"hearsay" poems
A picture of your mother
dull colors of a bygone era
a polaroid born faded
a memory bestowed upon you by another
a hearsay tale long lost in time
more far than you can count on fingers
she smiles
a smile reserved for the unburdened
you wonder when this woman is
she looks happy
A finger painting of your mother
all colors watered down
a reminder that you must
prioritize
some things carry more meaning
other need meaning poured onto them
cupped like water in both hands
presented to a lip-cracked child
some water saturate the soul
while keeping others thirsty
some colors are skin deep
Your mother, wrapped in blankets
in an almost vacant bed
her paint, dry and life-bleached
you sit with her
through all these final hours
watching as the outer coating
peels off and settles to the floor
solemnly, you sweep the flakes
an acolyte on hallow ground
choosing the most beautiful
pasting to a piece of paper
crafting the image of a woman
that once could have been
your mom
Dec 23, 2018
Dec 23, 2018 at 2:08 PM UTC
#
Almost
found a hope that prevails
reaching for me under a starlit tent
Almost
built a boat that sails
across all oceans as they bend
Almost
filled my book with tales
an anthology of moments I didn't attend
Almost
what a terrible word
holding such a stinging truth
Almost
felt like it's all worth the hurt
while wasting years of restless youth
Almost
called out and haven't been unheard
found something I couldn't lose
Almost
thought any path would get me there
where wholesomeness is not just hearsay
Almost
kept a fire in sight that brought me to where
I would find the light of day
Almost
made them proud of me, made them care
made them listen to what I had to say
And now
from where I stand
a lyrical sadness
paper in my hand
I know this is true
I can almost see you
#
Sep 10, 2018
Sep 10, 2018 at 2:10 PM UTC
Hearsay, the more you forgive, the more they will love you. But every time you forgive them, you fall in love with them less and less. And the time they love you more than any other is very much the moment you decide to love them the least.
Apr 5, 2021
Apr 5, 2021 at 7:47 AM UTC
At my antique womanly age,
I have reached beyond cynicism stage,
I am quite blasé about hyperbole,
Hearsay evidence about chicks like me,
You're wasting your time, unfortunately,
Old bags like me are basically resilient, you see,
I've had 700 billion lovers, it seems,
Plus or minus 10%, is that how you deem?
Contemplation on such matters makes me giggly!
Yes, quite blasé about hyperbole,
You're wasting your time, quite definitely!!!
Aug 29, 2016
Aug 29, 2016 at 2:59 AM UTC
A leitmotif of your average smug **** is a proverb here and there.
Spouting them off like the receptor has no care.
Their evidential naivety is blatant and almost impossible to bear.
As an audience member you can do nothing but hide your malevolence and stare.
******* in maxims that are apparently laced with benevolence and care.
You know the kind of oxygen waster I’m referring to.
The type of person that watches BBC 4 and likes tofu.
The kind that does the Financial Times So-fucking-Do-Ku.
Look I’m just saying that clichés annoy me.
I’m not asking you to love me, give me a reach around or employ me.
In fact you don’t even have to enjoy me as I tell you of things that matter not.
Suture yourself hypothetically to a geographically different mind. That mind being mine, oh that maverick-esque mischievous mind of mine, looking at this from my perspective.
In my transcendental endeavours to rid the clichéd ridden world of the afore mentioned adjective.
In the opposite of anachronistic times, we might successfully, surreptitiously rid the world of moral coated rhymes.
We can do this; all it takes is a few. One of which needs to be you.
Break out from being solipsistic, even the blind, the meek, the autistic, those that besmirch the edge of coffee cups with their lipstick.
Yes, I mean you. Here is what to do…
The next time someone spouts off a cliché, punish them, make them listen to an album by “Hearsay.”
If someone says “An Apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Then simply say, Steve Jobs had thousands and the here’s the definite answer, that consumerism inducer still died of cancer.
If a woman says “When I say jump. You say how high!” Don’t even cogitate to pardon her.
If the grass is always greener on the other side – shoot your ******* gardener.
Aug 24, 2012
Aug 24, 2012 at 8:03 PM UTC
if these ties of cupid
however with hearsay were stupid
that she'd complicate her nature
where her ensemble was audacious
but round a hearth with her nomad
as beast were her shillings
there was her but again wore attire
so attractive but as frozen
and heartily felt as her gait was thrilling
left her gander with grinder eaten.
Jul 22, 2017
Jul 22, 2017 at 6:50 AM UTC
Through silver maple and winding hedgerow wind-songs sough April’s hearsay. In stoic silence, spring’s axes—shuttered trunks—goad their fruit’s swelling. Clouds tumble in like sea foam, blue splinters flashing out: incorporeal troposphere, a halo entrapped by math.
