You know, I think that Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is an urban tale, would make a good urban poem
Think about it, it's a story about people within a city, real people, suffering, struggling
About as real as you can get
Urban poetry does not necessarily have to be about a place, but about people in that place, their emotions, their lives, the weight and fullness of their existence
Smoke and Steel (an excerpt )
By Carl Sandburg
A bar of steel it is only
Smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man.
A runner of fire ran in it, ran out, ran somewhere else,
And left smoke and the blood of a man
And the finished steel, chilled and blue
o fire runs in, runs out, runs somewhere else again,
And the bar of steel is a gun, a wheel, a nail, a shovel,
A rudder under the sea, a steering-gear in the sky;
And always dark in the heart and through it,
Smoke and the blood of a man.
Pittsburg, Youngstown, Gary they make their steel with men.
In the blood of men and the ink of chimneys
The smoke nights write their oaths?
Smoke into steel and blood into steel
Homestead, Braddock, Birmingham, they make their steel with men.
Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.
The birdmen drone
in the blue; it is steel
a motor sings and zooms.
Give me the Splendid, Silent Sun (excerpt)
By Walt Whitman
Keep your splendid, silent sun;
Keep your woods, O Nature, and the quiet places by the woods;
Keep your fields of clover and timothy, and your corn-fields and orchards;
Keep the blossoming buckwheat fields, where the Ninth-month bees hum;
Give me faces and streets! give me these phantoms incessant and endless along the trottoirs!
Give me interminable eyes! give me women! give me comrades and lovers by the thousand!
Let me see new ones every day! let me hold new ones by the hand every day!
Give me such shows! give me the streets of Manhattan!
Give me Broadway, with the soldiers marching?give me the sound of the trumpets and drums
(The soldiers in companies or regiments some, starting away, flush'd and reckless;
Some, their time up, returning, with thinn'd ranks young, yet very old, worn, marching, noticing nothing;)'
Give me the shores and the wharves heavy-fringed with the black ships!
O such for me! O an intense life! O full to repletion, and varied!
The life of the theatre, bar-room, huge hotel, for me!
The saloon of the steamer! the crowded excursion for me! the torch-light procession!
The dense brigade, bound for the war, with high piled military wagons following;
People, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants;
Manhattan streets, with their powerful throbs, with the beating drums, as now;
The endless and noisy chorus, the rustle and clank of muskets, (even the sight of the wounded;)
Manhattan crowds, with their turbulent musical chorus with varied chorus, and light of the sparkling eyes
Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.
Birthplace Revisited
By Gregory Corso
I stand in the dark light in the dark
street
and look up at my window, I was
born there.
The lights are on; other people are
moving about.
I am with raincoat; cigarette in
mouth,
hat??? over eye, hand on gat.
I cross the street and enter the
building.
The garbage cans haven't stopped
smelling.
I walk up the first flight; Dirty Ears
aims a knife at me?
I pump him full of lost watches.
Pity the Nation
By Lawrence Ferlinghetti.
Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty
Alone
By Edgar Allan Poe 1809-1849 Edgar Allan Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were I have not seen
As others saw I could not bring??
My?? passions from a common spring
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone
And all I lov'd I lov'd alone
Then in my childhood in the dawn
Of a most stormy life was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still
From the torrent, or the fountain
From the red cliff of the mountain
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by
From the thunder, and the storm
And the cloud that took the form
When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view
Sorry Soupers for being absent, I'm SICK YET AGAIN
Since my daughter started kindergarten, my house has been under attack from every new bug in the area
This one comes with a cough, headache from hell, high fever
Merry coughcoughcough Christmas!!!!
I am totally depleted
Good and night