"overripe" poems
Oh! There it is!
The blood of my Mothers’
Sins
Blossoming on
My white sheets
Like a bouquet of English roses.
A shame -
Laundry day had
Been yesterday.
My thighs have been painted
Rouge -
They blush
Like my cheeks
When my gaze
Lingers on my body
Too long in the mirror
As I put on my Sunday dress.
The needles in my
Lower back fill my
****** with blood -
I am a woman now -
And as such I must
Wake before the sun
And wash my sheets
And my body
Before anyone has a chance
To smell the iron and the shame
Between my legs.
I have never been so
Acutely aware of my body:
My sore ******* feel like
Overripe tomatoes ready to burst,
My stomach bloated and taking up
Space I’m told is not ladylike -
My head throbs, my limbs ache, and
I continue to shed my insides.
How is it I never noticed
The cry of my body before?
A week of blood
Before I have served my sentence
For a woman
Who dared to disobey -
I clean the stains
And wash myself
Away.
Nov 11, 2014
Nov 11, 2014 at 2:32 AM UTC
The overripe mango that sits promptly on my desk stares at me through its one eye, indignantly asking to be eaten – before it goes bad.
I consider, strongly, the mango’s proposition.
Contemplating the level of hunger, or desire I have for this demanding piece of fruit.
It may be that the latte I just finished burnt off any remaining taste buds I have, or it may be that I find
something amusing about holding a mango hostage of its pride – but I just can’t eat it.
A once firm, confident specimen edging ever closer to becoming a wrinkly, seeping, sack of rotten juice.
Knowingly, I chain it to its fate by refusing to slice the skin back and swallow its sweetness.
It demands to be mutilated rather than aged.
As I sit here writing of my hostage, it continues to stare through its eye – spiting me.
Cursing me with future putrid fruit, with worms in my apples, and with brown bananas.
Oh, how I hate brown bananas.
This mango has learnt well in the time it’s spent in my room, it knows my weaknesses.
I always knew that fruit had character, but this mango – I tell you, it’s something else.
Dec 23, 2010
Dec 23, 2010 at 9:10 PM UTC
How this **** fable instructs
And mocks! Here's the parody of that moral mousetrap
Set in the proverbs stitched on samplers
Approving chased girls who get them to a tree
And put on bark's nun-black
Habit which deflects
All amorous arrows. For to sheathe the ****** shape
In a scabbard of wood baffles pursuers,
Whether goat-thighed or god-haloed. Ever since that first Daphne
Switched her incomparable back
For a bay-tree hide, respect's
Twined to her hard limbs like ivy: the puritan lip
Cries: 'Celebrate Syrinx whose demurs
Won her the frog-colored skin, pale pith and watery
Bed of a reed. Look:
Pine-needle armor protects
Pitys from Pan's assault! And though age drop
Their leafy crowns, their fame soars,
Eclipsing Eva, Cleo and Helen of Troy:
For which of those would speak
For a fashion that constricts
White bodies in a wooden girdle, root to top
Unfaced, unformed, the nipple-flowers
Shrouded to suckle darkness? Only they
Who keep cool and holy make
A sanctum to attract
Green virgins, consecrating limb and lip
To chastity's service: like prophets, like preachers,
They descant on the serene and seraphic beauty
Of virgins for virginity's sake.'
Be certain some such pact's
Been struck to keep all glory in the grip
Of ugly spinsters and barren sirs
As you etch on the inner window of your eye
This ****** on her rack:
She, ripe and unplucked, 's
Lain splayed too long in the tortuous boughs: overripe
Now, dour-faced, her fingers
Stiff as twigs, her body woodenly
Askew, she'll ache and wake
Though doomsday bud. Neglect's
Given her lips that lemon-tasting droop:
Untongued, all beauty's bright juice sours.
Tree-twist will ape this gross anatomy
Till irony's bough break.
