"cheerios" poems
You remind
Of sweet Tea,
Honey Cheerios on,
Sunday morning.
Laughter
Is
Like
Sunshine
Saying
Hello,
A gentle breeze,
A hot cup of tea,
A lovely song
Makes my day lovely .
By Mariah young
Mar 28, 2015
Mar 28, 2015 at 10:50 PM UTC
I call my father's father Ye-Ye
because he is a traditionalist
and the word grandfather reminds him of England.
My mother calls him a selfish *******
because he never approved of her wallet's emptiness
and walked out of her wedding.
My father calls him an immature *****
because he throws temper tantrums at eighty-seven
and still doesn't respect anyone.
When I was five,
I stayed over alone for the first time.
I accused him of trying to poison me
because I found a dead fly in my soup.
When I was ten,
I found a coupon at the market
And got him a free box of Cheerios.
When I was thirteen,
I was sitting with him outside.
I got stung by a bee
and didn't say a word.
I have not seen my grandfather in seven years.
He has since almost died four times.
My aunt calls him a racist snob
because he refused to put my biracial cousin's picture on the mantle
and boasts of his friend's grandchildren instead.
Jul 8, 2013
Jul 8, 2013 at 1:03 AM UTC
Like some goofy lisp.
Like left over from Surrey to Essex.
Lycan, Omish, with some Roudy Rawdy Piper.
Like a WWE event, no ropes in the ring and a whole
bunch of cheerios.
It sounded like chweer wee ohs.
I got England to laugh out loud.
We were all laying on the floor hoping
fuhat bassthard would gooh on a diet.
Like Van Gogh and his buddy whats his...
knuck knuck. Painting pictures of Marshall
Islanders for a vote or veto. Paul Goin and Vincent
Van Gogh sharing a lisp.
Sthounds like..... Ah gawd!
Shut up you sobbing limp noodle.
Try writing something we all can laugh at.
Humor me Socrates with Albert Einstein.
E equals MC squared.
One part energy, a mass constantly squared.
Cheerio old chaps.
May 7, 2014
May 7, 2014 at 10:45 AM UTC
A four-year-old was perched in front of
a boxy TV with eyes only open to
sugar-coated Cheerios and 80’s Transformer heroes
on the screen.
Fast forward to age
thirteen where she flipped through
dusty photography with
eyes searching
for substance
to prove reality from almost-forgotten dreams.
Scrapbook memories aren’t
all that she sees
because,
honestly,
she loses things.
Summer Saturdays and
Fall Fridays and
Winter weekdays spent too wrapped up in her
own head to notice, silently, spring rising
from its deathbed.
Honestly, she loses things.
She
loses
things that should be important
and real, but all she can feel is
the guilt of lost
and faded photography.
Scrapbook memories fabricate times of
color and scent and sound,
of spilled milk and Diet Coke,
of words too far gone to seep from
pen to page because
honestly,
she loses things.
May 14, 2015
May 14, 2015 at 9:09 PM UTC
A whole new spiral,
Trees upon a coil,
Ink from leagues,
Written feathers,
Drizzled down as oil,
Evermore,
Nevermore,
Less is more,
All.
Reverse inside-out,
Springs before fall,
Trojan powered horses,
Mother Nature's fickle,
In life we really are all,
Trapped within a pickle...
Steal the base,
Capture the flag,
Always run the risk,
Chess played on a checker board,
Hands turned into fists...
The endless stairs,
Rise & fall,
Chutes & ladders,
Poles,
Elevated,
Reciprocated,
Orbital magnetic pull...
This way,
That way,
Three rights make a left,
Two of either,
Horizontal shift,
Four times,
Stuck in circles...
Full Moon,
Half Moon,
Crescent Moon,
**** cheeks...
Face cheeks,
Two lips,
Uranus,
**** facts...
The Owl asks "Who?"
Not how many licks,
Cracked.
Tongue twister,
Riddle fister,
******* fcking dcks...
Creation.
Destruction.
Under construction,
Living life,
Chasing death,
Don't forget to function...
Playing hooky,
Hooked on phonics,
Telephone,
Hello?
