Urbanize a nature poet

Cafe Society
1

You know how poetry used to be all about flowers and trees and mountains and all that? Well imagine if they’d lived in modern cities. Maybe Wordsworth would have waxed poetic about a host of golden cabs. Or Kilmer would have written, “I think that I shall never see/ A poem lovely as a marquee.” Give it your best shot, and put the words into their mouths.

My entry is a sort of cheat- I actually wrote it two years ago, after being stuck in Manhattan traffic.
The Highway Not Taken

by Bizarro Robert Frost

*Two roads diverged in a city ‘hood
And sorry cars could not fly, outside
Of science-fiction novels, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where bright taxis would give a ride

Then took the other, no less smogged
And having perhaps a better claim
Because that avenue less cars hogged
Though N.Y. traffic being so clogged
It might be backed-up just the same

And both in that morning equally lay
On asphalt no tire had yet streaked black
Oh, I kept the first for another day
Yet knowing how cars crash on the way
I doubted if I should U-turn back

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence
Two roads diverged in New York, and I-
I took the one less trafficked by
And it made two hour’s difference. *

2

Anyone?

3

You realize, of course, that urban poets also tend to write about trees and mountains and shit. It’s been that way since antiquity.

4

oh my love’s like those red red hos.
that got newly sprung in June.

5

It’s been done:

I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall,
I’ll never see a tree at all.

–Ogden Nash

6

Yes, but the premise of the thread is changing rural verse into urban peotry.

7

I was actually just trying to remember who wrote that. Thanks! But, yeah, that’s the sort of thing I was looking for.

8

You want to identify doggerel, you turn to me. I’ve inadvertently memorized a lot of it.

Meanwhile, on topic:

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing carre hornes!