"Morning has broken". Every **** day.
Branson is about to fly into the sky. Fauci
tries to get politics out of healthcare.

But you, you are young and strong,
fine and holy in my eyes.  I am due
to leave soon. You are forever 22.

I saw a picture of you recently. It felt
like withdrawal.  Don't look for me  
I am unrecognizable
In my old age.

I am my name spelled backwards.  
My broken mornings travel and
I am uncircled.  I have chosen not
to be and at some
point won't.

If you must come to me, come in the break of morning when the cat is
kneading me and I long for you.

Caroline Shank
7.11.21

I did not do that. The blotch
is the size of the sun
Methods of communication.
Failed mornings.

You saw the results of my
conversation before I did
Information quarreled with
meanings.. What should
be is not a reason to be.

Again the day begins with
prayer.  The end of prayer
cannot be its beginning.
The early morning empty

verses die of loneliness.
I die of repetition, of
stomach crunching fear.

I cannot find the night
in the car, the ******
shorts, your silence
drills me a lobotomy.

All this be the ends
of days and thought
moves slowly
backwards.

Caroline Shank
10.9.2023

You join me.  I am the receiving
slot to your philosophy.  We talked
for years.  You pushed the
red and yellow of your crazy
mind into me.  I was

the join to your metaphor.
You were the tendon which
completed the fit.

Now, lumber on the barn
floor I am martyred.

I tried to love you, my soul
inhaling your every thought.
You unearthed the grain of
my waiting mind.

You finished the fence post
of our friendship and moved
to Cincinnati.  I fell over,
A tear in the fabric of
magic.

Caroline Shank

The archaic symbols of the dream
appear nightly stained on some
gigantic scrim.  There’s a battle
going on in one corner, a damsel
is at stake of course; her favors
his reward.  Somewhere else is a
monkey holding a tin cup and
pant-hooting at passers by.
There will be some trouble if he
doesn’t get his pennies.  More
I suppose if he does.

A man and a woman face each other;
she prepares bandages for his war.
The problem is she can’t reach the
victims he piles up.

Birds fly, horses fly, lizards slither
out of holes each with pieces of’
paper fluttering from their mouths.
The paper disappears leaving only
sockets without sound.

The dream is incomplete without the man,
standing still in the middle, his spear
pointed up.  He cannot move
and the tears on his face
are children.



11/11/80


CSS publications 2nd place winner 8/84  $25.00

Move it on over little dawg.  
I jump freight trains now.  
I sleep where i want.  
And I gnaw the souls of
better men than you

are.

I don't hear you anymore.
I write my own songs
and I wave away your
charmless melodies

alone.

I hum as I hear the
music of another

lover.

Move it on over
little dawg, the
big dawg moved
right

in.


Caroline Shank

The triad of writer, lover and
the loved, she in the night of
raptors.

Gone the ability for thought,
the skin for touch, the heart
like unpainted bisque.

Her clammy hands, the drip
rivers ****** lacerations
born in the saunalike cataract
before, it seemed time
became the stranglehold
of Now.

Decades even later, years
uncover the silt of pain.

Together was not possible.

The rant began.

The cataract consumed her.
She unbreathed

goodbye.

Sphinx still
riddled.

She sat for me
clothed in sand

and waited

saecula saecularem

Amen,

Gentleman.

Last call.

Time gentleman.


Caroline Shank

You inspire me.  I am somehow
more when I am with you.  
You have given to me the
grapes and the branches
I need to weave my poems
around the ink and the paper
of my imagination.

You took a partial talent and
it blossomed by your fertile
mind.  You knew me as a
tattered vine and wove
my waiting dreams.

I drink to you,
a toast
of gratitude.  

A poet's dream.

Caroline Shank

The smoke stole, across the
sky.  I remember.
When I
was young.

Skies of pink clouds
across the evening
mark the advent hour.

I was 9. Then 29

The crazy years.

But i learned to survive.
So I thought.

There were lessons
I had to learn

Like pulling apart my
skin to see where the

bleeding

began.


