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..."