"maraschino" poems
Fettered by syrupy curves
of well-handled prose. Exposed,
prone. Bound to bleed
maraschino in free-verse.
Nov 10, 2011
Nov 10, 2011 at 3:37 PM UTC
A hippodrome as smoke adjourn
those can wrap Havanas blunt
while Manila fish for sordino
they reek of harvest yet exhume Moro
then San Mateo shall not a maraschino bane
whether they've sought bastion in Italy then
once their hopes shall keep ships ahoy
and Sabatini sing San Marino here
that sandcastle star await his lover in
"The Sea Hawk" a fine costume whence sail
those Antilles with a conquistador as buttress
in this play they call Those Philippines alas meet
El Duarte in a duet with his song set aflame with
great sleeves in such kleptocracy worldwide again.
Mar 24, 2017
Mar 24, 2017 at 8:35 AM UTC
Our first date at Rise
Holding your hand at the Firehouse Theater
Eating bagels you brought back from Montreal
Having lunch at Salata
Going to the Arboretum
The way you peeked out children’s house
Cuddling on the couch
Watching Game of Thrones
When you fell asleep in my arms
Drinking Amaretto Sours
When you would be silly
The sound of your voice
The maraschino cherry stem you tied with your tongue
The Forget Me Not Flower Kit you gave me
Exchanging texts
The sound of incoming WhatsApp messages
Diner at Howard Wangs
You wearing bunny ears during Easter
36-28-41
When you posed for me
Your blues eyes looking up at me
Seeing your smile
Touching your lips
The way you smell
The secrets you would tell
Showing how you care
Hugging me tight
Letting me take care of you
When you cook Arepas
The gluten free Clafouti
The time you had the flu
Wearing Calvin Klein underwater
Your dainty feet
Your goddess like figure
Your cute accent
Typing in the door bell code
Hearing you answer
The emoji of puppy heart kitten
Knowing you are my Bijou
Calling you Minou
Oct 26, 2018
Oct 26, 2018 at 7:21 PM UTC
You said you'd come to tea
so I made a cake
chocolate sweet; maraschino filled;
girdled with a satin blue ribbon;
set out the prettiest plates;
hand painted with forget-me-nots.
And from the darkest corner of a drawer
found a single candle to celebrate the day.
I'd understand if you had 'phoned,
but now the chocolate lends a bitter taste
and even the despairing posies have given up all hope
as the candle's flame flickers my ever waiting shadow.
Mar 10, 2010
Mar 10, 2010 at 9:01 AM UTC
into this pink grist
run mercury brooks
from the tower of liana
and ruptured mist
pools an ovarian sky
barefoot through milky way city
above strawberry ice cream lane
stratus clouds scale the ruins
and
the maraschino cherries ********** rain
Oct 20, 2013
Oct 20, 2013 at 12:49 AM UTC
little saporous pretty prisms
dragged through ashen bones
to place your cloying melt
on my shivering paper skin:
your sticky face,
tongue stripping strangling,
char-chipping my caramelized blisters
from the burning maraschino hum.
Bubbling up whiteness
like our eyes unfocused,
hands moving unaware
spread the chapping numbness
over our senses, succumbed.
May 7, 2013
May 7, 2013 at 6:29 PM UTC
the sea was never so still
as the night i spilled my guts
in the sink from vanilla pills
and laughed at my immortality
when i scream underwater
the blue screams back to me
in my maraschino heart
i know one thing to be true:
that the cooing and the howling
will never leave the ocean floor
and fall upon the waiting ears
of those who i meant it for
Apr 4, 2015
Apr 4, 2015 at 11:57 PM UTC
A thought about our recent ******
The oddly mean-spirited transgender
Who was a sort of dressed, but not very
Was the adorning maraschino cherry
Strange on a delicate ice cream sundae
Like which I melted early morning Monday
Mar 23, 2010
Mar 23, 2010 at 4:31 PM UTC
that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or a memoir of a man who remembers nothing but
danger that passed him by,
ruffling his hair as it passed,
ignoring his pleas:
stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something,
he would say
(that could be the subtitle
or the blurb,
something to draw the reader in; if floating bodies aren’t enough)
i just want to mean something,
and near-death experiences are the flavor of the day.