8.6k
My being craves a sun so vibrant
an unwinding summer
for my wilted heart anew
Heat that gives the air such humid kisses
leaving it stifling, sweet, and sticky
Rays of fiery gold
that pierce my cold, pale, and weathered skin
Rushes of warm air flowing over my body
heating me up
burning my skin
melting away my makeup
and carrying away the emotions
that I wear on my sleeve
My heart is eager
to be naive, carefree, and open
I long to be freed
to burst like an overripe plum
These walls I’ve built up
are ready to fall
Mar 15, 2015
Mar 15, 2015 at 6:17 PM UTC
your hair smells like brimstone
in my memories that swirl under the pale streetlight
and in the reflective shards fogged over by our words
swollen overripe sicksweet mangoes
colors are more than the sway of hips
or a glint in the eyes laced with starbursts
and a face contains no infinites
i remember the smoky silence
drowned in fiction
Jun 4, 2014
Jun 4, 2014 at 12:15 AM UTC
The sun falls swift as an overripe cherry,
Lighter than air, it still laughs like a fairy
Warm and wet and juicy and red
Along the horizon it slowly spreads.
Tossing up splatter to stick to the clouds
Filling the sky, its sweetness astounds
Then washed away by crisp starry rain
Silvery ice that soaks through your veins.
And each sweet day, and every night
The lights fly away, and out of sight,
But surely my dear, to beautiful eyes
Sunset sweet always brings sunrise
Feb 19, 2016
Feb 19, 2016 at 3:47 PM UTC
The heat of the tequila sunrise
On the seashore of Cape Creus
Melts flaccid pocket watches,
Soft as overripe cheese;
The dreamscape's permanence dissolves
Before distant amber cliffs;
On sweet, rotting flesh termites sup;
A time fly lands.
The monstrous fleshy mutation
Across the seascape draped -
Deformed, distorted,
Disfigured with decay;
Centipede shades lash alien flesh
And sluggish tongue oozes
From the snout of the surreal
Self-spectre of Salvador's craft;
Persistence of Memory.
Jun 24, 2010
Jun 24, 2010 at 8:32 AM UTC
As a seed, I was shot out the back end of a blue jay when, heedless, she flew over the meadow. Now, a willow, I drowse above the pond where their bodies float—skin gilded with algae, lips parting the surface, chests arching to the sun. Her sighs ripple outward—her lover drinks them in.
They are wet-silk hair, glistening sweat. Tracing each other’s folds, a slow, open arc startling minnows. Their toes stir the mud where my roots explore.
The blue jay died mid-migration. I barely recall her. Here, they are the only sonnet: lips on sun-warmed skin, their kiss that bends reeds. Below, their legs tangle like my branches—fluid, unpruned.
A heron spears the pond. Startled, they sink. For a breath—water holds them. When they rise, the town whispers of hauntings.
They are not ghosts—just peaches overripe in August.
Apr 14, 2025
Apr 14, 2025 at 7:09 PM UTC
We are rotten now.
You are rotten, moldy, putrid with disease.
I'll separate my pristine state from you.
Get the **** away from me.
You are rotten now.
You are contagiously, disgustingly rotten.
I'll pretend there's still some use in you,
Throw you in the compost, forgotten.
You are a memory.
Overripe, painful, noxious.
You were a part of me.
Infecting, stinking, rancid.
This is my goodbye to you
This is the routine compost.
This is how I say, "We're through,"
This is how I let you go.