Dec 9, 2014
Dec 9, 2014 at 6:00 PM UTC
So is it not with me as with that muse,
Stirred by a painted beauty to his verse,
Who heaven it self for ornament doth use
And every fair with his fair doth rehearse,
Making a couplement of proud compare
With sun and moon, with earth and sea’s rich gems,
With April’s first-born flowers, and all things rare
That heaven’s air in this huge rondure hems.
O, let me, true in love, but truly write,
And then, believe me, my love is as fair
As any mother’s child, though not so bright
As those gold candles fixed in heaven’s air.
Let them say more that like of hearsay well;
I will not praise that purpose not to sell.
1.7k
I felt a rumor softly touch the air I breathe
Mingling in my exhale
Such a sweet sachet of fleeting mystery
Lost in motives, of ivory veils
Unassuming pleas of poignant measure
Quivered in each breath
Purifying with a gravitational pleasure
Unparalleled, in its depth
Melodious testimony rang within the rising
Of my lyrical express
Sang in tune, along a harmonious horizon
A masterpiece, no less
The rumors touched me with no hearsay
I had inhaled the truth
Found within the mysteries sweet sachet
Motives, of ivory veils of youth
Sep 29, 2010
Sep 29, 2010 at 6:17 PM UTC
Verse
Why are you fighting every day?
Why are storming everywhere?
Why are we finding faults in each other?
Why am I blaming you blaming me ?
Chorus
Holding hands
As we find
Love for one another
Passing time
As we find space for each other
Verse
It’s true we faint everyday
It’s real that we get up again
It’s magical this life that we hold
As all the past passes us by
Bridge
Let’s hold hands
And stop fighting
Let’s hold hands
And stop stomping
Hearsay is hearsay
Here my pen, here is my pen
Lets write a new page
I'll find space for you
You find space for me
We find space for one another
Jan 30, 2016
Jan 30, 2016 at 12:25 PM UTC
You claim to know through hearsay
I can write and say a line.
And that may just be something,
But not poetry like thine.
Your lips were first, I noticed.
Their rosey, sanguine shine,
Their gentle part was stiff'ning,
and raises more than I.
If I could be those saintly words,
Sweet nothings from your lips,
I could be, would be art itself
Conceived in breathless kiss.
Oct 26, 2012
Oct 26, 2012 at 2:45 PM UTC
What he will give is the incipient bare minimum
of his heartbeat
He’ll reveal just
the washed out clamoring of his horded desire
all because there would be nothing left in his own perception
of a universe that may reduce his secret lust to nothing.
implode like terrorists on the fantasy of his greatness yet to come…
although we are born magnificent; which then gets blinded out by all the hearsay of our original sin
he won’t go too far with a notion of
blissful ‘otherness’
nor squeeze too many lemons
he’s got no room for confidence sugar stored
on his empty shelf
*however negative space can be
a good thing*
(he has heard)
he’s dumbfounded when he wants more from someone
and expects the best of their yet to be born
mind reading abilities to:
just
understand who he is
or
“be gone I say!”
…(hehehe) -writer could not help it-
scathed in baby blisters by his choices so far...
it was of course!
all the:
****** babble of growing up in his _Family of origin_/original sin
where he learned to swim so comfortably in precious
Aloneness ----- -Aloofness-
and there he became more real than ever
---Ahh well...it’s the grand excuse for
most of his life
until he feels the scratch of his riotous ‘settling for’
is bleeding ****** ******
and then one day he looks in the mirror and a ghost like
stroke (not yet manifested)
spotlights his over bearing mind to feel what it has
~done did~
disconnected with deeds of the heart
and foresight/manipulation
for naught
he then finds out his heart needed more than a cup of
tea and a scone (mid 40's)
he finds out his emotional impasse was so ****
false (almost 50)
and that his lack of allowing others in
was truly a waste of mental constructs
(Solid 51)
this I know like my own dry eyed nodding
I was him
(the now pleasure of hindsight... 55)
but all the 'do right' stuff is cohesively on time
all the contrast that created a calling for
again and again
this leaning
to love
Linaji 2011
Nov 9, 2011
Nov 9, 2011 at 12:58 AM UTC
Worry not for where the steamer heads
it simply helps us run away
But before you close this door for good
please listen to what I say
I'd never keep you from your loved ones
only your pride could e'er do that
and just because we sail away
doesn't mean we won't sail back
Why content yourself with hearsay
and yet insist I give you proof
The love you feel for me is real
but for him much more aloof
I can't promise you a lifetime
any more than any man
but what we have is here right now
with him its just a sham
You ask of me some guarantee
and then provide your own
That to live with one you do not love
would be worse than if alone
My love is not a lie my love
and never could it be
it's simply a dream thats unfulfilled
a dream of you and me
But if you choose to go to Sussex
please do not take me there
For these memories will haunt you
and lead you to despair.
