© Guest Starring in My Life This Year—

He said we were no longer parallel...

Well, duh! We’re a-cute angle now.

© Guest Starring in My Life This Year—

You. Your theatrical presence so intense,

It is almost blinding, my Dear.

The disease of love you dispense

Puts me in danger of the contagion,

but I’m dying to be weakened by you.

Please, let us destroy the weapon

They used to destroy my faith in you.

By Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(painting by Malcolm Liepke)

© You Are My Favorite Self-Indulgence

Long distance relationships never work, the colloquial wisdom goes.

Not true, according to a small but growing number of social science studies. Long-distance relationships are, in many ways, stronger than relationships between couples who live together or close by, shows a new study published today in the Journal of Communication.

The edges of our distant love are softened in

the streaks of the heated blur that disguises

the passion demanded by our naked bodies.

You have turned me into a kissing masochist and

I still find it amazing you can make me dance

from miles away and change my world with your lips.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(painting: RENE  MAGRITTE, Love from a Distance)

© I Had That Dream Again, You Know The One

I bombed him with wet scat. 

But, only after My eyelids fell as though they were weighted before my head hit the pillows. I was that sleepy.

I wanted to dream that special dream again. You know the one...the one about the two of us in the glass shower and the drain gets plugged and the shower water is up to our thighs before we stop...

Well, you know. Instead, I was flying again and there he was, below me, looking up and laughing because I was the oddball who was flying. I remember you said dreams of flying have to do with sex. I checked that out and it was Freud’s belief flying dreams represented sexual release. And here I always thought these dreams indicated that nothing could hold me down (except you, my love) or keep me from reaching my goals or that I was feeling in control of my life and emotions. But, there it was —sexual release.

When we’re alone with the light of the moon surrounding us,

you look at me with that look that tells me you think I’m special,

your head leans closer so that our lips are just a breath apart

and all I want to do is close that one inch of space between us.

That’s when I feel those invisible strings of love tugging at my heart.

There was that one time I playfully pushed you away.

We laughed about it at the time and went to sleep.

But, the regret I held grew. And grew.

Some nights, when I’m lying wide awake at three in the morning,

I wonder why I pushed you. Was it just a joke to you? I wonder because

I’m still lying here wondering.

I still wonder, too, How do I diminish the distance between us?

Sometimes I wish I could go back in time before anyone broke your heart. It will never happen, but the other night while I was eating and reading and thinking, I remembered something Shane Koyczan said...maybe in one of his Slam Poetry contests: when your heart is broken, make art from the pieces.

You know, I more than like you; so, I’ll end this and send you All My Love.

© I Had That Dream Again, You Know The One

from Letters I Never Sent To You

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reservedm

©Rules of The Game for A Windup Girl in A Dystopian World

Each of us is our own novel 

until our very last page, no one...

not even us...

knows how our novel will end, 

otherwise, who'd want to read it

It seems everything has fallen into place;

not quite what I had in mind,

but, nonetheless, I suppose it’s mine.

And how disgraced I might be

if I went where I pleased and

toppled all that has fallen on me—

only to suffocate underneath.

For those battered and broken

over time, I remain a mystery,

someone who lives alone with

nothing vying to grip my mind.

Endless soiled linens falling—

the devil threw us into the abyss,

the height dependent on the age of

the stains on our gowns.

I look up, passed my rising breath,

to the place where I might forget

my guilty naiveté and dry my

flooded eyes with tears of the lost.

I am Alice out of Wonderland and

there are rules of the game for a

windup girl in a dystopian world.

Mimi Wolske
All Rights Reserved

©Patent Leather Shoes

Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up by playwright John Powers is a comedy but it "reflects" the subjugation of young girls and the responsibility they were burdened with regarding the harnessing of a young man's running wild hormones —rather than imposing such responsibility on the young men to control their comportment.

There were other warnings young girls were constantly reminded to take heed of.

“Don’t wear pearls...they reflect down.”

“Don’t go to a restaurant where the tables have white table cloths...the (poor dear uncontrollable) boys will be reminded of bed.”

Powers story was written from the perspective of a child and, while a humorous look at life, it Did Not point a finger of blame the way the Catholics did with the young girls.

It’s true that the Catholics thought this way; maybe they do still. In my own experience, I went to a Catholic school dance with a Catholic friend. While we waited outside the doors, for what seemed like a Biblical age, I squatted down (I was wearing slacks and a nice blouse...all very proper) to rest. A priest walked over to me and said (honest to G-d) these were his words), “Stand up young lady! You look too inviting like that.”

