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

Moot Goodbye

I used to believe I would say goodbye.
I would stand before you, an equal, unafraid -
and tell you that I forgive what I could not tolerate.
But the day never came.

You died, bullying to the last, surrounded by strangers paid to tolerate your vituperation.
Somehow I knew you were gone, though no one bothered to make the call.
Googled the proof; seeing is believing.
Confirmation stunned me for a day before grief descended.

I wasn’t sad you are gone; that was a relief.
I was sad I never got to play out that scene I had imagined,
The one where I stand before you and say goodbye,
The one where I am stronger than you,
The one that gives me the upper hand.

I was sad that the Daddy I loved was not to be trusted,
That the relationship I imagined was never real.
I was sad for the childhood you destroyed
And the fear you built in me that I carry with me still.

I am sad for the love you gave up when you drove me away,
Sad that you were on your own at the end, among people who had no stake in your redemption.
I am sad for what made you what you were;
You were a victim first and a monster second.

I wish your life could have been different,

So that my life could have been different.

Goodbye.


Moot Goodbye is © Stephanie Mesler 2021

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

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

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

Tough As Nails Triolet

Tough As Nails Triolet

By Stephanie Mesler

Tough as nails,
like Grandma's legendary will.
or alligator scales.
Tough as nails,
with the strength of a scorpion's tail,
ready and willing to kill.
Tough as nails
like Grandma's legendary will.

© Stephanie Mesler 2019

On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago, An Anniversary

On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago
by Stephanie Mesler

Not so long ago, you were a thousand miles off.
I felt you in the night, heard your voice as if in dreams.
The tendrils of your breath reached across miles and warmed me in my dark.  

Not so long ago, shyness prevented me from taking you all the way in.  
I stole glances of you, feigning interest in objects behind and beside.
When finally I looked directly into your eyes, reserve dissolved
and all I knew I knew of you was enough.

Not so long ago, you laughed when I kissed your bottom rib.  
There was nothing at all manly about the ticklish giggle you tried hard to retrieve
but once I knew your secret place, there was to be no un-knowing

Not so long ago,  dawn crept around drawn hotel room blinds.
The clatter of uneven housekeeper’s cart wheels caused you to stir.
I pulled you closer, stroked your arm, whispered you back to sleep.

Not so long ago, my face nestled against your fur,
I fought to keep tears from splashing over your belly,
They came, unstoppable, bathing your body, wetting the sheet beneath us.
Your tears mixed with my own, assuring me it was ok to come apart before goodbye.  

Not so long ago, you kissed my palm,
It was all you could safely reach while riding the clutch in heavy tourist traffic.  
I looked straight ahead, wondering how I could possibly return to the life that did not include you.  

Not so long ago, I left you standing at the station.
Through tinted window glass, you could not know how I trembled.
You could not see a stranger hand me a tissue to wipe tears I could not even try to hide.

Not so long ago, alone again in my dark, I reached for you.
Your laughter echoed in my mind and your embrace took me home.
In your arms, a thousand miles fell away, and I breathed you in.

On Meeting and Parting Not So Long Ago is copyright 2011 Stephanie Mesler and is included in the poetry collection, Love Lines.

Three Haiku

As many of my readers have surmised, I enjoy writing haiku.  It is a form that comes easily, easily enough that I don't have to waste creative energy struggling to keep to the form.  That makes it a good tool for jump starting my poetical processor when it doesn't seem to want to start (or jump) at all.  A couple weeks back, I attended a short haiku workshop.  We were given a very simple prompt, winter, and a very few minutes to write several haiku.  Following are three haiku I created that day.


Roof Leaking Haiku

Monster wind, sky dumps
gallons; front makes tropics cold.
Roof leaking again.



Boardwalk Fog Haiku

Palms bent, sand swirling...
Cold mist blankets the boardwalk.
No clue what's out there.



Night Sky Haiku

Night sky blinks starlight
heavenly bodies zoom toward
morning's dread waking.

Roof Leaking, Boardwalk Fog, and Night Sky Haiku are © Stephanie Mesler 2019

Now Haiku

Now Haiku
By Stephanie Mesler


Courage is needed
when change is the choice, starting
out in the dark - now!

Itching to begin
destination uncharted
first steps, first breaths, buzz-

Energy mounting
scenery changing within
quick as without- now.

Mystery beckons,
offers diversion from then,
slam shut the door - swoosh-

The past is not real,
the future not yet, being
transpires in a flash!.

No point in wondering
what will come next, when all you
can know is the now.


© Stephanie Mesler 2019