© "——"

Two sullen boys carry a stretcher, bearing an angel dressed in white. The angel’s wing has been wounded and her eyes are covered with a bandage. The painting does not tell us what has happened. Perhaps this is how Hugo Simberg meant it to be. When he first displayed this work in the annual exhibition of the Finnish Art Society, there was simply a dash where there should have been a title. Was this the artist’s way of saying that no single, correct interpretation exists? That each viewer creates the meaning of the work for him/herself, interpreting it in a personal way?

My poem also has a dash where there should be a title. Your interpretation of the poem will be correct.

Make a promise to yourself not to tarry with or let your
heart roost on the promises
from someone who wreaks sour
mathematics on your soul.
You are too good to waste a fraction
on anyone who makes you feel less than whole.

by Mimi Wolske
All Rights Reserved, jan '16

(painting: The Wounded Angel, 1903, by Hugo Simberg)

©Back In The Saddle

David Carradine said, “If you cannot be the poet, be the poem.”

I’ve also heard it said the thing that breaks you are the words caught in your throat. 

Well, I have years of words (and thoughts) never uttered but living silently in notebooks or tucked on crumpled pieces of paper in the pockets of my coat, and some hidden in my heart—kept there safely and secretly because they are for the one I love—and sometimes I guess it does feel as though I’m choking by not letting any of them into the world.

But, sometimes I do share because I feel like the poem as well as the poet, the inspiration and the creator of something worth sharing.

Footsteps and cell phones,

as I walk the country roads,

remind me I am never alone.

Still, life is smarter here

compared to the city where

people talked night and day

having nothing to say.

Mimi Wolske

Jan ’16, All Rights Reserved

(the quote is by David Carradine, the photo is the property of the owner, the poetic words are mine)

WORDS

When we write, we want to show how lovers are when they are together, how they feel, how they speak to each other. We want readers to forget they are reading mere words and experience the emotional moment. And yet words are the most powerful form of communication in the world when it comes time to play on a reader's emotions. 

Don't feel you need write your characters into eroticism just because that sub-genre is what many authors are working in and publishers are demanding these days. Let the scene, your characters, and your comfort zone dictate where a love scene ends and where the reader's imagination begins. But, even before your characters fall into bed, they should be in love (even if they don't realize it yet). So, begin with romance — but only if it fits with the story line.

Also, no matter the length and focus of your story, there are different ways you can pull the romance to the forefront by remembering no matter how independent the heroine is, the reader wants the hero to be the one who provides and protects. The heroine needs to see the hero in action; so does the reader. That's universal. Also, emotional conflict (the staple of a good romance): conflicting loyalties or control  or both, fear, and trust. In a romance, you must decide, or let your character decide, what beliefs will be surrendered, what principles they must relinquish/agree to, or what beliefs must be given up for the romance to grow stronger and endure.

Below is a brief example of how words can show a great deal about your characters, their romance, and how they love. Yes, they are sexually attracted to each other, but they are also in love; or, they are falling in love. The prose is how characters recognize there is a burgeoning romance and how each expresses that.

He never felt like this about a woman before and the fear of losing her plagued his sleepless nights. He was going to lose her unless he was willing to give up his roguish lifestyle. His lips brushed hers and explored her face the way a blind man would explore it with fingers. He explored her face as though it was the first time he saw her, as if it would be the last. 

She remained quiet for as long as possible. When she realized her breathing was more labored, she backed away. "You are sweet temptation with your lips whispering unspoken words on my naked cheek. Your words are more than flirtation; it's as if they are writing a dissertation over my mouth with every caressing breath. You are a luring fascination and I loved you as a friend before I realized I was in love with you."

Poems are another way to express a love from the heart; in poetry, try using affirmation, apology, or declaration for example.

I Can't Help It

Ohhh, I can't help it,

you make me happy

and I become your

Venus of poetry

writing words of

love

I am a feather

carried by the wind

whirling and happy

because each of your

words dances in my

heart

I swirl among stars

entwining the two

of us together...

heaven's blessing touches

you and me, my

love

Whether or not the romance works out depends on you, on your characters, and on how much time you want to spend showing the readers the "why". What we want to remember, as writers, is that a romance begins with"once upon a time" and ends with, hopefully, "happily ever after". We can show this to our readers by letting the romance come full circle, by by setting up a similarity between the image we create and the language from the words we use at the beginning as well as at the end.

I Can't Help It Intellectual Property Rights:© 1999 – 2016 Mimi Wolske/Mona Arizona™. All rights reserved.

