"drywall" poems
I want to
make love
to you
but not
in the way
you'd think
I want to
brush your soul
with my fingertips
and slip in and out
of this world
in your arms
I want to
show you
the galaxy
inside of my heart
and watch you
discover each star
I want to
press my lips
against your body
and write the story
of our love
in sloppy wet kisses
I want to
deeply inhale
your wild spirt
and get high
on all your
hopes and dreams
I want to
wander the maze
in your heart
and hang
my portrait
over the
cracked drywall.
I want to
feel you searching
my soul and
shouting out
in joy at
every piece you find
I want to
strip you
of your insecurities
until you can
bask naked
in the warmth
of my love
I want to
paint our lives
in vibrant memories
of days filled
with laughter
and nights filled
with passion
I want to
have all of you
in every moment
of every single day
for the rest
of forever
And if that
isn't making love.
*I don't want
to know
what is.*
Mar 21, 2015
Mar 21, 2015 at 3:58 PM UTC
All this time you told me that the cotton candy was pink
So I ate at the fluff behind the drywall
I ate it all away
Wondering why I got colder as I did so
Do you know why the peacocks are always alone
I’ve never seen more than one at a time
And I suppose it is because they show all of their colors at once
That isn’t allowed in this game, is it
I thought not
I don’t want to have that kind of plumage anymore
Turn my skin gray and wrinkled and I will sit by like the elephant in the room
Because I never asked you questions you didn’t like
I never asked you to empty the sky into a pitcher just for me
Do you know why the peacocks walk all alone?
Curious, isn’t it?
No friends at all.
Jan 7, 2013
Jan 7, 2013 at 11:30 PM UTC
Bedrooms are intimate. Showing someone exactly where you breathe is special. To see it, they have to worship every breath that goes in and out, even if your exhale is poison.
*The walls still smell like you
Last week, I pulled the sheets off the bed. I placed them in the burn pile.*
I do not wish to see you.
*This week, I painted everything a new color, a darker shade.
I pulled down the Christmas lights and let my stars burn out. I placed them in the burn pile.*
I do not wish to see you.
I ripped stuffed animals off the shelves and letters off the dresser. Even the photo album went in the burn pile.
I do not wish to see you.
The flowers off the desk... They were dead anyway.
I do not wish to see you.
Everything in a bedroom is sacred. Not everyone belongs there; you sure didn't. You kissed everything with fiery lips and charcoal dust and I am still sweeping up. I continue to find your ashes in my bed.
I do not wish to see you.
You took everything. You took my air and gave me back poison. I couldn't tell the difference. But the worst thing you took from my room is me.
I do not wish to see you.
I do not wish to see you.
*I put you in the burn pile. I see you in the flames. I see you everywhere.
I start to tear at the drywall.*
Jul 21, 2014
Jul 21, 2014 at 9:01 PM UTC
I knew a dangerous man.
You wouldn't know what he was.
But I could see the tight clench of broken fists.
The ****** tape carelessly wrapped around the
bleeding breaks in his hardened knuckles.
A murderers kiss is a rush.
It is a pool of water so hot it feels cold.
When was the last time you kissed someone
so passionately it caused your hair to stand on end?
It caused a chill down your spine- quick and ruthless.
I wasn't scared of dark eyes or dark mouths or dark hearts.
I wasn't scared of a bullet or a gun or an ******
that starts with a rope and a whip and
ends with bruises and my body pressing into broken drywall.
I smile at the danger in the threat.
Our intensity crumbled our surroundings.
We were the flash. The flame.
He was the thrill, I was the ******
Have you ever wondered what hell was like?
People don't speak of the days they spend there.
They don't talk about the tortured memories that keep them awake.
A smoky afternoon and broken glass.
Cigarettes flung out the window with your decency.
Mangled innocence is okay as long as you
keep it contained enough to sweep out of the room after you're done.
Eyes like a black hole. Shaking desires.
And when he says beg, you close your eyes and feel the fire.
Have you ever loved a wild man?
Have you made him moan in the dead of night?
Have you ever been a pane of glass?
Have you ever had a brick thrown through you and been alright?
Have you ever known a bleeding devil and made his bed your home?
Have you licked his blood and tasted your doom?