Instead cast memories aside
both of me and of this week
I will think of you in Sussex
each time your name I speak
For though my this dream may not come true
I'll not deny it came to pass
For I will see its memory
in every looking glass
I'll not say another word my love
the decision must be yours
We both know that truth and happiness
starts through the cabin doors
Jul 18, 2010
Jul 18, 2010 at 3:25 PM UTC
sometimes hearsay isn't enough
I'm digging, digging,
oh, just raking up the flower bed
you have a sweet face
open yet so guarded
what secrets do you hide behind cherry lips?
you will share them with me over cake and cold tea
you will not take them to your grave, it's impolite
pray tell, what brings you here
and who gave you secrets
speak, those lips aren't just for the painting
why so silent, lady? silence is impolite
I said, you will share your secrets with me
I've already prepared cake and tea and a soft bed for you
(is it normal to be so angry)
the tea is cold, I apologize
you see, we have no warmth in these parts
you're new here, so you have to learn quickly
secrets are our currency
you have lips like a flower, quite dainty
(flowers also die easily)
don't make me pluck the petals, one by one
woman, deflowered
you will share your secrets, one by one
yes of course, I will send the painting to your husband back home
I walk out onto the veranda
in the living room, the butler picks up cherry-red petals and stores them in a jar
I see the flower bed in the distance (at least what's left of it)
I did my best digging it up, I believe it makes a soft bed
I told you, she will not take her secrets to her grave
fret not, woman, oblivion is not an issue
I will see you in flower beds, and in portraits of guarded smiles
your family will remember you in the painting I sold to a museum instead
woman, portrait
you're no longer a mystery
thanks for sharing your secrets over cake and cold tea
Jun 18, 2015
Jun 18, 2015 at 11:53 PM UTC
6 sides
Latent enabler
Counterpoint to truth, amorphic
Dada to life
Callous Birth
Islands dripped in collagen
Mystic, effortless life
Tempests laden iota in tune
Riven
Licked flat, obtuse
Crescent stench
Pagan cells
Hazard the thought
Pick the Atlantic cherry
Reach further than comfort
Pushed & consumed
Spirited paste
Jesuit told in spheres
Lament interest, matted quill
Totem, Saxon tribe
Inflections of hearsay
And Swastikas on parade
Guilt of the blacksmith, undecided
The arms of tablets
Ashtrays & tropospheric light
Another page turned
Capsules filled with perfume
Loose skin lost in relics
Temporal lobe
Cautioned indignant
Pardon the prose
Sonnets dissolved in ethanol
Caricatures of the fleeting
Of our cities last broadcast
Absorbed by times gone
Glittered pestilence
Canceling subordinates, powdered Semtex
Soup of the sewer
Lift the butcher above your head
Nazca lines
Suborbital
Silk screen with *****
Horizontal qualm toward revulsion
Incursion
Calm, cued and cubed
Lab coats coated in pharmaceuticals
Base compound, ionic bond
Covalent CNS
Sympathetic vibration
Default to nature
To theorise movement
Agitate intolerance, turbulence
Beautiful thought
Calculate causality
Passenger of licked lips
Token to latex
Croft in ear, to taste
Unlaced tips, rings of halothane
Bliss
Intrigued with obscurity
Apr 16, 2014
Apr 16, 2014 at 1:33 PM UTC
Birth pangs of a new era erupts violently no longer acknowledged by the one who lays naked upon the darkness. Soul fasting with anguish allowing his thoughts to carry on towards iniquitous perceptions cultivated from the depths of hearsay. Burying his beliefs deep within the dissipated center of his unconscious desires. His mind craving acceptance as his body endures brutal rejection; his spirit forsaken amidst the shadows of death all because he dared to be different.
Jan 17, 2012
Jan 17, 2012 at 9:31 PM UTC
Underneath the face of a sad clown lies a little wicked small town
Just a speck on the map
You may just be passing through but soon the fever will catch up to you
Feel the ripple effect
Here you won't make a best friend, but a sister you never had
She'll guide you through the flowers and offer lots of laughs
But even at her most serene there's a sinister current underneath
A flexing of power
And soon you'll start looking towards the ground, where you'll start tripping too much to be coincidence
An as you look up the danger stops
She'll look right through you as if you were air and she'll say, 'Take my hand'
Soon she'll invite you to parties of mutual bodies, who happen to favor clumsy fools like you
But they'll treat you like a guest of honor, when really their accolades are insults with armor
They've nothing better to do but make up a coded language and test it on you
How did I get here?