(art: Kiss by Ron Hicks)

Renaissance Woman

"Do you want to be a small fish in a big pond?
Or, a large fish in a small pond?" he asked.
She needed time to phrase her answer right before she would respond.
She had an answer for the question left unasked.

She wouldn't let herself be manipulated
Or intimidated by this self-proclaimed spokes fish
That would try to wrap it's philosophies fated
Around terms like "equality" or "choice" or hellish

PC words like "tolerance" and "diversity"
She understood she'd been created for times like this
And she'd embrace her destiny as a challenge, anti
Curse, no matter personal circumstances; with a hiss

She fixed her gaze on him and turned the question
On him. "Why have you limited my world of choice?
I'm a winner, not a whiner," came her reply only just begun
"A leader, not a follower; victor, not victim," she did voice.

"I'll set my own agenda for personal achievement."
She'd been in the school long enough to realize
She wanted to change the paradigm from a movement
Of the fishes that had served to marginalize

And ridicule fish that didn't follow the collective agenda.
She picked up the mantel of leadership courageously.
"I choose to be human, create my own vedanta."
She did not give her reply spontaneously.

His vision squared on her; he'd never received such a request
Only one in a billion had ever asked; he took it as an omen.
With a fish-smile, he granted her wish without protest
And declared her to be Today's Renaissance Woman!

from the published archives --
Mimi Wolske (November 2010)
All Rights Reserved

(art by Brian M. Viveros)

Purging Vinyl Mysteries from Hijacked Hearts

©Purging Vinyl Mysteries from Hijacked Hearts

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Minny Meanace was

soiled by sweet intimacy

behind a veil of

wholesale ideas

and Speedo trunks.

Zed was the couch

doing time in a room

of 1964 rubber and

fractured words that

should embrace silence.

Neither navigated

tongue-tied versions of

catwalk paper dolls or

acute renditions of

erasable conversations.

Time changed coincidence

after they surrendered

rejected dreams and

macaroni and cheese for

lies from their hungry muses.

©Covering Dreams And Asking No Favors

I bit, almost lost, my tongue

from biting worries and

finding you two mouthfuls

passed deleted scenes, scenes

which would have lead to a

happy ending. You were

lost between eclipses of

pain tied around my finger

to remind me how to feel

when memories begin to

stray too far from reality.

The stars were charged for

all the broken hearts

they have unwittingly

collected over the

centuries instead of being

thanked for all of the

dreams they provided.

As often as the night

blanketed the trees, we

asked no favors but

prayed to the God our

sins would be covered.

Thoughts I chained

unlocked the door to that

day I tried to avoid.

Your jeans had holes

in the center seams

and all of my bottled

dreams had cracks;

but it was the silences

between the seconds of

our heartbeats that

told the story of how

we played the game
and I became the victim.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Cutting Your Teeth A Second Time

©Cutting Your Teeth A Second Time

What was the point in trying

to cut your teeth a second

or third time with the

online dating market?

All that was left for us

were the Reduced To Clear

and the Sell By dates had

expired months ago.

You’re a virgin only once.

For days before I entered

any store, I was resigned

to never finding what I want.

And, when I entered the

local market, I never

expected to feel as though

I had missed the party.

I found my mind racing

as I wandered around

the desolate market

while enduring the

pains of my hunger.

I wandered the empty aisles...

maybe for half of an hour...

thinking perhaps

everyone already knew

something I did not

and that was why they

hurried up and down

the bare lanes with

lists in their hands.

Some shoppers were only

slightly hungry and wanted

a snack or two for the short

term; other snackers wanted

something to satisfy them

for the entire day. I

was on the hunt for all of

the ingredients for a meal

to sustain me and provide

leftovers for the long haul.

But the shelves were bare,

the best of the best and even

the barely best were gone. I

suspected they would be.

I should have left, not

because it was closing time;

the store was open twenty-four/

seven/three hundred

sixty-five. All the time

in the world was not enough

for most of us find what

we were searching for.

I wanted the best meal

but all that was left was

Spam.

So much Spam. It was

impossible to see anything

else for all the Spam.

And hummus.

There was an aisle

dedicated to hummus.

Love is hummus—

apparently.

Funny that since I

don’t like it all that much.

I was so awfully hungry

for something resembling

hummus. Way too

hungry to make

decent purchase decisions.

I watched desperate

shoppers grabbing anything

in sight...cans of beans...

as I left the market.

I wondered, is there

hummus out here?

That’s what I wanted.

Hummus.

Fresh hummus.

Not hummus touched

by hundreds of hands

turning it over to

reveal the expiration date

and replace it on the shelf.