Feb 19, 2015
Feb 19, 2015 at 7:55 PM UTC
I tasted every bitter lie
As you shoved them down my throat
Now I'm full of poison-soaked phrases
Badly in need of an antidote
Lost promises rest in my abdomen
Next to the deception I was fed
I need a cure for untrue words
Before this illness renders me dead
Fallacies come crawling back up
Venom rising in my windpipe
Sick to my stomach with acceptance
Your falsehoods have become overripe
I can't contain the toxic deceit
It's overflowing from my gut
Excuses pour out from my mouth
Alibis Ive managed to rebut
The ***** burns my weary tongue
Sour as it leaves my lips
Betrayal has me feeling queasy
Unwell from hearing your rehearsed scripts
My stomach empties it's contents
Spewing intricate facades
Until it is rid of all the
Charades, illusions, and frauds
Infected with dishonesty
My body is rocked by unease
I've taken a turn for the worse
Consumed by this relentless disease
This virus I have come down with
Takes it's toll on my heart and mind
I grow more fatigued each day
But relief I have yet to find
Chills, shakes, soreness, and migraines
Plague my organs, bones, and skin
My muscles are endlessly cramping
I loathe the fever I'm burning in
I do not know why I feast on your
contaminated reality
I'm sure if I continue to
I will soon be a fatality
My health is deteriorating
Still i dine on fantasies unreal
I hope for a miracle pill but
My flesh may not be able to heal
I fear I'll be plagued as long as I
Swallow your lies, deranged and uncouth
The cure I have been longing for
is a simple medicine called Truth
Feb 15, 2018
Feb 15, 2018 at 5:33 AM UTC
the simplest song (seek your prime)
the one that likely never finishes the course
tune that never ceases though it knows well stilling quietude,
one passenger verse in a lean vessel that reveals, declares,
anoints the outwards atmospheric condition with the conditions
of what’s within,
compulsively, incessantly demanding- seek your prime
write yourself a poem, be a poem, write of your becoming
bring the simmering sauce to a furious boil,
the words placed in your soil by your own five,
reap the fruit even if wormed, bruised, overripe
or trite
this is your song
breathe it into my mouth
until the last one,
making me glad to know you
and your becoming,
prime music
yes, this is a love poem
12/10/17 8:38am
Dec 10, 2017
Dec 10, 2017 at 8:51 AM UTC
yodelaugh bluebells
bugle the frenchorn debate;
youngheld punchropes
in freezing cordoba rain when the
silt hits the sand we’re all
****** into oblivion like
so much candyswirl
into the labial plains of
galaxyfrost are you in sentia where
the sun don’t rain and the sky don’t
glow grey beneath the hooded lambswool grain
there ain’t no gumption like
compunction like
eating sand to feed your ****** daughters overripe
mangoes hit the cement and explode in saffronochre gutspill
when else
does the world end
Oct 24, 2012
Oct 24, 2012 at 4:42 AM UTC
Open up your canyon lungs
and let me breathe like I am living.
I have forgotten what this tastes like.
The sky is awfully quiet,
like it has something to hide.
Dig up your bruised knuckles
from those sand-filled pockets.
We will rebuild the sun.
I sink my teeth into forgiveness
and it pours out my mouth.
Overripe;
I always wait too long.
Foolish, to keep important things
in drawers you never look in.
So I’ve dug up the front yard,
there were directions here somewhere.
Do not look at me like the stopwatches on our hearts
are the same.
Mine is counting up.
But forget that I left the front door unlocked,
this is a postcard from where I am visiting.
I hope it makes you hopeful too.
I’m sorry I don’t say things I don’t mean.
You are the ocean,
and I never know where to put my hands.
Aug 12, 2014
Aug 12, 2014 at 11:59 PM UTC
A sweetness comes with age,
like fruit that’s overripe
A Poet then a Sage,
on this journey into night
A wish distilled from all regret,
its seeds to be re-sewn
A sweetness comes with age,
that buried youth could never know
(Villanova Pennsylvania: October,2016)
Oct 3, 2016
Oct 3, 2016 at 11:55 AM UTC
The Blueberry tried
to escape from my lips
but instead
it ended in my hand
and back to my lips again.
