Mimi and Mona Poetry: #3

About my four-line poem:

I am presenting it to the reader using the element of the language of indirection.

Learn more after you read this:

#3

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

The Northerly is absent this year;

When will that cold winter air across the border blow?

Oh, Boreas, let your breath bring his embrace to this Fallen Leaf

And pray, with me, he will never let me go.

At the center of this short poem is the speaker’s desire to be reunited with the one she loves (most obvious in lines 3 and 4). However, the full meaning of this poem depends on lines 1 and 2 as well.

We know the speaker is the Fallen Leaf because she refers to herself as such (line 3). She associates her grief with the wind; but, the speaker leaves to implication (or, indirection) just how the lovers and the wind are related. I worked on this poem so they (the lovers) are related in several ways.

The need to manifest and experience love is an inherent need, just as nature’s need for changing seasons and, in this instance, wind. We can think of it as love, like the wind, is natural.

The lover is living in a kind of drought, or arid state (a drying, fallen leaf) that only the one she desires can slake by his presence, his embrace.

The wind cannot be controlled nor can it be foretold, and human affairs, like the lovers' predicaments, are subject to the same (sort of) chance.

There are also associations with specific words; for example, Northerly and border, which the reader is probably only half aware of but contribute to the meaning of the poem. Their connotations provide indirections that enrich the entire short poem... they offer the reader the location of the one she loves. Fallen Leaf is an indirection because it isn't just about the time of year, it is telling the reader the lover is in the Autumn of her life.

Thanks for bearing with me as I explain what I wish you, my readers, to take away.

(painting: Boreas and Fallen Leaves, oil on canvas,35 x 26 inches, by Evelyn De Morgan — 1855 - 1919)

Mimi and Mona: ©To Our Graves -- from the “Letters I Never Sent You” series

From the "Letters I Never Sent You" collection/series, there are some memories we must all consider taking to our graves. 

©To Our Graves

from the “Letters I Never Sent You” series

Mimi Wolske

All rights Reserved

How Well Do I Know You from those first provocative words in letters and phone calls when you courted and wooed me? I’m awash in nostalgia as I look into the castle where our memories are recorded.

Words growled like a wolf the first time we made love and you, playing the role of the alpha wolf, insisting that I say I belong to you (and me, smiling at my playful thought and saying, “You belong to me.”), and, then, you laughing and growling.

Words shared about past lovers (and me, once again laughing at my thoughts, deciding to post my limerick about you and her, naked, and the saran wrap) and her asking you, “You told her about that!? Why?”). The words you limited after that over the years. I still laugh.

Words you put to paper in poems and limericks for me, about me, and shared on your blog for the world the read. But also the words about me you protected from the public eye as well as those hateful words of revenge you told others and then told me what you shared with them hoping to keep us invisible from jealous mouths and prying eyes.

I know your eye color, the names of your blogs, the fake names you use on social internet sites, your birth date, how short I should trim your toenails, your college major, your moods, your favorite color, your humor, your love of a good nap, hobbies you like and that massage table you had once, your religion, what you like for breakfast and how you like your asparagus prepared as a snack, that you chase women, and I know your full name.

I know you by heart; you’re in my heart. You’re a loving memory on every part of me. How well I know the taste of you along my lips, and the corners of my mouth; the feel of you warm and moist at my crown, my nape, my hands, my back, my navel, my toes.

The commanding gentleness of your hands is registered on my shoulders, my cheeks, my back, my waist and hips, the back of my thighs, and my hands as your fingers teased and tensed every iota of skin day and night, as those hands directed me as we danced the tango—in our fashion.

Forever in reverie is the weight of you against my breasts; my belly; between my thighs and against the matted, black mass of curls at their apex; on my back; and against my buttocks.

You can never be alien to me again; our DNA is blended together in every city, every state, every country we have shared time as two, as one, as partners for minutes, hours, days and nights, and weeks. It has found homes on every book, every CD, every remote, painting, piece of each other’s clothing, every room key, every house key, the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, every boat paddle and cabin at Sandy Point, restaurants, bus seat, car seats and doors, the zoo, the Roswell Alien Museum, every bottle of massage oil, the trailer down near the border, casinos, beds, chairs, counters, showers, divan/sofas our bodies have touched.

We have shared laughs, political thoughts, tears and sadness, loss, happiness, jokes, religions, advice, vulnerable moments, anger, intimacies, special names/abbreviations for each other, gifts, photos together and separate in all the places we visited, and so much more.

How Well Do I Know You? As well as any loved one, more than some, never less than any. I know you like me and also more than like me.

 

Some memories we take to our graves.

