so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside a moribund
insurgency.
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January 31, 2005
The “an Iraqi twist on the red wheelbarrow poem” poem
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Comment by Brian J. on 1/31 @ 10:36 pm #
Damn, I love Edward James Olmos.
Comment by Jeff B. on 1/31 @ 11:01 pm #
Who does this pastiche? You’ve hit a cultural marker that I don’t recognize.
(I feel provincial.)
Comment by Jeff Goldstein on 1/31 @ 11:04 pm #
William Carlos Williams, who ends his with
the white
chickens.
Comment by c on 2/1 @ 12:13 am #
Is this about how wheelbarrows used for dirt and rubble carried Iraqis to the polls? Their determination is beautiful.
How could we have gotten so careless as to have big buses with slashed tires? We have our own spoilers. Less lethal, but ugly.
Comment by moge on 2/1 @ 12:39 am #
Very clever. There must be something about a good election that brings out the poet in us all.
Williams’ poem about the cold plums would work nicely, too.
Comment by Brian J. on 2/1 @ 1:49 am #
William Carlos Williams? Didn’t he play the lieutenant in Miami Vice?
Comment by Ana on 2/1 @ 2:08 am #
Damn. Here he goes with the “way over my head” blogging again. Hate that. Must return to Dr. Seuss books and Mr. Rogers videos to bolster self esteem.
Comment by CraigC on 2/1 @ 2:09 am #
No, that was Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.
Comment by Mel on 2/1 @ 4:41 am #
How lucky I am that my kid just had a book report on “Love that Dog”. Otherwise I would have NFI what the hell that just was!
Comment by Desert Cat on 2/1 @ 5:48 am #
That’s probably the only William Carlos Williams poem I know on sight, though I had a few more longer ones almost memorized somewhere way back.
Comment by Nordicgirl on 2/1 @ 6:35 am #
This, with a face
like a mashed blood orange
that suddenly
would get eyes
and look up and scream
A kind of legitimacy! A kind of legitimacy!
Comment by JWebb on 2/1 @ 7:21 am #
Dylan Thomas had a similar poem, except the wheelbarrow was glazed with steaming puke.
And of course, he was raging . . .
Comment by Brian J. on 2/1 @ 2:40 pm #
Isn’t there another stanza that says the white chickens were delicious?
Comment by Rightwingsparkle on 2/1 @ 4:08 pm #
I have a poem too.
But be warned. It was written by my 12 yr old and it isn’t funny, just sweet and sad in that still innocent 12 yr old kind of way.
Comment by McGehee on 2/1 @ 4:48 pm #
There once was a moonbat called Fiskie
Whose politics were just a bit frisky
He was quite taken aback
By elections in Iraq
And it got him all mad and tsk-tsky.
Comment by Joe on 2/1 @ 5:20 pm #
I greatly enjoy a good poem deconstuction, as I’m sure you all do, so forthwith:
so much depends
upon
an adult diaper on
a red wheel
barrow
a Communist circle (around?)
a castrated immature pig
glazed with rain
water
all wet
beside a moribund
insurgency.
except for a dead rebellion
But what a Communist, castrated pig in a wet diaper has to do with a dead rebellion is beyond me. Sometimes, Jeff, you don’t make any sense at all …
Comment by kyle on 2/1 @ 6:47 pm #
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
as freedom’s dawn
Comment by Douglas Thiele on 11/5 @ 3:44 pm #
DESERT WARFARE
by Doug Thiele
I am the child I am the child
under the rubble beneath the broken palm
bulldozed under beside the scorched dates
I am the child I am the child
crushed no eyes one of forty thousand a receiver of your anonymous death
I am the child I am the child
you did not see from your cockpits
nor did you see my grieving mother
I am the child I am the child
bathed in bullets swaddled in ashes
beyond your caring beneath your contempt
Comment by Jeff Goldstein on 11/5 @ 6:56 pm #
And I am the child
spared your rape rooms
my parents spared too
And I am the child
who is now free. So
thank you, Mr Bush!
