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.