"taxicab" poems
the smell of cigarettes and cheap cologne
the length of legs, the depth of eyes
more medical trips and taxicab drives
blood tests, x-rays, candy bars from vending machines
visitors in lab coats
questions
touches
from cold metal, cold skin
antiseptic aromas
waiting in cold rooms, in backless hospital gowns
a flash of skin from the hot patient
next to me, an inviting smile
a ***** of crotches
a wheelchair comes
to take me
away
Dec., 2002
Feb 14, 2017
Feb 14, 2017 at 11:16 AM UTC
The moon woke me up for the third time this week. The white light always looked pleasant on our white comforter surrounded by the dark sky and empty room. As badly as I know we need curtains, I can’t stand the idea of buying new curtains for an apartment that couldn’t be more run down. I turned over and watched your chest rise and fall as your body remained in its C shape.
I know your skin. I know every inch of it, the feeling of your five o’clock shadow, hidden birthmarks with freckles due east and west, the scars, and the stories that go along with each one.
I tiptoed over to the linen closet, hitting creaking floorboards between every honking taxicab on the avenue below. When I grabbed the accordion door handle, I could hear you rustling in the low thread count sheets.
“Come back to bed.” you said while yawning away last night.
“Go back to sleep.” I let out some anxiety filled air with my words.
An ambulance and the Doppler Effect ran past our building, numbing my senses with the moment we were parallel.
“Why is every day a melodrama with you?” you sat up.
“Just please, please go back to bed” you were right, but I didn’t feel much like talking.
“I just can’t stand this much longer Natasha, I can’t stand living with someone who won’t talk to me.” Your voice faded and you stared into the moon’s beam of white light. I wanted to hate you for everything thing you were saying, for propelling me into his bed that night, for you changing and losing your luster, because we aren’t, and haven’t been what we used to be.
“Just close your eyes, and just fall back asleep, it is really just that simple” I said firmly, hoping it would put our communication to an end. I stood at the linen closet for five minutes, pretending to look for a blanket that wasn’t there. I tiptoed back to our bed. Your body was as flat as a plank with your chest to the ceiling and your hands by your sides. Your eyes were open, and your skin hadn’t changed but I couldn’t match your eyes to my memory.
Jul 5, 2012
Jul 5, 2012 at 9:26 PM UTC
Instead of going out on that Friday night
she got out her old suitcase
and filled it with every memory
of the one who broke her heart.
She gathered every picture,
every love letter and poem,
every baggy band sweatshirt
and gently packed them away.
With her warmest scarf and mittens on
she hauled the baggage
down to the taxicab
and gave the driver an address.
"Here you are, miss
did you need a hand with that bag?"
She kindly refused the offer
and stepped onto the pier.
The suitcase grew heavier
and heavier by the minute
as she drug it all the way
to the edge of the dock.
Waves crashing against the wood
and the wind ruining her hair
she took one last look at the bag
and tossed it over the edge.
A single tear streamed down
her rosy red cheeks
as the tide took away
the suitcase full of broken promises.
She ran back to the cab
and asked him to take her home
where she could finally exist
without the burdens of love.
There is no moral to the story,
no real point to be had
Except that I am that girl
and I put you in that bag.
Nov 3, 2012
Nov 3, 2012 at 3:59 AM UTC
picture this:
clear glass rectangle table.
i am sitting
on one side, away from you
our feet touch
and i recoil.
you tell me again that you love me and i think
how drunk i was
how you still carried me home
even after all the others
even after i treated you like
less than nothing.
picture this:
in two years,
clear glass rectangle table.
you are on one side, away from me
i am halfway across the city
in a taxicab with your best mate
the phone is in front of you on the table
and you look at it
knowing i will not call until morning
knowing danger is the compass i use
to find you
in two years,
clear glass rectangle table.
bank card, a tightly rolled bill
lines like scratches and a glass filled with poison.
in the present, you tell me
people learn from their mistakes
and one can't keep helping people
but i tell you
the holes that we dig for ourselves
are far too deep.
Jul 17, 2013
Jul 17, 2013 at 12:00 AM UTC
Stop the bus!
