hackdriver flips the lever,
lowers his cap,
drags deep from a fag,
smacks mom's bicep tattoo,
then throws it into drive.
he glides her past powerful uptown narrow canyons,
forgettin his Rosas and Bernices
who he mounted like a tortoise,
quickies twice a day,
meter runnin on overtime.
we rode in his backseat
clutchin scrapbooks displayin our simplicity designs,
sellin our souls in this abstractexpressionist City,
where Italians and Jews get tossed from Rikers
into the blue and dank numbered avenues,
immigrants with no mamas to bathe them,
yet somehow survivin while the next crucifixion
goes down on lower Broadway.
yes, rare marbles New Yorkers are,
collidin inside Murray Hill and Duffy Square playgrounds,
dodgin hacks posin as bodyguards
luggin bibles of fire,
yellow hack machines
fireants lurkin on every corner,
cabbies nailin down coffins
strikin anywhere matches
while soakin up backseat babble like jealous lovers.
and hackdrivers crucifyin passengers,
first nailin us up
then undoing the handcuffs
when it's time to dump our bodies,
tradin off urban desire for violence,
barnyard polluted rituals of
stuck pigs stolen from their homes
donated to these famished soldiers of wood and nails,
hammers and gasoline,
bulldogs clambering up the frozen backsides
of the standing the sitting and the prone
our punches dodged and ducked.
and when hackdriver senses his prey,
when we are lost inside his Manhattan arena
overpowered and pinned
he keeps it right there,
mounts us right there,
his teeth tearin apart our wombs,
his foreign mythologies and grewsome breath
whittlin away at our tongues,
hackin us to pieces,
a butcher wieldin his sausage blade
fistin it longer
just a little while longer,
only to drive it in again
deeper this time.
then uptown 2:00 AM
we get dumped somewhere,
used, spent, broken and splintered,
and spottin his next fare
hackdriver yanks down the lever
that drives all the fury,
that defines his life
between the nails and the wood.
NYC, '83