Drywall Poems | Examples

Broken Things

Broken mugs 

And broken promises 

A broken lamp 

And broken knuckles

A broken TV 

And a broken stack of plates 

Broken drywall 

And broken glasses 

Broken bottles

And a broken door 

This is a broken home

And my heart cannot break anymore

Rolex

Rolex


If it’s a creation, 
then science and spirit should explain each other.
Not argue. Not compete.
They should echo.
Like a wave entering water—
and the water nods.

I was born into a field,
not a house.
The floor, the couch, the corners—
they didn’t creak.
They hummed.
The rooms didn’t scare me.
The electrons did.

The lies—
It came through pattern.
Through footsteps stored in drywall.
Through the breath someone forgot to exhale
Twenty years ago

My body is made of quartz that learned how to flinch.
It keeps time like a Casio—
$10 of stillness more honest than a Rolex.
Because truth doesn’t tick, nor dress up.
It vibrates.

Who said nostalgia is memory?
I know better.
Nostalgia is presence with a shadow
Eden remembered, but not currently lived in.
A waveform that still fits me
like the glow-in-the-dark stars
I stuck to my ceiling
before I knew how the sticker glowed.

Love enters and leaves no residue.
It echoes clean.

It’s a return.
A collapse in the name of peace.
A God crystal humming 32,768 times per second,
while we scroll past ourselves
looking for the next thing to react to

drywall

inside of twenty takes
dirty filled frames
no resolution
to me the family
that a ugly
call me
cat purrs on approach
welcome spat
too literal 
gotta reclamation
eye's cried so much relief
brushes is dusty clean
practice strokes at the gentleman's table
romanticism, adjatate, harpsichords
classified and credentialed
white ink's a tank thinking
'I remember", "he"
distract the trap, autumns born
waves of green mustard gas
country come plains, it's not your first mistake
chains on protest for poverty effort
2am production prints

beggars, dodgers, i aint your draft calling
pre screened and bread
my land by sea
indoors, know hoe
get to work, beach gone
pushing, yeah who's double checked
out of decks, on paper
iliterations an postulates 
hot boxes of brake dust
crescent shaped credit creased

basic design, irish blazee, defend
de speak

A Fly's Purpose

Steamy daylight seeps into
flesh, bone and drywall.
A large fly is trapped
between the curtain and a hot window.

Can’t tell if it’s angry, desperate, or confused,
the buzz is intermittent,
the pauses lulls of restoration,
or instincts in abeyance.
Maybe it just forgets to be anything.

Wondering if its purpose was decreed,
its mission,
to eat the dead things of the earth,
to bury its body in the rot,
in the waste of corruption?

Will a fly, on judgement day,
be called to confess,
and shall I, on that day of judgement,
be chemically sprayed,
to be now
my own gift of decay.
        Job done.

Pedophiles

they walk among us,
slipping through cracks in the drywall of laws,
hidden in neighborhoods where swings creak empty.
their eyes,
like needles,
threading innocence with ruin.

you see them in grocery aisles,
behind polite smiles,
a rotting core in a skin of civility.

justice comes late, or never at all.
the system's gears
grind slow,
while childhood crumbles
in a landfill of stolen nights.

the world lets them crawl on,
unnoticed,
like termites,
until the house falls apart exposing
the skeletal remains in the basement.

Skeletons

Echoed voices that seep 
Through the cracks in the drywall 
Of the room which I hide in.
Bones clatter in the closet,
The softest shadows show those faces,
Those girls,
Those girls who I loved who could care less for me,
And that faceless face I erased that held me against
The tile of that bathroom.
Haunting me, taunting me, 
Whispering, lingering, 
Always there 
In the back of my mind.
Impossible to find relief, I decide.
Words that aren’t mine, 
The violence inside that 
Shows itself outside, now, 
And my hurt hurts the first people to love me.
Bury myself in the closet, 
With all the things I keep deep.

