EGO ET TU (I’m With You)

ABSTRACT POETRY: Verse that makes little sense grammatically or syntactically but which relies on auditory patterns to create its meaning or poetic effect; Dame Edith Sitwell popularized this term and considered this verse form the equivalent of abstract painting.

© EGO ET TU (I’m With You)

For a while

For a while

Unlike waking from a dream

Going into one

Taking pleasure

Shameless
No apology

Lingering abed

Embraced

Night slipping
Into day

Day
Into night

Spending time

Until the end

Emptying memories

Into weightlessness

For a while

For a while

Mimi Wolske

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Tangled Tree Lights

Mimi and Mona wish you a holiday better than your dreams; a holiday filled with peace, good will, and hope; a holiday filled with a firelight that gleams; a holiday filled with the joy and love of your family; a holiday overflowing with holiday spirit, good food, and laughter. And when this holiday is done, we hope you live happily until the next one!

© TANGLED TREE LIGHTS

It took hours before I found the box
Of the many strings of lights for the tree;
After climbing the ladder in my sox
and reaching the attic venturously,

I crossed the chilly floor in stocking feet.
Passed the trunks, the crib, old furniture,
Passed the sled, memories now bittersweet,
And paintings in oils, pastels, and watercolor,

To the large, corrugated box. It sat on top
Of the highest of the built-in storage shelves.
It’s the box I got from our closed bookshop,
The box covered with inked Santa elves.

I opened and climbed the small, 3-step ladder,
Blew away the cobwebs and got my surprise
When the dust blew all over my hair. In a blur,
I saw my reflection and began to fantasize

I was covered with white hair and a full beard,
Dressed in a red suit and shiny, black boots.
My reflection from the window was bleared;
So was my mind. There were no absolutes.

It wasn’t that jolly elf I thought I saw.
I laughed and took down the box stored on high.
Dear reader, don’t think me too bourgeois
But I wished I bought lights, thus gave a sigh.

Dragging the heavy box of Christmas tree lights
across the attic floor, down the wooden slats,
And into the family room, turned on the lights,
And what to my eyes should appear? Doormats!

“Arrg! Where are the lights?” I asked myself.
Went to the kitchen, opened some wine,
Drank one, no two glasses, returned to the shelf,
And saw, on a box on the floor, the TREE LITES sign.

My laugh sounded merry, so I laughed again,
Dragged another box downstairs, poured
Another glass or four, and gave a broad grin
Because the lights were all tangled that I procured.

Now on my third bottle and wound in the lights,
I rolled to the wrapped presents and stood like a tree.
I swear by the fluttering wings, an angel alights;
When she kissed my forehead, I lit up with glee.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(photograph by B. Rosen)

The Career Man And The Artist

The first tangos had no written lyrics. Sometimes some were improvised in the spur of the moment. Dame la lata is the first tango song with written lyrics. At the end of the poem is Dame la lata, music only.

© The Career Man And The Artist

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

At the end of the nineteenth century

He wanted to take her to Buenos Aires

She said no, Montevideo

They settled for the border

Between Argentina and Uruguay

Where they could learn to tango

To the sweet sounds of the violin,

The driving flamenco guitar, and

The strange, mournful wail

Of the bandoneon

Each night was a different, shady,

Dockside dive where they watched

The mating dance between

Barmaids and their customers,

Where the entertainment was the

Violence and illicit sex and the

Lower classes on both sides of the border

Before the clubs were raided by police

He learned every move from the barmaids

She learned to step and side-step the customers

Together they danced

Separately they returned to California

He grew a mustache, married, and

Died after forty years working in a bank

She studied painting, showed

Her work in galleries, and lives forever

Blood Rushes To My Head

Aristotle said that love is a single soul inhabiting two bodies. A Love Poem is actually a message of love. It doesn't have to be long; when a lover makes blood rush to your head, heartfelt, honest words can be incredibly special to the person receiving them.

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."  Victor Hugo

© Blood Rushes To My Head

Your love is my plutonium and it’s

Registered to kill as sure as

Mercury through gloves.