Nov 29, 2015
Nov 29, 2015 at 2:04 PM UTC
“i’m done with furries”
i.
i can’t dream your dreams,
but you’ve told me about them.
you wear an owl mask
shaped by fists and transgression;
a laceration splits your side
from a skin split
to your rib splits.
your love,
Bill Clinton or Donkey Kong
(whoever populates your thoughts),
crack your bare skin
until makeup
leaks out of your pores.
you dream of emulating art;
O hanging from a ceiling claw,
clicking heels against drywall
until leg muscles give up
and her diaphragm accordions close.
but who is your sculptor?
who is your artist?
ii.
alas, i am only
a paper mache bird.
i flinch when it rains,
i flinch when i move;
my paper skin
could cave in
from lip crack to *** crack.
(i hate
Inside Out.
but, i’ve only watched it once,
and i’ve been told
my eyes would adjust
on the second viewing.)
i dream of emulating art;
Marat in an ice bath,
tragedy and love and death
captured
without conflict.
but who is my muse?
who won’t break my bones?
iii.
you don’t know my dreams either,
but we could dream together.
two reveries in polyphony
of an owl and bird *******
making love
before they
make art.
our love
is ******* weird;
a childhood seesaw
we’re trying to
find the perfect balance
to with our weight.
we dream different things;
**** fantasies and intimate kissing,
but that doesn’t matter.
at this point in two years,
we can see through each other.
i can’t make art without you.
you aren’t done with furries.
May 31, 2018
May 31, 2018 at 11:15 PM UTC
The redneck got arrested last night.
The ******* was barking back at dogs
and belting shots of scotch well-before sundown.
You could say he and the sun were collectively sinking.
Nights like these
breed pregnant silences
between the outbursts.
I sit poised for the next eruption
as a child cloistered under covers for fear of thunderclaps--
Another howl,
(presumably bellowing for beer)
then he's batting his live-in lap-straddler
around the apartment beneath me.
With every strike
the drywall learns a lesson
this ignorant *****
can't get a grip on:
some things never change.
The world will change around them
like tissue growing around a bullet fragment.
The cops come,
the cuffs go on,
and the problem is put on pause for an evening--
but he'll ascend the stairs with the sunrise.
They'll reconcile,
because misery does want for company.
He'll promise he'll be different.
She'll actually believe him.
They'll be back to battering their plaster
with the reverberations of ******* and arguments.
She can't see that a drunkard's apologies
are counterfeit currency.
I took it for common knowledge.
Perhaps it is...
Perhaps, like living in tornado alley,
they cope with ceaseless shit-storms
because they're just too lazy to move.
Sep 20, 2012
Sep 20, 2012 at 12:36 AM UTC
I am afraid of speaking.
I am afraid of the texture of my voice, and the effect it will have on you.
I don't want to be pressed into the caricature of an angry woman; voice raised in what they call a hysterical display of emotion.
Calm down. Be rational.
Stop being
So
Dramatic.
Well let me tell you something:
I am an angry woman.
Because all I can see is my best friend’s blonde head, coming within an inch of becoming the crushed drywall beneath his fist.
All I can see is the false piety painted on his pastor’s face, asking, “well… did he hit you?”
I see her eyes closed in the darkness, fingers gripped in the sheets he tore off of her body to wake her. She has to hold on to something.
He says, “Show me you're enjoying it.”
Calm down. Be rational.
Like he wasn't gaining access INTO her BODY by FORCE. Like, of course it's her job to lay down and take it. Like it. Lick his lips for the taste of honey, because honey, he told you to.
but it's poison. It enters her bloodstream, weakening her will to resist it.
She looks at her phone, at a text she did not compose herself, or send,
“Hey hot stuff. When you see this, let's have ***
“If I pretend I didn't write this I'm just playing hard to get.”
Do you get it?
Yeah. I am an angry woman.
Stay calm, dear sister. Be rational.
Rationalize the gaslighting, because the big picture doesn't look beautiful when you hang it above the sofa; and her home was staged to look like a family so that when you look in the window, you don't see that she was a hostage.
You don't see that her son was asleep in the bed when he grabbed her face between his hands and crushed it,
And called it “gently redirecting her gaze.”
From the window, you can't see his body blocking the exit.
You can't see her baby, with his little fingers curled around her ******* begging for comfort.
I will not calm down. And in case you are so damaged by devotion to comfort that you can't see it, it is right to be angry.
It is righteous.
I am angry, and more rational than I have ever been in my entire life- rationally, righteously begging for justice to flow down like rivers.
