Scary Tale Of New York

It’s Christmas Eve, Babe In the car pound It shouldn’t be this way Should not have been found But I’m the lucky one I am the thirteenth one And when I got a scare I hi-tailed out of there But everywhere I went It seems a ghoul was sent Until I smashed my cab With one unholy dent So happy Christmas My wife and baby I have to leave you now And that’s no maybe… I’ve got lungs that are punctured from ribs that are broke A spectre glared at me and called me a joke I should have completed that line up that day To comprehend fate would always have his way * Twas on Christmas Eve in two-thousand-and-one Twelve yellow cab drivers at down of the sun They waited in line just outside Central Park And sat, engines idling, until it was dark But where they went when they went, nobody knew Those cabs disappeared without leaving a clue Yet twenty years on during each Christmas new Don’t hail yellow cabs or you’ll disappear too It’s crazy, it’s hazy, a bell tolled aloud And New York cab drivers found thirteen’s a crowd Till voices, malignant and laden with spite Said, “Fear not the water; the ice shall not bite.” For years hacks have dug but their efforts are thwarted For little is known and far less is reported One night on his iPhone from inside the park One Journo’s last words were, “Sod this for a lark!” Don’t enter the park in the depths of the night It’s more than just baddies that hide out of sight It might not be muggers that give you a fright If that was the problem they’d lock it up…. Right? But rumours like tumours spread like baby boomers Resulting in whispers from some doom and gloomers So now I bring word and it’s slightly absurd But when I’m gone please tell the world what you’ve heard… That twelve police divers found twelve taxi drivers In twelve sunken taxis, that’s twelve non survivors In Central Park’s lakes with their feet off the brakes Of twelve rotting drivers, just one re-awakes That Yellow cab driver was not a survivor But turned his head slowly to wink at the diver The diver recoiled and soon riddled with fears Kept asking how sunken men still can shed tears And yet as twelve taxis were hauled from the drink Detectives were left with no clue what to think Twelve zip up bags lay, side by side, straight and neat But each long lost driver had gone from his seat And that’s when it started, those dearly departed Set out to relocate their loves broken hearted Some say that they wander in search of their wives Who if found ‘in company’ soon lose their lives But those cabs retrieved that were riddled with rust Some fifteen years later were finally crushed Yet parapsychologists try to keep tabs On twelve phantom drivers in twelve phantom cabs And now the Big Apple is too scared to sleep In Grand Central Station the fears now run deep The whispering walls that now whisper aloud Are screaming out threats that the dead have avowed On Fifth Avenue men with half rotted faces And clothes that are sodden take shambling paces They stumble their way into unprepared places And innocent people become murder cases * And the boss of the NYPD said Just file it all away We must not ladle fear on Christmas Day * A distant bell now tolls It’s called so many souls It seems that finally Its waters beckon me And so my final act To spell out every fact I testify to you So do what you must do From now there will be seen What should have always been One more man - slimy green And phantom cabs… thirteen * And the boss of the NYPD says Just file it all away We must not ladle fear on Christmas Day