Red Woman

Red Woman

By Stephanie Mesler

I see you, a dismal speck of grey, washed over with the red that is myself.  

You are withered and infinitesimally meaningless.  

You bring nothing to my world…

or your own.   

Without my blazing energy, you’d disappear altogether.  

You stand out, because you are framed by me, surrounded by me, lucky to be seen at all in a tiny bit of the glow from my spotlight.

I allow this because my flame cannot burn bright without twigs to keep it stoked,  

I smell smoke as it rises around me.  

The ground is scorched beneath my feet and the sky is murky.  

The bravest of firy men try to tame my power.  

I toy with them.  I let them think they might  shine brighter than I,

but, even the hottest of them, bore me after a short while.  

I brand their thighs, take in the smell of burning flesh, before sending them on their way.  

I pretend not to hear you cry at night,

when I let my fire turn to embers.  

You sob for lost warmth and the dullness of my glory, 

But I need rest and your sniveling, your needs, have come to mean less to me than when you were a living oak tree.  

Still, I listen and I remember a time when I wanted you to be whole and alive.  

I dream of singing with you - two full voices filling the sky with song.  

I taste your tears - or maybe those are my own.  

Either way, the saline makes me thirsty.  

That is when the rain comes.

It is dangerous for an inferno to drink freely of the falling rain, 

but that is what I do - I stand tall and I drink.  

The water is fresh and tastes of a time before I was made of flame.  

You are awake, too, and I see you stand, for the first time in,,,I don’t know how long.  

You stand beside me and together we drink deep drafts from a puddle that is forming around us.  

I feel water at my ankles, and then, my knees.  

It stretches out before us, as we stand in the deepening lake, now up to my waist.  

Where you were once bare and grey, dull within my burning, you are now coming green.  

Buds appear on your branches and I feel the first shoots of your rebirth when you put an arm around my waist and whisper, we’re back.  

Before long, we are floating in a great sea of blue, 

You are fully alive and I am no longer the color of fury.  

My red has faded to fuschia.  

We are specks in a wide, wet world.   

And we sing in harmony, of our new beginning, and of a future that lies somewhere beyond the horizon. 

Red Woman is © Stephanie Mesler 2024

Villanelle On The Loss Of A Friendship

Art by Blue-eyed-girl-23

By Stephanie Mesler

The greatest pain is caused by friends,

who turn away when you are not your best.  

They know the way to turn the blade.  

When all is well, your brightness transcends

above their pain, above all trials and tests.

The greatest pain is caused by friends.

When they are lost, your hand extends.

You lead them home and let them rest.  

They know the way to turn the blade. 

Real friends are true even at the ends

of predictable circumstance, even twisted and stressed.

The greatest pain is caused by friends.

They rip at the seams, the violent gash your heart rends.

They open you up and empty you out, leaving a cavity where once was your chest.

They know the way to turn the blade.  

You lie down alone, wanting to make amends,

but that job is not yours. Still, for restoration, you’d take on the quest.

The greatest pain is caused by friends.

They know the way to turn the blade.  

Villanelle On The Loss Of A Friendship is © Stephanie Mesler 2023

Blue Woman

 

Early Morning Rain Stops The Gasps (a Clogyrmach)

By Stephanie Mesler

Early morning rain stops the gasps.

Like cotton wrapped around a wound,

it softens and dulls pain.

It works like valium,

not healing,

but hiding.  

Early Morning Rain Stops The Gasps (a Clogyrmarch) is © Stephanie Mesler 2023

Love Soothes (A Fibonacci Bell Curve Poem)

by Stephanie Mesler


0+1=1 Love
1+1= 2 Is not
1+2= 3 as easy
2+3= 5 as it seems in books
3+5=8 or in romcoms on the tv.
5+8 =13 Love is not even as easy as that first sweet kiss
8+13=21 or the long anticipated burst of passion that felt like you’d found home.
13+21= 34 All that is just the start of a journey no longer taken alone; Now you’re in a rowboat steered by two people with their own sense of true north.
34-13=21 Unison rowing can result in dizzy circles; At times you’ll row alone, feeling
21-8=13 like the labor of love buries you under heaps
13-8=5 of untended wounds.
5-2=3 Then a touch…
3-1=2 or smile…
2-1=1 soothes.