I am an angry woman.
May 7, 2018
May 7, 2018 at 4:07 PM UTC
Last night, I hit a wall in my chest.
Like the sea, I came crashing down
and suddenly, I was drowning.
Last night, I hit a wall in my head
and I couldn’t process thought anymore.
There was only pain behind my eyes.
Last night, I hit a wall with my fists.
The drywall fell broken to the floor,
and blood dripped down my knuckles.
Oct 1, 2014
Oct 1, 2014 at 9:44 AM UTC
we were driving home
taking side roads in a roundabout way.
and you spotted something on the side of the road.
bloodied, broken and (i assumed to be) dead.
you pulled over and we inspected it.
i was rather disgusted, but you picked it up and coddled it 'cause it had fur.
you kept coo'ing at it and asked it what it's name was (expecting no answer)
but it struggled to utter "Love".
we begrudgingly decided to take it home
and made a bed for it and nourished it back to health.
a week later we were drinking Earl Grey by the fireplace,
heard a rumbling
and looked around to see it standing there looking at us.
it was 7' tall and had an expression of awe, wonder, and terror
as if it thought we would ****** it at any second.
each night it had a different face, resembling one of your former playthings.
you never called it the same name twice.
a week later, it couldn't fit through any of the doorways.
we always came home to plaster, paint and drywall scattered everywhere.
i complained.
"Love has broad shoulders", you quipped.
it had grown too much for us.
a week later, i spent the afternoon at the bar and you were shopping.
we rendezvoused back home at 3PM.
only to find a gaping hole where the front door used to be.
everything inside totaled.
precious collections, expensive technology, jewelry...
all gone (or destroyed beyond recognition).
i railed, "Love ruined EVERYTHING!!!"
you seemed to take no note, kept your composure and muttered, "It always does" and just began sweeping.
the next day we got a kitten from the animal shelter,
and were laying in bed with it at night.
i asked, "Do you think Love will ever come back?"
you answered coldly, "It never does".
Jul 16, 2012
Jul 16, 2012 at 1:17 AM UTC
it's a college party
even though i never finished and the rest of y'all are spending money you don't have on the ingredients necessary for homemade sangria so you can drink the crippling anxiety of not knowing how to pay off your student loans away
there's a man living in a tent in the backyard, and i'm pretty sure we put one too many pieces of scrap wood in that very-hard-to-maintain bonfire. that has to be a metaphor for the state of most of our lives. stop throwing things i'm unprepared for in what already feels like a situation that is going to **** me.
is this a literal housewarming
i'm drunk, and sitting on the deck, counting the christmas lights. i smell **** and there are white people dancing and singing to blink 182 inside.
i paint my name on a drywall with a brush and canisters i find on my way to the living room, where i'm asked to referee a game of beer pong. i lose interest quickly.
i scroll through my phone, sober enough not to text you but drunk enough to desperately want to. someone sits down next to me because i've apparently become that person at the party.
i talk about rent with a guy who really wants to connect on the fact that we're both middle eastern, even though i'm not middle eastern. he smells like PBR and completely believes what he's saying. he says he's proud of me for following my dreams of coming to new york and that he likes my "crazy hair" and that he wants to **** me.
i raise my eyebrows, more in disgust than interest, but he then takes his perceived cue to shamelessly ask me if i have a ****** i don't, and i leave before he brainstorms any alternatives i am just as aversive to.
ironically, i find a ****** dispenser attached to a tree on the walk to the subway. considering the amount of catcalling i experienced on the way to the station, my level of discomfort is amplified by the fact that the neighbourhood literally, physically implies, ******* is going to happen in the streets. it's 2am, and i just want to go home. and i'm sitting on the J train, recalling everyone who's told me it's shady and unreliable and makes you feel like you're going to die.
a few months later, i am nicknamed J train.
Sep 21, 2016
Sep 21, 2016 at 2:24 AM UTC
In warmth beneath the insulated drywall
I curse my gooey insides
for not being as solid
as the lamented linoleum
moreover, I wish I didn't need
to declare such trivialities but
I do
Nov 28, 2014
Nov 28, 2014 at 1:12 AM UTC
You see a kaleidoscopic spongesque speck pushed into a blur over your vision,
Sitting on air & feathers.