How can I disappear?
But as you start to evaporate she'll throw you another inquiry
She's reading off your flaws with smiling jaws
Taunting you with mistruths
You look away hurt, and she seizes the moment to write the jab on a napkin
Something to share with the cronies for later
Ha-Ha, how cleverly subtle you are!
Friendship is makeshift here, my dear
The hippies don't play instruments anymore
The company she keeps would dispose of her in a second
But she's not worried, she has you as her bullet shield
The body-snatchers with mommy issues save face quite gracefully here
They all say they'd leave, but they burn a free ticket
A mafia with no honor
You'll have seen more life in comas than this town
Little coffins with hearsay mouths where hearts should be
Small town breeds fair-weather ghosts and cold abodes
But it sure is a great place to be if you're training on how to play dead
Nov 19, 2011
Nov 19, 2011 at 8:25 PM UTC
opening up an eclectic ruddy random selection of books to the sound of classical concerto dimmed to 'whelming' (neither under nor overwhelming), is like entering point after point to perspective to new brain after old brain after subject to object to alluvit, the few, the many-- 'on July 21st, 1936, Lockheed test pilot Elmer C. McLeod, with Amelia as copilot, took the new Electra up for its first official flight..' 'This is the picture of the Djinn making the beginnings of the Magic that brought the Humph to the Camel..' 'A block away from the museum doors, the guards still follow us, until a new group of guards from the next building has us under surveillance..' 'More and more, I suspect that Buddhists and shamans are correct..' 'I liked Bloodworth and in the spring we were going to play outfield together on that Lowell team, he whose name for years had mystified me when I saw it in Lowell High and Lowell Twi League boxscores-' 'if the world at large found it impossible to believe the truth of the Holocaust, even when provided with incontrovertible proof, Berliners presented with piecemeal evidence, rumour and hearsay were bound to dismiss such talk as enemy propaganda, or perverted fantasy. As Ursula Von Kardoff recalled after the war: 'we were realistic and pessimistic. But Auschwitz?'- '"Twenty-five centavos."
"Twenty-five centavos," repeated the Syrian in a firm voice with almost no accent.'--
Mar 4, 2014
Mar 4, 2014 at 7:28 PM UTC
When miracles were given away,
It's found that there weren't them for me.
Maybe they didn't put down me in list
Or I forgot to join a queue, you see?
Maybe I got on a shift turnover.
Wizardry's also a job, hearsay,
With lunches, holidays and days off surely.
There're no fools to work the whole days.
Well, I guess I'll have to wait.
I'm a human. I know what's what.
I'll scroop by myself. I'll be patient.
I'll do my best. I hope I would.
Jul 12, 2025
Jul 12, 2025 at 5:10 PM UTC
the pompous one
with her comments
as she slithers by
with
the rudest
of dogs
the confident family;
confident
to a fault
sitting too close
and talking
too loud
the hypocrite
complaining
of the mess
and leaving behind
a scavenger's
detritus
the insecure sage
a font of knowledge
based on
hearsay
and opinion
with only
a pinch
of fact
the innocently gormless
with no thought
for sense
or logic
common or otherwise
but only
for the now
and
the immediate
these are
the passengers
on the
carousel
of frustrations
for today;
replayed
rephrased
resurrected
over
and over
i think
so little
of them
yet
i'm unable
to stop myself
thinking
about them
Apr 22, 2022
Apr 22, 2022 at 8:54 AM UTC
This must be what they mean by growing up.
Skin worn with boyish charm,
but I feel old in my bones.
The holes in my marrow house stagnant air;
echoes of unheard words
and half-forgotten dreams
keyhole-peek through hairline fractures.
There must be something in the wind,
the way the dust is kicked up from
the soles of our shoes
to dance with the last night’s
idle bedtime prayers,
and find intimacy with dew
that will never fall out of love with grass.
We said,
Black out the lights so that I can
catch my breath again…
and we looked for shade under rootless trees
and couldn’t quite decide whether the night sky
was everything our grandfathers made believe
in stories that smelled like cigar smoke
and typewriter ink,
or if it was nothing more than
card stock and pinholes.