i’m not brave enough to do it myself,
i’m not a hero
or a villain,
just a lonely boy, undefined individual,
and your 350 teeth can help me mean
so much more,
350 individual teeth that float above my head,
falling out one by one as you bloat with seawater
(and here the first chapter would end,
here we would break for intermission,
audience smiling over martinis.
only 32 teeth, did some fall out?
too many maraschino cherries will do that to you.
too much sugar on the rim of that glass)
dead sharks in the current and none glance twice
i keep yelling but they just
deflect my bubbles,
and the surface swallows them like the heartless ***** she is
i keep yelling but they just move farther
i keep yelling but stay please stay please stay
i just want to mean something.
i just want some blood on my hands
is that so much to ask?
i just want some of my blood in the water,
to be a survivor
or a victim
(whichever gets more press coverage;
who cares about a memoir that nobody reads?
who cares about a memoir where nobody gets hurt?)
i just want shark teeth in my heart,
he would say,
i don’t want to make a mark on the world,
i want the world to make a mark on me.
that should be the name of a song
or a poem
or the eulogy of a boring man.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 12:58 AM UTC
My eyes click clacked
To the cling clang
Of a bottle of *** hitting marble
Ava was sitting on the bar countertop
The boy with the glasses
Folded between her spider legs
Their teeth like piano keys playing one another
She ****** his shirt
Red maraschino
Pet his cheek with her
smooth leather palm
Stroked his hair with
Comb fingers
Bejeweled with silver rings
She stretched out her vowels like taffy when she spoke
Giggles stabbing themselves into the middle of her sentences.
“I️ like the way wine makes me feel”
She purred,
Swishing the words around in her mouth before she chased them down with
Pino Gris
I’d never seen this version of Ava.
Night velvet
Black cat
Skin sheets of raw silk.
She was slippery and evasive,
Like a mermaid
Hiding behind her hair and her scales and champagne,
Because
Inside
I️ knew
She wished the boy
With the glasses and the red shirt
Was her Brooklyn boy
So she kissed him with wine lips,
The force of disappointment and pain
Jul 17, 2018
Jul 17, 2018 at 10:46 PM UTC
i write poetry in fifty seconds or less
sometimes the words taste like salt
and sometimes like maraschino cherries
i wonder if my blood is red or if it's purple
because pain no longer feels like the color red,
it feels like numbness, cold unsaturated color.
red is diamond and fire and volcano
and it doesn't seem fair to call myself eruption.
it would be more accurate to say that i'm sand dune
and flood
and hurricane,
something that doesn't burn painfully
but slowly sinks into your skin
like water
until you breathe in what you thought was air,
but really it's not oxygen anymore,
it's me.
this one tasted like salt.
(a.m.c.)
Dec 3, 2014
Dec 3, 2014 at 9:42 PM UTC
Holy Spirit,
Tell Me what You Know
Today is a day of Miracles, according to Hafiz
And instead, I ask you for the listening Wisdom..
How can a friend, cherished and adored
be the knife that Mark Anthony sees,
the Hand inside the Soul of Brutus..
How?
All the world seeks the cure of single mindedness
the effects of cancer, Aids, Ebola
and yet does nothing to acknowledge the Word of Welcome held within them
There is more mystery here than could ever be in the fuel of a Rocket
Can You Hear the Pleasure of the Earth Rejoicing for Its Victory of Faith?
I can… It’s Beautiful.
And yet it was called single mindedness for many years
as She sat alone and cried for the destruction of her Being..
Even then the community rampage of the Sovereign Greed did not stop.
Witnessed by All, Ignored TRUTH of the Condemning ReBalancing
Have we given Up the Gift that Truth in Accusation Brings?
From Maraschino to My Lai Trial, you are just God’s Witnessing…….
