Daily Lyric: CLEAN AIR

I just can’t get comfortable

Every breath has got me melting

I’m trying to escape this smoke-filled room

And this cigarette in my hand isn’t helping

I need some ventilation

My tolerance is shrinking

My sense of smell has gone to hell

‘Cause this whole damn place is stinking

Oh Lord, gimme some clean air

Oh baby, I wanna breathe that clean air

The buses belch into the street

Until I feel like gagging

The guy next to me had beans for lunch

And the agony is nagging

The atmosphere’s so boiling hot

The fumes, they got me freaking

But then again what’s to expect

When some politician is speaking

Oh Lord …

I live downwind of the refinery

The SO2 is nauseating

It’s no better than the nuclear plant

That’s always radiating

No matter where I put my foot

The result is still the same

I’ll G-d forbid wind up with cancer

And if not that then I’ll go insane!

Oh Lord …

©2023 The Hesh Inc.

"Orange Day" in New York, June 7, 2023.

This song was actually written in Israel in 1987 or thereabouts, long before the wildfires of the 21st century in the US, Canada, and elsewhere. I was remembering the pollution I encountered in places where I lived and traveled when I was growing up in the 1970s, which, in retrospect, was quite mild by comparison. Musically, I was thinking in terms of Lou Reed in songs like "Vicious Circle" and "Temporary Thing." I performed this in numerous singer-songwriter gigs, mostly in the 1990s, but most people did not get the senses of humor or irony that I was trying to project, and I eventually dropped it from my setlist. Originally posted on June 7, 2023, in the aftermath of the "plague of darkness" that was visited upon my local region due to the dense smoke from the wildfires burning out of control several hundred miles to my north in Quebec, Canada.