Login
|
Join PoetrySoup
Home
Submit Poems
Login
Sign Up
Member Home
My Poems
My Quotes
My Profile & Settings
My Inboxes
My Outboxes
Soup Mail
Contest Results/Status
Contests
Poems
Poets
Famous Poems
Famous Poets
Dictionary
Types of Poems
Quotes
Short Stories
Articles
Forum
Blogs
Poem of the Day
New Poems
Resources
Syllable Counter
Anthology
Grammar Check
Greeting Card Maker
Classifieds
Member Area
Member Home
My Profile and Settings
My Poems
My Quotes
My Short Stories
My Articles
My Comments Inboxes
My Comments Outboxes
Soup Mail
Poetry Contests
Contest Results/Status
Followers
Poems of Poets I Follow
Friend Builder
Soup Social
Poetry Forum
New/Upcoming Features
The Wall
Soup Facebook Page
Who is Online
Link to Us
Member Poems
Poems - Top 100 New
Poems - Top 100 All-Time
Poems - Best
Poems - by Topic
Poems - New (All)
Poems - New (PM)
Poems - New by Poet
Poems - Random
Poems - Read
Poems - Unread
Member Poets
Poets - Best New
Poets - New
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems
Poets - Top 100 Most Poems Recent
Poets - Top 100 Community
Poets - Top 100 Contest
Famous Poems
Famous Poems - African American
Famous Poems - Best
Famous Poems - Classical
Famous Poems - English
Famous Poems - Haiku
Famous Poems - Love
Famous Poems - Short
Famous Poems - Top 100
Famous Poets
Famous Poets - Living
Famous Poets - Most Popular
Famous Poets - Top 100
Famous Poets - Best
Famous Poets - Women
Famous Poets - African American
Famous Poets - Beat
Famous Poets - Cinquain
Famous Poets - Classical
Famous Poets - English
Famous Poets - Haiku
Famous Poets - Hindi
Famous Poets - Jewish
Famous Poets - Love
Famous Poets - Metaphysical
Famous Poets - Modern
Famous Poets - Punjabi
Famous Poets - Romantic
Famous Poets - Spanish
Famous Poets - Suicidal
Famous Poets - Urdu
Famous Poets - War
Poetry Resources
Anagrams
Bible
Book Store
Character Counter
Cliché Finder
Poetry Clichés
Common Words
Copyright Information
Grammar
Grammar Checker
Homonym
Homophones
How to Write a Poem
Lyrics
Love Poem Generator
New Poetic Forms
Plagiarism Checker
Poetics
Poetry Art
Publishing
Random Word Generator
Spell Checker
Store
What is Good Poetry?
Word Counter
Email Poem
Your IP Address: 3.141.100.120
From Email:
Required
Email Address Not Valid.
To Email:
Email Address Not Valid.
Required
Subject
Required
Personal Note:
Poem Title:
Poem
In flat America, in Chicago, Graceland cemetery on the German North Side. Forty feet of Corinthian candle celebrate Pullman embedded lonely raisin in a cake of concrete. The Potter Palmers float in an island parthenon. Barons of hogfat, railroads and wheat are postmarked with angels and lambs. But the Getty tomb: white, snow patterned in a triangle of trees swims dappled with leaf shadow, sketched light arch within arch delicate as fingernail moons. The green doors should not be locked. Doors of fern and flower should not be shut. Louis Sullivan, I sit on your grave. It is not now good weather for prophets. Sun eddies on the steelsmoke air like sinking honey. On the inner green door of the Getty tomb (a thighbone's throw from your stone) a marvel of growing, blooming, thrusting into seed: how all living wreathe and insinuate in the circlet of repetition that never repeats: ever new birth never rebirth. Each tide pool microcosm spiraling from your hand. Sullivan, you had another five years when your society would give you work. Thirty years with want crackling in your hands. Thirty after years with cities flowering and turning grey in your beard. All poets are unemployed nowadays. My country marches in its sleep. The past structures a heavy mausoleum hiding its iron frame in masonry. Men burn like grass while armies grow. Thirty years in the vast rumbling gut of this society you stormed to be used, screamed no louder than any other breaking voice. The waste of a good man bleeds the future that's come in Chicago, in flat America, where the poor still bleed from the teeth, housed in sewers and filing cabinets, where prophets may spit into the wind till anger sleets their eyes shut, where this house that dances the seasons and the braid of all living and the joy of a man making his new good thing is strange, irrelevant as a meteor, in Chicago, in flat America in this year of our burning.
Type the characters you see in the picture
Required