Lose the "O",
Cheerios,
Rolled away,
Hell.
Pacific Bell,
Pack Bell,
Liberty Bell,
Cracked.
Xs,
Os,
Hugs,
Kisses,
Followed crumbs,
Smacked...
Cacophony of words,
Magnified to deaf,
Pantomime,
Mr. Mime,
Jynx,
Hypnotic crest...
Abra,
Kadabra,
Apply directly to the forehead...
Water your brain,
Fertilize,
Extra fries,
Exercise...
A to Z,
1, 2, 3...
F*cking A,
We say...
Today is here,
The end is near,
All come here to stay...
Escape rope untethered,
Weather altered sky day.
Gaze at stars,
Hollywood floor,
Rich,
Poor,
More...
Life is great,
Life is crap,
You decide,
Not me...
Cause all I see,
Is cacophony...
No sense inside of "we"...
Here we are,
We've come so far,
RELAX...
Have fun at last...
Half full,
Half empty,
Shattered...
At least we have the glass......
Sep 1, 2018
Sep 1, 2018 at 5:28 PM UTC
empty water bottles everywhere
cheerios on the floor
I can never keep track of myself
or the food I bring out of the kitchen
I'm worse than a bachelor
& my Benadryl is almost gone
I need it to sleep
sleep and to dream
so maybe my nothing
will be something
that it seems
I cannot stop obsessing over
how lonely I feel
in my new married life
I feel better talking to people
I barely know
than I do my own husband
they say the first year
is the hardest
but I think I've just always felt
this way
when your heart clings to something
you can't have
the feeling never quite frays
never quite
erodes in its natural form
I find myself daydreaming about
things that don't happen
true love that doesn't come true
romance is not abundant in these parts
chivalry is carved on a tombstone
a few blocks from my
apartment
& I'm lucky to get a kiss on
the cheek whenever
I walk by
I want to believe that
there is some man out there
who would build me a bouquet of
wildflowers
& play me some classic rock
ballad about eternity
maybe he lives
in this house
maybe he lives
at all
Apr 5, 2012
Apr 5, 2012 at 12:12 AM UTC
You're mother hugged me
when I walked in.
Asked how I'd been.
Told me it had been too long.
Picked me dry about
every little detail of my life;
where I was,
how I was doing,
how the northeast was treating me.
--Oh, it's all so splendid!--
She was enamored, your mother,
and I took you before dinner
in the back room
where your brother used to sleep.
--Like riding a bike, one never
truly forgets a woman--
It was magnificent
in all the ways I had remembered
and your father had cooked
the beef tips and broccoli
that he had made for your
birthday dinner all those winters ago
and we made small talk over the
beat of clinked china and good drink.
--They had a nicer bottle
of red for the occasion--
There was an intimacy to it
one that almost betrayed our
hidden skeletons.
It had been years since I'd seen you
I'd been away and traveling,
engaging in school
and intellectual activity
but the reason I left
--to find myself, if you recall
I told your mother--
was still unknown to our hosts.
Your mother hugged me
and the guilt ripped throughout like
a nail through wet wood,
and the look in your eyes
with your hand on your stomach
convinced me that we were both
condemned and that
damnation was the only honest
retribution we could deserve
and somewhere right this moment
there is a child
with her grandparents
making love with cheerios
and wailing her antipathies for the
world to hear
but for us there is
none.
There is only the look you gave me
as your mother hugged me
and the emptiness that filled
and still fills my stomach
much greater and
much longer than
your father's cooking
ever could.
