Beauty and the Beast Dance a Duet in Medellin
The clay god lives here.
Red dwellings paint blue sky-line.
Wedged between steel and cement giants,
scrappy narrow structures,
play hide-and-seek in their shadow.
Bricked barracks, sprung up like weeds
in the aftermath of reckless wars,
clutter and cling to steep mountainsides
and brim over with refugees.
Clay homesteads, teeter on the edge of precipices,
line roadsides like lost itinerants.
Lone figures lean out the miniscule windows
of rainbow-colored concrete closets,
dream of pennies and escape.
Herds of motorcyclists and streams of yellow taxis
clog the roads. Pedestrians inhale suffocating gas fumes.
Street vendors brave noise and smoke as they sell
mangoes, lemons, watermelons, pineapples,
sugar apples and sliced flesh of coconuts.
Pastry shops, doors adorned with iron bars,
bloom out of nooks, appease the hunger pangs
of sweet-toothed passers-by.
In a crowded market, displaying souvenirs,
a man grinds sugarcane stalks.
People wait to buy juice trickling into a pan.
The wealthy retreat in gated communities
with modern amenities and live in soap-opera worlds.
Drug lords orchestrate fiefdoms in the shadows.
Danger and death lurk round corners.
A black granite library, a misfit
among random construction,
stretches defiantly skyward,
to bring knowledge to the masses.
Medellin, a world metropolis,
masquerades in a carnival of contradictions.
The clay god watches
as beauty and the beast dance a duet.
© Althea Mark-Romeo 2011
Fabulous poem that brings to life the vibrant, if challenging city of Medellín, Colombia.
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Lots of love
M
I love it. I read it and I recall. Event after event comes to life again in my senses - included are the times when, in Medellin, you and I, in a group, were together. I thank you, Althea, for this exquisite record of what was beautiful and what was not - of what, all together, was divine, the time of my life, those Medellin days. I recall someone referring to Medellin as a poet's heaven. We were certainly made to feel special. You cause me to recall that I have poems, written in Medellin, to locate and to type and polish. Thank you, Althea, for your precious words - for your very fine art.
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