Best Urban Sprawl Poems
Now brown, the once-blue brook meanders down
To dams where sludge has chased beavers away
As species die, our Mother casts a frown
For Nature can’t control man or his way
From fracking, tapping minerals, she groans
She coughs, red lava spews from Mother’s pores
With waste-clogged arteries, she weeps and moans
The very sight of man she now abhors
As Nature inhales toxins, man’s forewarned
Her colors change from purity to rage
Depleting ozone, Earth has now been warmed
Tsunamis, hurricanes take center stage
We shed our tears, entrapped by urban sprawl
But Mother turns her head and lets them fall
*December 5, 2018
Written for John Hamilton’s “Colour of My Heart” Contest
Inspired by “Colors of the Wind” from the movie “Pocahontas”
Categories:
urban sprawl, nature, pollution,
Form:
Sonnet
Don Christmas socks and ugly sweaters, All.
‘Tis not the season for your being shy.
Come jingling to the Worldwide Christmas Ball.
Let not your woes cast over you a pall.
Be like the brightest star that lights night’s sky.
Don Christmas socks and ugly sweaters, All.
From sunny Sydney to cold Montreal;
I call to every single soul I spy:
Come jingling to the Worldwide Christmas Ball.
This party goes beyond your urban sprawl.
It’s time to laugh. That is the reason why!
Don Christmas socks and ugly sweaters, All!
Pretend the world’s a dance floor wall to wall.
On peace and harmony we’re getting high.
Come jingling to the Worldwide Christmas Ball.
So decorate yourself, not just the hall!
Come on, fine lads and lassies; just say AYE!
Don Christmas socks and ugly sweaters, ALL.
Come jingling to the Worldwide Christmas Ball.
Dec. 16, 2020 for Joseph May's 'Deck The Halls' Poetry Contest
For those who don't know: Ugly sweaters is the term to refer to decorated Christmas sweaters. I kind of enjoy them!!
Categories:
urban sprawl, christmas,
Form:
Villanelle
For those left behind
feeling the pace,
urban sprawl
remnants of the human race.
Revisited, looking in
cosmetic world
the haze removed
the urban battlefield.
© Harry J Horsman 2020
Categories:
urban sprawl, angst, anxiety,
Form:
Free verse
My roots run deep & strong here in this place you curse & scorn
I couldn’t think of a better place than here to have been born
you say this is a dead end town, where dreams whither & die
I know this town has nurtured my dreams, seen them soar & fly
You say the cowboy has left & gone, run off by urban sprawl
Yet every morning, I still hear the young calves bawl
you talk of crime run amok & people no one can trust
I choose my friends carefully & fight for the right & the just
You say this is no place to raise a child, that they’ll not learn respect
but its our job to raise them up, their course in life direct
You say that no one gives a damn about another’s plight
but I have seen this town come together to turn a wrong to right
You say this town holds you back & you will never gain success
I can feel her sing my praises as I aim to do my best
I will stay here in this valley & no matter where I roam
I know my roots run deep here & I will always come back home
Pack your bags & go on down the road in search of better grazing
One day you will come full circle & return here to your raising
For your roots run deep here too, though you may curse & shout
and roots, home & belonging are what life is all about
© October 2003
Categories:
urban sprawl, cowboy-western, introspection, life, nostalgia,
Form:
Cowboy Poetry
A lone tree
Used to stand proud and free
In a meadow its shelter we sought
But now bends its old branches in a parking lot
In the bridge between city, country it got caught
Its now part of the newly built mall
Growth, no way to forestall
Urban sprawl
Barbara Gorelick
5/13/14
Bridges contest-trois par huit
Categories:
urban sprawl, growth,
Form:
Verse
Gas crisis and smog emissions
Coal war economy
Urban sprawl
Forcing rural withdrawal
While cutting down the trees.
Gas prices and tax submissions
Political parody
Fly to the moon
Live within a cocoon
But this trip will not be free.
Before technical transitions
Sublime ecology
Now it’s ride on a horse
With a meter of course
To measure flatulency.
