Portland Taxis
If were on Mars, and wanted to get back-to-home, I would Hail a taxi. There's nothing I like better Than hailing a taxi, they have saved me many times From the spectre of fiscal responsibility. From the bottom Of a well comes my voice, hailing a taxi: "Get Me Out Of This Oubliette"! Beside the bed where I make love The business cards of taxicab companies are tacked up. Taxicab salesmen surround my every motion Hinting I'd be better off as a driver, but it's Hailing a taxi I relish, not threading my way All day thorough the midtown traffic. Buses won't do Either, the exquisite squalidness and rash of Public transportation is not the point, but Something about in these little moving cubicles Filled with me on demand. I feel crammed-in on a plane Because there is no room for me to lift my arm, there, To hail a cab. In a cab there's no room to hail A cab, but then you're already in one, it's ridiculous To even think of, unless you have the hots For hailing a cab, thousands of cabs, as I apparently do. But then I Digress, I wish a taxi would come, grind and screech To a halt, and take me someplace, anyplace else, and get me out of this alluringly mind-boggling love-mess Such as, to Portland.
From The Badminton at Great Barrington; Or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo, published by University of Pittsburgh Press (1980). Copyright © 1980 and © 1999 by Michael Benedikt. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.