Caroline Shank
5.18.2025

My children were the mothers of my soul.
Each of them took me to places I had
never been.

When they were babies I learned
through trials the fears that croup
doesn't **** a 3 month old,
that my daughter wore Holly Hobby
and never told me she hated it.

I learned the Sears catalogue by
heart and always bought the 3 pack
of whatever they had on sale.
They never complained.

I was amazed that my daughter
spent her only 50.cents on an
owl for my collection.  Ruby lives
with me today.

They were mine until they
started school.  Then they
we're feral.  

My stretch marks crawl across me
like fuscia rivulets.  I have
left the itch of them behind.

I am a grandmother to strangers.
A mother to voles.  I bred
them out like songs I can no longer

hear.

Caroline Shank

My Daughter Near Drowning
  in Lake Michigan
     Seven years old



So cold and still her eyes looked
up at running me.  Glass is like
the water between us.  I am
Christ.  I never felt the wet
and never sank.  I reached
her through the mirror of
myself.

I am her god now.


Caroline Shank

We used to spend whole evenings
grinding on your playroom floor.
I learned from you to kiss through
clenched lips, to watch TV over
your shirt stained shoulder. Your
sister, my friend?, Eating popcorn

You left when you were done, me
to make amends to Kathy for the
adolescent floorshow.  To eat
popcorn to stop my stomach
heaving with excitement.  

You told everybody.  I had to walk
through the fog of laughter.
Not even the memory of your
lying words that night
could rub off the smear of
regret.

You showed me deceipt.
I turned my face to the wall,
crumpled and bleeding.

You sent me
to Hell with every

crack of your laugh.



Caroline Shank

I found the end where I thought
it was too soon. The vestigal
wrapping of time is in the
dance.  The Nun’s habits
rustle.

There is dust in his eyes.
The sun is blotted out.
My mistaken opinion
forsakes him.

The dish of songs in my
late nights repertoire is
only food for the
neighbor's cat

I am hearing him
Pipe. The trembling
of my heart

Is the only sssooo
uuunnndd.

Caroline Shank
6.12.2024

Somebody burned the house
she said.
Frying steak.

Long live smoky kitchens
and those who are
called to the cause.

We are all molecules
in motion riding a
colossally failed experiment.

Non sequiturs abound in
my world.

Smokey kitchens.  
Metaphors.

I hang my head.
Slowly clear my
thoughts.

The kitchen remains.
the Abode.

There is nowhere

else

to go



Caroline Shank
9.26.2022

You asked me if I had
     Written
a poem today?

No I said.  You could not
have known that you are

     my poem.

My metaphors have changed.
You took my sad attempt’
'
to make of my life

     a story someone might
read, even for a moment.
Tonight I can tell you

     You are the meter
which steers the thing
I call love.

An unusual poem, filled
with all the things you are.

So I will know you when
     finally
we are met
and One.  

Caroline Shank
December 17. 2024

For Kinik

was a dark haired Jewish
boy with curls like black
streamers around his face.

He danced me
on stockinged feet.
We Lindyed to the music
until all the girls were snapping
fingers and tapping toes.

It was a long time ago.
this boy was willing in
my life.  He gave me
flowers and songs,

dreamers and
forever…


Caroline Shank
11.9.2022

My Windows look out on the Hastas.
mMy plastic flamingos travelled
     back here.
     Here from Florida

My bolus of early spring
     flowers offer pollin
but no bees arrive.  The
Blossoms reach out to
     the sky.  

It is to no avail.
My hands
shake in anticipation.

The cup of leaves with bite
     holes sift the want
     from my poetry.

I am an adventure.
     Tomorrow I will write
about you. How youth
escaped me and how
the open dreams danced

a little jig, a show of knee

And

The

Last time

ever
    
     you

        called

My

     name.


    
Caroline Shank
6.16.2024

The clocks,the ticks,
the chimes. people pop in and out.
In thrall with the missing

figures behind the carved
wooden sides.

On the walls were the
partakers of this vigil,
alert to the footsteps
on the stairs, the whisper
from one to another.  