Jan 30, 2014
Jan 30, 2014 at 1:19 PM UTC
i quickly became the antagonist
crushing up dead leaves
and sprinkling them on your bones
throwing a bowl of honey nut cheerios
in a public swimming
leveling the plain
creating a crater
May 15, 2015
May 15, 2015 at 11:02 AM UTC
Pillows lay the case to wake up past 3 oclock
Face faded in dreams make razors on cheek comfortable to me
Blond bold because i barely gave red a try
Is breakfast ready for me
Backing beauty with a blue t , turning to me all bright and free , afro messy , eyes maybe brown, maybe green
Did i mention i couldnt see
Reality just came back to me
Even tho these eyes rarely catch seas
I still see star shaped almonds in cereal bowls put before see
Meet her meteor shower plastic kungfu hopes
My mettle met with metal, she was bars for the screen
So in between things, i smell scent and add my two cents
But when change comes short, gasoline gases up things
Thunder booms and she can never quite see was behindthe bangs
But that's another thing cause cereal is really tho
Another taste of almomd milk cheerios
May 3, 2018
May 3, 2018 at 2:23 AM UTC
I sliced a fresh banana today
alone at my kitchen counter.
I drew a common table knife
and carved a slender yellow disc
that lingered on the blade.
The next disc drove it off the knife
and down to the cereal below.
Soon the banana was all partitioned
and the Cheerios mostly masked.
I popped the heel in my mouth.
Childhood memories crackle
like a radio slightly off its station
and I can almost hear mom
talking softly as she slices -
I am barely listening.
My left hand holds an imaginary banana
while my right hand maneuvers
a non-existent knife.
How strange the knife I held so real
yet the shade of mom merely conjured -
far too strange to truly believe.
Jul 27, 2014
Jul 27, 2014 at 3:52 AM UTC
Glistening in the bowl of milk,
I gaze upon circular wheat.
Made of honey and of silk,
My life is now complete
I send 10 spoonfuls down the hatch
slowly dozing off...
Because breakfast? No.
I like cereal as a bedtime snack
Feb 17, 2014
Feb 17, 2014 at 10:56 PM UTC
I taste the brightness
Of citrus when she smiles,
Almost like a sunrise.
I taste something mournful
When I remember our midnight conversations.
Blackberries, dark and bitter,
But as the tang fades,
The stain remains.
People say crying tastes like saltwater.
Yes: the stale sting of sweat on my palms,
Tastes like graphite and desperation,
Like expired mangoes,
And a voice that won’t stop talking.
I remember the ache of
Evenings, lonely and suffocating.
Mornings that I still wake to
Where I dream of breakfast and
Treat myself to black coffee.
It sounds like a braggart king’s
Biggest lie, the taste of death.
It tastes like showering in the dark,
Like metal and blood that won’t wash off,
Like black coffee when I would
Rather have Cheerios.
Mar 14, 2018
Mar 14, 2018 at 3:30 PM UTC
i will cram myself into a goldfish bowl
because it's awkward inviting people to look at me if i am perfectly normal
maybe everyone will forget to feed me
and one day you'll find me belly side-up
or perhaps i will dig myself into the cheerios in my bowl
i need a life preserver
and there are several stacked up in there
maybe i will get bitten by a computer virus and morph into code that nobody can decipher
or maybe i will write a poem
and it will preserve a portion of my soul
(so that my ideas may die without such a struggle)
Sep 9, 2014
Sep 9, 2014 at 2:42 AM UTC
my hands melting on the page as my eyes close
begging for unconsciousness
but if I don't get this out now, I never will
to be completely unburdened
by anyone, and that includes me
would be simple and easy
and it would bore you to death
to need someone
why do bodies crave other bodies?
a body is just a body
until you get down to the soul
your purple and blue bruised soul
If I don't get this out now, I never will
because honey really does come from bees
and the night you kissed me for the first time
you mentioned how you were deathly allergic
so honey, do you have time to hear me?
If I knew you wouldn't
one-
get scared and run away
or two-
get bored and ask for your CD's back
I'd give you every last bit
but I have to hold some in,
to make sure you stay
words are hard so you use your hands
and looks,
and the tilt of your chin
and the shaking of your knee
words are hard so I choke out syllable
until you hand me a glass of water
and I simply sing out your name
If I don't get this out now,
I never will
I'll follow the leader,
I'll obey my command
did you expect me to make this easy on you?
oh honey, I'm not that sweet
I'm the venom in your morning Cheerios
I'm the paper cut at your favorite part
I'm the black in the morning sky
honey, I'll only make this harder,
as hard as I possibly can.
