Return to the Surface

It has been a quiet couple of years. We've moved the ICAU headquarters back to Los Angeles and expect to build things up again in 2012. Stay tuned my friends.

a poem is a city

a poem is a city

charles bukowski

a poem is a city filled wit streets and sewers

filled with saints, heroes, beggars, madmen,

filled with banality and booze,

filled with rain and thunder and periods of

drought, a poem is a city at war,

a poem is a city asking a clock why,

a poem is a city burning,

a poem is a city under guns

its barbershops filled with cynical drunks,

a poem is a city where God rides naked

through the streets like Lady Godiva,

where dogs bark at night, and chase away

the flag; a poem is a city of poets,

most of them quite similar

and envious and bitter . . .

a poem is this city now,

50 miles from nowhere,

9:09 in the morning,

the taste of liquor and cigarettes,

no police, no lovers, walking the streets,

the poem, this city, closing its doors,

barricaded, almost empty,

mournful without tears, aging without pity,

the hardrock mountains,

the ocean like a lavender flame,

a moon destitute of greatness,

a small music from broken windows . . .

a poem is a city, a poem is a nation,

a poem is the world . . .

and now I stick this under glass

for the mad editor's scrutiny,

and night is elsewhere

and faint gray ladies stand in line,

dog follows dog to estuary,

the trumpets bring on gallows

as small men rant at things

they cannot do.

from "THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS"
HarperCollins ISBN: 0-87685-005-0

2009

The organization is excited for 2009. Maybe the hope generated by the election will translate into action for the improvement of our cities. Member and non-members are encouraged to submit essay topics for the 2009 Journal tentatively entitled dist-URBAN-ces.

Please contact the ICAU headquarters at the.urbanist@gmail.com

Mission

Conceived in the spirit of the radical design collaboratives of the mid 20^th century such as CIAM, COBRA and the Situationist International, the ICAU is an organization dedicated to the study of architecture and urbanism. We seek to foster an exchange of ideas and share this knowledge with the community at large.

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