From the second floor front window
of this apparently elegant hotel
4 blocks from the Bush White House
I am watching below in the driveway
night gathering in the faces
of the cabbies who wait there
for the prey flung before them
by the more smarly uniformed doorman.
Shadows pooling in their eyes,
they wait to take the polished guests
to the places of the courtiers
and the courtesans of democracy.
Leaving their cabs,
the drivers draw into a ring agains the night.
Ahmad, Sayid, Santiago, Jackson --
the cool heat of their eyes glows,
their teeth flash, lips almost laughing.
over the shared crackpipe.
In their circle of fire
they gesture madly and eloquently,
thin arms spinning in their sockets
as they boast their skill in the hunt,
shrugging over the rich man's folly.
A pink busload disgorges --
tourists burnt from a day in the sun
of Lincoln, of Jefferson.
A long limo emits a young socialite heiress,
beautiful as a bunny.
The drivers sniff her air,
and they plot revenge on the riches, the bitches.
They look often and quickly
around a circumference of shadows
limited by streetlamp lightpools,
animals whose enemies are everywhere
while also their quarry is everywere,
in this tangled jungle of streets and lives.
But no one looks up until one of them --
it is Mustapha, I think --
catches my eye,
my face at the window above him.
I grab his glint,
my share of the take.
8/89