Here
from the side door,
a piece of rhetoric,

offers the scribbles,

on
the
****** sidewalk where
I lay,so long ago,
counting my sins.

In me the balance,,.    
the ****** years

of a lost forever,
love, in the foggy
whisper,.

the sounds of

days gone by.


Caroline Shank
9.26.2024

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

Never again.  Your voice like
thistles scrapes. It's tracks
unsteady.

Blood drains from the holes
dug by serrated edges.You
command the death of
Venus.  My throat expels
the vowels of the tirade
you unleashed.

To see, unleashed, the
ferocious silliness of
your torn words addressed
to the gods who long
before laughed at your

excavation of old bones
and misunderstandings.

Never again will you pillory
me, my torn lashings
       stung
in deep regret

for the years of meaning
now drawn closed like
curtains over a corpse.

One word bled from your
mouth, lifted me to my
knees.

Goodbye.

I laughed.

Never again.



Caroline Shank
2.28.2023

It's New Year again

Winter brings another flavor

to my lonely heart.


Caroline Shank

12.31.19

Next Spring I will move.  The Wisconsin
winds will sweep me from this house
of yours where I no longer belong.

You climbed the lattice of the cold
Winter.  I was your bounty.  Now
I can leave the brown sugar color
of this apartment. There are scrapes
on white walls from your wheelchair.

The family will not care and for that,
I will not ask.  

I am through writing thank you notes
and receiving the few callers who
patted me for your loss.

Spring is too far away for intimate
details.  The shaking tree limbs
will be quiet and the annual
equinox will welcome new growth
and knitted sorrows.

We were an uninvolved lot,
the children and you and I.  

So I will write again
on my calendar.  No one will ever
remember that it was I who took
your hand,

your heart,

your suffering

to the last
quiet sigh.



Caroline Shank

No matter what I will celebrate
the deterioration of my body.
I will forget the sacks of my neck.
The scarfs flesh burdens will
       not remind me that I have
six minutes to escape and that
I will fail.

No matter what you see look
closer.  I am only a ticking
clock away from myself
you knew then. I look to the
        calendar, truths that
my mother knew, the due
date is ordained.

I don't delay the search for
company, I am sitting on the
edge of my genetic map, Henry,
waiting for my skin to turn
tan, as it always did, every
summer. No matter what.

I am not gentle.  I am a kick
away from screaming. The
lies of every soap manufacturer
are written in my old face.
And I don't like it.
         I want to be loved
again, to rise in the warm
morning singing.

To be alone at the cracked end
of the sidewalk is to be tempted
over again as I was at twenty
seven. The last real estate is
sold to the younger woman.
          The light skin of my
youth is pasted on his memory.
I would no longer
           be of interest to him.

The tomorrows of then have
passed and I am in the window.
The mirror is not true, it sees
me old and alone as the last
            line of the play.

No matter what I want to
remember the suntan on my
ripe body
but gone. No matter what
I cry to be remembered
in a life of gone by

dreams.


Caroline Shank
1.29.2023

Noon
Turns
and night
Is the
Bridge.

You step. Forward.

I cannot sommelier
The moment
Of drunken sorrow.

We made love under
Lies and the trumpets
Were off key.

The question never
asked was when
did you know?

The tattered fragile
rain of love runs
out the window.

Where was i when
time leaked out?

A cold sidewalk.
A faded flower.

The remains of love
is an urn.  
Smashsd sideways.
Rolls away toward the
Avenue A terminal.

The sounds under the
Bus were all the
Music  we ever

Sang.


Caroline Shank
7. 11. 2022

It's the wartorn pedestrian
whose  tears fall on the
heart's side streets.

Veins of regret that curl
the same pain.  It's not
the sorrow that hurts, it's
the gullibility of time's
unlearn-ed lessons.

The old suffer
most.  The pandemic
of hope again in
the release of
lyrics left long ago.

The letdown lisps
it's own goodbye, prefigured
in the drawl of soft sighs.

Goodbye is muted
and falls to the floor.

It sinks to the power
of your poetry.



