VIP 001

Never let anyone dominate you with their experiences of life as happening to them rather than the reverse. Walk away from people who have no direction and feel dependent on the whims of fate or the environment in terms of what happens to them. 

© VIP 001

I’m an old soul in a new moon,

educated by good ol’ boys

wearing their blue suits, under the

thickness of a reflected gray

sky and the eddying shocks of stirred

water and whirling moonlight. Beating

down my baffled soul, they left me

climbing back up from a sunken

path only to see them riding

like aristocrats in sedans,

sedans permitted only to

the most privileged of humans.

Where is the hiccup for this man’s

misfortune? Where is that pretty

penny? That swagger of ego?

Don’t hand me a suit of blue and

Cloak me eternally in your

emotional guilt and ego.

I possess the resources you

married to intent; your prison

psychosis is not my whole world.

Selective amnesia of your

past is not my disease. Release

me from your tango in the grass;

I am an old soul in a new moon.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

His Old-time Religion Fork

© His Old-time Religion Fork

Sip, Swish, Spit.

Words danced over his tongue;

Another thought that departed,

That farted and stuttered his flow,

That drove him to delirium.

Sip, Swish, Spit.

Saying what they wanted

Him to say; madness; badness.

Got out of bed before he lost control,

Stepped off the train, rolled his eyes.

Sip, Swish, Spit.

Was that Mezcal sprayed

With every borrowed word,

That mellowed him as he

Got them off his chest?

Sip, Swish, Spit.

He sold snake oil to soothe recent

War wounds, to grease squeaky

Wheels, and exchanged his silver

Spoon for a borrowed silver tongue.

And left you to choke down every word,

To wonder from whose limo they escaped;

Knowing wood kills the flavor of the drink,

He swore they all will pay to play—

Let everyone get that old-time religion.

SIP. SWISH. SPIT OUT THAT OLD-TIME RELIGION.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Narrative and Poem -- Stumble. Stop.

Growing up in a funeral home isn’t scary. I've only known life with dead people. I always look at them, the dead. They're the temporary guests in our house, guests I’ve never met before, but I am completely comfortable around them — and they seem to enjoy my entertainment. I kind of like them in a way; I don’t know anything about their lives — whether they were nice or mean or crazy. They're just our temporary guests who have callers coming and going and whispering and crying.

© Stumple. Stop.

Come and go, come and go.

Tedious; it’s always the same.

Come, go, come, go.

See that colorful, camphor window?

No, you can’t see in; I can’t see out.

Footfalls; step, step, step.

Voices whispering

Sounding like hissing snakes;

Tears and sniffles and

Step, step, come and go.

Why have you come?

Not for the wedding;

You’re too late.

Oh, for the funeral;

You know he lost his connection?

Yes, and he lost his heart;

He lost his mind.

He lost his head.

Someone said, “He would

Not have done it, otherwise.”

Whispers, footfalls, step, step, step.

Come and go, come and go.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

GONE

"Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things." ~~ T.S.Eliot

"Poetry is, at bottom, a criticism of life." ~~ Matthew Arnold

© Gone

No! Walk away. Go back to the shadows.

Gone is the sun that made the flower bloom.

He turned his back, hid behind the moon,

And, so, she disappeared into her sheath of folds.

Strong were his hands that could not hold her;

In that short summer, she cloaked him with her ether;

Her sweet aroma lingered before she fell.

No! Do not look up. He will blind you.

Don’t throw rocks at her windows;

She was plucked and set in glass, on a pedestal,

Next to more glass where his arms stretched,

Longing to embrace the full sweep of her summits.

Naked, she stood in a sea of shining diamonds

And iridescent pearls created by his hands.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

In The Silence of Her

Romance is not dead.

It is just done differently.

There are still people out there who are more "old fashioned" in today's fast-paced world and want to be in a real relationship.

© In The Silence of Her

You can’t step into the same river twice

I swallowed my drink, took a drag of my smoke

She smelled like lemon blossoms

I called her Spring

She laughed and called me wet between the toes

Always one step ahead of me in her

Perfectly round matching cultured pearl necklace

Hanging down her naked back

I pulled her into a dance

Across the dew-soaked lawn

Away from the river’s edge

All parks are cut from the same canvas

Grazing across her bare shoulder

Up her sensual sensitive long neck

A vulnerable mewl escaped her lips

Driving my desire

Her body inclined in my arms

Like a young tree in the wind

She was like caviar

After my years of home-baked beans

I could not get enough

I could drive for hours heading nowhere

And learn peace is found only with her

In the silence of her... I could be her silence forever

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

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

All Rights Reserved

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

Tumbleweed Contessa's Poem "Crazy Love"

Love is both a momentary feeling and a long-term state of mind.