Personally, I never really like patent leather shoes. They squeak — all of the time.

©Patent Leather Shoes

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Her gown was like looking at

the birth of winter in a new year,

bits of lace, soft and enchanting,

over the blue of a starry midnight.

They danced; he led her into a spin and

the lace flared the way dawn folds

around the stars; her legs were

like the Milky Way galaxy folded in

the blush of the universe and the

ineffable, unrelenting winter wind.

He saw it all in her patent leather shoes.

Bukowski Filled My Glass But Drank Me Dry

Stop it! Why are you flicking my ear repeatedly? It's irritating. 
Alcohol...it might be a lot like sex— well, I read a statistic once (don't know if it's true) that 90% of the population enjoys it and that those in that bracket are made comfortable by the 10% that does not.
The following is a paraphrase: Oscar Wilde said Drink is the curse of the writing class.
Anais Nin is quoted as saying, "I have a strong sense of creation, of tomorrow, that I cannot get drunk, knowing I will be less alive, less well, less creative the next day."
But, it was Charles Bukowski who is quoted as saying, “Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you’re allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It’s like killing yourself, and then you’re reborn. I guess I’ve lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now.”

©Bukowski Filled My Glass But Drank Me Dry

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

I wince at the gaping wounds in my poem;

Frazzled weft of useless words is frayed

Surrealistically away from the warp of worthless thought.

Tramping on the escalator to nowhere in this

World of poetic profiling, I sat at the

Table of prolific drunks; Buowski

Filled my glass with fermented blank verse,

Praised one page of my hieroglyphic ink,

Featured my brain waves in a quick,

Spirit-rupturing work in response—

He drank me dry and threw kisses of sarcasm

before grabbing himself and shaking it at others.

There’s truth in some of what poets write.

Below is a rare video of Bukowski's last poetry reading -- The Last Straw.

I've seen people get angry and I've heard them behind closed doors; it is damn scary!
How can they explain how it feels in their minds when they become so incredibly mad they are beyond reason, when reeling in the relentless seduction of anger is beyond all desire?
A poem of maddening anger before reason...

©Burgeoning Reason

Wondrous landfill of contemplation

That camouflages dull ruins of lost thought

And deformed orbs of hidden paradoxes,

Where nothing disturbs, nothing excites,

Nothing stimulates like wasted syllogism

Among the intricate but spoiled paradigms

And the vibrant ruins of buried syllogisms.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

You Left Me Your Spartacus Kiss

Arguments about erotic love poetry can often be distorted to serve the moral or psychological ends of the readers and the authors of such poetry can be lampooned. But, not all authors of erotic and erotic love poetry write accounts of human sexual relationships in explicit language or write with the intention to arouse the reader sexually. Such poetry used to be called pornographic. This is not a pornographic poem; it is erotic. While straightforward, images from the words are to be interpreted by the reader and each reader's interpretation is personal.

©You Left Me Your Spartacus Kiss

So, isn’t it funny? I found them

at this late date... you left your words

all over me. I’d grown accustom

to them sinking letter by absurd

letter into my skin like some tattoo

I would never be able to erase.

Not as if each word whispered by you

belonged there. That wasn’t the case.

Truth is that pieces of you found

their place in my open, waiting veins;

they flowed to my heart, and were bound

until nothing real about you remains.

Mona Arizona

All Rights Reserved

(painting by Malcolm Liepke)

Old and New

Shelley said, "I change but I cannot die." ('The Cloud', line 76). 
Deepak Chopra said, "The next step in mans evolution will be the survival of the wisest.”

David Vann said, “Even now, I still believe metamorphosis is the greatest beauty.” (Aquarium)
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” Franz Kafka (The Metamorphosis)

©OLD AND NEW

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

It was at the corner

of Old and New

the first time my eyes

captured his image,

the first time my heart

beat that old tattoo—

Flight or Fight—

the first time I

didn't know what to do.

His head was tilted back

in hardy laughter and

I saw his breath escape,

dance around the crowd,

seize some, and then

it gripped their souls;

his laughter stopped.

Unable to abandon

my position, I watched

his every step

leaving scars on the road

as footprints, as memories,

as warnings to those

of us left, frozen in time

between Old and New.

(painting: detail from Metamorphosis of Narcissus by Salvadore Dali)

(video: 30 seconds of The End by The Beatles)

© "——"

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)