Aug 14, 2014
Aug 14, 2014 at 12:00 AM UTC
You move through the hallway
tile by tile; step by cautious step
as you explore every
sound the scooter makes;
every moment new and
wonderful.
You tiptoe, dip your toes down
and lightly dust the floor,
skim it like the first time in
the shallow pool of the bath.
Then you step, push,
slide down the hall
leaving care in your wake
like discarded cheerios and
chewed up apple bits.
You stop, smile at
this new secret
the world whispered
as I lift you up into my arms.
Aug 8, 2013
Aug 8, 2013 at 9:37 PM UTC
Watching milk pour into little
ziploc bags with bananas and
Cheerios and fights over which
fruit better invokes the feeling
of sunrise, of home and
morning eye crust and blown
curtains in summer breeze.
Strawberries don't stain dresses
as much as blackberries from
a friend's farm in upstate
New York or Eastern Washington
or some ranch in coastal Venezuela
with coffee and sugar smells
stuck on sticky skin and licking
juice from sweet fingertips
right before it starts to rain.
When February sun peeks
through cumulus clouds after
a five-day downpour, you turn
your face to mine and proclaim
that the world may be beautiful and youthful, after all.
Sep 3, 2013
Sep 3, 2013 at 12:58 PM UTC
Because we both know the sound of gunfire
Except I, didn’t grow up in a war zone
It was a different kind from yours
Our bullets were words
Sounds of breaking glass
And the shards of which made it into my cheerios the next day
Chewed them anyway to spite
The sound that
Breaking makes
You,
you know the sound of falling bodies too readily
you can mimic them in your footsteps
The smell of rotting corpses
What kind of scars shrapnel really leaves
What the color of blood really looks like
I see that shade of red every time you speak
The way you keep it hidden in those paintings
In the drawer that I sneak into when you sleep
Know too well what evil looks like
I can find a place for all the words buried in my chest
inside your bullet wounds easily
If I were not a coward
Staring into the dark irises of men in uniforms dirtier than their conscience,
Find it easier to look into a barrel of a gun
Only one of them holds salvation
No, you are not afraid of guns
Nor the sound that breaking makes
But I still remove the safety pin
Just in case
Feb 22, 2013
Feb 22, 2013 at 3:38 PM UTC
I don't think I've ever heard my father
Tell my mother that she was beautiful.
I'm sure of it.
Never.
There wasn't any positive comments on her appearance.
"Fix yourself up a bit!"
"When are you going to lose some weight?"
"I don't like your hair that way."
When I was sixteen I wrote her a note for mother's day
Telling her that she was genuinely beautiful.
And she cried.
I can't think of any positive comments on my appearance
That either of them spoke to me,
That didn't revolve around losing weight.
And then was only when I was throwing up on a daily basis.
Pocketing lunch money,
And measuring out one cup of cheerios every day
That I eventually stopped eating,
And starting storing in gallon bags hidden under my bed.
"Are you losing weight, good for you?"
It wasn't even that I looked good.
Or that I looked beautiful.
Or even that I looked healthy.
Just good that there was becoming less of me.
And to keep at it.
And I'm sorry sometime I try to fight you when you say you like my stomach.
I was always told it was unsightly and needed to be smaller.
My little sister listens when they call her fat, that her *** is big, that she needs to lose weight.
Constantly.
Not other kids.
My parents.
She asked me why she didn't have a boyfriend.
She's 15.
She thinks she is fat and doesn't like the way she looks.
I try to corner her every once in a while
And tell her not to listen to our parents.
Tell her that she is beautiful.
That her hair is soft, and her eye brows are flawless, and her tummy is gorgeous.
There has to be someone there to do that for her.
Someone to counter the words of authority.
And tell her that she is gorgeous.
So she never has to meet Ana or Mia.
Because she was average to below average weight
When she was in preschool,
and I in elementary school,
And were put on weight watchers by our mother in the summers.
Maybe because she was never told that she was beautiful.
And it poisoned her.
