SECTION
EIGHT
POETRY
PAGE ONE
sm
COLUMN
SIXTY-TWO, AUGUST 1, 2001
(Copyright © 2001 The Blacklisted Journalist)
LETTER FROM ED
April
15, 2001
dear
al
thanks
for your interesting paper on clinton and bush, and all those other bastards in
the white house.. truer words never better spoken ... but what to do about
it"...shall we have a fucken revolution? there is enough death and destruction
in this "free" land of ours.. look at Cincinnati ohio where they are
rioting in the streets ... blacks against whites again, eh?
listen, al, there is nothing wrong with e-mail, but you are
just gonna have to put up with my foolishness.. I LIKE LETTERS BETTER... it's
cheaper too... phone calls cost MONEY, which I aint got.... anyway, I cant hear
you over the phone, or else my EARS ARE GOING BAD.. at almost 84 (june) anything
can happen... so i can do without computers, and all that stuff.
I have editors write me letters ..yes, LETTERS, all the time..LONG
LETTERS. besides putting out their magazines, they dont mind dropping me LONG
LETTERS, so why are you an exception"..but hey, i am just talking.. i am not mad
at you, al ... that is just my opinion .... i know this is a computer world, and
i wish to hell it wasnt ... this world is going to hell fast with all this
computer stuff, and people enticing young girls over the internet .... that is
one of the evils of the computer..besides all the SCAMS going on too ... so fuck
the computer as far as I am concerned... and my sons are lazy sons of bitches
and wouldnt care to get back to me on E mail stuff.. i hardly see them as it is
... when you raise sons who are past fifty, you got one foot in the fucken
grave, and they could care less about you.. i hardly see one of my sons, who
lives in maryland... he is sixty one years old... the other guy is busy fucken
his goyishe girl friends.. and has no time for me... I AM ENCLOSING A NICE
LITTLE
REGARDS.
ED GALING 3435 mill rd. hatboro, pa 19040
*
* *
authors note:
the poems in this book are close to my heart. They were all written
for, and published by SPARE CHANGE, a worthy publication, published in
Cambridge, Mass., and sold by homeless people on the street for a dollar a
copy...Homelessness and Poverty are evident all over the country these days.
No one is ever immune. It is
to combat this condition, and make the government officials aware, that SPARE
CHANGE exists. SPARE CHANGE
also conducts work shops for the poor and homeless, and is engaged in many
activities to further the cause and cure of homelessness. It is my wish that no
one ever need to be homeless. And 1
am ever so grateful to SPARE CHANGE for publishing these poems ... all of
them having to do with the human spirit
*
* *
SONGS OF THE LOWER
EAST SIDE
i hear it yet
listen,
you can
too,
perhaps,
it's
the sound of
immigrants
who
came
over from the old
country
to live
on
the lower east
side.
the footsteps
are
strident. the
sounds
are strong
the
cries of humanity
sobs
in tearful
mournful
pleadings
oh,
God, please let
this
be our new home,
where
freedom is promised
and
the knock on the door
will
not be our last ones,
oh,
Shalom, oh Shalom,
as
we walk the streets
of
concrete, as we cry
even
as we remember our
old
land,
listen, i can hear
the sound of the Rebbe,
the long white beard, the
peyes that twirled down
his face, and now even
though i return so many
years later, i cannot
forget those who walked
these streets before me;
the songs of voices of
the old return in the
whisper of a breeze,
as i walk along in
memory. ##
* * *
i
never sold apples
during the depression
on
this new york
street that i passed by
each
day, you would find
them,
men with wooden
crates, upon which the
apples
rested, and below
the scrawled sign,
"buy an apples and help me..
five
cents..."
the
men were always so
sad looking and old before
their time, defeated by an
enemy
over whom they had no
control,
millions
unemployed and out
of work, and i, too, was
one of them,
existing
on a welfare check
of twenty dollars a week,.
living
in a cold water flat,
alone, and broke...
and often i would shiver in
the cold air, stop, and buy
a sweet apple, munching it
on the way home to nothing,
thinking,
it could be me,
it could be me...
and
from then on,
even until these days,
an
apple has never tasted
the same again. ##
*
* *
it's what you make it,
they tell
us...
roll
with the punches,
wise guys say,
but what the hell
do they
know, unless
they have been on welfare,
or
worked for a buck an hour,
and uncle sam took his
offa the top...
then,
when you're miserable enough,
then you apply for a government
housin
project,
where four rooms, a gas smoked
heater,
a bed, and a toilet,
is like a palace,
and
in a way it is, i guess,
like
all the other hundred lost souls,
living here, side by side,
findin
it hard to come up with the
twenty bucks a month,
subsidized by the
government,
wonderin'
where the good times begin...
yeah,
it's what you make it,
pardner,
unless
you just ain't...
got the tools to build on. ##
* * *
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