"wheelbarrow" poems
YOUR bony head, Jazbo, O dock walloper,
Those grappling hooks, those wheelbarrow handlers,
The dome and the wings of you, ******
The red roof and the door of you,
I know where your songs came from.
I know why God listens to your, "Walk All Over God's Heaven."
I heard you shooting craps, "My baby's going to have a new dress."
I heard you in the cinders, "I'm going to live anyhow until I die."
I saw five of you with a can of beer on a summer night and I listened to the five of you
harmonizing six ways to sing, "Way Down Yonder in the Cornfield."
I went away asking where I come from.
10.9k
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
8.4k
So much depends
on a yellow
Bulldozer
Caked with mud
Beside thoughts
of payday
Jan 20, 2015
Jan 20, 2015 at 4:03 PM UTC
And she fell and fell down the hole..Hit the bottom and remained there
Darkness and depression surrounded her
She was too weak to move or speak
And so weeks turned into month turned into years
One day she opened her eyes and a slice of bread lay in her lap
Hesitant at first she nibbled it
The next day there were two slices and she ate them
Time passed until she felt strong enough stand up
Determined she climbed up the hole again
Above the ground she was flashed by the sudden brightness
The cerulean blue sky
The soft breeze
The birds singing mellifluous songs
The sweet scent of honeysuckle….
She was not used to it
But she found bliss in all these things
Years passed but one day
She returned to the entrance of the hole with a wheelbarrow of soil
And filled it up until it was no longer
So that nobody could ever go there
Mar 25, 2023
Mar 25, 2023 at 5:09 AM UTC
I had not been born yet.
Still, I can see you at your labor -
alone, scouring the meadows
for the stones -
lifting their gray shoulders
from the moist earth -
pulling them from the
green grasp of briars,
goldenrod, and
Queen Anne’s Lace.
The smell of the earth
must have filled you with
your own childhood memories -
of plowing fields
and cold mornings
trudging across barn yards
mud thick on your boots -
promising yourself
that someday you would leave
and never return.
I can hear the pick axe -
the sharp strikes
against the stones,
and the dull thud
when the earth
swallowed the blade -
and the deep exhalations
when the stones tumbled into
the old wheelbarrow – new then -
that now leans rusting
against my garden shed.
Some of the stones were so large -
far too large for one man –
how did you move them?
I look at the old photographs
and you seem so young –
so much younger
than I am today - and so thin –
staring off-frame beyond the camera.
What were you looking for
in those fields?
I can see you sorting the stones,
stacking them -
building and unbuilding
and rebuilding the walls
and terraces
until the walls were true
and the terraces level
and planted with dogwood,
birches, soft grass for bare feet,
and bordered with roses.
Did you know
that you were building my castle?
That the highest terrace
would be my tower and keep?
I remember calling out to my
knights, my legionnaires,
and tribesmen –
rallying them in defense
of the citadel – ready for
the coming siege.
I also remember looking out
across that verdant kingdom
for the last time -
no longer a king or a boy –
and miles away, across the river
to the west, I imagined
the new home that awaited us.
I couldn’t know
how far away it would be
or what it meant to leave.
This morning,
as I looked out across
the garden that I have built,
I felt the weightlessness of time
and its gravity
settling me into place.
For a brief moment I had
the sensation that I was standing
on the shoulders of
gathered stones.
(for my father, Guy Spencer.)
Tom Spencer © 2015
Jul 4, 2015
Jul 4, 2015 at 12:13 PM UTC
You can see it already: chalks and ochers;
Country crossed with a thousand furrow-lines;
Ground-level rooftops hidden by the shrubbery;
Sporadic haystacks standing on the grass;
Smoky old rooftops tarnishing the landscape;
A river (not Cayster or Ganges, though:
A feeble Norman salt-infested watercourse);
On the right, to the north, bizarre terrain
All angular--you'd think a shovel did it.
So that's the foreground. An old chapel adds
Its antique spire, and gathers alongside it
A few gnarled elms with grumpy silhouettes;
Seemingly tired of all the frisky breezes,
They carp at every gust that stirs them up.
At one side of my house a big wheelbarrow
Is rusting; and before me lies the vast
Horizon, all its notches filled with ocean blue;
***** and hens spread their gildings, and converse
Beneath my window; and the rooftop attics,
Now and then, toss me songs in dialect.
In my lane dwells a patriarchal rope-maker;
The old man makes his wheel run loud, and goes
Retrograde, hemp wreathed tightly round the midriff.
