Things on hold
Bleeding in and the
flowers of surgery are
wilting  

Waiting is sand spreading
on the ground, slippery
and ever widening

My
determination is
rippled.

Morning is thwarted.

I am unmouthed.

Today is

unwritten.



Caroline Shank
5.6.24

I lack everything
I have no essence to cherish
I am dense to myself
Fear prowels my thoughts

The Divinity in me
Waits for no one
I am unblessed
Repulsed by nature
Coward
Today

I will return to my Recovery
Lessons learned

The deadend is not
signed
It is a curve that
ends on the
Last Exit to Chicago.

Caroline Shank
May 1. 2024

For us it was pure recreation, the
flap ends of days at work
We saw the night sky lighten to
the moon’s yellowed ends.

Our signals were these - -
the free
formed contacts of those who
worked in the dark.

Every time thru touch we
exolored the tiny motions,
the fingertip braille of meanings.

Then the scattered
motions slung across
the disarray-
the darkness of
lamps shutting off,

of
beds silenced, sheets
unmoved

ever again.

Not to return uncovered the
indifference, the mistaken
edges of a vocabulary grown
only
in my carved thoughts.

Feeling  blurred into
the dim haze of

indifference.

Touch

slid

away.



Caroline Shank
2.29.2024

Dear, You Know Who You are.

Bless me Father for I have
sinned.

It has been twenty four
months since last i

looked
in the mirror.

Forbid me not the long
vowels of my
Poems, the

caesura of love in

the Winter in Wisconsin.

Summer's in the
Lake.  There's fire in
my old dreams

And you.


Caroline Shank
4.26.2024

I Believe for Every drop
of rain… there is a
note of wonder
A falling waters, a cataract
of stones where the
baby was born like

a song misplaced, a heart
In darkness lay in the
shadow of your lies.

My alphabet is several
runes short of the words
spelling forever,  the
never spoken, the

blue assumptions of
yesterday.

Tomorrow will be like
the sadness, it will spread
to the echoes of memory

when I believed

Caroline Shank
4.23.2024

That was before all the decisions.
Before the car was packed and
you drove with such a pain in your
knee.

That was the last time I was
thin and my hair was not yet
pink.

Before I knew you were around
the corner.  You were not yet
the last to set my mind reeling.

Tomorrow will see you wrapped
In the linen of your generation,
the symbol of a freed man.

Wallace Steven's predicted
you but I was not listening.
To be freed was not the point.
All that was before I saw the
exhaustion on my face.

Waylon Jennings here.
Full stop

Yet all my life foretold you.
The brave of you and the
blindness of my ever
singing anthem.

I leave you with s soft
flower

To

Wear

in your hair.

Caroline Shank
April of my discontent


4.20.2024

I am neither this nor that,
Neither here or there.
I do not talk too fast nor
loud.

My ego rides on me like
a rug. It needs vacuuming.
Today was a pretty dusty
day with lists and conversation

written with the accouterments
of my old age.
I am a fantasist.
It shows in my mistaken
choice of you.

You cannot hear me.  I am too loud.

Whatever I have to say is not
a flower or a song.

I am the avatar of she who
left.  The husk of intelligence.

If there are questions that
are unanswered  ask another.
I have the memory of a
conversation, an admonishment,
a loving reminder from someone
who was wrong.

And the reclining apneic
experience to

sleep. To say

my

prayers to the God of my
understanding


Caroline Shank
4.17.2024