2 Poems

Isaac Matus

Poema a Bogotá
Ruido.

Lluvia.
I’m sitting inside an old green bus,
The driver argues with another sketchy-looking man in the street.
The man gets inside the bus from the back door,
And raps for a few coins.

I’m just sitting,
Listening as he rhymes about his life,
Taken by the claws of a faceless and smoky beast.

It’s hard not to admire the colorful and abundant street art
As we are stuck in the traffic,
Inside the old Green bus.

Most of them are energetic and touching
Claiming change through art,
Expressing,

What society spits

Some others are awful,
Drunken symbols of local fútbol teams under a Simon Bolivar Statue,
Love confessions on a colonial-style building.

(What a mad symbol, what a merciless love)

Still,

What society spits.

Nomadic Soul
Two cities, two lives.
The crack in the soul of the traveler gets deeper and wider
As he finds a new place to call home.

The crack is filled with colorful faces and vivid scents
Tribal sounds of festive music
That used to be tangible
But turned into blurry memories
One on top of the other
Composing a grey and dusty mass
Filling the crack
Marking the division.

Nothing has changed
Yet everything is different
The promise of a new life
The excitement of transition
Faded away when the winter arrived
And the landscape grew dark
And the temperature went low

A soul divided
Two cities, two lives
Two languages to remain silent
Open fields with yellow butterflies
Turned into paths
Paths with uncertain destinations
Marked with frozen woodswallows

Featured Artwork:
Delaunay, Robert. Simultaneous Contrasts-Sun and Moon. 1912-13. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org. Accessed December 2016.