Portland Taxis

Portland Taxis
By: Michael Benedikt

If I 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.