Caroline Shank

You can't reverse the dying
of a leaf. Even if it is not fully
in the ripeness of its demise.

The yellow stripe of incipient
decay that rides the center
of the foliage is only the
beginning.  The curled
edges follow and if there
is a flower it will float down
very shortly.

Love like death takes
its time with all things.  
Toes and fingers curl in a semblance of sadness.  
The veins break
like old thread.  

Both leave in their own season,
in short gasps.  The last thing
to go is the stem. The *******
resonance of a long goodbye.

It rejects the unction
of extreme prayers
left on the
knuckle of loss.


Caroline Shank

There is still the rocking of
decisions amidst the myriad
daily tasks of which the
true label’s my conversation .

If Macbeth is the analogy
du jure no doubt the
witches will once again
sing the single syllable
their vocabulary utters.

I toil while the firelight remains.
The maps of my skin are
particular, I choose you.

Skies clear deep blue ever
present in the unsleep
washing over the signature’s
toes, I go on.  The petty
pace of time like the
seasons regurgitating

****** reasons goes on.


Never before has the
changed Bible paused in
it's slouching toward
Bethlehem.

“I have seen the eternal
footman snicker

and in short,
       I was afraid.”


Caroline Shank.        T.S.Eliot
10.22.2024.               Shakespeare

Now travels with me like skin.
It's always there.  I can't feel
yesterday.  But I remember.

I remember lp records and
playrooms for the kids.  Me.
I remember Mrs Cleaver
and Donna Reed.
Father knew best.

Make out parties.  Devil
or Angel.  Slow dancing.
Egg creams and cigarettes
at thirteen were a quarter
a pack.

Football. First in ten do it
again.  Cheers and jeers.

The lake behind the school
where we met to go to
the drag races.

Dancing at First **** on
Saturday nights.  The Dog,
The Bird, of course the
Twist.  

Bobby socks,poodle skirts
and crinoline,
boys in in pink and gray.  
Fads.

Getting my driver's license.
Big Boy and Bonnie Doon's
Driving the packed streets
in and out through the
circuit.  All kids all night.

Sleepovers and 35 cent
movies.

But I digress.  Now is
creaks and coughs.  Today
is viewed through rheumy
eyes.  

Now is like walking through
air dragging memory and
tomorrow's shopping lists.

That really is All There Is,
My Friend, said Mae
West I think.  If I can
remember.

Caroline Shank

Mother did you know I would
grow old alone?

That the crevices on my
face fell into the street

with used syllables?

Tomorrow you said
No
To my first boyfriend.

Mother did you know I
wouldn't care. Your scarred

breast
was not my fault.

The trail of your
Epithet does not hurt
As much as this

Old age
When you
tried to

sell me


Caroline Shank
12.24.2024

I don't have for you, a leaf or
a stone or an unfound door,
no not even
the sound of the gate's
clicking.

Angel of my once beginning
broken,
home, blown down
around my wrinkled feet.

You are not allowed.
The abandonment of a love
affair under your careful
vocabulary, can only but strip
the remaining skin shined
mind.

Where else should I go to,
gently or torn away?  To
dream of better days? To
round the corner empty
after all.

The same birds in blue plumage
sing a little tilted now.  Though the
pattern is the same.

You don't see the war between
myself and you. You see
patterns where I walk in the
garden.  I see the soft brown
of yesterday curl adoringly
once around the house
and fall asleep.

I am out placed. The Angel
in the square told of my
forsaken, washed and combed
recumbent  wisdom turn
to ashes on the winter
Manhattan sidewalk.
.
Will I see you in
September?



Caroline Shank
1.25.22

I am not a kind person

At times
I trickle interest in what
you are saying.

Mostly
I wait for
noon on a hot
day.

The breath of a
thousand words
cannot reach

the craters of
stones dug
without care.

I am not a kind person.

Where you were,
dying,
it was
the nurses who
compassioned you.

My reflection was
hidden in the
still pool of your and

leaving brown eyes.

I reek with sadness,
with the
penance of being

alone.



