Stencil Poems | Examples

Bob's Tailor Shop

I'm open for business except Sundays from nine to nine.

I have a 5-Star rating from the BBB because my work is very fine!

I specialize in tailoring garbage bags for we folks who were so named,

By a doddering old geezer in the White House who ought to be ashamed!

You must provide your own 30-gallon bag which usually comes in black;

I'll form fit it and for an extra fee will stencil MAGA in huge letters on the back.

Five bucks is the cost or if a vet or a senior a 5 percent discount I'll advance.

You'll find it very appropriate wear at rallies or any other such circumstance!

Day Slides Away

Day slides away unspoken
Over the timeless hill
Dark oak and ash
Stencil the fading light
Black flickers of roost-bound rooks
Imprint the low sky’s cushion clouds
While half a world away
God’s turning Earth unfurls
Another’s bright Antipodean dawn.

I love sitting outside as the daylight fades, witnessing the departure of another day – a day never to be experienced again.
In 2003 at Llansadwrn in Wales, found me coming to grips with the awesome truth that I was on a vast globe which was forever turning, exactly as God designed!

ambages

People say, when there's a will, there's a way
But this way will only lead me astray
Without you everything annoys me again
The faint sound of people I hear when my music stops
I don't want them to exist, you changed a pessimist

Your ideologies are your utensils
My existence was your stencil
I feel you reach in me, rearranging
Organizing, correcting, taking
I don't like it but if its what you want
I'll live with it in the hope that one day it will be exchanging

I'm not perfect, but I could be for you
I'm not a poet, but you're still my muse
My ink filled pages, our relationship's ambages
You sliced into me and I'm hiding the cut
It's all for you and you're so unaware
As long as you're fine you don't even care

Destroy me from inside out
Watching with blurry eyes
You were my Fomalhaut
You blurred the line of lies

Not Another Resolution

Here we go with a New Year’s resolution
Deciding to make a change or start over
Forever arriving at the same conclusion
Were you intoxicated and now sober

Even if we design it or stamp it into a stencil
Take an oath that we will see it to the end 
Never write it down in black ink but in pencil
Waste a whole year but still seeking to extend

Not bringing it to fruition with an impulsive pledge
Most declarations or expectations fall by the wayside
In a month, if we start, we will push it over the edge
It may be outlandish, but we can say at least we tried

Lied with Long Nose that Grows Horn Haiku

when case came to close
Trump lied with long nose that grows
guilty we suppose

my poems may be crude
rather than having been rude
you became unglued

could be contagious
always was advantageous
also courageous

perfect particle  
of arousing article
read at sabbatical

drawn with utensil
prepared a Christmas stencil
done with a pencil

on face found a mole
which became my greatest goal
take another pole

when germs are villain
need to take penicillin
when to are willing

when we were squirming
met someone with much vermin 
a gorgeous German

here is what you get
Horn haiku has been better yet
me be best should let

Muddeled Muse Cacophony

Thoughts can be blurry and empty.
paper on an easel, a whirlpool on a sheet
letting emotions explode into poetry,
explores the realm of cryptical and mystery
Crafting verbal art saps one's inventiveness.

I wrapped my body with a tattered velarium.
My shades can't even pass the litmus trial.
I stand without ignominy.
I am the one who folded my halcyon tripod.

My soul is the painting on this easel.
without a brush or ink, an oil drawing of intrinsic
all sins are conveyed aloud in this triptych.
It is a work of inner gloom, a magnum opus.

Drawing by the moon on a quiet beach
A painter stencil is bolstered on a pedestal.
Sea whispers reverberate in the sky.
The cosmic shyness sound

In this bewildering blend of noises and spirits.
A winter tree's naked singing may be heard.
With shades of gray, it is jubilation.

4th place contest winner

Written: February 16, 2023

Premier Choice No 1188 Poetry Contest
Sponsored by: Brian Strand

My Homies That Don'T Know Me

My homies that don't know me from the outside in
And wherever home is I feel outside in
I feel inside out
Wide open and shut
I keep silent but inside me i am screaming aloud

I keep trying to learn me how to figure me out
Why do they stencil always try to figure me out
Let me sink to the bottom
Then they try to finger me out

Sometimes the world feels scaled down like a figurine house

And I'm a real boy
Or perhaps the houses chew toy
Now I know why they keep swallowing then spitting me out
Yes, I am never about
Yes I am hiding out loud
To my homies that don't know me from the inside out

Two Cents Worth

Lest I be guilty of grossest negligence
I feel like I must put in my own two cents
As I watch and evaluate strong evidence
We owe a debt of gratitude to Mike Pence.

I know, I know, he’s not even a Democrat
But on Jan 6th he knew where he was at
He stuck by the Constitution and all that,
As I see it, it takes courage to stand pat.