And as the footsteps that find comfort in concrete
step over our flickering, kerosene city lights,
We hummed hymns into the
crevices of our collarbones
and serenaded the sky with
our songs of sin.
They interpreted the tip-toeing crescendos
for the hearsay of rats
and the cricket gospel of violin legs.
But what they never understood is that
I came clean with careful lungs.
Listen,
the air was a draft drawn through
an almost silent note of a harmonica,
This Town is more fragile than a whisper.
Mar 17, 2011
Mar 17, 2011 at 1:27 AM UTC
The fairies of chaitra
lie on the un–wrinkled bed
with their backside up
in the hearsay of the air
once the woods of tamarisks
once the hill of paraffin
it appears there is no interruption
to this circus
the toy-telephones
hang from the cloud to cloud
from that carnival
take birth many kanthali-champa
the surgeon comes calmly
to the secret of darning
all localities are totally maddened
by the flow tide of the exudation
observing all those happenings
the half-broken wave
does awake on the sofa-set
Oct 8, 2010
Oct 8, 2010 at 9:07 PM UTC
(I.)
Only a fool would try, in line by line
Of fair assessment honestly expressed,
To paint with words the finest of the fine
Beauties of which you solely are possessed.
No elegance would not seem spread too thin;
And he who'd try would never be believed,
For none would see as truth the truth therein,
But think it all a lover's eyes deceived.
So candid pics and videos must record
What speech could never adequately limn,
And would be doubted elsewise word for word,—
The evidence being hearsay and far too slim.
Yet, all of these leave much too much to doubt:—
All flaws would seem, no doubt, photoshopped out.
(II.)
Like two caves spun with dusty cobweb-snares
Guarding a cache of emeralds is your nose.
Your globby eyes find shade 'neath oxen hairs.
Like two thin frowning mustaches are your brows.
With microscopic mites your shiny skin
Glints, like a hanging fruit's with aphid flies
Flitting around about and out and in,
Or a hot, oil-glistened frenchèd fry's.
Like hard, mini marshmallows are your teeth.
Your lips, like jellied dextromethorphan.
Oh! oh! to be that rubber soul beneath
Those knobby tubers made for kicking a can!
But here again the painting is askew:
It lacks that certain something that's in you.
Yes, rubber soul.
*
Mar 16, 2015
Mar 16, 2015 at 12:59 PM UTC
Fox Fidelis
for Hazel
So, she said,
what do you want?
*Somewhere warm
to sleep inside,*
said the fox in the snow.
There’s only the bike shed,
she said, and only at night.
Right,
said the fox in the snow
*If you let me in,
and you let me out,
I’ll be a good fox.*
You’d better be, she said,
No squatters here,
even at Christmas.
Verstehen Sie?
Etiam,
said the fox in the snow,
*Semper ergo sum
vulpes fidelis.*
Fox in a blizzard
For Joe
Looks serious
this blizzard of snowflakes.
A proper ice storm perhaps?
All the same yet different
the microscope shows.
Who knows?
Just hearsay it’s said,
and cold on the nose,
said the fox in a blizzard.
Dec 17, 2013
Dec 17, 2013 at 2:45 PM UTC
I ran away and started a new journey
Caught myself in a peculiar story.
Been to different places and found myself startled
Obscured, grotesque, melancholic, and bleakly mottled.
Meeting different people, but never got the chance to stay
Mind fickle and heart let astray.
But then, I understand now how it feels
Of these surrounding silent hills.
All those stirred up feelings gave me nostalgia
But aren't you in spasmodic sequence of amnesia?
Alas, reality throws me up in all that regression;
It teared up my obsession.
Then there goes a series of flashbacks;
It occured to you all of the setbacks.
And oh, I remember a certain old man,
Told me a something about a plan.
With conviction, he said, "Maktub, it is written;
Those who can see and listen,
One's fate has been predestined
To those who is good and sinned."
"Young one, it is about time for you,
Know all that is true
And seek to discern for your true happiness.
"Well, I say "That's intense!"
Then as I pondered on this old man's wisdom,
**** that old geezer is just random.
But what he said did make sense,
If BMW is better than Mercedes-Benz.
Though it may seem easy for him to say it,
My mind went into a frog's "ribbit!"
How vague is it to listen to such hearsay;
The horses neigh and the hearsayers, nay.
Life is giving me much more farce
Though the sarcasm is all so scarce.
Oh, I give up cause it's better to be at home
With my friend Gary the gnome.
Now I know it's better to return
Than travel further the world that is too stern.
It's all but you I see is missing
In a picturesque abode with me, kissing.
Jun 2, 2015
Jun 2, 2015 at 6:57 AM UTC