The fall, for it, must have felt a lifetime
after dodging death once
but
like all things
something found it
a gentle touch turned crushing
snuck up from under it
bringing to the brink and past again
I feel its little soul
squeeze out on my tongue
bitter
sweet
almost overripe, but cooked in brown sugar sauce
it whirled from death so many times
that when I finally came
I found it in its best suit
and I robbed it even of that
Or perhaps, the suit of old age
of ripening,
isn't quite its best
maybe
when it was unripened
and pale
on the bush
perhaps that would have been more fitting
for me to rob him
of his style
Jul 11, 2013
Jul 11, 2013 at 8:07 AM UTC
*coats of dust & pollen settle
on an unoccupied desk;
clumps of rust sprout
on faded typewriter keys.
marmalade pages with
elaborate strokes & scribbles
shrivel like mango slices
suffocating in tropical heat.
a dozen lolling envelopes
with awe inciting addresses
from San Francisco to Shanghai
each wither like aging flowers.
the room once gleaming in
luminescence now hoards darkness.
brandeis blue curtains drape
the windows, stifling sunlight.
sober emotions linger
in the thick, musty air;
overripe creativity decays
into the unwashed floorboards.
rhyme, rhythm, & reason
of the mind cease to bloom;
curiosity & inspiration fall dormant
in a chilling, thoughtless winter.
the mind of a former poet
is an unkept garden;
an Eden of ideas abandoned
in favor of myopic trivialities.
though unattended, the
garden is never barren;
cultivate your imagination &
you will always harvest beauty.
**it’s never too late to pick up your pen;
water your mind & your garden will grow!***
Apr 5, 2017
Apr 5, 2017 at 6:39 PM UTC
You are sweet
Like overripe fruit
Forgotten in my kitchen
Salty skin in the summer
Lips touch under shady trees
Watching busy bees
Float by
My mind is a busy bee
Thinking turning spiraling
Out of control
Just a book waiting
To be written
I cannot trail words
Together and make
Them make sense
I can only break
Words apart between
My teeth and spit
Them out
Hoping they hold the
Answer all on their own
Because I cannot slow
Down and think about it
Think about the words
They come out in quick
Angry bursts
Sudden sad sounds
Spilling out of my mouth
I try to swallow them
Whole but I can’t
I can only choke
Out sorry
Sorry sorry
I’m so sorry
For failing
And falling
And wanting
And needing
You
Jun 10, 2019
Jun 10, 2019 at 6:04 PM UTC
This is what I remember:
the rasp of your callouses against my hips,
and the way your eyelashes would settle
like snowflakes on my cheekbones
if you brought your face close enough.
This is what I remember:
the whir of the air conditioner
struggling against the afternoon heat.
Too short shorts.
Vinyl diner seats sticking to my thighs,
pulling uncomfortably at the skin.
Blueberry cobbler and coffee left too long in the ***
I don't know if it was me
or you
or me with you-
the way I would bruise pretty and quick
beneath your fingertips,
like a summer peach just shy of overripe.
This is what I remember:
filling myself with you and dime-book poetry,
both worn by time and the carelessness of others.
My wet hair on your pillowcase.
Your eyes.
Your eyes.
Your eyes;
irreverent and devoted.
There was religion in you-
divine words written in the spaces between your ribs.
You took whiskey like holy communion.
And me too.
Your bedroom faced the East.
Mornings were molasses and sugarcane and dragging feet.
This is what I remember:
ruined shoes and over-stretched T-shirts.
The smell of lake water.
Mud between my toes.
Changing leaves floating down around me.
Cold doesn't come here like other places.
Snow gathers on trees and in hair and melts easy.
This is what I remember:
warming my hands in your coat pockets,
then with cups of tea-
Earl Grey brewed so strong it made my head ache.
I am more used to night terrors than I ever was to you.
This is what I remember:
feeling.
The flu in September,
then again in December.
You felt more like a fever dream than anything else-
blurry;
fantastical;
difficult to recall.
You left me sixteen voice mails;
sixteen unheard messages;
sixteen times I pressed nine to delete.