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Weaving My Future From My Past

I think a poem ends when it answers itself; however, it may have resolved nothing.

©Weaving My Future From My Past

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

He complained I pissed on his corn flakes.

No! It was he who aimed his dick

as if I was a target in the snow and

drilled his piss-poor attitude into my chest.

Sometimes laughing uproariously,

sometimes weeping, sometimes running

and sloshing the red from my wine glass,

I turned in my painter’s brush and descended

into darkness and bowed to the iconic

figures of lovers past: clowns, actors,

artists, entrepreneurs, boisterous braggarts,

womanizers melded into a cast of characters.

I was weaving my future from my past

dreams, fantasies, and myths and some

alarmingly autonomous aristocrats who

were truer to life than super hero super humans.

I paid a fortune in words to get a grasp

on my feelings so I could think and see

that through the interaction, pieces would come

together and could hold a kaleidoscope of relations.

No longer suspended in ambivalence,

I continue to be attracted to double mindedness;

I am Atlas unburdened from the weight of others

in my imagistic life — I will be a woman at the top,

and then, maybe I can actually piss on

on someone’s cornflakes and walk away

remembering the first poem I fell

in love with and let it become my mantra.

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Pink-Polka-Dot Men Laugh

The Gods have fashioned us for love. 

That is our great glory, and it is our great tragedy.

IF YOU ARE FAMILIAR

WITH MONA ARIZONA,

YOU WILL BE FAMILIAR

WITH THE TYPE OF

POETRY SHE SOMETIMES

PUTS TO PAPER.

READER BEWARE,

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE POEMS!

©Pink-Polka-Dot Men Laugh

and pay Zara — they have

poison oak but they want what

the heavy-breasted whore

on The Upper Haight sells.

It’s more than fortunes if you

know the right name when

you call to purchase her

services. Dark stairs lead

men and women to her rooms.

They’re there for her to fuck them

in the back room, away from

the prying eyes and busy nose

of her brother who is visiting.

In the front, she takes money

from widows, women with

no lovers, and sensitive men;

she makes up stories and

tells paying customers lies

based on what she has read

in the news, on the web, on

social media sites they have joined,

and from all she has learned

during her life on the streets.

They believe her. She is quite

convincing with her Tarot cards

and crystal ball on its brass stand.

In the back room, the polka-

dot men drop an easy three

one hundred dollar bills for Zara to

suck their brains out through

their cocks and more C-spots from

each to let them poke her in the

back door, to bring a friend, and

to place her chocolate thighs

on the sides of their heads

and sit on their faces so they

can jam their tongues into

her wide cave and prove

they are man enough to

find the nonexistent nectar

and suck it down. One pushes

her aside and yells “Mama!

Phew! That sure is some damn fine

vulva-aid you got down there!”

She laughs. The pink polka-dot

men laugh and the others pay

to prove they can do it, too.

They put three more Benjamins

on her table so they can

sandwich her between two

of them while she lets the

third drill her mouth.

In the morning, before she

changes the sheets so she

can sleep, Zara counts

her earnings. It’s been a

long night; she’s cold and

she’s hungry, but she smiles.

She would have taken

out her teeth for the third

man, but he didn’t have

an extra fifty for the thrill.

by Mona Arizona

All Rights Reserved

Mimi and Mona Poetry: Arizona

©Arizona

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Arizona;

he would never kick

it completely off his boots,

the dust of Arizona, heavy

and unrelenting, it would

cling to the angled heels.

So, why was he here

at the place of the one

woman he’d left

months ago? She

never opened the door

or happily greeted him when

he finally stepped inside.

He teased her with a few,

short sentences, kissed

the air, not her, and took

her there on her couch.

The last wasn’t planned.

Her whining had driven

him mad until he gave in,

gave her what she thought

she wanted from him without

permitting those claws

of hers to dig deep into

his skin so she could

continue to hold him

in a life he didn't want.

He couldn’t finish.

He didn't really

want to fuck her and

she did nothing but

lay on her back and

let him push his naked

flesh against hers

with no moans or

loving cries to encourage

him to complete the act—

that’s all it was with her.

He sat up to regain

his breath and, thick-

tongued, cotton mouthed,

and choking, was

immediately sorry

since the smell from

her nether region

brought to his mind

that day he spent

near the Pacific and

the odor from a seafood deli–

dried tuna and sour cheese.

It left his cock drenched

in the nauseating

stench of dill pickles.

Complaints and tears,

arguments and words

meant to belittle him;

the reason to leave

came back to him.

He knew where he

was his happiest.

Arizona.

Arizona.