Caroline Shank
10.8.2022

(Do you remember Columbine?  I do.
From Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris
straight through to Anthony Ferrill
of yesterday's Milwaukee nightmare,
the deaths like a drumbeat go on,)

Shooters like thistles crawling
in their dementia to our cities
leave trails as the unexplainable
cancer claws to vine into our
conscience.  We listen to the

words as waves of newspeak
write the epitaph of our known
society.

Deeds as gunshots slap the
faces of we who can no
longer sleep. The panacea of
Peace In Our Time has rotted
limbs.

I live in the branches,
the false years of  the 50's.  
The Days of Our Lives
are indeed shot with a

bang

not

a whimper



Caroline Shank
2.27.20

Not your average cryin' in
your beer bar song. No
not at all.  In this tune the
wet soft plunk of falling
dreams lands in your lap.

Tomorrow will be infamous.  It
will ride in blistered and red from
too much *******. Sore
on the bottom, full
of whiskey. It's how I
do lonely.

I pick up the wet bar glass,
toss my cigarette as I
fall to earth.  You can always
find me, the drunkard of tears.

The cholera of grief.


Caroline Shank

I didn't shed a tear until
yesterday.  Your memory
pulled me back
years of
the flood of
the days and nights,
the children, rogue
warriors in our battles
their  children confused
by the confessions,
the chest pounds
of sorrow.

Where you remain
under the guise
of husband.


Caroline Shank
July 10, 2022

I am the next wind
which crosses your neck.
The raindrop on your cheek.
When you wake up
tomorrow I will be the
crease on your face, the
tangle of your blanket.

Know this then, I will
never leave you.  The
scent of me lines your
breath.  

So now I lay me down
to sleep. I pray my soul is
yours to keep


Alt ending

So now I lay me down
to sleep.  I know your soul
is mine to keep.

Amen


Caroline Shank

Now what? You might well

ask. After the halcyon days

in Florida? After the debt

of childbearing?  After the

years of budgets?  Now what?


Back in the cold, the kids

grown, the still unsettled

finances?  I'm old and faded.


What happens to this

country song that is 

my life?  I am going to 

dance.  Still hold out my 

card to you.


The dance we have left

is slower, but the music

still travels up my spine.

Yes that's what.  I 

save the last dance

for you. 


It's just the way I roll.


Caroline Shank

1.2.20

Number 1.

February 24, 2023

I am using this as an attempt to navigate the last years of my life.

Number 1. February 24, 2023

I have faintly seen and
     suffered my
brain
to
blow into the next
life.  

(Oh, Yes I believe
            In Karma)

There are enough grains of
nosand now in charge of the
serious songs of our lives.

I digress

Or did I forget what I was
rattling on about.

I forget the how-to's.  I'm
on the road to Damascus.
My epiphanies are bright
shots for only a second.

I've lost direction.  The
compass of my life
tilts.

There are roads to travel
           Yet,
People to see, loves
to find.
  

But to mix thinking

this Busy
            badly
Mable.

Not until Now.


Caroline Shank
2.24.2023

October's nights
lay on us
like wet skin.
Leaves everywhere.
Gold soaked medallions
in the early dark.

We walk the city's
sidewalks.
Shadows hold
daylight under drains,
to be released into
tomorrow.

Dusk now rinses down
foggy wells.  Deep
grays baton the
process.  God's promise
released in a
quotidian embrace.

We go on.
Each to another.
The whiteflash of the
walklight sanctions
movement.

We cross the street,
bridge the evening,
listen to the cafe
music as we pass.
Rainwet faces.
Smiles that dim at
the ends of days.
We kiss.

October's evening
shuffles into night.

O Domine!

Caroline Shank

I have seen the marble arch
and was not afraid.  The
comeliness of it's curved
surface paused me. Your
song whispered of birds

felting by, of fallen kings and
reasons.

I have time on my hands to
listen. Hallelujah.  For my
steadfastness in love has left
me

bereft.

I swore to all the kings in the
Bible. I offered my skinned
knees, for solace that I was heard.