This is what I remember:
me,
stronger.
Oct 2, 2015
Oct 2, 2015 at 8:32 AM UTC
.
.
i want to pull you apart in sections like an overripe orange
and lick all the juice off of your skin
.
May 2, 2015
May 2, 2015 at 4:51 AM UTC
“Love is like a reckless twin; I’m giving in.”
Scandipop on the radio,
The scent of marijuana hanging heavy in the air;
The fruits of my love lie wasted,
Rotting away,
Overripe and burdensome,
And I drink deeply from the sweet pools of wine
That gather where the fruits were bruised,
Either by their lesser fall,
Or their greater failure,
Having been inspected by most,
And rejected by all.
Nov 28, 2016
Nov 28, 2016 at 9:54 AM UTC
An author must understand the craft
of picking such
fruit.
The patience to resolve and then
pluck
the ending, ripe on the branch.
But any reader can taste the sweetness,
Satisfying, although it leaves such a
Singular lingering taste
An urge to bite
and bite
and bite
until only the seeds are left,
embedded in the folds of you brain,
watered by your memory, to grow.
Though we say that reading is our escape
All readers want reality in the end
An overripe “deus ex machina”
can never satisfy
the craving for
a good ending.
Jul 23, 2012
Jul 23, 2012 at 7:46 PM UTC
Spilt blood seeps into the cracks of the earth
Floating gently down like a plucked feather
Deeper and deeper into the black soil
Which turns purple, slowly, like a bruised fruit
Carrying its infected blood to the core.
Festering roots grow, a tumour,
Which rises and bursts like an overripe fig
Into the open landscape below which it swelled.
Pink leaves hang from its twisted branches
And casts a black shadow submerging us all
Jan 7, 2021
Jan 7, 2021 at 3:43 PM UTC
The memory of your battered work boots,
tipped on their sides and haphazardly strewn about
the back hallway, my mother
asking you to put them away.
To the love song playing on the radio,
you recalled that the first time you
heard it, you were standing in Times Square
and you immediately thought of my mother. (I
wonder if you still think of her.) You
picked up a can of Miller. You took a swig.
My sister, just a few months old and laying in
her bassinet, plucked from the comfort and placed
into her carrier. You toted her around with you,
took her to meet the crowd in the beer garden.
You took two sips.
On the weekends, you would lounge on the couch with
race cars in your eyes. Your thoughts were far
away from little girls playing dress up and
little girls toying with dolls. Your thoughts were on
the equipment from work that you had
begun hoarding. You took three gulps.
My weekends, spent with my grandparents, felt
like mini vacations. Your cool distance and rotten
behavior towards my mother felt like arms outstretched,
keeping me away, forcing me away. Childhood like a peach
out in the sun for too long, overripe and decaying,
you threw it in the trash and I helped.
The sour taste in my mouth is leftover childhood
ignorance, the kick in my gut when I think about you
is leftover betrayal—I will not mourn a traditional
childhood, I will mourn your lack of apathy. You will
never know remorse.
The phone will ring, and I will not answer. You will
leave messages, and I will delete them. We are
on two different planes now,
Daddy.
Jun 11, 2014
Jun 11, 2014 at 12:55 AM UTC
The pasture lays abandoned
The barn is bare
The fields grown overripe
Fences lay fallen
Roads returning to dirt
Not a single tool lifted
Nor a single human whimper
Nay a cry from any creature
Had been heard for many eons
And one may wonder
Of the perished and of paradise
For Earth lay singing
While all else is silent
And some long for music
And some long for quiet
And all long for something
And some long without knowing
And some long for things long gone
And some long just to go along with others longing
And some are just so winded from being long winded in longing
So longings lengthen,
Filling us to the brim with hollow wants
And this perfect paradox becomes
Pandemic
Aug 30, 2018
Aug 30, 2018 at 2:59 PM UTC