If Pence had listened to Donald J. Trump
Asked how high and been ready to jump
On our democracy, he’d’ve taken a dump
We’d’ve never recovered from the lump.

I’m pleased to know some have principle
Not willing to turn their back on sensible
And will defy their unscrupulous principal
I want more cut from a Mike Pence stencil.

Bravo to a politician I thought was a toady,
Wasn’t an a**-kissing Donald Trump roadie.

The Pink Lady of Malibu

Though her life span was less than a week,
The Pink Lady of Malibu was a glorious sight, 
Never to be forgotten by anyone who was lucky enough to see her
The daring escapade spanned six months
Timing her final foray on the cliff to coincide with the full moon

On October 31st, 1966, seemingly overnight
there appeared on the sheer cliff wall 
above the Malibu Canyon tunnel 
a 60-foot-tall painting of a nude woman 
gamboling freely with her black hair flowing behind her 
and a fistful of yellow lilies

No one knew who had created this guerrilla artwork 
but scandalized Los Angeles County officials  
Fearing traffic congestion and looky-loo accidents  
They had decided she couldn't stay

House paint and a giant stencil to accomplish the artwork 
The paint had soaked into the porous rock 
Finding it impossible to remove her
The county ended up covering the Pink Lady in beige paint

Such Waste

Such waste of pen,
if your only subject
self-centered men;

Such waste of pencil,
if vain women the 
stencil, patterns and
frames of your poetry – 
her many loves
and woe-it-try!

And if Nature
and her creatures 
are your features...

Why God only first
and last? – a few words
before rest, and a brief 
recital upon rising....

Soul Shavings

Remain silent until it's time
 to love again

Finger touches and tongue tips
  dance again

Rain drops coursing leaf veins
 I want to stencil my name
all over your anatomy
   as if I never had before

Magnified insight
  finding new ways to envelop
    your light

Soul shavings on bad days
  don't need it all
 the tiniest portion of you
   will do

Sometimes my poetry needs
  time for you to seep into 
  my vocabulary

to understand that perfect ground
you fall upon.

The Bread Box

It sits on the pantry shelf where it's always been
The old blue bread box made of tin
with faded white letters B R E A D stencil on
for some reason of it I am fond

It no longer stores loafs or buns
It now holds things forgotten
A dish towel whose pattern was pretty and fun
A rubber glove in case we found the other one
Some rubber bands and bread ties too
and don't forget that bottle of old wood glue
The timer that doesn't time
a baby spoon I think was mine
A candlestick and yellow lighter
A recipe for holiday apple cider
Old refrigerator magnets that don't stick
An half empty jar of Vicks
That old squirt gun that always leaked
A Tootsie Roll we forever keep

Why we keep the bread box I don't know
But I am glad it's there if just to show
some things other think are useless and old
are the treasured memories of us they hold

Through Youth's Eyes

Despite June’s tempest, I relish life’s grace

         My eyes marking the stencil of ripped trees

     A yesterday which draws me to embrace ;

The comfort of kin amidst storm’s reprise.



For Gregory R Barden's Rithimus Divisa 5 Contest
Excerpt  from  the poem Woodland of My Youth 
Dated 4/04,2018
Resubmitted 9/5/2020

Our Hearts Same Throb

We all tend to hold faith and hope to bolster 
our daily stay inside a positive base where our
desired dreams and wants are void of negative
claims as painfully aimed straight towards afraid.

Each morn we dress in faith to fortify our prayers
potential so that our dour tears will not break 
our hopes most delicate and integral stencil.
While in principal we all hold faith and hope
for the whole world, we mostly purpose both
to keep our claimed emotive focus controlled.

Due to error characteristics, we all seem to 
deny ourselves charity for we falsely feel unfit
but with behaviors altruistic, we are genuinely
authentic to our earthly purpose and role as God’s
souls on a human journey of charitable service.
United and individually, we are all charity worthy
and deserving of truly compassionate sharing;
our hearts same throb as loving children of God.

If Art Was Time

If I were to collage next year
I’d place bronze across gold
and third over first,
stick paper upon electric,
paste glutton below thirst.

If I were to sculpt next year
I’d chisel women into boardrooms,
chip away white to reveal colour,
smooth borders, fences and walls,
curve catwalks with something fuller.

If I were to paint next year
I’d splash rainbows over churches
and shade Xs in boxes to stay,
I’d smudge pay gaps, titles and labels,
etch over surgeries, filters and Black Friday.

But if I were to sketch last year,
using invisible ink I’d draw a stage, ruined,
without watercolour I’d wax a bridge, rammed apart,
in fine liner I’d retouch a city’s cycle path, attacked,
keeping a vanishing point in sight and restart.

So if art was time, and I free to design,
I’d graffiti the White House
with handprints the paint of all races,
I’d stencil love above hate,
and erase hurtful mouths from all faces.

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