The Sirens of Washington

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