I like these waters where the wild gale scuds;
All day the country tempts me to go strolling;
The little village urchins, book in hand,
Envy me, at the schoolmaster's (my lodging),
As a big schoolboy sneaking a day off.
The air is pure, the sky smiles; there's a constant
Soft noise of children spelling things aloud.
The waters flow; a linnet flies; and I say: "Thank you!
Thank you, Almighty God!"--So, then, I live:
Peacefully, hour by hour, with little fuss, I shed
My days, and think of you, my lady fair!
I hear the children chattering; and I see, at times,
Sailing across the high seas in its pride,
Over the gables of the tranquil village,
Some winged ship which is traveling far away,
Flying across the ocean, hounded by all the winds.
Lately it slept in port beside the quay.
Nothing has kept it from the jealous sea-surge:
No tears of relatives, nor fears of wives,
Nor reefs dimly reflected in the waters,
Nor importunity of sinister birds.
4.4k
You were always a grand mystery to me
Just like that ten thousand piece puzzle I had always attempted
Scrambling on the floor
Trying to fit a million jigsaws together
That were from different puzzles
There was one in the corner of the room from a puzzle
Of a few cats sitting in a wheelbarrow
And ones from a dolphin in mid air
Trying to flip through a hoop
As mesmerizing as it was to finger through the pieces
It sure was hell trying to shove them together
But that's just it
We can never shove the pieces of life together
Especially someone else's
It never works out
So perhaps if you let that person be
They'll figure out their own jigsaw
Complete the cats in the wheelbarrow picture
And finally see that dolphin jump through the hoop
Mar 21, 2014
Mar 21, 2014 at 11:34 PM UTC
the land very well of my tongue but I was asked to know the tongue of my land in the tongue of my land. doc the veterinarian hired me anyway. I was to myself in the dog cages and in their runs I would kneel and let the hose seize with water. I was to myself in the sick and brick room fearful the slow cat would rent with its curl my stomach. I was to myself when the parrot so parrot told me in so many words separated partially its upper bill on purpose. was I dumped the dogs full asleep and half from a wheelbarrow into a pit and I in trouble doing it when we were busy. was I would basket my arms upside down above three dogs a day at most while the needle made sometimes the back of my hand and somehow on that four dog day my chin such that it got me my funny talk and fired and I had to tell my home early dad.
Jul 13, 2012
Jul 13, 2012 at 1:15 PM UTC
A neighbor of mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, “Why not?”
In casting about for a corner
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, “Just it.”
And he said, “That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm.”
It was not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load.
And hid from anyone passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but ****
A hill each of potatoes,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
Now when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, “I know!
It’s as when I was a farmer——”
Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.
3.5k
the destroyers are out to destroy
they are the heat of the night
napalm-burned bodies trembling in the jungle
they are bullets nestled silently into the back of one's head
babies dangling from their mother's limp arms as
she builds herself a new body
made out of the countryside & the trees & dynamite
and she will bring the explosion at dawn
i could fit the memory of last night in a wine bottle
i fell asleep in the dumpster and you kissed me with your wine stained lips
in the morning i hoisted the sunrise into a wheelbarrow and headed west.
now i don't know who or what i am
all i need is a soapbox to stand on
or a cliff to climb
a little solitude
i need to be regurgitated as smoke
hanging over three lanes of asphalt
i need a valley with soft green carpet
and a pretty girl's adolescent thighs
i need my face shoved in her *****
i need the enormous bliss of a long afternoon
i need to find the intersection of
our intimate streets.
Jan 18, 2014
Jan 18, 2014 at 2:06 AM UTC
so much depends
upon
the wet air and
rain
that made the wheelbarrow
rust
and chickens
*****
May 14, 2013
May 14, 2013 at 8:38 PM UTC
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
3.2k
*so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens*
So much depends
upon
a girl who
can
barely stand up
on
her own two
feet.
Nov 12, 2012
Nov 12, 2012 at 2:48 PM UTC
I met a gorilla
Gardener
In a jungle
Of native species
She kept her oxeye
Daisy on me the whole time
A cowslips past unnoticed
By the blush red columbine
Lily of the valley was
Sporting a fox’s glove
The cornflower and the cardinal
Seek guidance from above
A swamp of soured milk weeds
Seeps past your eyes
The firmly rooted ragged robin
Looks up awestruck at the skies
The bergamot was wild
Running circles round the yarrow
Black eyed Susan moped along
With her bluebell filled wheelbarrow
Good dogwood sets paw after paw
Creeping through the common nettle
As lance-leaved coreopsis
Charges in to test his mettle
I left a gorilla
Gardening
In a jungle
Of native species
Aug 4, 2019
Aug 4, 2019 at 4:19 PM UTC
Casper was ****** in the *** by fifty Muslims.
