The Right Permits

Every house on the block got sold to the city
It’s sad, but some offers you just can’t refuse
Mortar and brick once towering tall
When a city is changing, you can’t have it all

Now the building’s a bike shop where we went to high school
The house where my mother lived is a restaurant
The old public housing holds gallery art walks
The tourists ask where the wine tasting is

And all the pneumatic drills and old bribes in the paper
Machinery thrashing and blowing off steam
Big business and councilmen laughing about it
If you’ve got the permits, you can do what you please

Now the bulldozers tumble out over the rocks
And the mold in the clapboard is making me sick
Some worker in denim keeps calling me Linda
I sign all his papers, but that’s not my name

I pocket his money and then walk away