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

The Prognosis

By Stephanie Mesler

When they say you might (or might not) die,

That you might just be miserable for the rest of your days,

but they can’t say how many days of misery you’ll get to enjoy,

you try on clairvoyance.  

Looking ahead, how far do you see?

Can you see another 25 years?  

How does the next decade look?

Can you see next year?

Next month?

Next week?

Are you sure of tomorrow?

When these questions cannot be answered,

when you look ahead and see nothing at all,

you get philosophical.

No one ever knows which day will be their last, do they?

Shouldn’t we all live our todays like they might be our last days?  

You decide to assume tomorrow may not come again;

You act like you have nothing to lose

And, before you know it, you have built the life you always wanted,

A life you really don’t want to lose.  

And that’s when it happens.  

The Prognosis is © Stephanie Mesler 2019

Golden Mourning

 

Golden Mourning was created as part of a Writing Workshop in Second Life.
The prompt was this picture from Debra Kelly Makeup Pinterest page.

Golden Mourning

by Stephanie Mesler

The sun invades too early, changing sterile white to blinding gold.

My own pale hands, yellowed in this light --

The spot next to me vacant a year to the day,

loss ferments in my gut, so much virulent anguish.

How to commemorate the day that dares to start with saffron glory

when it should have been the day the world ends?

I have prepared to face this day assuming it would rain,

that the sky would be black with clouds and the streets filled with dirty water.  

But here I stand, looking out the window toward the hill where you are buried,  

naked except for this unnatural auric glaze.

© 2021 Stephanie Mesler

Coming Full Circle

Written July 6, 2015

Coming Full Circle

By Stephanie Mesler

There are constellations I would not see and cries I would not hear,

had I not learned to live with my insides always turned out, 

exposed and bleeding, open

to life and experience, to knowledge and pain and joy and fury.

You made me who I am.  

Sometimes, I think that’s a good thing.

You were the daddy who built swings and filled my sandbox.  

You tied my rubber raft with rope so I could not drift into waters above my head.  

You made a chicken wire playpen, so that I could crawl on lush bluegrass 

while you read the world’s great books, sometimes out loud, 

and sang me opera and spirituals and talked with passersby.

You were the unpredictable dad, who sometimes went AWOL,

who was quick to rage, impossible to please.  

Sometimes, you hit.  Often, you bullied.  

You were competitive for me 

and against me.

You were the father everyone envied

because I did not tell them what might have made you look less than…

I tried to be one of your accomplishments

It was never enough.

You did not love 

the daughter,

the girl,

the child who could not be molded in your image

I tried to get it right,

dated men like you,

men you mostly hated.  

You saw yourself in them and could not look in the mirror without flinching.

That is, I suppose, a sign of...something.  

Through the decades of my life

I have fallen again and again into the trap of happy memory,

allowed the danger of relationship to be outweighed by shimmering, gooey, optimism.

Last time ‘round, I said I was done, and I am.

Now, we do not speak --

having hit a wall too high for me to climb again 

(I’m not young anymore myself, you know)

I slammed a door shut behind me so that you can never again walk through uninvited.

When I think of you, it is mostly in shades of yellow and blue, happy thoughts that tell half the tale:

the Christmas of 100 books,

singing together from a balcony,

watching live ballet,

the way you cooked white fish in red sauce when Mom was away,

how we made up fantastic stories about complete strangers to pass the time on long trips.  

I remember the charm and humor, the intellect and art.  

There are dreams I would not have,

stories I could not tell, 

songs I could not sing,

had it not been you Mother chose, though no one will ever know why she did.

You will be dead soon.

For better or for worse, that will bring relief.

Then, I will dispel the somber murk of darker memory and 

create a vast and glowing void to be refilled with more of what made you Daddy.  

In my fantasy, it is safe to be your child,

safe to open the door one last time before it’s too late,

safe to say goodbye, face to face.  

I will one day write that scene, though it will never happen.

I will give myself the gift of coming full circle.  