Hallelujah

There are cracks in my head,
my ankles are shackled.  No
music but a laugh echoed
side to side.  

I will go down to the river to
find God.  Your repertoire
is complete.

Why a monk Leonard? The
music of the ages was written
without your melody and
I sank beneath the river
like a stone.

But you're not there.  Your
music sustains me.  I walk
out, wet and cold.  

Hallelujah.

I am redeemed from the
nightmare.  I step on your
music as a soft petal.

I am for a moment, relished
and shriven.  

Hallelujah


Caroline Shank

The Story

Hey Wall.
Are you there
to hold me up when
old age conquers tomorrow?

Between my layers,
are my flaws.

Not the Greek Islands
again, Wall.
Not where my last glass of
Summer wine
was drunk?

The tears slide
on my face.

The wine is finished
and in

your dusty corners
gathers moonlight.

I toast to you
Wall.  

Nothing ordinary
ever was
so still.


Caroline Shank
8.7.2022


The 1970's movie
Shirley Valentine

Older women look around,
say wait a minute,
We are required to have tea.

Older women
wear watermarks
where kisses
first were placed along with
lilacs.  

Flowers are the truth.
Older women whisper
in petals. The scent
rubs into the soft
underbelly of
years gone deaf into

yesterdays.


Caroline Shank
10.14.2023

I am surprised to discover
myself in old age.  
I repeatedly find myself in
the 50's or 60's
as if I never left. It's truly
shocking, the image in the
mirror, the chubby, no fat
old lady I said I would never
become.

Here I am.  Looking young
through old eyes, wearing
sensible shoes thinking
spike heels and fancy hose.
I am still 27 not the 74 I have
inadvertently become.

I am flat shoes and sweaters
in the summer. No hot
tan or sun bleached hair.

This is the time for rocking in
my chair not the dance
floor.  My, I was good.
When the music made sense.
I have my favorites still.
A playlist we danced to.

You kissed me in the dark
and left me in the rain.

I must rearrange my baggy
pants and sweaters. I shy
away the summer breezes
and shiver in the sun.
I look for you in the night,
find you in dreams,
a dear lost
moment.  

It all went by
so fast.



Caroline Shank

I miss the real photographs.
The leaves of pictures I turn
over. The names and dates.
The high school graduation
memories.

My babies growing up when
film was their reflection of
summer and school. The
birthday parties slightly
blurred, a little out of focus.

The didital cameras next
with their zingy zoom.  A
little clearer now blurred
by tears.  

I hold these images to be
self-evident memories. I
hold them to my face to
smell the suntan lotion
and the scents of pine and
snow.  The birthday candles.

I choke on school pictures.
New haircuts each year. The
leather of first days.

The photograph albums are
stored for space.  I miss the
luxury of turning leaves. The oh wows of yesterday's Kodak
captured babies little butts.

My phone has a thousand
pictures In the palm of my
hand

I never look at but can
share in email in a
solipsistic minute and
click to the end.

Caroline Shank

My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,
dressed in the beaches of my
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.

My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,
dressed in the beaches of  
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.

Caroline Shank

Old Roses and Summers


My life, then, hung like a
sun-yellow mobile that spun
in the heat as I flowed from
one end of summer to the other.
The songs on the radio were
my island.  My life as a girl
in the years before fences
appears in memory slides,oses
dressed in the beaches of my
youth.

I grew from seeds to roses in
the ground of my childhood
summers.  In the calendar of
my life as a young girl
every date prefigured you.
Day by day, in the years of
growing I bought, with the
barter of my soul, all the
heat and all the music.

Battened by the times before
you, strengthened by long
storms, hot suns, cold winds,
this, then is what I offer
you:  deep beaches, thornworn
roses, summers that flow
from one end of your life
to the other.


102592

I slow danced in the living room to the
memories that were even in the 60’s,
old.  

I would stack the spindle with several picks
from my library of “crooners”  Andy, Jerry,
Jack, so many memories.  Listening to the
music of the 50’s would sop my mind soggy..
Johnny Cash walked the line all over me.

