One Last Smoke

I was working on a scene where love had gone south, but it is the male character who is sad. Sadness is a strong emotion and I couldn't let the scene go with only the words: "She left him without a note or a goodbye". I want the reader to feel his shock, his pain, his hurt. This poem was written over a couple of days and I switched the characters around and it is the man who has walked away. This is not close to what I wrote in my WIP. It is a poem. It is shortened and, therefore, each word counts. 

© One Last Smoke

Standing in this river outside your hotel

Wondering where you are since you told me farewell;

I’ve been wishing on a star, hanging onto Jack Daniels—

He’s soothing my broken heart, stroking the shrapnel.

God’s sitting on his mountain having one last smoke,

Satan’s here beside me laughing at some joke.

I…I wish I could look into your eyes,

Know everything will be the way it should;

If you looked at me without turning away,

You…you would see tears welling in my eyes

While I make promises to God that I will be good

If He’ll just bring you back and have you stay.

And Hell’s not heaven, and I’m dying of heatstroke;

Satan’s still laughing so it must be a good joke.

Before I throw out the empty and tear up your clothes,

I’m leaving these photos…I’m not the one you chose.

Will you remember us and getting sick on avocados

Will you remember me and all my goofy fiascos?

I never told you but you’re the love of my life;

I only wish I’d never laughed when you wanted me for your wife—

I wish I hadn’t laughed and caused you such strife;

I wish I hadn’t laughed and let my words run rife.

God’s sitting on his mountain having one last smoke,

Satan’s here beside me laughing at some joke.

I…I wish I could look into your eyes,

Know everything will be the way it should;

If you looked at me without turning away,

You…you would see tears welling in my eyes

While I make promises to God that I will be good

If He’ll just bring you back and have you stay.

And Hell’s not heaven, and I’m dying of heatstroke;

Satan’s still laughing so it must be a good joke.

Mimi Wolske

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(Painting: DarkWaters by Julio Reyes)

Mimi-Mona Poetry: The Upbeat of His Bipolar Shift

Know Someone Singing That Song Just Another Manic Monday?

Is That Your Theme Song?

There are shift doctors who can help when someone suffers extreme shifts in moods: mania and depression. 

©Before The Upbeat of His Bipolar Shift

Mimi Wolske

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It was always there, always.

The reality of it following the last beat,

the beat immediately preceding

that upbeat of you bipolar shift,

that feeling you long for; not

that downbeat of despair you dread.

She always imagined it

being like a foot in suspension—

on the rise but not quite there—

and the anxiousness you felt

unknowing whether it would descend

for another downbeat of despair

before reaching the longed for upbeat.

This is the worst time, right?

The timing of grayer skies and

shorter days when you find yourself

under the same influence as that great

statesman Churchill’s own black dog—

the one still under controversy discussion,

the one many know as manic depression.

Just as so many before her, she never

understood why there were never displays

of affection, of love...of intimacy. What if

she finds out? What will she say? Will she

tell others? Will she?! Fear brings the downbeat

and the predator eats well for another day.

She watched you pace and pace and pace

and count, count everything. She

constantly asked if you wanted to sit.

Did she know you could not sleep—

for days—because there was so much

energy you knew you would explode?

It was always there, always.

The reality of it following the last beat,

the beat immediately preceding

that upbeat of you bipolar shift,

that feeling you long for; not

that downbeat of despair you dread.

Mimi-Mona Poetry: Suspecting nothing

Betrayal in Dante’s Inferno — “That is the lowest place, it is the darkest, And the furthest from that heaven on which all turns” (Canto IX, lines 28-29)

©Suspecting nothing

in a dream that set me apart

as a double-edged warning

plunged into my heart

with an inescapable foreboding,

I bowed low and spread my arms

in a sign of surrender.

Death, with its dark charms,

denied me a blinder of mercy

so I might recognize

those with a dark proclivity for

traitorous acts that would ostracize

the one who, hereinbefore,

lay innocently asleep,

held aground by the neap.

Not traitors with a mere flaw

of desire, but those

with a spiritual flaw;

a flaw the devil chose,

one he wished to go

to the deepest part—

to the core of their soul.

Not to their undeserving heart.

I passed by and gazed into

the darkest, the deepest,

cell where he threw

them into the lowest...

It was there I saw my

betrayers held captive—

I wanted to cry

because I could not believe

they were the most

evil doers of all,

cowering in form of a ghost

behind that wall—

in the ninth circle of hell.

were the betrayers of family ties.

I cried out, “I know them full well!”

Not even Dante gave them disguise.

by Mimi Wolske

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