You sit on air rather than feathers,
Incased in drywall,
Surrounded by your worldly possessions,
Drowning in sweat,
Suffocating from air,
The hum of coupled fans waltzes’ into your skull,
A metallic mind prints mass media
Via a melodramatic faux-vintage situation into your skull,
There’s the pitter-patter of post-traumatic pondering in your skull,
A Mexican Coca-Cola clutched in your left hand,
Phillip-Morris owns the pocket on your breast so that they sit closest to your heart,
Pabst Blue Ribbon has carved rights to your liver,
You have an over analytic sense of humor and well-being.
Now you decode your day.
Now you chastise your intuition for lustful engagements with shadow people.
Though you have no qualms with this,
You enjoy yourself from time to time.
But cannot you imagine a more climatic proposition,
In a less disposable universe?
Where corners are cut,
Shoving dignity & quality out the door
Is where impractical risks are made.
However,
All you ponder now is the blur pushed into the edge of your eye.
Perhaps it is a microorganism rendezvousing with another microorganism.
Though they would have no concept of predetermination.
Jan 24, 2013
Jan 24, 2013 at 11:04 AM UTC
I fear how much my heart would bleed
To witness real tragedy
To sink in Flanders Field
To collapse in Choeung Ek
To scream for mercy in Nanking
To beg before the walls of Baghdad
A life of insulation
Pain relative to the first world
My heart hardly calcified
Compared to the bones of those who died
Hardly removed from the horrors of mankind
My drywall castle shields each breath
So hardly removed
From the stench of death
Sep 26, 2015
Sep 26, 2015 at 12:56 PM UTC
Last night I dreamed of roughened hands,
And pristine walls with spackled sand,
And feeling less,
But wanting more,
Of windows open,
And a creaking door.
Last night I dreamed of voices mild,
And smiling faces, and laughter loud,
I dreamed of grackles in parkling lots,
Of finding familiar and imagining what.
I dreamed of witchcraft and of lore,
And linen hidden in a dresser drawer.
I dreamed of you,
I dreamed of you,
And all the things I'd like to do.
Feb 6, 2013
Feb 6, 2013 at 2:40 PM UTC
Sometimes you might find me,
in a back alley, throwing up my guts,
in explosions, of green and orange.
Sometimes you might find me,
in a rundown apartment, with a ceiling fan
that arcs crookedly, hitting the ceiling in
explosions of drywall and poverty
Sometimes you might find me,
in a sunny park, scribbling lines in a
worn, tattered notebook,
in explosions, of ink and passion
Sometimes you might find me,
outlined in chalk, battered, bruised, ******
in explosions of red and abuse.
Sometimes you might find me,
standing beside you, walking with
and guiding you in explosions of
anger
and
I told you so's.
Feb 21, 2011
Feb 21, 2011 at 9:58 AM UTC
I had heard long, long ago
Of the language of the Eskimo,
Where cars and drywall lack a name,
But snow and snow are not the same.
For, you see, in Eskimo,
There are a thousand words for snow.
By the shore I'm wont to roam,
I see the water as my snow.
From crystal clear to stormy blue,
The ocean holds a thousand hues.
Brackish green and sunset red,
The whitecap thunderous demons bred,
Seductive black on moonless nights
And wind-whipped tops plateau with white.
So maybe I'm an Eskimo,
But too warm-blooded for the snow.
May 6, 2016
May 6, 2016 at 7:38 PM UTC
Desired to be more attuned with idols
Their private lives gleaned from
Stills and moving images cutting swaths across
Skyscraping billboards, TV screens
The sides of passing buses
Subway cars headed deeper in,
Further in, beneath
Magazine spreads pulled out for
ad-hoc posters taped and tacked across
the plaster-sputtering suburban drywall paths
Like screams in arctic winds
Many, the young mean-spirited things
Wanting kinship with these enemies
Trying to plot a course to
**** diagonally-up across
their strident wildlife scenes
Attuned with idols riding their
phantom wavelengths with the
maverick assistance of Reds and
water-cut pints of irish whiskey
Then Father comes in proclaiming
to have saved our democracy on
the whim of a lever-pull upon
a municipal voting machine
No interruptions now please
I will direct the favors of my unborn
I am honed in on what really matters:
Hemingway hedonism.