© Stephanie Mesler 2015

Black Bird January 7. 2021

Black Bird January 7. 2021

By Stephanie Mesler

Black Bird, I see you there,

alone on the tip-toppiest branch of the barest tree,

just the other side of the building across the pool from where I sit, 

eating my breakfast in silence,

trying not to disturb others isolated in this time and place with me,

waiting for the contagion to pass,

for covid-19 to take its leave.  

Husband growls almost inaudibly at his work computer.

Daughter studies.  

Dog and cat sleep at opposite ends of the couch in determined ignorance of one another’s presence.  

I don’t mind the quiet; This day, I relish it.  

It is the morning after the almost-coup.  

I am emotionally and physically drained.  

I hunger for silence; in it, there is peace.  

I see you there, Black Bird.  

You wait.. Listening…

Wind gently shifting the bare branches around you.  

Somehow, you are still and solid, unmoved,

there on that  tip-toppiest branch.  

You are strength.  

You are peace.  

© Stephanie Mesler 2021

New Poem: Election Day Eve 2020

 Election Day Eve 2020

by Stephanie Mesler

He commands an army of duds with nothing better to do and nothing much to lose.

They fly his machismo flag over their trucks with big dicks.

They stop traffic and make noise, demanding attention - 

dateless boys who can't get a girl into the backseat without threats or bribes or both.  

They're proud now,  their king is proof that human shit can be shitty and still bask in glory.

They shout for a while and laugh -- they think they own the road and that's enough for the moment, owning the road is proof they can own the world.

But no one pays attention to toddlers stamping their feet

Traffic backs away or goes around them, spinning gravel, ignoring their tantrum.

They are alone with just each other and their combined insecurities.

They have no binkies and no blankies.  

They are cold and hungry and afraid.  

They go home to bed without any cookies.

Perhaps tomorrow they will grow up.

Election Day Eve 2020 is © 2020 Stephanie Mesler 

New Poem: Remembering Love

 Remembering Love

By Stephanie Mesler

Will you think of me as the wind blows across a mountaintop and will you know that it's me brushing my fingertips across your back, shoulder blade to shoulder blade, so slowly that it's like not moving at all?  

Will you remember that my eyes are the color of borage just after it's rained and that I love the rain, even when there is work to be done in the garden?  

When you taste bergamot and lemon, will it transport you to that tea shop we found at the edge of that town that wasn't big enough to have a stoplight?  Will you wish for the cookies that were iced with rose water by the man who looked like he could raise a cadillac over his head and toss it into the river that ran outside his kitchen window?  

Will you hear my voice at night when you sit alone on the porch, waiting for moonlight to fall on our willow for the 100th time since I left?  

If a winter storm comes and icicles hang from the gutters, will you see how they sparkle in the sun and know that I would have cried for their glory?  Will you leave them hanging until they melt because that's what I would have wanted?  

Will you wish for me to return?  Will you waste the years after me, remembering?  

I want you to forget.  

Forget how much we needed one another and how we swore to be one another's one and only.

Forget the promises and the vows.

Forget the pain.  

Remember only that our life together was no miracle, 

That we had love because we were love.  

We earned love because we did love.  

Remember this - love begets love.  

I want you to love again and remember that we taught one another what is possible.

Do not settle for less.  

Remembering Love is © Stephanie Mesler 2020

Weeping For My Old Hometown

Weeping For My Old Hometown

by Stephanie Mesler

I weep.  

My old hometown is on fire.  

It is burning with the fury of a thousand mothers whose sons were shot just for living in dark skin.  

It burns with the fear of old men who once held power just because, but are now told they must earn a place around a table that used to be rectangular.

It burns with the passion of the ignorant who follow whoever makes them feel smarter than...well...smarter than they are.  

I weep.

My old hometown is shattered glass and broken beams.   

I watch on my phone as my old friends make themselves shields.

They use their white skin 

(not really white at all, BTW, more like slightly pink)

They use their pink skin to get between the men in blue 

(not really blue at all, BTW.