Violence held, within the Intention of Pure Goodness
Your Devoted Presence is a Peace filled World
Cal Anderson, I always wondered as to your medal.
shall I call you Osiris ???
Thinking it undeserved,
I now hammer at the forge of my own being
and with apology, call you grateful LIFE
More than a victory of deserving,
Love's acknowledgement of Steadfast Being...
Life’s right to Justice on Her terms, not ours
Peace Holy Spirt.
for the Victory,
You are ONE.
Grace in Blessing
And So It Is.
Nov 20, 2015
Nov 20, 2015 at 8:08 AM UTC
I inhale fuchsia
I feel amethyst purple envelope me
I breathe out turquoise
I crave coral
I cling to royal blue
I am entranced by lilac
I let maraschino cherry red invigorate me
I spy light spring green
Navy sails away with me
I get elegantly persuaded by classic black
every stitch
has my rapt attention
nuances take center stage
each piece
has a tale
to spin
of past encounters
while fantasies of
future engagements
shine brilliantly on teeming racks.
May 13, 2014
May 13, 2014 at 12:52 PM UTC
I am pretty sure my love will be leaving me soon
for a woman whose skirt does not lift in the zephyr of her sadness:
we kiss and we tie
maraschino cherry stems with our tongues. The
same labyrinth puts rosy skin in our teeth, here is his ***** hair
knotted with saliva. When I think I have everything,
it just means that we are stuck together –
I realize it does not mean that we are happy together. I think
someone poisoned the water
with glue, and it is I who dispenses more to let my love escape me.
He is as happy as a child who has finished a puzzle
except for a single missing piece, repeating the movements
again and again. That has got to bring it back.
For seven months, we have been handed the gift of pretending I
can feel the inner-workings of who he is and why he is
and I am pretty sure he knows he never has
to pretend again. It is there in the silences: across the room,
across the ocean where hundreds of babies have died,
babes with mothers and fathers and parents who weren’t divorced.
All I hear is my love toying with a Rubik’s cube
he never learned to complete. I have a Magic 8 ball saying
I should let him go. I mostly worry about telling my mom, who will
tell my therapist and then we will have to
close too many doors. As long as I am sad, they are locked. A
key is stuck in the mud or in someone’s molars –
my room is empty, the air is quiet, and he has not even left me yet.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 4:39 PM UTC
once when I was sleeping, I dreamt
that light flew from my cheeks in
golden strips streaming like lily
banners that fell upon the back of
a loved one, towards the ceiling
they shot off elsewhere into the
dark and it warmed the bones
beneath my eyes like a maraschino
blush and it made me feel as if there
was something
more to me
more to me
more to me
Sep 20, 2013
Sep 20, 2013 at 5:58 PM UTC
It’s morning
The light hurts your eyes:
Yesterday is hurting you: You were moving in.
This is how they welcome you to the neighborhood,
The toothpaste is making everything bitter—
he’s dreaming of rivers
you’re awake staring at the ceiling
at clumps of runaway white paint—
on a pillow that smells like your sister
At the beach
The sand is bleeding—
the water rinses away the stains,
You’re making circles out of sugar
She’s laying on her stomach—
The sun pouring maraschino cherries on back
Jul 31, 2015
Jul 31, 2015 at 2:08 AM UTC
I am only three thrusts away
enjoying the girl,
oh her little bones,
sweet somber hair
as my pants
become tighter.
I watch you brushing teeth,
foam on your lips,
as my crippled spider
legs sway forward on
towards your tender little ***
hole like a cherry,
hidden within the cleft of a peach,
sweet, then a flash of violence
towards your haunches, hips, shanks.
Older women are sweet like saccharine,
but you are pure cane,
****** peppermint
cinnamon disks,
which drip
the same as crushed
maraschino cherries.
Jun 16, 2011
Jun 16, 2011 at 5:27 AM UTC
At the time as leaves nestled
a hushed acquaintance
brushed by as Autumn.
Healing beneath his tongue
He tasted Maraschino again.