He was ****** twenty-five times on top.
He was also ****** thirty-seven times bent over a wheelbarrow
And eleven more times at the bank.
He was ****** at night in the ***
His *** was a bit ruptured.
He was born for getting ass-rammed!
Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!
Casper got ****** in the *** brutally
And the fifty Muslims' ***** was ****** on his tonsils.
He was up to his eyeballs in Muslim ****
He was so full of *** he had to ****
This guy really took a **** pushed away the Muslim ****
And took his own ********
And started ******* himself in his *** brutally.
Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!
Casper was taken to a hospital by an ambulance.
At the hospital, he told the doctor to say ******* licker".
After the doctor said ******* licker".
He got on top of Casper and started ******* him in his *** brutally.
So far, Casper was diagnosed with holy freakaholic
And became loose for super duper maneuvers!
Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!
Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!
Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper, Casper
Casper the homosexual!
Casper the homosexual!
Casper the homosexual!
Casper the homosexual friendly ghost!
Rock over London, Rock on Chicago!
Western Union: It's the Fastest Way To Send Money!
Jan 23, 2014
Jan 23, 2014 at 10:25 PM UTC
Oh, phalo skeptic,
part your wave for skirted ***** surfers,
tho, trout, tripe, and titmice thrill thrice..
Will duct tape save us?
Urge the Zamboni machine,
to microwave ice.
Quince down that pouting sphincter,
Oh, the tides do swell
on the morrow of passing fish.
Wheelbarrow pious.
Swift, awesome biblionauts,
Fire! Fire! Pail, Pail thy watered pitch.
Know this, every potato is somewhere vane ...
I'm busy now, rude duuude,
have you sweated a recumbent lout?
Indent chill mots,
Pete, I'm big in Europe, pal,
Have seen me dance the Macarena?
Fool, fool on that high hill,!
Take care when licking spiny urchins
Oy! I scare myself.
Jan 19, 2011
Jan 19, 2011 at 2:34 PM UTC
the music was playing so lovely then it found a scratch. found a scratch. found a scratch.
and when it was so lovely
that music in my head
the wild din, swoosh round about from being a kid
and then, the record found a scratch. a scratch. a scratch.
mom's song she sang to me in her arms was beautiful dreamer. beautiful dreamer.
scraaaaaaatch.
the song became out of key.
lullaby baby, gonna make you cry. here's auntie schizophrenia.
we will welcome her into our song, too.
auntie schizie sounds like the scraaaaaaaaatch.
the scratch in my young mind. in my mind.
i'm bloated with memories.
words said,
mistakes made,
wrong choices.
can't dance no more you see: the record is scratched.
no daddy don't look. i'll hide away. hide away.
towels under the door. covered in clothes. shower in fear.
the record scratch again. the record scratch again.
the music once came from riding in his wheelbarrow. carefree. music.
become a teen and the record scratched.
i dreamed i held August in my arms.
Held her tight and cried into her thick black hair. i held her so tight.
i miss you.
the record scratched.
it was music once. i thought it would always be there.
but the record once again scratched.
so now the pills make music. like angels in my brain.
i dreamed God allowed me to hear His Holy choir.
Sounds like nothing else. Music. No scratches anymore. The music is inside.
I wish He'd pluck me out, but He will not.
He doesn't love me enough to take me in time. and so, the record will scratch.
these pills in my head right now and music again.
sweet.
harmony.
light.
float.
yesterday they made me shake, sweat, fight my sleep.
he held my shaking body. unsure. he can't know.
he wants to fix it.
i keep it hidden.
it will scratch his record and end his music too.
pluck pluck scratch scratch.
the music was playing so lovely then it found a scratch.
found a scratch.
found a scratch.
Aug 25, 2013
Aug 25, 2013 at 9:02 AM UTC
Angry, Annoyed, and Jobless
Starting to feel hopeless wondering what it takes to make it and if I have it or if I can even find it.
Friends changing, time passing, learning the youth is not everlasting.
Face changing showing some aging starting to feel the body aching.
Looking at all the time taken. Many roads could have but should have that were never taken.
Searching for employment in a maze of internet searches and job applications.
Getting red starting to steam with the same response with different logos.
Not knowing why it's always a no go. Went to school got a couple of degrees.
