City Poems
The City Planners
by Margaret Atwood
Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
......
A Timbered Choir
by Wendell Berry
Even while I dreamed I prayed that what I saw was only fear and no foretelling,
for I saw the last known landscape destroyed for the sake
of the objective, the soil bludgeoned, the rock blasted.
Those who had wanted to go home would never get there now.
I visited the offices where for the sake of the objective the planners planned
at blank desks set in rows. I visited the loud factories
where the machines were made that would drive ever forward
toward the objective. I saw the forest reduced to stumps and gullies; I saw
the poisoned river, the mountain cast into the valley;
......
The City In Which I Loved You
by Li-Young Lee
And when, in the city in which I love you,
even my most excellent song goes unanswered,
andI mount the scabbed streets,
the long shouts of avenues,
and tunnel sunken night in search of you...
That I negotiate fog, bituminous
rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,
or two men jackaling a third in some alley
weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I
......
Lot's Wife
by Wislawa Szymborska
They say I looked back out of curiosity.
But I could have had other reasons.
I looked back mourning my silver bowl.
Carelessly, while tying my sandal strap.
So I wouldn't have to keep staring at the righteous nape
of my husband Lot's neck.
From the sudden conviction that if I dropped dead
he wouldn't so much as hesitate.
From the disobedience of the meek.
Checking for pursuers.
......
Exiled
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;
Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.
......
Frome
by Gilligan Snolepart
Frome is jolly nice
It has
A main street with too many barber shops
Pet firendly tea rooms full of sponge cakes
Caramel fudge and sea salt specialty chocolate
Restaurants only open three days a week
Burger joints with a vegan option - Always!
And Ubers that will be with you in seventeen minutes
For a £7.69 trip
......
Fancy Flower Frills
by Evelyn Judy Buehler
Ruffly and pretty
in the colors of warm bliss
Windblown and silly
Young and with life, so giddy
Walled garden in the city
Midnights
by Everleigh Blackburn
At the stroke of midnight,
The world falls silent and still.
The moon shines brightly above,
Casting shadows that chill.
The stars twinkle and dance,
In the night sky above.
A gentle breeze whispers secrets,
Of lost dreams and love.
......
The City Is a Garment
by Michael R. Burch
These are poems about city life, poems about modern life and relationships, Also poems about cities like Alexandria, Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Louisville, Memphis, Moscow, Nashville and Salzburg,
The City Is a Garment: Nashville
by Michael R. Burch
A rhinestone skein, a jeweled brocade of light,—
the city is a garment stretched so thin
her festive colors bleed into the night,
......
O' Toronto
by Lee-Ann Azzopardi
If I die here, let it be known
You were my happy place
Not Disney
As the smell of the sewers
Cascade into my nostrils
I think, one day, I'll grab the literati
Of this city and be praised
O' Toronto let down yr hair
And save me from these small town doldrums
That put a chain around my ankles to
......