It's great to make new friends and
Great to indulge in conversation,
Hanging out for beers, no tears
No fears of pending annihilation.
But once you leave the party and
The people are behind you,
There's something waiting that's
Got to give and make you see
And blind you.
It's truth that waits in a taxicab outside
And smells funny. You don't know know who's
Driving, only where you're going and how you're
Getting there.
It's a sad certainty.
You're going home, alone tonight.
The ceiling is too low to hold a noose.
There's a message to be heard, although,
It would fall on your deaf ears of
Annihilation once you've got nothing
Left to part with, there's nobody behind you
There's something waiting, God is to
Give you, take your seat, get
off the bus!
Mar 21, 2010
Mar 21, 2010 at 5:05 AM UTC
An apartments the size of a grave
and just as expensive. It costs a life
to be buried on Avenue A.
Two girls reunite in their street corner booth
where many nights have been spent confiding
about boys, the plausible deniability
of taxicab ******** flights home over
one bridge or another.
She's just returned from a semester in Africa.
The unencumbered smiles beaming from
the children's faces linger like a sunburn.
Her friend is agonizing over a guy who believes in her
wholeheartedly. She commands him like a drone
with the send button on her phone.
She asks her friend if she saw the article in the Times
about women in Afghanistan who die for their poetry?
Is it still warring over there? the friend says.
Her laugh is ambushed by a new feeling, something like
regret at having allowed herself to be wrapped
in the personality of her dresses for so many years.
First thing when she got home she pulled her grandmother’s old fur
out of storage and wrangled the antlers onto the cat
but the smile didn't come. Tonight, we're going dancing.
The boys are meeting us there. Does that work?
She nods. A button is pushed and a car carries them
to a warehouse in Bushwick which twenty years ago
was a wonderful crack house. Oh, it's so good to see you again!
She laughs and pretends she is living the night like it's her last
the whole time thinking about a young girl
across the world speaking her poem
into a telephone so someone else can hear it
before the line goes dead.
Feb 8, 2014
Feb 8, 2014 at 1:35 PM UTC
We are in a taxicab with a drink hidden in the space between our legs. We are skipping through the night. We are in the line wearing wristbands. We are laughing loudly with beautiful people. We are dancing all night under electric lights with electric music and electricity in our hair. We are slipping out of dresses and into blood-warm pools. We are being kissed, we are getting high, we are getting in for free, we don't pay a thing. We have stayed up all night into the dawn, we watch the sunrise, we stand on the balcony and watch the world pass under us. We are celestial. We are goddesses. Today the city is ours. The light sparkles on our skin.
Jul 14, 2013
Jul 14, 2013 at 10:11 AM UTC
We wander together,
your hair a burnished gold beneath the streetlamps.
We hold hands,
your eyes wild and bright in bursts of taxicab headlights.
You pull on my collar,
your lips stained and blurred from the wine.
We cling to one another,
the stone steps slip under our feet, I catch you.
We run together, scream together,
our raucous laughter bouncing off the walls and the sky.
We tumble together,
you a mess of hair and cold fingers, the water is in my shoes.
We gasp together,
the fountain has filled our lungs and you kiss me hard. The lights below the surface are flickering and I see black spots where your eyes used to be.
We crawl across the square together,
giggling, you pull out a cigarette that hangs crooked and dripping between your drunken lips, your devil's smile.
We watch the stars together,
laying on our wet backs while the earth turns and my stomach churns and my sick heart yearns.
The stars will stop for us.
Feb 16, 2015
Feb 16, 2015 at 2:51 PM UTC
The Chinese wall
Stained with teacup & wandering
Chatter and white texture
Of table and screen in eye flashing
A personal ideal
You and your entitled insomnia
Making blonde dogs hurt for a summer
Or a saxophone
Me and my twelve hour staircase speech
Aiding a circus
Or a bleeding taxicab
Way of thinking about a moon
Full of dental light
It doesn't need to be a dreadful
Sadness alone on this street
I can be a child too
The symposium of fastened
Yellow sounds
Being sent by radio tower to
The head of a gated individual who hasn't sung something fresh in far too long
& quite frankly
The ones who wear ***** dresses have had enough!
