Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
An empty swing hangs from a tree
Drifting in the airs varying touch
Vacant in his mind,
Where light shines upon the grass,
Stretching and leading
While shadows kiss the base of it's warm bark
This tree has a memory,
As the swing longs in its drift

This place
Where she used to reside,
Radiating magic and captivating flowers,
Remains dormant

The swing longs,
The tree mourns
The light, slightly dimmed and muddled

While remnants of her enchantment
Leave the scent of life and beauty embedded in every space
Her words once touched
What makes life meaningful?

Understanding another's

pain and suffering–perhaps.
The water in my well is deeper and no longer bitter.

The river of life flowing into me and flowing out from me is no longer just a trickle in a sunbaked riverbed.

No matter how long
and hard the
journey has been

I take back what I lost
I take back what I wasted
and I take back what
was taken from me
whilst locked in a universally
human functionalized social
and spiritualized trance.

I take back my hope!
I take back my faith!
I take back my peace!
I take back my joy!
I take back what
was taken from me!!!
Occasionally, it can be a good thing to take advantage of a gap you may see in the spinning wheel of life, and carpe diem--pluck the day as you would a flower--to help make a positive change for yourself and others.
NM!
No more performing —
No more presenting —
No more people-pleasing,
And seeking attention.
Can I do that? With no treason?
Is there a people-pleasing anonymous?
PPA?!
Dismissed from long ago,
When? I don't really know.
Wallowing can now wait
It’s time to live, not hate!
Wounded,
But loved —
Coveted;
Beloved.
From the archives
I see myself in light and shadow.
I wipe away “always and never” like spilled water,
when the paradox bothers me.

I dissolved my soft boundaries,
in the name of unreal faith.
So many places, so many faces,
yet another beginning.
I keep rolling a big stone beside others.
The home I dreamt of now exists in my world.

I have found this time, this place
describing what cannot be translated:
a room for uncertainty,
farewells and returns.

I like to stand in the last row,
to see tired bodies.
I whisper good words,
to make the world a little better.
My sovereignty is a willingness
to be an echo,
the symbol, the myth,
or a meaningless element
in the chain of woven stories.

I love metaphors.
I find myself in a forest of ellipses,
that bring unbearable truths.

Tensions, contradictions,
awareness that everything that lights
brings unseen weight.

I am a part of stories,
to vanish into oblivion—
the done past.

The Earth still breathes with me,
or without me,
among blooming linden trees.
So, I want to stay,
to open my eyes,
and be with what remains.
To my Father
Tomorrow creeps it's been
said.
I have nothing to offer as balm.

The hours tritely signal the new
est

hollow minutes.  The breeze
through my shabby thoughts
finds no place
to rest

Will there be a

another song?

Someone will sing it

so wrongly yet familiarly
time you carved

into me?⁰

Just past noon on a summer day
today  is fighting to let me go

I am trapped in a

vortex from
which I will never be let go.

I beg to be forgotten
by

you

the prying and the Poetry
I writ

before pity turned our

journey to

Salt..


Caroline Shank
July 1, 2025
Next page