Your air-bending suffocates me

But it is AH!, the element of

Surprise that defeats my senses.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(art: Michael Carson)

POETRY: Pieces of Her Heart

“It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you." E.M. Foster ― A Room with A View

“In a world full of temporary things you are a perpetual feeling.” ― Sanober Khan

“I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.” ― Socrates

© Pieces of Her Heart

She sat outside quietly sewing pieces of her heart together,

Shedding old pains yet weeping for what used to be.

Once the proprietress of a late-model, gas-guzzler,

Her reveries wove summer rains and red wine kisses,

Sun-baked tans on aging skin, and hopeless-wish reflections.

Another stitch and two long sighs burrowed away from cold-blooded lies

On tear-stained parchment, aged by time, and coiled around her feet.

Raindrops that struck a tiny tin cup sounded like submarine pings.

Following shadows to tender places along magnolia-lined lanes,

It was more difficult for her to swim in oceans of parking lots

And wish-you-were-here loveless postcards mailed from

Obligation than it was for her to let absent lovers rest in peace.

Fingers braided with thread sewed in mysteries for future lovers to

Solve before departing whole while reducing her to scattered pieces;

Dragonflies, crooning frogs, and panther-dark clouds echoed her thoughts as

She sat outside quietly sewing pieces of her heart together.

All Rights Reserved

(painting: Young Woman Sewing in The Garden, Mary Cassatt, 1886, oil on canvas)

Tumbleweed Contessa Poetry: © When I Was A Child

© When I Was A Child

I called her yellow and she

danced with the breeze,

her head bowing and nearly

touching a carpet of green.

she stood straight once again,

her face to the heavens. Face up,

she smiled at me as I stooped

to pluck her from the ground,

as if she were a small gold finch

or a tiny, singing canary, with

a quick swoop of my hand.

There you are, my dandelion.

But, those bright eyes the color of

buttercups or daffodils pleaded

not to hurt her and force her

colorless blood to flow, and

she promised if I waited,

white and silky, wispy wings

would sprout, yellow would fade;

then I could pluck her up,

close my eyes to wish as

I faced away from the breeze,

and then blow on her, I could

watch her dance on the wind.

but when that day arrived,

she appeared as clouds around

the moon or a lace collar and

I decided I would keep her.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

 (picture #2, painting Of Dandelions and Dreams by Jimmy Lawlor)
(picture #3, Marie de GARAY - 1861-1953, Catching Canaries, oil on mahogany panel)
(picture #4, dandelion - Angela Bartlett, Colored Pencil)

(all paintings, drawings, photos not attributed to any artist do not belong to me and are the sole property of their individual owners)

A Tumbleweed Contessa Poem: sometimes the ceiling drops on her

just another day, another dollar-two-fifty

for wind-blown, euphonious  poetry

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved 

© sometimes the ceiling drops on her

she never knows what chapter she’s in,

she never understands the plot, and

she never knows what to do next.

whipping out her pair of used scissors

like an old gunslinger, she

cuts down snow-licking sunflowers

before they become massively dehydrated;

it’s her own private blend of

brain-hatching unhappiness.

there she squats sobbing tears of dirt,

legs bent like a grasshopper’s

with her knees at her shoulders,

her arms tight around those coltish legs

as if to prevent them from

wandering off and leaving her.

stretching for an explanation, trying

desperately to fall into

the rhythm of the story, but

she never knows what chapter she’s in,

she never understands the plot, and

she never knows what to do next.

(painting by Michael Cheval)

Tumbleweed Contessa's Poetry -- Surely You Jest

I'm working on a character for a new book, a woman who has become a woman being used. I'm discovering that it's better for the person who doesn't know how to be in an honest relationship to be an asshole for telling the other person they aren't interested or that they've lost interest than it is to keep the other person in an emotional purgatory where they think they have a chance.

What kind of person leads another into believing they are loved and then walks away without a word? They're ALWAYS so so so busy. Hey, aren't we all? They fall into being the responder and never the Initiator. You hear more about what they did with an ex-lover than how happy they are with you. Huge Red Flags are huge red flags for a reason. 

When the one being deceived begins realizing something is amiss, well, maybe they will have something like this poem to say.

© Surely You Jest

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

You can’t just come into my life
and tell me you love me
as much as I love you,
and begin to matter,
and become an important part,
and then set me in a dark hole
away from every part of your life
and just walk away
without saying a word,
leaving nothing but a hole in my chest.