Perdu46

Frere Jacques Are you sleeping up there in the stone parapet in which you spend your time writing letters and showing how you can trip the light fantastic with no one watching. You,  where you retreat to listen to music. To read your books  and with wine dream,  like Miniver Cheevy, of the days of roses.  Do you think of me? My perfume you were so fond of.  Oh, how I adored you! I am not allowed to climb the steps to your so private sanctuary.  The locked door reminds me of your pledge to God to leave me and the child.   We are not yours, not anymore.  You with your hunched shoulders crying "That is not all, that is not it at all."  Your dead heroes replace me. I should have gone away before I knew you loved me.  But how could I?  I will tomorrow shows me a new place to hide away Think of me when you are inside with your plans and dreams.,  and I am on the outside scrolling across the long years in which I am stranded...

Long Days Long days.  Night slithers through the door and I reach for you.  I believe in the wisp of  twilight, the smell of dope  and your arm around my  shoulder. The cross we bear.  The map of night is written and I must go.  Never, the tears.  I stare at your mouth.  We kiss the chalice of each others love.  The mass of yesterday sanctified a long litany of love unanswered.  I hate the sound of the bells.   I am brought to my knees. An old woman genuflects, A tear falls.  I confess my sins but never you.   You, you belong to the  dusking dreams.   Caroline Shank  5.26.21

Gethsemane  It's April snow on daffodils.  Yellow stains on the white sky.  Drops from God to salve the  feral pain.  I wait for tulips that are encased in green buds.  A lot of  energy in the making of a flower.  It reminds me of a prayer.  I think my Azalea has gone for soldiers, and the lilacs wait for me to heal.  The faces in this  garden look to find you.  I am all alone with my prayers,  this station is one before the  Crucifixion. My Garden waits  for our reconciliation as  snow floats on in time past  and time future.  Now is not our cup of Salvation.   Forgiveness is not our business.  Caroline Shank 

Sylvia You sucked death like a fruit. For twenty years you did dying. You had an art. Your father left you in the pit of childhood. He went into his end dustless and without asking. At twenty you wore a strap less black wish. You drank until you’d drunk ten father less .s. Dun years, you beat his coffin. Your fists never bled. Smashed hands were a ticket. You knew how to make him die, die, die. Twenty was your real death. Capsules saved like candies. It was close. It was not close enough. Thirty was a party. Show off show woman do it again. Come back to see your baked  brains on my paper. Your  poems are spread out like cards. I play your deal in War. I lean over my poetry. Thirteen years beyond you I know death. I shake at your familiarity with me.

I Believe in You This long life has been informed by love.  We shared each other Oh! for so  short a time.  Like fruit we hung onto the sweet drops of new nectar's night.  We peeled each other to the pink skin of sighs.  It was a delicate scent when blown into the stars quiet Space.  We sped into the walls of destiny and crashed in the pulp of sorrow.  But I miss you in this  orchard of dessicated memories.  I am rawed by the thought of you.  Caroline Shank 4.16.21

Sax The sound of the tenor notes culled by the expert plying music, swiping keys and sweat from the essential melody of the saxaphone sends me into the world of the sensual. I breathe shallowly.  Sigh in the tender way of notes brushed against my skin. I sit in the smoky club as if alone in my secret self. Smoke trails from my mouth as he makes contact.   The player sees me and knows my helplessness as he swings toward me trailing the sound of his sax across my waiting lips. Caroline Shank

Not Your Average Bar Song  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 bareback. 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  3.12.21        All Poetry   Caroline Shank, you got a new comment! Jonathan Moya commented on your item "Not Your Average Song" Would make a really nice song. Like the last line a lot.

Friends People touch people in some free-form folding of lives, briefly, changing shapes, always re-emerging against new sides, blending likef figures on a screen, always in motion, changing colors, signifying some never-ending continuum, floating in a liquid teeming with possibility, sliding into each other, skin to skin for the length of a second. Touch is the brush of friends at anchor. Friends People touch people in some free-form folding of lives, briefly, changing shapes, always re-emerging against new sides, blending likef figures on a screen, always in motion, changing colors, signifying some never-ending continuum, floating in a

Sometimes I See You Dancing  Sometimes I see you dancing.  Your arms are strong and hold me up.  I would have  fallen without you, tumbled down like a doll flung away.  Sometimes I see your strong walk. You were my bear in the  warm summer of my 27th year.  You are still playing music in my old age. Sometimes I see you dancing in the night,  in the rain.  Our  song,  floats away like smoke in the air that I breathe.  Caroline Shank  5.22.21 Jonathan Moya - Interesting  how this poem uses the familiar tropes of romance to create a memory poem that is both sentimental and heartbreaking. Like how the doll simile acts both as a bridge to the second stanza and as a transition from the joys and heartaches of childhood to adulthood.  It becomes a better poem as a result- one not of lost childhood dreams but adult ones crushed also.  Without that simile the rest that follows would be just a bad melodrama retold. Wit...

  In this circus of the mind, you are the dreamraker, the seller by the booth of riches. You are the daylight’s yellows and the blue stratum of sleep. We knew each other in the shadowless angle of noon, bartered minutes, collected seaside the shells of poetry. You opened the door of tents. The edges of the sand’s various galleries collapsed into rivers, opened into books. You are the sheik of araby, the dream-maker, the purples mornings brush in the eyes of wise men. Dreams surrounded the day’s median. Time was, red was the color of afternoons pressed against us. Now the tents move nearer the water than you. The past is covered canvas, the future is the wet unbroken fabric of beach. The bazaar closes, tents fold, pictures painted on the moon’s memory move on. You and I walk to the uncut littoral, carve footprints in the cool green silence, the first morning of the world. Caroline Shank  8393*