Concrete Moses

He's a blue collared artist supreme
with a medium of drywall and wet concrete.
He was laid off when build back better lost its gloss.
He occasionally does side jobs... tax free.
The beard is unkempt, he flashes a tattooed head.
He's donning a third trimester belly he calls Johnny walker red 
It's going to be some time until his next masterpiece.

a mouse is not the best taste tester

Sappy hired a mouse to be the taste tester for her restaurant
no one said anything for a day or two, but we were not happy.
He eats drywall, dust, fabric, even insulation, said the elephant.
Hiring a mouse to be our taste tester was wrong of Sappy.

the new man

it felt like he was in her pocket. 
something insignificant 
but with her at all times.
i felt as though he resided in more than just her phone 
in her mind 
in her time 
my father was a bad man and maybe i’m just scared that now every man is a bad man 
he lives in her pocket 
soon maybe in our home 
my home 
my mum left a bad man 
a bad dad 
maybe for an equally as bad man 
she tried stripping the wallpaper 
and scrubbing the floor 
as if it would remove the mark of my father 
i feel like the new man is trying to hammer up family photos we have yet to take
i feel like the new man is trying to slip exactly into my dads old space 
just like he slipped perfectly into her pocket 
he can hammer up pictures
he can live in her heart 
but there’s drywall in my home 
and behind the drywall is all of our secrets

Somewhere To the Left of Earth

In my many years before the mast 
I’d seen rocks and shoals conspire
To ground me down to powder
Till I was just dust in the wind,
And I’d never even been to Kansas.
I was useless as a one-armed paper hanger,
Skilled in the geometer’s art,
But no closer to infinity
Than the day I’d started out.
Just a journeyman aesthete
Dressing drywall plaster 
With those tapestried patterns
Favored by the rich and famous. 
But, being a lifelong learner,
I learned to breathe.
I learned to eat.
I learned to say, “No.”
I became a student of the universe,
Composer of the mini-verse,
Somewhere to the left of Earth.
Mainlining the vagus nerve
On the highway leading home.
And there’s no place like home.
I must be doin’ somethin’ right.

I Witnessed a Spectacle Within the Attic

I see a rotting occlude on the drywall in my attic at the peak of the ceiling beyond the walls veil for outside of it I came as a worm in a large world at the very core of a rotting apple only being who I am to be cast out as an abomination hoped to be dead but I want to heal everything escape this dreadful red.

Who Cares I Do

Who Cares
There was green Playdough in the rug
Big deal, who cares?
My drywall now had a work of art
Created  by an imaginative four-year-old with a black magic marker.
Even way back then I realized something.
One day when all my children are in college
That rug can be replaced.
But the art work on the wall shall live there forever
Because I knew it would forever make me happy.
I was not wrong.

I Am a Wall-

I am a wall
Solid shortened horizontaly long vertically tall
I am sustained three more of me forms a cube,
A room a place of structure made of two by fours and painted drywall
I am a space you can occupy 
I can walk through look at place pictures on 
I am a wall







10/31/20
Written words by James Edward Lee Sr © 2020
Mask poem verse

No Tree Street Names

He built motels
across America
loving the land so much
he could sleep anywhere
on her
in her
cheaply,
predictably.

Anywhere was home to him.
Home was not special
but same.
Same bars of soap,
same color wrappers.
Same towels.
Same smells almost.
Same views.

Home across
the human spirit
of imaginary states.

Just outside streets
with tree names.

And out of this
I arrived
from love created for each single
completed
square space
spilling forward,
motel to motel,
born by American Motel Woman,
timeless builder,
faceless
with no Kodachrome
to pin down my origin
or capture his passion.

Pick-up truck front seat cradles,
beer for sedative,
K-Mart toys,
all-night pharmacies.

His gift-
           I belong anywhere
nowhere,
owe nothing,
know anyone
no one,
am rooted in spackle
drywall
and cheap two-by-fours
and need only decide
which illusions
to put up
and which to take down.

Rile Up Richard Day

He was mad, all riled up.
A brother of few words, but always angry.
We two sisters were too much for him.
We did not let up because it was our goal to make a man of him.

Besides we were preteens, and in moods of our own most of the time.
Not our fault our parents decided to have a kid when we turned eight.
And it was great to see his face turn all red, and I mean red.
So this was one of those “rile up Richard” days. We had lots of them.

He was older now, and more eager to hurt us, but we still did it.
I am not sure how we riled him, but he came toward me like a bull.
Head down like a battering ram. I quickly moved out of the way,
And his head went through the drywall of the newly papered wall.

Destroyed new wallpaper; actually punched a crevice shape into wall.
If he had hit a stud, I imagine we would have been in big trouble.
We rearranged the living room furniture before mom came home.
Every time Mom got close to the corner we would all three laugh.
I am glad you are all getting along, she said, pleased.

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