Categories:
urban sprawl, introspection, nature,
Form:
Verse
On a blushed evening of late autumn,
powdered clouds whisper a tune in notes
between sweet and classic, while every hoof
of our wagon taps quiet...
plowing each route along miles, miles ahead.
And as darkness peels of fragile rays, we lay
on our carriage among souvenirs
while our ancestral home awaits.
I remember we are nearing our last milestone,
and the urban sprawl ‘s relentless noise
exiles the hum of dragonflies, of each word
straining gentle reveries.
Now that twilight years call, our farmland
takes us back where youth’s pureness runs
along the grasses crisp...crystalline.
Again, with traces of affection ,
dahlias will purl around us in a slow- dance
of floral innocence, cradling each other freely...
then to play, delight, and rest in the meadows
of time's remains.
Laura Loo's Any HM Ever Contest
Back To Innocence Theme Contest
Resubmitted 3/31/2017
Written 8/20/2015
Categories:
urban sprawl, home, innocence, youth,
Form:
Free verse
Houses creep closer together
Inch by foot by yard by mile
Until you see your neighbor smile.
Cities spread their urban sprawl
Hour after month after week
If earth cannot breath, she will speak.
People schooled to grow apart
Given time will graduate
Into a class of greed and hate.
Clouds that crowd together
Suffocate the blue away
Until the wind blows back the day.
19th May 2016
Categories:
urban sprawl, people, society, world,
Form:
Rhyme
You see them all the time,
the Stepford wife
and her counterpart,
the bronzed over, buffed high sheen,
man bun walking in skinny jeans,
so tight they squeak...
HIPSTER as they pass on by.
With a flower in the beard,
the artisans musk hinting the air,
bees wax soap and a scent of irony,
the newfound Stepford-hipster syndrome,
Both are the same
but from different sides,
one glossy eyed,
over-medicated,
injected perma- grinned.
The other a living Subaru commercial,
planting city trees,
while in the not so distant future
a real life Bancksy dog will pee.
The urban sprawl,
the shame of it all,
the 1%,
the cost of the gas,
that gets her to the shore
while texting and calling in her oversized Cadillac Escalade,
that was beeped violently at it drove right past
A city zap it rental,
Toyota Prius hybrid sport,
on the Garden State Parkway
with a flowered bearded hipster
driving slowly with thick black glasses,
inside.
Categories:
urban sprawl, america, confusion, culture, identity,
Form:
Free verse
The solar perigree is all too brief,
departure signalled by the falling leaf,
bright colours in their duller Autumn hue
can glisten in the early morning dew.
November mists obscure the rising dawn
as coldness primed with frost welcomes the morn,
and sometime lingers into early night
with damp, translucent, eerie demi-light.
Some random days remind of Summer's call
to warm the country lane and urban sprawl,
their brevity prologues advancing cold,
already settling in, the Winter mould.
The visusl beauty drifts as shifting sand,
inexorably, just as Nature planned.
Categories:
urban sprawl, autumn,
Form:
Sonnet
As I walked down Mulberry Street, my pack and the shoes on my feet.
I see a nickel, penny a dime an empty bottle of wine.
Fletcher the old drunk, smelling a bit of a skunk still I smile and wave.
Punks have placed Graffiti on a wall, claiming ownership of this urban sprawl.
I stop for a bit and have a quaint sit on the remnants of a flower box.
I light my last smoke, watch some odd folk, they walk to the beat of their drum.
Exhaling the sweet mist of nicotine addiction, happy this is my only vice.
A dandelion grows through a crack screaming for me to take poetic note.
A Mercedes parked in front of the attorneys office, ill gotten gains.
Trash blown into the inner recess of the arched doorway in which I sit.
A drug store receipt a note perhaps a declaration of love or don't forget the milk.
The cast iron manhole cover states proudly, Made in Chicago.
Ahead lies the Mulberry Street Mission a line already forms.
Where dinner and biblical mumbo jumbo are being served.
The old woman greets everyone with a smile and tells them Jesus loves you.
I'll wait until she goes inside I don't want to argue.
The wind blows and sunshine falls on my face.
I notice out of the corner of my eye a normal folk (Non-Homeless).