Getting dead with generations
slinking in and out of frame
from before and after
me
Nov 7, 2018
Nov 7, 2018 at 2:25 PM UTC
I felt your skin
strip away from me-
you said you’d be right back-
as you slipped into foreign bodies,
lips soft with easy dinners,
who forgot the lightbulb burning out,
the lid left rattling on the counter,
a suit of pots dented, stacked,
steam lifting from a rust-ringed drain.
That studio in the Texas Riviera
was never meant to last-
brown carpet, AC rattling,
bass beating through drywall,
neon from the Whataburger sign
bleeding through blinds.
We were two beautiful accidents
in a month-to-month, always paid late,
your sweat a spell pressed into my skin,
ankles grinding on parking lot gravel,
the road outside a forgotten promise.
And when you smiled I held you
like a chipped glass,
rim still sharp enough to cut.
The ember died against porcelain,
the glitter was swept with the crumbs.
Your armor slumped in the pantry corner,
rusted tins, lids unfastened.
You walked away, naked and ordinary,
the light left buzzing in the kitchen-
outside, asphalt slicked with oil-sheen,
my body, also, dissolved
into the shimmer of the road.
Sep 12, 2025
Sep 12, 2025 at 10:51 PM UTC
we've got to do a better job of getting lost in the relativity
**** your tooth fairy
...and suddenly i know things again
anthropologists taking notes
guttural longings
catharsis trailing down
but its delusion, soft swirls to the all
the source
we have now settled into the fortress
never seems like there was time
you are the clockwork
i am the pendulum
sycophant strange
the drywall notes
chanting
return to the what was that?
Oct 5, 2014
Oct 5, 2014 at 2:15 PM UTC
Nailed the nail
in the wall
There was a
a metal plate
Emptied entire box
of those nails
Smashed in wall!
Fell on floor
I threw picture
out of win-dow
Eating drywall so
**** on nails
When I wash
hands, soapy, soap
Popping bubbles, rub
clockwise no, yes?
~Alan Moore? *
Jan 5, 2017
Jan 5, 2017 at 10:50 PM UTC
You’re less subtle than susceptible
to the sun rising
to hands softer than mine.
The smoke colors your fingertips
tarnished turmeric gold with
life passing through them
in waves and ripples
like Warsaw’s children
playing on the wharf.
That foam splashes up behind a sun
the rose hips on your hips, an alabaster canvas.
Nothing falls gracefully.
Brake,
break,
grab, slide, ball
like an infant safe in your ******* womb.
Cars around growl poised in packs on round haunches.
I hear finesse in relation to broken teeth,
rats in relation to style.
Like writing,
your name
on an outstretched rubber band
watch yourself shrink
and fly away every time
I see you let go.
Your teeth like drywall looks
when you’re eyes’ve gone red.
I want you like a child’s first attempt
at perfume
too much alcohol
and pulling blush from a warm rose.
Apr 27, 2014
Apr 27, 2014 at 1:50 AM UTC
I was throwing raw eggs in the hallway,
shell on the ground,
yolk in the drywall,
when you evolved
into a bland
sun bleached towel
cut from terry cloth
and washed ten times,
worn on both sides, still
you dried me
threadbare and fraying
to the sound of eggs,
wipe up the mess,
never complain.
Jul 19, 2014
Jul 19, 2014 at 1:41 AM UTC
Quiet throughout all the rooms
I sing to drywall
Mar 5, 2016
Mar 5, 2016 at 8:18 PM UTC
It’s not about the money
it’s not unusual
it’s not over
it’s not a tumour
it’s not easy
it’s not easy being green
it’s not easy being me
it’s not enough
neverwinter
never let me go
never say never
never back down
fix dead pixel
fix drywall
fix design
fix dripping faucet
find me spot
find me
find me guilty
find me love
why are flamingos pink
why are people gay
why are flatworms flat
why are we here
why is the sky blue
why stop now
why am I so tired
why do cats purr
then I got high
then I learned French
then I saw her face
then I got bronchitis
what is quinoa
what is love
what is the fiscal cliff
what is dubstep
Apr 11, 2013
Apr 11, 2013 at 9:32 PM UTC
Warm a house, wreck a home.
Denial of cracks in pavement, in drywall.
My back is unbroken
My back is will never not be unbroken;
The only way back is to move forward,
Restart; Groundhog day.
The subtle difference experience makes.
Playing parts only goes so far,
You want the real thing,
But I will never be afraid again.
Jul 3, 2014
Jul 3, 2014 at 3:15 PM UTC