Enough of totalitarianism
And the debate of a sidewalk under fire
&prayer;
the seat of a desolate minstrel
Who can believe in your
Fantastical idols??
Not the airport who's burning fur hat
Lifts a feather to the
Palace of night
And ..... Now
We expect burdened coronations
Or the theater to put on
A clatter of
Simplicity
I have no wide stepping
The alarm has rung for the strange ostrich
One may attempt to love absolutely
Renouncement finds pleasure in
Renouncing itself
Jan 21, 2017
Jan 21, 2017 at 2:29 AM UTC
It is newborn ducklings and chicks that struggle to climb out their broken eggshells.
It is daffodils that bloom in the spring to greet the warming sun.
It is juicy ears of corn that signal the start of heat and happiness.
It is your puckered cheeks as you down another glass of cool lemonade and search desperately for shade.
It is Pac-Man and the taste of macaroni and cheese that whisk back to your childhood.
But it is also the taxicab that offers you the shot to begin again, ten thousand miles away from home.
It is the Beatles and their submarine, promising a life of ease and all you need.
It is the sparkle of champagne as you toast to the New Year.
It is the color of mornings and rebirth and second chances
So I guess it’s only natural that it happens to rhyme with “Hello.”
Apr 26, 2014
Apr 26, 2014 at 1:57 PM UTC
Put down the conversations
You overheard in the taxicab
Engrave the clauses
A shadow falls over the morbid epiphanies.
Draw life into these lines
Tessellated ,Portray your potential
Efface the curse from within yourself
The fire on cold winter nights spreading all around
The truth is a secret
The farce guides the mortals
The leftover part is a reverie
Eyes wide open, white light blinding the soul
Railroad tracks of broken dreams and thoughts
The journey is incomplete
Reality cringes into the pleasant daydreams
I'm still eavesdropping the conversation of the dead.
The train passes from over my soul.
The trees echo my dreadful silence.
Aug 17, 2014
Aug 17, 2014 at 7:16 AM UTC
i remember
sitting on the curb,
sipping a venti café latte,
and pulled
the last cigarette out
of my patched-up
leather jacket,
i waited on you,
but it rained
my hand upon
my head, i placed
and ran fast
to the side street
near the crossroads,
the rain pummeled
the concretes,
crackles of thunder
at the distance,
i was
on my way home,
i supposed,
but i missed
the taxicab,
i remember
sitting on the curb,
soaking wet
in the rain,
tried to light up
the last cigarette,
and the coffee
gone cold,
i waited on you,
but you never came
Jun 15, 2021
Jun 15, 2021 at 6:47 AM UTC
Mcdonald says
A jimmy wis lost
in Auld Reekie
'n' sae asked
a polis boaby
is thare
a B& Q in Leith?
'
n' th' polis boaby said
Na bit thare is
a D & E in Dundee.
We hud a roar
'n' Finch bought
th' neist round o' drinks.
A scotsman wis
in a taxicab
whin th' driver said
Th' brakes dinnae wirk
'n' we ur gaun
doon th' road
'n' ower th' cliff.
Sae th' Scotsman said
If ye cannae
stoap th' taxi
at least stoap
th' ruddy meter.
Ah laughed
bit he juist sat thare
wi' that straecht goup
o' his
smoking his ***
wi' care.
Mar 12, 2021
Mar 12, 2021 at 4:33 AM UTC
In suspended cotton glow,
My ****** architecture wondrously
waits permeated with the hollowness
that comes with mind's dissolve in love.
(Even the birds read ***** politics and would rather hold wings to a drastic shift in light as appeared thru the nest and branches so connected with foggy earth
&
Even the jesters who's knees ache with
Lost children resolve to speaking Poems to the Forest who have not forgotten June's princely fever
& Even the cynical italian officer
Who's briefcase molds behind his arched
Brittle spine can relate to the fullness of
His daydream
& Town Hall accounts for each passing hour
& Taxicab antlers offering welcome thru its veiled windows do keep the radio of India praying)
I am finding more and more used condoms on the carpet of anonymous rooms/
But at least the refrigerator is stocked with Wine!
Nov 19, 2016
Nov 19, 2016 at 2:41 AM UTC