She hated that place,

and his unconscious

whispers with her name,

and the smell of tequila

worms on his breath,

and that twitch with her

behind his crooked smile.

He may as well have

been in the desert with

his tanned bitch for

all the good her tears

had done, drying up

before they reached him.

He’d be sorry, she

had warned. He’d pay

for leaving her again.

She knew he was

fleeing her again to escape;

heading back to Mexico

he said; she knew that

State of Arizona

tugged on his big toes.

She knew she’d never

get her hooks into him.

When she wailed, he

said, “Shut up,” for one

last fuck. She did,

and prayed he’d come

back to her, or, at

least, think of her yet

she knew he’d never as

long as he had her and

Arizona.

She hated Arizona

and the woman who

ran naked through the

desert with him while

the sun burned his

northern white ass.

The leather divan was

cold, but his words

as he left were

colder. He said

“I don’t want you,”

and walked out, his

big toe twitching,

his dusty boots back

on his wandering feet,

and Arizona waiting

with its scorpion

sting left in her heart.

Arizona never

made him stay if he

wanted to go. He knew

that. And the woman

waiting for him there

would have changed

the sheets on her bed

and would turn her

book over with the

page left open because

she would stop reading

when he knocked on

her adobe home’s door.

He who never stayed

longer than a few months

but never truly left her...

He’d smile when she

welcomed him back with

a knowing grin, a few

kind words, and a naked

embrace he’d never forget

and never want to leave.

Arizona was the lucky one.

(She Is His - mixed media on canvas board)

Mimi Wolske - Mona Arizona Poetry: RAZZMATAZZ

JAZZING THINGS UP WITH POETRY...
(shared here for those who can't access WordPress)

©Razzmatazz

Implicated, we’re

in a situation

never fully

revealed.

We wanted to be

the sky — a

formal rendering

of word fragments

glimpsed as

a passing cloud,

overheard but

never really

paying

attention

on the train,

on the radio,

in the street,

in newspapers.

A clock-maker’s

revelation.

Surreal sensibility...

both familiar

and strange;

thoughts and

feelings gestate

in those spaces

dark and luminous,

equivocal and eloquent,

implicating us

in a situation

never fully

revealed.

 Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(painting: Razzmatazz by Roy Lichtenstein)

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Tell Her Adieu

©Tell Her Adieu

Her failings shattered, became exposed;

she couldn’t prevent what you disclosed.

You ignored her as you ignored your own

beating heart, spurred on by testosterone.

You had her trust not to starve her

of your self, not to openly ignore her

as one of the walking dead. Did you tell

everyone the two of you split? Well?

Is that your reason to lock her in your hell,

in some cyberfile away from prying eyes

to be opened only when you can circumcise

her from her love and enjoy her privately?

She is a lovely, kind, thoughtful, unmanned,

and intelligent woman, and I cannot stand

the way she is being hurt by you;

time for you to tell her adieu.

She was drunk and crying; she could not

be anything but honest; that’s not tommyrot.

The look in her eyes was like the look

of someone when they first awaken...shook

because the surroundings are unfamiliar;

where everything seems to be a blur.

You fell in love with her honest moments.

Now you love unmade beds with a reverence

as you immigrate from one liminal space

to the next, from one Jezebel to the next scapegrace.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Mimi - Mona Poetry: I'm Painting Again

©I’m Painting Again
from Letters I Never Sent to You

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

I shouldn’t tell you this, babe, but she started eating herself again.

I think I’ll have to let her die.

Someone told me a lusty story; I thought of you and the way

you stretch time into a thin line between super unrealities.

I’m still telling those stories of you and me... they change

as I change my mind, but isn’t that part of the art of storytelling?

I’m still working on a method to conflate the tales of you and me yet

keep the personal considerations obscurant and not lose reader interest.

Remember that time we had to tunnel through successive ruinations of

our nightly plans. I wanted to cry. How do I diminish the distance

 between us now?

I’m painting with a sense of calm these days, without the bloodletting,

and with that stability of painting people whom I’m showing as

morally sound, people with multifaceted lives. Their stories have

solvable problems to tell.

I’m still afraid of that word. Yes, that one: goodbye. So, I won’t say it.

It may be an alteration of G-d be with ye, but it’s also a conclusion.

I don’t want us to conclude, so I’ll end with All My Love.

Mimi Wolske - Mona Arizona Poetry: I Think I Know You Are Everything Before We Name It

©I Think I Know You Are Everything Before We Name It

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

I think I know where you hide.