It is also that powerful moment when we meet another person and feel energized and are immediately aware of our heart pounding.

Crazy Love

In the frisson of passionate love making,

you startled me

suddenly jumping up

and yelling,

“Who’s shilly-shallying?”

and throwing my Tootsie Roll supply

into the fire.

“Not me,” I said,

“I’m Yipee-Ky-Yea Cow Patty.

Now, come here Ger-On-Imo

and help me make a

topic sentence.”

Don’t fill up on macaroni and carrot stew

after I’ve made all this crazy love.

by Mimi Wolske

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

(Crazy Love by Gil Bruvel)

Tumbleweed Contessa's Poem — Single-Serving Packages

One after another relapse after another second ticking to the next making it difficult to ring in another year before the world shakes and time cannot stop gossiping about the killing blood on the bedroom walls.

© Single-Serving Packages

Christmas, pock marked from naked

Branches shoved by the fractious winds,

Exposed the signs of a struggling

Economy and weather-beaten lumps

Of forgotten love in a poverty-ridden

Heart, then waned with expectant hope.

It turned out I was good at holding onto

Bad dreams, bad at keeping good lovers

Who wanted to walk in wet leaves singing.

Do you know who I am when no one

Is looking? When just-for-the-night guys

Forget to remember me between breaths?

Painting is equal parts prayer and hell’s fire, as light

As a meteor reflected off morning’s icy lake and

As dark as your dog’s bones in the backyard grave, or

Like when you are lying in an embrace, stretched,

Kissing him with all your heart and then you are

Curled like a fetus in a basket wanting to be loved.

The holiday ham tongued the glaze

Of hunger’s disillusionment and

Taste buds cursed the tangled tree lights

While I spun in a dance of your

Disproportionate equilibrium and

Tepid nostalgia of another lover, not me.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Poetry: Once Upon A University Drive

Memories. 

The hottest ticket in town.

Still art, dancing and bleeding poetic life.

© Once Upon A University Drive

Leaning on a crutch of photos,

Vivid and pale ghosts from my past

Dance around me tinted with gaiety,

Nonchalance, and somberness,

Bringing shadowed and vivid memories

Once again ambrosial or unsavory.

Prone on spots in time, I linger;

Fifty values of gray hues covering

A wistful heart’s pale blue floor blanket

As lighter chromas of gray framed

Outside my window come singing stormy

Songs written by a factious wind.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

Don’t Throw Arrows When You Can Caress Blues

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins? Edgar Allan Poe

© Don’t Throw Arrows When You Can Caress Blues

Suspended and motionless,

Wrapped in the firmament and

Touching evening’s gossamer soul,

And feeling equally ethereal.

Sitting on the edge of the world?

Finish your medical smoke;

Here, take away this empty glass,

I’ll drink from the bottle.

Tangled in moonlight’s shadows

When wind songs whispered long ago,

We buried you in the garden you loved so much;

Now you are pushing up our daisies.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(Painting: "Alma descansando en la sombra" / "Soul Resting on Shadow", oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm. approx, 2005, Helene Knoop)

If You Are The Canvas

© If You Are The Canvas,

Let my lips and my tongue be the brushes

Stroking landscapes with colors of my love;

Let my perfume wreathe you as it gushes

Forth like music rising one more octave;

Let my breath spread weighted hues forever.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(painting by Malcolm Liepke)

Fluent In Loss

Poetry in Politics is not new; neither is Politics in Poetry.

Abraham Lincoln said in a speech:

 "I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views."

“I stand as a witness to the common lot, 

"survivor of that time, that place,” wrote Anna Akhmatova in 1961.

If the twain ever meet

Will it be a 'twain wreck'?

© Fluent In Loss

Vomited secrets from the mouth

Of a river, dizzy from its whirling

Waltz, echo in Prevarication Canyon;

Will you ever forget how it goes

When you are singing the next verse?

When the house you exit will not?

When the “cats cradle” is nothing

More than tangled finger-strings?

Stacked plates made of paper

Mache in a calm, blue sky where

The finger pointing at Adam, who is

Thirsty for forgiveness in this

Thin-layered, cheap concrete world,

That locks him behind a door

Thick with the sins of the father,

Warns him not to look back.

