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.
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.