Too Much

after William Carlos Williams

I depend on too much and many, 7,000 or so,

leaning on yellow-brick walls, slipping, too much

to bear, handing compliments back like “it depends.”

I deserve to be looked horizontally upon,

not a plea deal, washed with velvet bloodstains upon a

pebbled beach, beached I wail, but all that comes out is red,

so I metaphorize, teach you how my fortune rolls, a slick wheel.

If my runes tell the story of a lost cause, leave me in my barrow,

I might be a forgotten pharaoh, misadvised ‘til embalmed, glazed

with resin, sticking bandages I could’ve used a lot earlier, bargaining with

a lackey of Death, maybe not the big guy, but the one that comes with the rain. 

Too much I depend upon, tsunamis made of anything but water.

I crush dreams like sugar pills in the coziest bed, a strange me I lay beside, 

hoping that everything I’ve asked for never comes to fruition, planting the

seeds of a garden soiled with flooded wastes, and yet a chrysanthemum shines white,

just petals above that ruined monolith, every seed I plant a feast for those ravenous chickens.

Graeme Melcher ‘26

This is a Golden Shovel poem, utilizing the words of "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams at the end of each line. I was inspired to write about the overwhelming experiences of high school, using the Golden Shovel format to emphasize the underlying connection we have to simpler times.