Directions for moving in Bogota

“Bogota, t embodies all the cities you’d ever want to see, and I suppose, many that you would not.” (paraphrase from an Airplane magazine.)

[It is dangerous there.]

[Don’t go alone.]

[Best not to walk at night.]

[ Carry your cash up your sleeve.]

Discover if they are right

By moving, in your way,

Around that forbidden city.

First,

Move with reckless abandon

Like the costeno ice cream seller

who I saw hurdle the Carribean surf

with his impermeable

cart full of firecrackers,

bombpops, and other dangerously

sweet treats.

When he surprised

the Santa Marta swimmers

he exposed a hidden desire:

A craving for the sweet countered by salt,

A guava popsicle on sea-kissed lips.

Next,

Move with awareness of your desire

For the beautiful and the terrible

juxtaposed.

A decadent dessert

at the restaurant that reminds you Europe

can be yours too: Crepes and Waffles.

Indulge in your crepe, chocolat, crème fraiche

From your seat near the glass

Where you can smell espresso

And at once

bazuco and sniffers glue,

the odor of garbage sacks

exploded,

your leftovers being exploited by men

on the other side of the glass.

Move up mountainsides

For a panoramic view from Monserrate

verdant and sublime

shared over a bottle of wine

and on your way home,

a view of twelve year olds

exposed in red-lit doorways.

Moving in Bogota is

street mangoes doused in salt.

Pucker,

And continue searching.

Move weaving

As though you were the Guajira woman’s hands,

through crowds of suit coats

tattered trousers,

citizens dressed for the cool

or evading it

beneath door frames and newsprint.

Move rhythmically

Behind a plaid-skirted girl

as she hopscotches an improvised court

skipping over holes,

alternating her beat,

narrow sidewalk to narrow street.

Stop.

Discover

That the walkways are not

minefields of shit

and electrical pits

and grime ground

between bricks--

The streets can be a tap dancer’s stage.

Hear the clicks on pavement

slick from all-day mist.

Discover

With eyes skyward,

the painters

remaking the faces

of buildings old as Bolivar,

day by day,

ochre, salmon, celeste.

Discover

Like the obrero

whose charcoal eyes

are as singed as the door

he torches and scrapes

until he reveals

centuries-old oak

the color of his wife’s skin.

Discover

Your own admiration

as he who pauses

to marvel at the wood,

imagining his senora

and lunchtime in her steaming kitchen

soon.

At last,

move inside

a door.

You will understand:

Bogota is a beauty

coated in soot.