Comment by Douglas Thiele on 11/6 @ 12:26 am #
Anyone who believes that the Iraqi people are free or that Bush invaded the country for any other reason than to pay back Halliburton and Bechtel and Enron and the other corporations for getting him elected lives in an alternate universe.
And as to rape rooms, it’s bad form to bring up the admittedly barbaric practice of some Iraqis when the current American regime and its puppet government have sent countless Iraqis off to torture camps, both foreign and domestic, to be mutilated and murdered.
The “child” you speak of will be a whole lot closer to freedom when the American forces curtail their invasion.
Comment by Desert Cat on 11/6 @ 12:32 am #
Anyone who believes that the Iraqi people are free or that Bush invaded the country for any other reason than to pay back Halliburton and Bechtel and Enron and the other corporations for getting him elected lives in an alternate universe.
..from the one you’re living in? Yeah, we’ve pretty much concluded that.
Welcome to real life.
Comment by Jeff Goldstein on 11/6 @ 12:46 am #
But Desert Cat, Douglas Thiele fancies himself a poet.
Don’t you see? He’s right because he feels greater than do you and I.
He’s one of those who loves to agitate for change, but he’s never actually for any of the means of achieving it. Lucky for him, though, either condition leaves him available to feel the suffering of others—and so provides him with subject matter for his poetry.
Convenient, that.
Some of us don’t feel quite so driven to pretense, however.
Comment by Douglas Thiele on 11/6 @ 12:56 am #
I guess in your own quaint way you’re trying to respond to my post. And while cleverness doesn’t seem to be quite within your grasp, maybe the facts of “real life” are easier for you to understand.
Tell you what: I don’t have the time or interest in educating you, so go look up the PNAC and check out their Iraqi invasion plans made before Bush’s boys ever got elected. Dig a little further and you’ll discover that Hussein was YOUR boy: the US (read CIA) set him up in power (see the photos of Rumsfeld shaking his hand) and provided him with the weapons (and the instructions on how to use them) to kill the Kurds. When he got too big for his britches, as many US backed petty dictators seem to, he had to go. We didn’t raise a finger when he gassed his own people, but when he started stealing “our” oil, that was the end for Hussein.
Things are lots worse in Iraq now than they were under the petty dictator Hussein. That doesn’t count the tens of thousands of innocents killed by both militaries or, more relevant to us I think, the tens of thousands of US troops killed and wounded for the administration’s greed, a crime for which I hold this administration directly responsible.
Comment by Douglas Thiele on 11/6 @ 1:06 am #
Wow, Jeff! How smarmy and disingenuous to say:
“He’s one of those who loves to agitate for change, but he’s never actually for any of the means of achieving it. ”
I see you have an antiquainted view of poets as some Rupert Brooke bit of fluff rather than having a 21st century knowledge of the field. There are two problems with your post (other than it’s perplexingly superior tone): first, you don’t know me or my activism and so, make an illogical assumption. Second, doesn’t it seem just a bit ironic that you condemn poets for non involvement in what you see as the “real” world while you spend your time sending your comments through cyberspace?
PS: I don’t mind being doubleteamed, so bring it.
Comment by Desert Cat on 11/6 @ 1:22 am #
It sounds like you must be a very important person in your universe, seeing how you’ve apparently presided over the trial of those eevil Rethuglicans and Chimpy McHalliburtin and found them guilty of such crimes.
Wow. A poet and a judge. I’m impressed.
Double teamed? Tell ya what. If you really want to show off your bravado and wow the crowds, why not take a look at the top of the page and find the link that says “home”. Click it and share some of your poetry and legal acumen in one of the current threads. Seeing as how this thread is eleven months old, your talents are being underexposed.
Turing word: “group”. Let’s give Dougie a big right-wing group hug.
Comment by Jeff Goldstein on 11/6 @ 1:34 am #
Yes, Douglas. My grasp of literature is not so fine as yours, I guess. Just don’t tell my students.
Beyond that I’ll say no more. Desert Cat is right: this thread is 11 months old. If you want to post your laughable poetry here, go for it.
HELP US FEEL, DOUGLAS!