Give me your tired, your poor laundry,

Your glasses half full of photos, and

Claim your life tastes like moths

Clinging to life after they crash and burn;

Clearly you lost Honey’s moon; you’re

Clueless so just pull the muzzle over the

Clownish Crows Cawing because the

Back of your hand brushed my doorknob.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(painting #1 no title by Fred Calleri and #2 Milk Run by Fred Calleri)

Just A Place To Sleep

From the NORTH to escape the icy cold to claim the desert southwest as their winter home, the sunny place where no one bothers to shovel sunshine in the winter.

©Just A Place To Sleep

I’m hiding down here

in the vacation trenches

trying to latch onto

a piece of higher ground

(ground without the prickly,

wound-causing cacti)

and those larger avocados;

eating salted genealogy

while bits and pieces

of time slip by;

grabbing the rope of hope

immersed in chaos—it's like

a Dostoyevsky passage,

or paint on a canvas

about life in a

retiring trailer park

by surrealist Ernst,

or a magic wand

carved from wood of holly

(hooray for Hollywood);

I continue to contemplate

the possibility of

one more taco

with jalapeño sauce

and maybe one more

glass of sangria.

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

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)

Silence Sounds Like, a poem by your Tumbleweed Contessa

Rumi said something to the effect that poetry gives the illusion of having had the experience without actually going through it. 

It, poetry, plucks at your heartstrings and makes music.

Poetry goes beyond the logic of prose; there is mystery in each one, a mystery not be explained but, rather, to be admired. 

ENJOY

© Silence Sounds Like

Silence sounds too much like you’ll be going;

Peace preys like a wolf longing for the hunt,

Serenading mocking love fragments from the past.

Autumn songs, once hidden like stars during light,

Return to the desert after summer blends into fall,

Bring winter’s chaos as if thunder in spring’s soul.

Swimming in a Van Gogh joy and red cosmic dreams,

I never wished for your hand-me-down dreams,

Your washed-out, washed-up, rented future for one.

Hail the part-time dreamer, the full-time idiot,

The lover who came with no warnings,

Conceding to counterfeit honesty……..

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(art: Michael_Carson_Ginger_20x30_oil_on_canvas)

Poetry - TWINS

From one fertilized egg that contains a single set of genetic instructions, also known as a genome, did you know it is still possible for identical twins to have serious differences in their genetic makeup? Did you know some are mirror images of each other? They have the same physical features but opposite asymmetric features. If one twin is right-handed, the other twin is left handed, a twin with a birthmark on his left check will have a mirror twin with a birthmark on his right check. They can even have hair that whorls in opposite directions and opposite teeth. In more extreme cases, twins even have mirrored internal organs, such as one with a heart on the right and the co-twin with a heart on the left - even the skeletal features may be reversed.

There they were on the screen—

Shoestrings tightly interwoven,

Tree limbs reaching out like arms,

Plant roots stretching like legs—

A silent comedy of entangled umbilical cords.

© TWINS

Mimi Wolske

All Rights Reserved

(I am not a twin, there are no twins in my family history, there still are no twins in our family.)

Ambiguous Shades of Your Love

Real love is never perplexed, never qualifies, never rejects, never demands. It replenishes by grace of restoring unlimited circulation. It burns because it knows the true meaning of sacrifice. It is life illuminated. Henry Miller

Synthetic highways in the first folded light,

nonmusical yet rhythmic beats of familiarity,

minimalist imaginings of Rapunzel’s wealth,

whispers dancing in the paleness of moonlight,

evening paper embers becoming wildfires,

distorted photographs of conditioned responses

consumed by a wayward soul cast to the sea

and

expelled as vintage whispers in a moment of tranquility.

© Ambiguous Shades of Your Love

All Rights Reserved by Mimi Wolske

(photo: no acknowledgement provided by the site copied from)

me - a poem

I love early mornings when the rest of world is fast asleep, or so it seems, and I'm the only one awake and everything feels like a still life or portrait painting and there are no problems because it is just me, the world, and the rising sun.

me,
sitting Indian style, crosslegged,
on a turquoise sofa
in a still life called Friday,
colored with the natural light of dawn
and fading starlight,
the warmth against
the sleepy, cool skin of my hands
caused by a ceramic cup
filled with reheated coffee,
thankful and happy
to begin another day
and to experience love
from family, friends, pets, and life

© me
Mimi Wolske
All Rights Reserved

(painting: Daniel F. Gerhartz - Captivated)