Did we come away with treasure, or are we lost in the war game?

---
how many is enough to make the effort,

ef fective effort to learn.... check. didit, still am. one's enough.

ef fective effort to use the learning right ... check, workin' on it.

Whee gotta cut some traditional slack to the clowns
who keep the poor man happy for the hell of it,

y'know, life's hard at the bottom.

but it ain't
no fun.
And happy minds bounce. No lie. Bi-polar on demand, kinda.

K'mon down. The price is right. Got moonshine in the evenin',
after-the-cool-of-the-day, unquiet late spring night,
Stars aplenty,

laid back, leanin' on the tree of all I can ever know or
ever know
already. Ever knowing, you know. Feels good. Starry night,

in focus, with our shared augmented eyes beyond

the base-bubble of life, where I fit.

---- bored old man? is that pathetic, or what?---
Is this a good that you can do, asked, but I allowed no quest to form.

The point of any story in my mandlebrot set of stories never imagined,
is why I make the daily efforts, find the point, mark it a peaceful
place at the end of a hard row to ***.

Making the point in ever, where you notice your role,
this is the peacmaker's privilege, for the prize of playing your role,
the rest that remains, is mine to use right, examing life
amidst confusion you may have stirred up on your own way here.

~
"Leave the lights off and on,
I feel mysterious tonight,"
she says.

"Every time you look different,"
replies her careful ecstasy.

Practice makes perfect,
and from chaos comes 💋 (kissing).
She floats free from
her own body's outer reaches:
The mirrorball and the mystic circle.
The mirrorball is a light
for attracting attention.
The mystic circle
is an unsustainable trance.

"Will I dream during the process?" she asks.

"Only if you know the wild that wants you," chants the infinite unsayable yes.
~

Thoughts spin softly toward the unsayable Impossible to resist like the city's dark glamour or a wicked woman's kiss
Each turn of her face an eclipse giving birth
Each cigarette a torch held high
Only to have died all gorgeous and sad
As the city and abyss stare each other down

I want to teach you
The language of my hands
For they can at times
Be so very much more eloquent than I
More subtle than my sometimes clumsy tongue
Less prone to stumbling or misstep.

Every touch can be a poem
There are volumes written
Upon the lines of palms
Comfort in the creases, reassurance
Love, desire, solace, all find voice
Buried in fingerprints.

All that I cannot speak
In the space where words fail
Or have not the proper definition
Let my hands tell you
By caress or grasp
Variations of pressure or attitude
In perfect, silent eloquence.

That way, even the simple
Lacing of fingers twining
In knots of flesh and bone and nerve
Can be a conversation
Between our pulse
The unsayable become known
Described perfectly
As a slight squeeze.

I'm not always good to her
but she's always there for me

I pour my wretches into her white
and she just takes it
without flinching

I only come to her when it suits me
because sometimes it's just
so hard

sometimes there's just
too much to say
I don't know where to start
and it gets so loud
convoluting in minor keys

I leave her behind
because she knows
I can't lie

she ***** the truth
right out of me

I can't smile and nod
glaze over as disconnect severs
the feelings I'm fleeing

so I avoid the conversations
that are dying to get out of me
but it's just so hard
to say some things

even when you know
after there will be relief
and weights tied will unbind
and release

and you may yet float
and breathe

so thank you, P

for giving all the unsayable things
air and wings

Essential midnight dusted in an April chorus
Blue girls bittersweet wandering
Unsayable thoughts and lamplit rivers
Mindless roaming beyond memories of warm days
Sweet worries seen through bitter eyes
Withering in a moonless paradise
Undeserved karma
Describe the taste of a dreadful hold

i’m glad someone is effing me this hard. tattooing finger trails along the spine of the universe.

just break me.
i don’t pretend to know.
i just puppet words and try to say
the stupid unsayable.

which is all so, sooooo....

much.

you know.
it is.

He had a great desire to say the unsayable, and he used poetry to not only fulfill that desire but also to make it appear palatable.

How diligently do you
deepen discourses
on philosophical,
social, and political
truths?

What is debatable,
palatable,
until it is unsayable,
cuz the unstable
will make horrible things
capable of happening.

A carnival of
constant rotations
declines and elevations,
disturbing mental visitations
paired with terrible hesitation.

The fetishization,
and circulation
of cultural appropriation,
hastened by caucasians
lack of emotional relations
to different groups
and their enforced stations
in our society.

How do we address
the inequality
when so many resist
the notion that it even exists?

So, the systems persists,
as I bang my head
against collectively created
mental bricks.

At dinner I am retying my shøelaces
when yøu say ønce møre
gø øn, again
is what I hear
   what the waitress hears
as she dumps
anøther blønd-haired pint
in frønt øf me with a grin that clearly states
she’s telling yøu høw tø say that phrase is she
the three-wørd term
unsayable tø øutsiders

høp step jump
øf a phrase
the language fluvial
like a lake sluicing weeds
cønsønants like dripping water
vøwels that huddle tøgether
as if the cøld is cøming in
the irregular phlegmy intønatiøn

there are candles here
whøse lives expire in silence
a glut øf armchairs
where what cøuld very well be
the wøølly Jumpers expø
før the year cøngregates
triplets øf fingers running
thrøugh their straw-bløøming chins

despite the side-track
I still døn’t knøw why
the ø’s are impaled
my møuth and tøngue
haywire as if tøssed in the wash
the demøn shibbøleth
øffered tø me
and that tablespøøn øf mucus with it
rull grull mel fluøl

the wørds dribble øut
bunch øf slushy søunds
she laughs
says I’m a løst cause øn the matter
and that I’d be better øff with hygge
which is surely the søund made
when løng yawning in the mørning

I don't want to hear,
what you say, now unsayable,
flaunting golden ring.

Another sun and
another moon. What was this
soft December pain?

The smoking gun in
the trembling light of candle tells
a different tale.

I want you to know things

I never had the strength

to tell you.  I am reminded of 

Zues, of the wisdom of 

Socrates, the guts of 

Anthony.


No, I have the soul of 

a chorister.  Back and forth,

strophe and antistrophe.

I wear the mask made

by decisions and revisions

that a minute

would reverse.


I repeat  to

myself the lines from

Eliot.  They give me 

fortitude to say the

unsayable.  You are

more wonderful than

a day at the warm,

sunred beach.


You tell me how you feel

and I dare to disbelieve

you.  I am upended

by the impossibility.

My throat is a naked 

slash.  My mind is

a tan tunnel.

I implode


at the possibility that

you are truly speaking.

That you measure me

by your kindness.


I will go first before

you realize that I am

the way the world ends.


I am a whimper in the room.

To you belongs my

hollow flesh.


I tear myself in half.

I begin the way up.

Charon sends me

to you whom the 

gods have released.



Caroline Shank