Love is not stale or

bitter or dying from

an expiration date.

Love is sweet, full of life.

You don’t have to

cut your teeth on

Love the second time around.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Mimi - Mona Poetry: In This Life, I Was A Rainbow Lorikeet Living Among Pigeons or, I Wasn’t A Drama Queen Until...

©In This Life, I Was A Rainbow Lorikeet Living Among Pigeons

or, I Wasn’t A Drama Queen Until...

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

It’s time to pick up all the pieces from

whatever that was that dropped like

air-to-ground missiles with only me

being pinged as their target last year;

to eradicate all those mistakes that

somehow found, collected, and pinned

me in their lost hearts display box;

to wean myself from love’s vernacular grip;

to discard the drama of the operatic aria

that earmarked me for center stage.

I didn’t lose the one I loved.

It was not like we were in a crowded room

and suddenly I was doing a solo on

stage with a bunch of naked musicians

and he wasn’t one of them and he

wasn’t backstage nor in the audience.

But, that’s how people say it when

the one they love just up and walks away—

Helpless, I watched my world disappear.

I lost all my air. Death was slow and painful.

Mimi - Mona Poetry: You Could Have Been My Electric Toothbrush And Made My World Spin

©You Could Have Been My Electric Toothbrush And Made My World Spin

Mimi Wolske

2016 All Rights Reserved

Wish I was your portable vacuum

so I could breathe in all of you,

but I heard that you fell out of love

or near enough...that was tough

Wish I was the portable heater

making you hot in your basement bedroom,

but I understand I was too patient

for your urgent manly needs...indeed

And all of that love dust plus some

that floated around from the vacuum

burned like paid-for crispy sighs

and missing but needed goodbyes

And all I could be was

Suddenly freed

Suddenly freed

Suddenly freed

Wish I was your addictive devotion

sharing all my emotion motion

but I learned the tide had rolled out

with nothing settled, nothing given

Wish I was your fantasy dream girl

the playgirl you wanted to unfurl

the one who could make your world twirl

be more than your down-south cowgirl

And all of that love dust plus some

that floated around from the vacuum

burned like paid-for crispy sighs

and missing but needed goodbyes

And all I could be was

Suddenly freed

Suddenly freed

Suddenly freed

Mimi - Mona Poetry: This Flower in Your Garden Is Wilting

©This Flower in Your Garden Is Wilting

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

The soft murmur of silence for even one day;

Ohh, how I love any lazy Sunday.

I am no longer held captive by the whims and

thoughts of you that still haunt these rooms,

your ever-changing iconic musings, and that

pneumatic ego of yours crowding my mind with

mangled morsels of a fallacious altruism

so you might nurse on my love like a greedy leech.

No longer can alluding memories linger

as if they are playing on a loop to keep me in

the grip of your script, that continuous dialogue

where you step monotonously into your narrative

to offer your own opinions on my still-life table

setting in front of the lover’s window of dreams.

And, no longer will your invasive, diamante words

break through like the psychedelic colors I once

glimpsed on sun-lit wings that embraced my heart;

I keep my coat collar tucked protectively

in the crook of my neck to insulate me from

the tangled frenzy of your quivering, breathy lies.

Ahh, the soft murmur of silence for even one day;

Ohh, how I love this lazy Sunday.

(painting: petals from my roots by brooke shaden)

Mimi - Mona Poetry: I Can’t Get off The I-Love-You Merry-Go-Round

©I Can’t Get off The I-Love-You Merry-Go-Round

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

It began one evening so

chilly that when I gazed

through my lacey-frost-adorned

window to unwrap the sunset,

like some obsequious lover,

the tender presence of your

memory carried me to that

moment of lingering sighs

at dusk and stardust dreams.

You are an endless dream

from which there is no waking.

I fear I have dreamed of you

for so long you are no longer

real; that the feel of your lips when

we kiss is a phenomenon,

and it would be as unfeasible

to press my lips to yours

as it would be to feel

the warmth from a stranger’s.

That cold night ,when

looking out my bedroom window,

I found you out of reach

in my reality and an

illusion in my dreams.

You have been so much a dream

and for so long, I’m unsure I can

get off of this I-love-you

merry-go-round or out of

the nakedness of this dream—

I just wouldn’t know how.

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Who’s Reaching Back for Me?

©Who’s Reaching Back for Me?

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Running insane in the pouring rain?

You’re a standup dame; please give us your name,

Then future this when the milk is gone—

Time’s not secure when overdrawn.

All hurts fade in the light of day,

But night pains thrive in your résumé.

