hackdriver

flips the lever,

lowers his cap,

drags from his fag

smacks his mom's tattoo, and

throws it into drive.

the way uptown,

he glides her past powerful narrow canyons,

forgetting about the Sarahs or Bernices

who he mounted like a tortoise,

quickies twice a day

his meter’s runnin on overtime.

so we rode together in his backseat,

our scrapbooks selling our obvious simplicity,

announcing our souls for sale

in this abstractexpressionist City,

where Italians and Jews get tossed out of Rikers

set off into the blue and dark bloody avenues,

Romans without Jewish slaves to bathe them,

to jerk them off after another crucifixion goes down on Broadway.

rare marbles we are,

colliding in the playgrounds of Murray Hill and Duffy Square,

driven by these hacks posing as bodyguards,

lugging our minds and bibles of fire,

yellow hacks lurking on every corner like fireants,

hammering and nailing down coffins

striking anywhere matches

soaking up backseat babble like jealous lovers.

and hackdrivers crucifying passengers,

nailing us up

then undoing the handcuffs

until it's our time to crucify them,

that instinct getting swapped,

that desire for violence,

that polluted barnyard ritual

of stuck pigs stolen from their homes

then donated to soldiers of wood and nails,

hammers and gasoline,

dog mounters on frozen backs

standing, sitting, or prone,

dodging no punches,

until lost we are in the arena,

so lost we are in Midtown.

and when we finally get pinned

he keeps it right there,

mounts us right there,

using his teeth to tear apart our wombs,

his foreign mythologies and breath to whittle away at our tongues,

hacking us up into pieces,

a butcher or surgeon wielding a blade,

fisting it longer,

just a little while longer,

only to drive it in again

deeper this time.

then uptown somewhere,

he dumps us, used up, spent,

broken and splintered,

and flagging down his next fare,

pulls down the meter lever

that drives that fury

balancing his life

between the nails and the wood.

NYC, '83