City of Brick - Blogabond

Medellin, enchanted city, home of the silicon buttcheek, where no one remembers the natural light of stars and the sun has barely been named, where the paisas wear their souls on their skin and old men sing sad songs in the streets selling guanabana juice by the cup, where notices in the park bathroom urge you to give transcendental meditation a chance and park attendants in decorative safari hats remind you ¨no shoes!¨ while rouge bastard geese ambush afternoon picnics and iguanas look on grinning, where laughter thunders and thunder laughs and eveybody remembers your name, where no ever has change for 50 mil, no more than $23 dollars, so you buy juice on the corner, an arepa down the street, quesito in the market, all part of a strange ritual shuffle necessary to divide the great bill, where buses leave a lump of black exhaust wherever they go and stoplights are more of a suggestion, where the metro cuts across the city like something from the future and heartbroken youths wander the nights street singing Spanish songs of love, where raisin-faced women push carts of coffee and gum and the history of the world transpires every hour to a backdrop of horns honking, globular synthetic breasts, and the smell of cornmeal frying.

The contract expired on the 13th floor, so we all packed up and found new rooms. I was the last to go. I sat at my window, looking out, sensing the emptiness of the apartment. Across the street, high up in a building, a woman swept a vacant living room. Windows glowed orange, blushed pink, emitted deep-sea greens with the varied hues of curtains. Others were dark. I took in the view for the last time, at once detatched and nostalgic. Jefferson Airplane played from second-hand computer speakers, adding to the mood, making life feel transient and too short, conjuring memories of people and places which felt and which were very far away.

I would miss that window. The way the apartment blocks across the street looked like something out of a Stanely Kubrick film, uniform and sterile, radiating pure functionality. I would miss the small stretch of hiway visible between buildings, revealing the pulse of the city which peaks at five in the morning and again at the same time at night. I would miss waking up late and watching students bustling over the yellow bridge spanning Carrera Barranquilla and stopping to mingle around streetside empanada stands or sitting in the grass with friends to talk noilsy over cold bottles of Casteña. Or the way fruit vendors would roam the streets with broad carts declaring their wares in rhythmic auctioneer mantras through amplifiers rigged to car batteries as an afternoon rain blew in. I would miss spitting from above and watching the blobs explode halfway down, sending fine mist to the trees.

These things I considered as I took one last look from the window.

The surrogate stars of San Javier shimmered angelically in the distance.

Lightning blinked soundlessly.

A dog barked from vacant streets below.

A motorbike appeared on the brief glimpse of hiway.

And then, just like that, it was gone.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Police pour from the paddy-wagon
like
cartoon firefighting clowns,

bramble ´cross the street
to the meat shop.

Out they come,
then,
the body limp,

the spectator´s eyes -
¨Que puta, not again.¨

Jello red on white tile.

¨Silencer,¨ says the somber
server nextdoor,
hands me black coffee -
¨No one heard a thing.¨

The van takes off.

The crowd floats away.

Gelatianous blood blobs
disappear down the drain.

written by

chaddeal on April 1, 2009 from Medellin, Colombia

from the travel blog: The Great Pan-American Synchronistic Cycle Extravaganza Unlimited

Send a Compliment

Chad,

That was a good poem and blog you wrote; very descriptive, elicting of strong visual images, and a
fascinating use of vocabulary - keep up the creative writing! I'm sorry you had such a near, firsthand encounter with a violent death; that must have been unsettling, even if it was a person you didn't personally know. I pray every day for your safety in that volitale city. I'm sure you are alert to the people and situations around you. Love and miss you, Mom

written by Viki on April 13, 2009

comment on this...