Feb 22, 2014
Feb 22, 2014 at 12:54 AM UTC
It’s been seven years and I still don’t think I’ve processed it
For most of my young life I had no mother
For most of my young life I had no father
There was only her, mother of my mother
A sharp woman with hands like sharpened scissors
Counsel and Care, the altar I was made to pray at
Her touch was soft unless it was hard, and hard unless it was soft
Like salt tossed over her shoulder,
Like warm potatoes in the sun
Like a bowl of cheerios before the bus comes
We prayed the rosary every morning
And I told her about my gods and myths
I told her about the rocks and crystals
And I cried about numbers
We prayed the rosary every morning, and I couldn’t bring myself to mind
We went to church on Sundays, and I sang as loud as I wanted
We picked out melons at the grocery store and ate them by the pool
It’s been seven years, and I miss her
And I will miss her
I’ll cry when I hear Que Sera Sera
I’ll eat saltines and still think to myself they aren’t that good
I’ll keep my rosary and sometimes I will pray
I will miss her
And I can only hope to be like her someday
And I hope that she is proud
Oct 22, 2018
Oct 22, 2018 at 3:05 PM UTC
She gives the gift of gab!
When her love snapped onto my back, like a rucksack to be worn
The old me died, a rambling man was born.
My words are playing a twisted game of Temple Run
The monkeys are her eyebrows, cocked like pistols, and we're playing Russian Roulette.
My words are emptiness and hot air and imagined shapes, yet not nearly as two-dimensional as constellations.
She's a phrase I just learned, and will incorrectly overuse.
She's a worm in my ear, impossible to lose.
She feels like two cups of tea at three in the morning.
She feels like assembling an RC car without reading the instruction manual.
And by God, those eyebrows.
I need her like rocks need water and snow needs the sun.
I want her like turtles want to fly and eagles want to run.
She's that feeling when rain comes down on an empty highway.
She's half a bottle of Elmer's glue I just dribbled onto my hands.
I miss her like broken bowls miss Cheerios and holey socks miss feet.
I miss her like diarrhea misses constipation.
I miss her like NBC misses viewers who have turned to online news sources.
I miss her like journalists miss exposés.
I miss her like polar bears miss ice caps.
I miss her like avalanches miss snowy peaks.
I miss her like Hiroshima survivors miss World War One.
I miss her like cities miss silence.
Mostly, I just miss the silence.
May 22, 2014
May 22, 2014 at 5:34 AM UTC
i can't stop
giving her
cheerios.
I put them on her black spots.
***** fur. freshly licked clean.
like the oil spill in the gulf.
i've spoiled her with human food.
she lives better than most.
she's better than most.
now she digs in my food
claiming it as her own.
and with that tongue she licks her oil spills,
and my bowl.
Jun 17, 2013
Jun 17, 2013 at 9:29 PM UTC
they say cheerios make your heart stronger
but when you said "this is it. Cheerio" and left
i was leaft heartbroken
it was just a lie
all of it
i trusted you
to nourish me
and give me my daily fibre intake
but you didnt
you left me
by myself
and thats all i will ever be
Jun 8, 2016
Jun 8, 2016 at 8:20 AM UTC
The dusk smells like the dank moldy parts of the basement, old and decrepit. The days are short, like lives of butterflies. Only stray cats roam the streets after dusk like men in trench coats looking for your children. This is where the buzz of sports games fights through voices like car accidents, wafting through the air with the liquor that fuels them. The mix of rotting seaweed flesh and burnt cheerios intoxicates the wharf, drunker then the teens in their parent’s basements. Anyone can tell you where every **** store and Tim Hortons lies, where bass and basket ***** echo in the roads of chicken wings and blizzards. ‘Beautiful River’ you are where the hearts are strong as bison and tongues sharper then sabers. Yet among the old eyesores you'll find the hope of a city. It screams through the rusty and cracked windows; negligence made mosaics. Based on a pride that runs deeper then it's waters, the strength of those who reside in this urban Crayola box crown and shine like the tips of the waves cascading past the falls.
and the streets breathed
as crows rose and took the sky
crying in anguish.
Aug 11, 2011
Aug 11, 2011 at 8:24 PM UTC