I drank the music
of my youth like warm milk.  Time was
I danced to the sounds of American
Bandstand, everyday after school.

The race was on to get home to turn
on the television and watch as ****
Clark and Justine or one of the
Regulars would rate the music that
had just come on the airwaves.

“It's got a good beat and you can
dance to it.”

33 ⅓ records, 45 rpm’s would stack
up on our playroom record player.

My Dad put headphones on my
radio in an attempt to find peace
from the horrible, to my parents,
sounds of the likes of Elvis.

It was the 1950’s and all of
it was so new.  The era of the
Teenager was born.

We had our own money from
lawns and babysitting and could
buy the song and songbooks,
The clothes and cigarettes we
consumed like soda shop
malts and and nickel cokes.

You may not know of these things
you who are the children of the
80’s but we started it all.  

We strolled and twisted before
our freaked out parents.

Now I can still do the dances
But it’s more like a crooked
back and shuffled foot.

But I remember you,
Makeout parties and
Sloe gin in my coke.

I remember being kissed in the
backseat of your car.
so drunk with beer and music.

I remember the long play albums
That are just now coming back
into the stores.  Oh! How I wish
I had my Bob Dylan “Freewheelin’”
album.

I gave them all away when cd’s
took  the sound of the
needle as it ripped across the
grooves of my youth.

It was the best of times.

The worst of times
came later..
.

Caroline Shank
2.17.20

Once I told you not to explicate my life
like this.   Don't tear me apart as when
the grass grows too high.  You mow me
and I am cut to my bleeding bones.

I receive your blades into my sanctuary
of flesh.  A little more of me to spill out
and I run.  There is a bottle of gin
waiting.  I forgot it very well when
you left me.

I don't want to be your friend.  I don't
want to wash in the same cracked sink
as you do.  Wear me on your last

trouser pocket, the blue one from
the New York tailor we could not
afford.  The abortion remains
too fragile to be spoken of.

The crackling of the shutting
door is all I can hear.    


Caroline Shank
January 12, 2015

I have rebuilt so many times. Every
love is a dispair.  I have room for
none but the lonely, the broken
pedestrians of time's sidewalks.

How old I am is irrelevant.  I
am tuned to the rhyming night.
I listen to the frogs mating in the
swamp, the crickets and, in
season, the cicadas who do not
love but for a breath.  

My house is now a ramshackle
of old memories, songs that
burn my fragile skin, and the
sloe gin of my youth.

You retain me, and in the end,
the currency of my life
is writ of you.

I have rebuilt so many times,
love's fires ring the sidewalk
around my memory .
I write of the past that
is in runes.  My thoughts enact
in me that youth that was always
yours to have and to hold.

We are all phantoms of our pasts.
We are rubbed with it. For you
my skin sings of the tight tan
you knew

once upon a time.

Caroline Shank

On Sitting Alone at Costco Eating a Hot Dog

and wishing you were there, the
strong maleness of you,  Your
daily grip on my loneliness. The

wait for you to get out, call me.
The beef flesh taste so long
forgotten on my tongue.
Tonight will be too late.  You

will not find me there   My old
walk out the door will never
find you looking

I sit alone knowing that this
long, left over afternoon will be
the last warm memory of

today.

I will go home from here and
prepare the socket of my own
life to leave this place

Forever.

Caroline Shank
9.28.2023

Ilse told of many things:
The noises of the casbah,
ululations from the musky
throats of the wasted women.
Tent smells from a hundred
hookahs.
She had her destiny all wrong.  
It's the same old story.

Cold drinks, a hot town,
thwarted love.  
A kiss is still a kiss.

Bombs mix with the
night sounds.

Louie didn't call off the search.
The suspects lined up

The enemy blurred.

Ilse left.  
Her stillness is forever.
The gin is always cold,
the fedora is slanted
and for the moment
of the last Act:

A kiss goodbye.

Casablanca is in the night's
glare. I hold my glass.

I will always toast to love. .
ft
Goodbye is never
forever.

A kiss is still a kiss.
    
       As time goes by.


Caroline Shank