His bloodstream reinvigorated
by these changes
eagerly suspending disbelief.
At the time the wind stood still
he found discarded keys
to an Autumnal hut
and bounded opened its door
he felt the joy of those sprouted aliums
Which he hurriedly planted in a drill
Mar 14, 2013
Mar 14, 2013 at 7:43 PM UTC
Maraschino cherry red sun rays cut through pre-dawn shadows
I lay dormant in dream state
Limbs waking up to the vision of juicy starburst colors
Dancing across my pale gray walls
I stretch languidly with whispers of "good morning" coming from each molecule
The first of March three years later and I still ache
No amount of yoga, running, sweat or tears could ease the soreness
I get overwhelmed, stay in bed, retreat from sound
There is no running from the memory of your voice
Realizing that I did not want to was a journey
I prefer the echo to the silence
I trade the shadow for the light
Mar 1, 2016
Mar 1, 2016 at 11:18 AM UTC
Your lips are maraschino cherries
Sickeningly sweet
Stained red with desire
enjoyed too much
And a stomach ache ensues
Yet I can’t stop eating.
May 22, 2018
May 22, 2018 at 1:39 AM UTC
I can almost taste how tense those muscles are when they swing the red-hot tire-iron into my face again and again
And oh, how the blood keeps coming and oh, how it pools on the uneven concrete
Steamy and globby and staring at my contorted jaw and the hard lines of arms using my skull like a drum
More thwacks and now human barbecue as teeth drop into the syrupy mix and float like islands and I think of A.1. steak sauce
One second of silence and I wipe my hands on my thighs
The only difference between jeans and a dress is about six inches and I start to wonder
Which six until my head jerks left and then right again and
God, don't those ******* arms ever get tired
I lick my licks and lap up the red that must be running down my chin
Tastes like maraschino cherries and some other flavor I can't quite grasp
I search the tip of my tongue for it but find only the holey ridges in my gums and suddenly I realize
Maybe that flavor is the six inches that separate jeans from dresses
But then I laugh, and somewhere far above me someone else does too.
Jun 20, 2015
Jun 20, 2015 at 12:44 AM UTC
A man walked across the floor and stopped at the bar, pausing briefly to adjust his suit before speaking. It was hard to make out what he was saying over the loud music, but whatever he had said, it looked to have pleased the bartender. With her shoulders squared towards his frame, she flashed him her best smile. He leaned in closer and smiled back.
She began fixing a drink that looked rather complicated, but somehow it attested to his sophistication rather than his arrogance. The bartender finished the drink off with a maraschino cherry, which he promptly took between his lips, leaving only the stem out. He had a puzzled look on his face, as though he was trying to place the woman. He mumbled something else, and she laughed nervously in response.
At this, she exited the backside of the bar and walked towards him. He met her with his hand outstretched, and the two began to dance. They stood out from the other dancers at the bar because he was leading her in a traditional style of dance. She looked absolutely giddy.
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 10:39 AM UTC
My sister fell, at the neighborhood pool,
on the cement, instead of into opal water.
She said the **** on her knee
looked just like a maraschino cherry.
Red like a maraschino cherry,
or a clown's nose,
or like the fire
in the center of our planet.
The ****** **** dripped cherry juice
down her leg
in between her sun burnt toes,
evaporating off of the cement.
She reminded me of lava,
constantly bubbling
always moving
always destroying
without hesitation.
The reaper of flowers
and ice cream cones.
Red cheeks, red like Geryon.
Purposefully confused
and always wondering.
I hope I can answer any questions
she has, when the need
to know evolves to thirst,
and the fears she has now
as a little lava girl
become fears that we all feel
as destroyers in our own lives,
wrecking everything,
reaping the flowers
that are growing
in the ashes of our youth.
Jun 11, 2019
Jun 11, 2019 at 10:36 AM UTC
I'm fond of those light touches
when someone knows how to
turn my cheek into their palm
in the maraschino hue, I like
that, I like that
I like that
Dec 2, 2012
Dec 2, 2012 at 12:19 AM UTC