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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
02.04.2011
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Great blog...
ReplyDeleteThanks for telling me about it.