One is just a mantel decoration made of cheap balsa wood and lies.
The other is great but never enough. Wanting more companies always want more.
I think education and jobs are working together.
Education is the wheelbarrow that takes all of your money
Jobs is the boot kicking you in the *** to remind you that you do not have any and that you need more.
Every time we pass go with another job interview we get a glimpse of hope but it drives off in a car or sails away in the corporate battleship.
That leaves only the dog to **** on our dreams and leaves us wondering where is our dream of lots of money and a big top hat.
Just left to feel thimble like and try to iron out the details of your life
I am tired of looking tired of getting told no. Going to do it on my ******* own.
Load up the cannon with what money, hope, and dreams I have left and shoot for the stars and hope I can reach mine and fulfill my dream and escape this monopoly game of life.
Feb 3, 2012
Feb 3, 2012 at 11:49 PM UTC
i am pushing you away
i am doing it.
i beckon you closer so
you can leave me
because im used to it
i'm used to scaring
so i remain safe.
because if you stay
i will ruin you
and make you a
boiling mug of dried out
hibiscus leaves that once glowed with the pink of ignorance
and will burn your throat and make it hurt to swallow so you believe that you are sick and you must begin to ease the shallowness of our framed existence.
in the wheelbarrow of neurons
its my love that refuses to grease the wheels
Mar 31, 2015
Mar 31, 2015 at 11:44 AM UTC
School urges us
ever to accumulate
yet what dawns in
maturity is selectivity
not bulk - how I soon
began to seek white
chickens and essence
of red wheelbarrow
glazed with rain.
(c) C J Heyworth July 2014
Jul 16, 2014
Jul 16, 2014 at 6:59 AM UTC
umbrae
for Genevieve
your prayers include a terrible notebook, an invalid friend, and a man believing separately that we are here to place turtles upright. when you walk into the ocean you walk into the ocean on your hands. you do this to protect your knees. many think you are magnificent and these many you are on the verge of telling about the Saturdays that bore you and about the spider you repeatedly squash. the resurrected spider that is not a gift. if you could you’d give your youngest son a woman he could either swim through or swoon inside. a woman who could put him to sleep and rock in a chair the boat of her belly so untroubled to be thinking twice about twins. you’d be sad, or sleepy, and get to choose.
before I go to war
the dark readies in the oven.
my father washes with a wet sock a knee exposed.
my mother
wears one dry sock which she removes
and makes into a puppet. or an oven mitt.
both
silence the hand.
idolatry
a red wheelbarrow, maybe-
but not
so much
depends
on a poem
about it
Aug 15, 2012
Aug 15, 2012 at 5:27 PM UTC
best if i say right off this is gonna be *****
so if you believe in god or are under 30
or can't ride the rides in Disneyland
disembark
**** I forgot what
I had in me dream,
****
I stomp and jump up again and say **** It!!!!
Fucken all this crap!
I am so tired of chasing visions, so tired of lying women
so tired of every buzz.
God ******* **** **** me!
**** with a capital F I forgot to add the emphasis.
So full of ****** rhymes so full of bad times.
I just need to calm down, okay.
i am ok.
So, where was I, geez, a full load wheelbarrow falling **** into my lap.
I make it day to night, and sleep alone again. What have I to look forward to tomorrow. A hard day labor and a lonely night.
A fist full of dollars I **** away might as well just take a crap on this whole world wipe my *** with a hundred dollar bill, then roll it up
and snoot a big *** of candy again up my nose.
I know you are tired of my whining. Look, I got a Major, a doctorate even,
in wallowing. I will never be okay as long as I camoflauge my feelings. So, i am spilling them all out now, puking my guts up on your eyes in lil a big Z
Nov 2, 2014
Nov 2, 2014 at 11:56 PM UTC
William Carlos Williams:
“so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.”
I don't know what it means, but I know it exists and that Dr. Williams wrote it while waiting for a child to die.
So, perhaps, it’s his way to dedicate something to that poor child.
Nothing depends in the red wheelbarrow glazed with rain water, beside the white chickens, but maybe that’s what was around him while the child was dying, and his death is depending upon...something. Or his life is depending on something.
Or maybe the child loved that red wheelbarrow, or it was a toy red wheelbarrow.
Or maybe the child contracted his fatal end from touching an old wheelbarrow.
But either way, the red wheelbarrow was glazed in rainwater, beside the white chickens
A child died
And so much depended on that wheelbarrow.
Or did it?
:;,
Mar 20, 2017
Mar 20, 2017 at 8:58 PM UTC