Genre: Art, Travel, Commute, Observation, Life, Society
Parte Uno
A NOU PLACE: My commute
by Caoimhe O’Neill
There is a woman I pass
Every morning,
Underground in a walkway of Diego de Leon,
She sings the same ABBA song.
Every morning.
Her voice is impaled by her own poverty,
A voice squealing to ignorant and bustling passers-by.
They have coins slouching in their
Pockets, bags, purses.
But none clinks its way to her.
There is a man when I emerge from the metro at Santiago Bernabéu.
I pass the scooters in their messy rows.
I pass the people of Madrid’s
“Canary Wharf”
With their suits and golden euros.
This man he leans against a pillar,
Everyday, mid-morning I watch his leg laze solemnly as the other props him up.
He smokes, he leans, he smokes, he never leaves and only his clothes and the date changes.
He contemplates or he does not,
all the while his dirtied, beige boots are still.
He is not a beggar like the woman,
despite a scuffed look.
I question who is the most entertaining statue on my morning commute?
I don’t answer,
I do know that my commute will never
Be free from characters,
from still or moving lives,
from man nor woman.
Parte Dos:
CALLE DE ORENSE
People on bikes,
Your Lance Armstrong or Bradley Wiggins types.
People with headphones,
Your Michael Jackson or Leonard Cohen types.
People in cafes,
Your J K Rowling or James Joyce
types.
There are people all over,
in Madrid, Paris, London, Lisbon, Milan
European people who cycle on reckless city roads or glorious mountain pass, who sing and dance, who write with real ink and fashionably sip cappuccinos and peer longingly into a hustling street.
The latter is like me,
Those who write for love
and for dreamy trade.
Some people all the while, do other things.
We are Europeans and living on the mainland
Makes me write with an increased flourish and flair for I belong to this artsy RACE.
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