Condition Oakland

I rode down to the tracks

Thinking they might sing to me

But they just stared back

Broken, trainless and black as night

Climbed out onto my roof

So I'd be a poet in the night

Beat the walls off my room

I saw the big room that is this life

This is my condition

Naked and hysterical

Reaching to grab a hand that I just slapped back at

This is my condition

Desperate, alone, without an excuse

I try to explain, Christ, what's the use?

Read and I felt so small

Some words keep speaking when you close the book

Drank and just about smiled

Then I remembered us in that bed

Put my ear to the door

I just heard hot rods and gunshots and sirens

People kill me these days

There's keys in their eyes but they lock from the inside

This is my condition

Naked and hysterical

Reaching to grab a hand that I just slapped back at

This is my condition

Desperate, alone, without an excuse

I try to explain, Christ, what's the use?

"Everything is pouring in

The switching moves of boxcars in that little alley which is so much like the alleys of Lowell

And I hear far off in the sense of coming night that engine

calling our mountains.

But it was that beautiful cut of clouds

I could always see above the little S.P. alley

Puffs floating by from Oakland

Or the Gate of Marin to the north or San Jose south"

"The clarity of Cal to break your heart

It was the fantastic drowse and drum hum of lum mum afternoon nathin' to do, ole Frisco"

"The street is loaded with darkness

Blue sky above with stars hanging high over old hotel roofs

And blowers of hotels moaning out dusts of interior

The grime inside the word in mouths falling out tooth by tooth

The reading rooms tick tock bigclock

With creak chair and slantboards and old faces

Looking up over rimless spectacles