Except where they are swathed in camo, like they think they are going to war on Main Street, these men in blue are covered in black, head to toe, even the weapons strapped to their belts are shiny black.   

They look like they wanna join Vlad’s Alpha Group and fight for domination of a continent.  Their horses are black and so are the clubs they use to beat back resistance.)

My old friends use their pink skin to get between the men in blue that isn’t blue and the people of color.

And they really are colorful, these people; their skin comes in many shades of brown, from tortilla to umber and everything in between.  

I watch as the men in blue that isn’t blue open fire, sending rubber bullets into the shins and bellies and faces of the pink.

The rubber bullets bring my old friends to the ground where they are trampled as the men in blue that isn’t blue move on the people of color, raising their black cannons and firing orange gas at the crowd.  

All the while, even as they go blind and fall, they chant:  “No justice, no peace.”  

I weep.

My old hometown is flooded.  

Blood is in the streets.  

The river overflows with the blood of the city herself

She’s been cut by her native sons and daughters as they sort themselves out, 

many generations later than expected, 

probably too late to save my hometown.

She will die because she does not deserve to live.  

She will be a memory, a page in a future history book, a wikipedia entry about the city once ruled by men in blue that wasn’t blue.  

I weep.

My old hometown is gone.  

There are no more untended flames threatening the safety of the many.

All that shattered glass has been used to decorate a new city’s towers and spires that rise toward the sky.

The blood is gone from the streets and pulses through the veins of living men and women who come in enough rainbow colors to populate their own big box of crayons.  

From a distance, you can hear that blood thrumming and feel the city’s pulse.  

My old hometown glistens, reflecting the faces of its people, all of them.  

I weep because my old hometown has made me proud.  

Copyright © Stephanie Mesler 2020

Mother's Reflection

Mother’s Reflection
By Stephanie Mesler

Mother told me Erik Estrada needed to take more baths. 
She said the same of our housekeeper, Lupe, and the boy who took me to the prom. 
His name was Manuel. 

No matter the temperature outside, Mother rolled up the car windows, when we crossed 110th Street.  She told me never to look a black man straight in the eye and not to sit next to a brown one on the bus. 

Mother skipped my wedding to a man who spoke with a Caribbean lilt and never held her grandchild.  Mother disowned me until my brown baby girl was in the ground and the ink on the divorce papers was dry. 

Mother was the only mother I had, so I let her forgive me.  I tried to play the role of returned prodigal daughter.  I tried to do my duty, but she died alone and spends eternity in an unmarked grave, prepared by a man with midnight skin. 

Mother was not white.  Her skin ran from summer tawny to winter taupe and her eyes were the color of dark roasted coffee beans.  Her hair was thick and curly and she carried herself with the straight-backed pride of a long denied akhsó’tha*. 

Mother was afraid to see her own reflection.  She owned only one family photo of her blue-eyed daddy.  I never knew mother’s mother’s face nor the faces of any of the women before her.  Mother bleached her skin and panicked when I turned a rich brown in a Florida summer.

I have to stop myself from crossing the street when I see a black man coming toward me on the sidewalk.  I am not afraid; it’s a habit learned before I knew I was being taught.  I will myself not to share that lesson with my own child. 

I do not scrub my skin until it is raw as Mother often did hers.  I do not drench my hair in lemon juice or attempt to control the brows that grow thick above my eyes.  I look at myself in the mirror and I see Mother looking back.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019


*akhsó’tha is a Mohawk word, for "my grandmother."

Scarlet Woman

Scarlet Woman
By Stephanie Mesler

Painted toes
beneath undulant
hips, swathed in
counterfeit
coins sway the siren's rhythm.
Red, blooming motion.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019


Poetic Form: shadorma 

Be The Sea Fair Or Foul

Be The Sea Fair Or Foul
by Stephanie Mesler

Floating separate, idly chatting, side by side over the glassy pool,
lazily stroking, we move forward in tandem, no need to look at one another.
We trust in forever and focus on fluffy clouds, imagining the heights,
We do not notice our feet are no longer parallel.

