Condition Oakland

[Verse 1]
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 on to 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

[Chorus]
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?

[Verse 2]
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 locked from the inside

[Chorus]
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?

[Sample: Jack Kerouac reading "October in the Railroad Earth"]
"...and 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 bought in some West Virginia or Florida or Liverpool
England pawnshop long before I was born and across
Rains they've come to the end of the land sadness end of the
World gladness all you San Franciscos will have to fall eventually
And burn again. But I'm walking and one night..."