When I was a child, you hid

beyond where neglected fences

around the park’s hinterland

disappeared into culverts and

darkness. You lurked where the

forest became too thick to

see into. I’m duly afraid to

admit I saw you just beyond

the close of the horizon; you were

concerned only with the

business of your existence and

the coming war to end all wars.

I think I know what you are.

But, that doesn’t mean you

do not exist. You do, especially

to those who claim they’ve looked

for you —others didn’t want to

join you; they wanted to claim

you... At least, that was the whispers

among them. I know they want to

fortify the border. But, we know;

don’t we? You and I can never

escape each other since you are

found in me and I in you.

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Seriously, Darling, I Don’t Deserve You

IMAGINE THE WORST PAIN EVER...EVER!

Now, multiply that by infinity and realize it is inescapable!

What Pain Would That Be?

©Seriously, Darling, I Don’t Deserve You

Is this because you believe I love you too much?

I don’t. And, I don’t hate myself, so this cannot

be psychosomatic, nor is this fire that consumes

my brain imaginary. I am not delusional.

What if you’re wrong and I never cared about you?

What if I never had any empathy for you?

What if I loathed your ambition, your duty?

I did. I do. I loathe them and your accomplices.

I loathe the fear you bring and the plans you wrap me in.

Damn it! Take back this harrowing torment

you gifted me. This relentless throbbing

behind my eyes that proclaims you won’t

stop until I relent— I never will. I will fight you.

even though the battle is tedious and painful, I will win.

You’re nothing more than a banality dancing on

every nerve ending and causing my sensitivities

to betray me; you defecator on my emotions.

Darling, if I could leave you I would, but I am too weak.

Be gone! Show me the mercy I cannot show you.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Migraine disorder affects 12% of people in the U.S., mostly women, and its symptoms can be debilitating.

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Mona Arizona's Poem HE

 “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ or ‘how very perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.” — The Sandman by Neil Gaiman

©He

Mona Arizona

All Rights Reserved

He owned me like a watercolor,

or Sumi splashed across rice paper,

or a tumbling star thrown into the night

sky; just as one of a pair of dice

hits the edge hard, I rolled back stained

and every part of me vibrated from the

laughter of the next apple on the tree

who whispered in the mouse’s ear.

He cataloged my thoughts and moves

then set me to one side on the library

shelf of lust and love, mystery unsolved,

but too hyped up on the latest color

to recognize my tortured ring tone. Don’t

shed tears for this latest martyr; send me

to bed to dream of the end of monsters,

the Frankenstein monster of amativeness.

He bound me to his canvas with vermilion

games that mimicked expired antibiotics

and post-dated bit-coin hopes.

Be suspicious of crooked smiles,

of cowboys bearing apples, and of

wolves who enter a city of cobwebs

and lack the atlas of the spine, too 
afraid to beard the lion in her own den.

He emptied me like a worn suitcase,

strung me tauter than a violin’s strings,

yet never cherished me as though

I were one more hour of a Spring

day blended with the last days of

Autumn. The fat lady sang and
flashed him bits of cheesecake, but the

frightened mouse had screwed his last.

Mimi - Mona Poetry: The Seeing Eye of Truth

Everybody lies.

That’s what research suggests. However, criminal liars act pre-emptively; e.g., they will contact the police or, after being questioned, may contact their victims or victims’ families. When questioned by the authorities, they don’t give simple “yes” or “no” responses to questions as an innocent person will. They provide too many details and lie about the small things. They will refer to their victims (if murdered or injured) in the past tense. When asked direct questions, they will try to stall by saying, “huh?” or “what do you mean?”. And, they helpfully offer other explanations, e.g., they saw another person or suggest another person hoping it will throw of the authorities. They will even suggest an innocent party committed the crime.

©The Seeing Eye of Truth

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Fragmented lies without foundation

bleeding a dark pigment of discontent;

conscious-stricken, I’m shushed,

I am commanded to hush;

speculating whether I will

shoot down their returning rising star—

No. Never have, will not now.

Accusation demanded— refused.

The evil that split this small world

manipulates, accuses, lies; the

star allowed to return

proffers the attacked false alibis and

crosses fingers behind his back

as he stands puffed self-righteously

like the billowing sail of an

oaken vessel pirating night skies.

Creators of words, songs, and movies

are labeled liars breathing life into

fantastic tales invented and shared.

Stop. We are the truth sinners,

not those with limited self-esteem,

those who eschew the arts and truth,

those who press labels across producers of

honest and sincere bodies of works;

not the hypocritical deceivers and

who deviously and jealously

slip in between the dusty blind slats

to covertly ambush and disorient

the color schemes of those with

the Seeing Eye of Truth.

(art: the_all_seeing_eye_by_killingspr)