Love
Is not
as easy
as it seems in books,
or in romcoms on the tv.
Love is not even as easy as that first sweet kiss,
or the long anticipated burst of passion that felt like you’d found home.
All that is just the start of a journey no longer taken alone; Now you’re in a rowboat steered by two people with their own sense of true north.
Unison rowing can result in dizzy circles; At times you’ll row alone, feeling
like the labor of love buries you under heaps
of untended wounds.
Then a touch…

or smile…
soothes.

© Stephanie Mesler 2023

Roll Down The Hills With Me, a Villanelle

By Stephanie Mesler

Roll down the hills with me, let’s go home.  

We’ve been exposed to the sun far too long.

It’s almost dark and the forests moan.

Maybe another day, another year, we will roam

beyond this circle of hills, away from their song. 

Roll down the hills with me, let’s go home.

The light slips away now, day is done.

At dusk, we will hear their arrival, the ghoulish throng.

It’s almost dark and the forests moan.

Come with me through the dreary gloam,

Alone, I am puny; together, we are strong.

Roll down the hills with me, let’s go home.

We will land on the valley floor, in the brome,

before night falls, back where we belong.

It’s almost dark and the forests moan.

Together, wrapped in twilight, let’s scamper home.

Let’s be abed before Llyr sounds his midnight gong.  

Roll down the hills with me, let’s go home.

It’s almost dark and the forests moan.  

Roll Down The Hills With Me, a Villanelle is © Stephanie Mesler, 2023

Mother Was Not Smooth, a Sestina

By Stephanie Mesler

Mother was not smooth; she was not genteel.  

Mother was sharp, like a needle in the eye,

and blunt, like a butcher’s mallet.  

Born into a motherless home, she learned early to cope with solitude.  

Alone with a man who had not planned on raising any child, much less a daughter, 

She learned to love silence

Early morning darkness enveloped her in silence.  

Gowned evenings among the genteel, 

away from the home and daughter

that demanded more than just the mother’s watchful eye,

used up all of her sociability, stole her grace and made her seek solitude, 

wherever it could be found.  Her mornings, she guarded with a tone that crushed like a mallet,

“Why are you awake?  Go back to bed,” decreed the mallet.

Don’t you know this is mother’s alone time?  Silence!  

She sat on the sofa, smoking in the dark, surrounded in her solitude.  

Here, she was herself, for herself; bereft of the veneer of the genteel

politician artist preacher’s wife.  In her jaundiced eye,

There was no love for the home, the man, or the daughter.  

I was the invisible daughter -

she, who learned to avoid the mallet -

she, who was also a needle in the eye.

I moved from room to room, through pea soup silence,

cutting through the air, like the well mannered and genteel

cut through societal barriers and silence.  

I learned from the lonliest how to embrace solitude.

My own points got sharper and my tongue grew terse; I am my mother’s daughter,

in the end, so much more than my father’s - he valued the elegant genteel,

even as his own words cut to the bone and his fists crushed like a mallet.  

In a daughter, he valued only bragging rights and silence.  

I was to be evidence of his own value, proof that he could create what was first seen in his mind’s eye.  

Mother looked the other way when he punched me in the eye, 

an event that led to a full week’s solitude.  

I was condemned to missing school, unending silence 

at home, time for my wound to heal, so no one would look at me and see the daughter

of a monster and his mallet.  

I was captive to  that blinding veneer genteel.  

I have grown to be both sharp and smooth, the daughter

of a mallet, who is, myself, a blunt, hard, damaging, self-protective mallet.

I am also capable of gentle, gentlewomanly gentility.  I am needle Genteel.

Mother Was Not Smooth, a Sestina is © Stephanie Mesler 2023