Taking their own cigarette break enjoying the same sweet addiction as myself.
Our eyes meet in acknowledgement of we are the same, for the moment.
The Mulberry Street bus rambles by spewing noxious fumes.
The city's wind artwork slowly turns hoping someone will take notice.
My last long draw on my cigarette, I grab my pack and pull myself up.
then One foot Two foot I resume my journey to the Mulberry Street Mission.
(In Memory of Fletcher Campbell 1940-2015)
Categories:
urban sprawl, addiction, adventure, crazy, destiny,
Form:
Dramatic Monologue
Boat Ride II
Upon the crowded deck, boaters go their way
Drifting silently among sunken glades
Where sun kissed ripples on sparkling waters play.
'Tween quiet banks the elegant Heron wades,
In meadows long grasses horses forage
Where passing willows cast their shifting shades.
Open farmland, factory cut, under bridge,
Boats glide, driven by the river’s silent force
Motorway, urban sprawl and forested ridge.
Flowing steadily from its far flung source
Boaters not knowing how the fragile river thrives,
Unaware of the world within the river’s course
Then at its mooring the pleasure boat arrives,
The river passing on beyond their distant lives.
Barry Stebbings
Sept 2022
Categories:
urban sprawl, environment, nature, pollution, river,
Form:
Terza Rima
Gardens, houses, metaled roads, no tractor and mower
Speed limit grows in reverse, bigger and slower
Brick and concrete slowness teks ower
Sixty, forty, to thirty, where does it stop ?
Down to twenty wi’ houses on top
The infrastructure is little
Planners and government fickle
Greenbelt is pointless and brittle
Farmers berated for removing hedges and trees
Yet with urban spread, it’s the accepted disease
Tyres, bottles, wire, bricks and stone can’t be mown
Poisonous garden waste and domestic rubbish thrown
Working farms overwhelmed, engulfed and surrounded
Unworkable as animals are regularly hounded
Mechanical and vet bills compounded
Abilities and patience are seriously tested
However much time money and effort invested
rubbish knackers machines and kills animals when ingested
It matters not how well the farm is managed
Gates left open, animals and boundaries continually damaged
Old farmhouses swallowed up, all out of place
Invaded by alien architecture, right in their face
Greenfield sites with scant protections
Built-up outline grows more projections
New estates in all directions
Exponential town growth,
Ribbon development, conurbation sloth
gradual creep, sudden crawl
Houses and industrial units, landscape awl
Removes the countryside whole, urban sprawl…
Categories:
urban sprawl, city, environment, farm, urban,
Form:
Free verse
Early morning, city street,
Glancing down around my feet,
There, as if upon a trail,
Sat a tiny little snail.
How he got there, I don’t know;
Snails and cities just don’t go.
Still, somehow, he made his crawl
Smack inside an urban sprawl.
Though I thought to move him to
A safer place to see him through,
I opted not to interfere
With fate, which must have brought him here.
Either he’ll survive or not;
I believe he has a shot,
Though New Yorkers, I’ll admit,
Don’t like creatures slow as _ _ it!
for Andrea's "Show Me the Funny - Part 2" Contest
Categories:
urban sprawl, nature, urban,
Form:
Couplet
Sometimes people live too close to one another
with the scent of lives overlapping lines
psyches stepping on toes and
problems bleeding in through doors & windows.
Neighbors crying, remonstrating, manipulating, and copulating
demonstrating the need for soundproofing or renovating
as we wave the next day our smiles ingratiating
because its at their expense our needs we’ve been satiating
and the building goes on.
Some stress “urban sprawl” others cry “urban blight.”
Yet developers rub hands with piggish delight
Smart animals follow the birds, which take flight
and poor confused deer become targets at night.
Yet the building goes on.
Big boxes, small boxes, strip malls and stores,
McDonalds, and Wendy’s, and Bed Bath and More
Family Dollars and State Liquor Stores
Pawn Shops and Nail Shops and
and . . .
when trees are memories
fish bellies rise like steam from warm waters
and desertification has become "the new black."
Perhaps then we will draw a line in the sand.
Categories:
urban sprawl, social,
Form:
Light Verse