I was the one lured; by Spring spurred

Into annihilating kisses from disencumbered

Itinerant male tenants,

By Summer seasoned into extravagance,

And by Autumn encouraged to winter in

A nobleman’s embrace, and then

Came the meaning of Winter’s meaningless

Misery to my mind’s hopeless mirthlessness:

I was being left behind the we,

Wondering who’s reaching back for me?

Let me be the one who remains mononymously

The only name you call —exclusively.

(painting: Auburn, 15x24 inches, Acrylic, Graphite, and Oil on Canvas by Michael Shapcott)

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Don’t Blow On My Dandelion Wine

©Don’t Blow On My Dandelion Wine

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

It was like the Titanic

only it was me sinking

in our enchanted garden of

earthly delights;

it was like cloud-piercing

trees standing as sentinels expressly

on the watch for all of

my dreams and desires being

gathered for one last ride

in the time capsule of love.

Time was the thief; it was

11:59.9999 when I

walked the tightrope of

a time in the past.

I awakened chilled like

my favorite bottle of

Clos d’Ambonnay;

oh, you could have drunk me

low and high, night and day—

but for the magician in you

who became invisible like stars

twinkling in a mid-day sky,

who left that twinkle in my eye—

left me naked, exposed, vulnerable...

with knee-shaking bravery and defiance.

When I wasn’t boxing shadows

created from your misunderstandings,

I was smiling a vocabulary of love

for a man with no light-cast silhouette.

This feels like cloud-piercing

trees standing as sentinels expressly

on the watch for all of

my dreams and desires being

gathered for one last ride

in the time capsule of love and

there’s a mystical alchemy

of tears and rain

becoming my dandelion wine.

Mimi-Mona Poetry: Swallowing A Widespread Carpet of Burnt Umber and Sienna

©Swallowing A Widespread Carpet of Burnt Umber and Sienna

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Is there a way to swallow

the sands of the desert

without becoming the desert?

A habob storms in, runs away.

Your footsteps are no longer

seen; the feel of you beside

me suddenly disappears...

Left are the dust devils

carrying your memory.

After years, it was your

spirit I let inundate me.

Now when the wind picks up,

I feel the grit of the desert dust

and swallow the sounds before

I sink into the widespread

carpet of burnt umber and sienna.

Mimi - Mona Poetry: Two Poems Today: You Make Me Feel Like Las Vegas and I Attacked The Glass Ceiling

Two Poems Today; one is erotic...it's from Mona Arizona: You Make Me Feel Like Las Vegas, and the other is (not erotic) from Mimi Wolske: I Attacked The Glass Ceiling

©You Make Me Feel Like Las Vegas

Mona Arizona

All Rights Reserved

Pump me full of unleaded rocket fuel

and ride me to the moon and back;

with a kiss on the bottom stair,

tilt the earth on her axis and

make this edenic moment

whirl within this room—

spin

spin

spin

©I Attacked The Glass Ceiling

like a small unknown mad underdog in a narrow alley,

my head swimming in that infamous pyramid of male power—

Not for you Gloria Steinem Dreaming Is A Form Of Planning

for equal rights—

my barks and land mines served as warning

You Have Met Your Match Except I Am Intelligent

and I was scaling a national fight on a small unpublished scale

for all bitches to have the same rights to those full-sized bones

of survival any of the most powerful oppressive tyrants had.

Hear Me Howlll

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Mimi - Mona Poetry: ©Two Is Not The Aurora Borealis Draining The Ocean of Red

©Two Is Not The Aurora Borealis Draining The Ocean of Red

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Your heart,

an acorn

in the night sky,

became

surreal...

broken reality

stored by hopeful

lovers

in alabaster jars,

hidden behind

a crest of lips

filigree-etched

on an altar,

possessed

by the gods

and blackened

by their fire.

My alien bones,

in the universe’s

cracked mirror,

lay beached

just beyond

the sea’s foam,

crushed,

multiplied

like so much

scatological

obscenity

collected by

beachcombers

for you—

saved to net—

another

unseen

gamboling

sylph

inked and pinned

into the boxed

collection

of ancients

from the air

to be revealed

in this high-tech

low-battery life;

my fluid

coagulated

like the dust

in my mouth...

a mouth

that once

ranted

my dirge

for freedom.

There is no

universal will,

no will for a

universe

masturbated

from your last

test

-a

-ment:

a hieroglyphic-

painted

conch

standing

the test of time,

left to testify that

the micro-waved

third planet

will be left

disinherited.

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

All Rights Reserved

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.