Drifting apart, the distance grows between us as the the water roughs.
Reaching, unable to clasp hands, we rise higher and drift farther with each swell.
We see one another only briefly when we both crest at once.
For a while after you are completely out of sight, I hear your cries.

Sinking alone beneath the waves, I fight to rise above the tumult.
Grabbing at spume that vanishes as my hands slice through it, I bawl out your name.
Down I go, spiralling with the maelstrom until my back slams into sand.
And there you are, already lost, eyes black, skin pale, not the friend I thought I knew.

Drowning, underneath 326 million trillion liters of water, we are reunited in stillness.
I take your hand, allow one last look at you, the friend who abandoned me to choppy waters.
A gasp before the sea goes still and the world goes dark… And then there is nothing.
We, two, are no more.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019

Deep Breaths

Deep Breaths
by Stephanie Mesler

Breath is an entitlement,
reward for being born,
for waking up each day,
putting one foot in front of the other.

Breathing is to Deep Breath as being alive is to living.
You can do one without the other, but will it be worth the effort?
Breathing begins with a baby's first cry
and continues without ceasing until it doesn't any more. 

Deep Breaths are a luxury
to be found in the silences
between the movements of concerti,
before largo gives way to prestissimo.

They do not like to be found.
Deep breaths hide behind Aphrodite
and under Hokusa's azure wave,
within the well of O' Keeffe's second Petunia.

Deep Breaths are not obvious.
They are not givens, available just for asking.
One must make room for deep breaths,
clear out the clutter that makes us pant.

Deep Breaths can be found in the window seat
or under your grandmother's quilt.
They are in the wide open, beside rivers,
and in musty caverns kept sacrosanct in the dark.

Deep Breaths take a little effort,
sometimes a steroid pill or two. 
They require a slowing that doesn't come easily,
and patience to clear out allthe crud.

© Stephanie Mesler 2018

Outliving A Friend Who Should Have Lived Longer

I'm still here and she is not. 
She was the friend who wasn't a friend for a while ...
until she was again.
The friend who made me consider the depth of friendship...its endurance. 
She broke my heart and then helped to rebuild it. 
Together, we learned that love damn well does mean having to say you're sorry.
We learned that, sometimes, that's enough.

She was the friend who reminded me that love can be punctured...
wind can blow right through it.
That's when you expect it to fall...
but the holes actually make love stronger.
It can withstand fury.
Together, we learned that love will bow without falling.
 
Tsunamis came and rivers raged across our landscape.
We were as a raft, tossed and turned,
sopping wet, but still useful...
still crossing the sea, headed toward land.
Together, we learned that love floats.

She was there when my life ended.
No, not my actual life,
the life I lived. 
And she was there when life started anew. 
Actual life carries on in spite of the deaths we experience.
We carried on together, even when the life we shared was done,
ever in one another's hearts,
ever on one another's minds. 

And then one day, she was gone.
 
In some ways, nothing has changed.
The sun still rises and the wind still blows.
The sea continues to creep across the world.
I still think of her...
I still love her.
But nothing will ever be as it was. 
She would tell me that is as it should be. 
"Change is the reason we exist."

But this is a change that came too soon,
a lesson I do not wish to learn. 
I'm still here and she is not.
She was my friend. 

