Saturday, March 17, 2012

Set me free Set me free


To be the best me I can be
Set me free set me free
I want to be me like you are you
I want to follow in your footsteps jet around the planet make stops in every nation
Perform and leave my words like seeds
To flourish into flowers before the final frost
Words grow along with a world that everyday is more crazy
Power and money go to those few lucky
So set me free set me free let me be me
The same way you are who you want to be
Let me be who I want to be
An overnight sensation performing in Paris
All that money and power right beside you Will I go crazy
Will I still stand up and preach loud and clear about the rights of the people
Or will I forget them if I get the big bucks?
Will I forget this poor besieged planet
Forget all that I stand for
if I become free and am the best me I can be
If I get the payoff and am one of the one percent
will I become one of them?
That’s why it’s easy to choose you over me.
Set me free set me free
Left out of everything frowned upon and looked down upon
They made fun of my name.
Looking me in the face, they’d cruelly say, again and again,
like it was some kind of fun game to make fun of my name
“Leftout, right? That’s your name?” sniggering with delight
They were justified being better than me I didn’t fight back.
Yesterday’s dreams and memories follow me
Letting go is never easy
Set me free set me free
Could I become one of you if I had power money and will the way you do?
Set me free set me free
Break on through to the other side in my fantasy
Amy’s absence screams inside and I reach to pull her out of me
my eyes sting - tears follow the tracks for who she could be – soul sister
Set me free set me free
And makes me wonder who I would be if I had half the chance
I want to be me set me free set me free let me be me

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Paper Blues


I’ve got the blues about paper today
I walk around my house examining notes, short stories,
papers from high school written in long hand
looking through papers to throw away
Thinking about days long gone when we learned to write script

My mind jumps ahead: future generations where no one will know how to write script. Writing by hand will disappear except for a few who carry on. Handwriting will become a fine transcribed art that no one teaches and that no one knows how to do anymore.

My cabdriver explained how now-a-days, children do their assignments online on the computer so they don’t write anything down at all anymore not like we did back in the day. He said they barely learn print, they type everything on the computer.

Columbia forced me to buy a typewriter in 1978. They said hand written assignments get lower grades. Hasn’t anyone explained this to you before? I mean I ‘m sorry to break it down to you like this and feel bad no one told you before that at Columbia. Miz. Leftow, you already lost one grade this term by handing in hand-written homework. You would have gotten a B+ but because it was hand written you only are due a C+. Sorry…

When I explained how poor I was she said you’re smart, you’re here at Columbia so you’ll figure out a way to survive.

Back then all I had was two pairs of jeans a skirt a few blouses and one sweater from the $10 store. I had no money to spend but needed that typewriter. Back then I couldn’t conceive a typewriter had a memory so you wouldn’t have to typewrite the whole page if you made a mistake.

My cabbie ‘s conversation brings me back. He’s telling me how hard it is to get by with four children, two are teenagers. "The only way we get by is because my wife lies and says I don’t live there so she can get food stamps Medicaid and section 8," he said as he drove his Lincoln Town Car, working and paying for High Class radio service trying to make a buck. "It ain’t easy out here and that rent we pay would cost us 2100 instead of the 900 we pay and in this way we get by," he confided.

"Four children and us and two cats. I show the vet our Medicaid card," he continued, "and then we don’t pay. Medicaid for cats is good," he said. "We’re doing the best we can to get by and she works on the side too. My wife’s a certified home health nursing aide and she gets work a few days a week at a hospital up in the Bronx. After they take out the taxes it’s about 50 bucks for a 12-hour day then she got to make sure it don’t get in the way of watching out for our children so thank God she doesn’t work everyday."

"It gives her time off to cook and clean house and watch over our teens and younger children. We pay for catholic school – and they have to go to college. There’s no jobs out there you know. We try to get by – but it’s hard to qualify. That’s why she wants to work too. She works off the books. There’s just too many bills to pay. You know growing children need clothes and shoes - those are expensive."

"It’s a different world out there," my cabby alerts me that the ride and story have come to an end. I look around me at all the paper, the notes and each piece of paper seems to have so much meaning I don’t know how to throw it out.

They don’t do things the way they used to. My cabbie is a young man. He’s only 42. His radio comes alive. A voice asks his location in Spanish.

It’s a lot to chew on. I think about all the finagling I did to get by twenty-two years working professionally to help our young – a noble job made harder by the huge bureaucracy I functioned in.

I wanted a house but it went into foreclosure but I still have my state subsidized Mitchel-Lama. They’re hard to come by now-a-days and they don’t intend to build more. Now the Mitchel-Lama rentals are so high that when people don’t lie andtell the truth about who lives where, no one can afford to live anywhere anymore.

In Washington Heights where I live most of the people survive on a lie because otherwise they’d live so poor they’d be in deep shit .

Worked hard for that money and still

Can’t get me no no no no - satisfaction