© Stephanie Mesler 2018

Time For A New Poem

Time For A New Poem

By Stephanie Mesler

This is me, writing a new poem because it's time to commit poesy.  I know it is, because it's marked in my day planner.  2 PM on Monday afternoon--- "write a new poem."  It's not even in pencil.  I've inked it in between an appointment with the oncologist and tea with my great Aunt, who will, no doubt arrive on time with a bottle of something sharp to add to the tea, so I'd better get started.  She tells me the poem will be payment for her company.  So I am writing...a poem?...sort of.  Or maybe it's just an essay, a plain old boring essay about how poems do not submit to scheduling, no matter how determined the poet.  But no, this has to be a poem... doesn't it?  Because poems are about fleeting things, thoughts and feelings, colors, and odors...aren't they? Of course, sometimes they are about deep things, like water and philosophy, but in a poem, even broad subjects are to be detailed with brevity.  That's what poems are, or so I was taught -- thoughts expressed or stories told  in the barest bones of language.  It's like building scaffolding around a tower that already exists, then, knocking down the tower, leaving only the framework around it.  The scaffolding is the poem.  A skeleton of sorts that, once, surrounded living flesh.  No, that's not quite right.  The skeleton itself lives.  If I do my job well, it will dance a graveyard jig... which is truly an awful metaphor for a gift I'll offer a 92-year-old who tells me every week the newest poem might be the last poem I write for her.  So, now it's 2:45 and the doorbell will no doubt ring just before three.  I need to lay out the cups and the saucers, the ones with the little hand-painted flowers, and the silver spoons, the assortment of teas in many flavors, a bowl of real sugar cubes, and a pitcher of milk.  No one will touch the sugar or the milk, because tea should be drunk black and strong, but I'll put it out anyway, because I was raised by an Aunt who believed in doing things properly and now is not the time to start disappointing her. 

© Stephanie Mesler 2018

Haiku for Christine Blasey Ford

She lit up dark nooks.

Her torch scorched the iron dome.

A nation smolders.

© Stephanie Mesler 2018

Video: The Amazing Shrinking White Boy

The Amazing Shrinking White Boy

The Amazing Shrinking White Boy
For CBF and Her Army 2018
by Stephanie Mesler


You cannot bring me to my knees,
grateful to be heeled.

You won’t teach me my place with a
kick and a laugh - I won’t be trained.

Your hand on my mouth cannot silence me.
I bite and you bleed.

You think you’ve won the world,
just by being born white and male,
with a lifetime membership to the club.

You think you are the main act,
When, really, you’re just a sideshow freak,
The Amazing Shrinking White Boy,
Too drunk with privilege to see me rise.

You are blind with arrogance,
deaf to the roar of the army behind me, coming to end your reign.

In the end, you are nothing,
Not even a footnote in the history of the universe.
You will return to dust, forgotten.

You’re not the strong one.
You’re just loud.
And puny.
And scared.

I am the one who crawled back from hell
to tear off the mantle you wear to hide your frailty.
It’s not even yours; you stole it,
like everything else you ever wanted and took without asking.

I am the one who will clean up your mess and take away your keys.
I will end you once and for all.
Move along, little boy.
There’s no place for you here.

© Stephanie Mesler 2018

Forty-Nine Floors

Forty-Nine Floors
By Stephanie Mesler

I smell him before the doors open.
He slinks on board,
reeking.
Not the light smell of a delicate French soup or wild onions along grandmother’s fence.
He must have bathed in a vat of roasting bulbs, rinsed his hair in the juice as it sweat into the pan.
His vegetable smell is mixed with testosterone and the hairs on my arms stand to attention.
I know before he reaches for my waist that he has plans for my body, plans to which I have not consented and never will.
I spin around and face him down, right there in that tiny room, gliding from ground floor to roof.
He is not zipped and I watch as he grows.
He smiles
NO, I shout, reaching behind me for the button, any button.
I want to get off this thing, out of this space, out of his reach.
He swings wildly, grazes my cheek with a sting.
BITCH, he roars.
YES! I roar back. YOU HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA.
He lunges and I stumble backwards, somehow, miraculously, hitting the alarm with a shoulder as he forces me down into the corner.
The elevator climbs as he descends.
I lift one knee with all the force I can muster - it smashes into his prized possession.
Pushing against his chest with both palms, I choke on his pungency as I scream.
NO, I say again, and then I stand.
He is curled in the opposite corner, muttering, Bitch, Cunt, Slut, Bitch, Cunt, Slut, Bitch…
I step toward him and kick. Hard.
Blood splurts from his nose and he has no more words.
He howls and the elevator rumbles.
The door opens behind me and I step backwards into a crowd.

© Stephanie Mesler 2018