Condition Oakland
24 Hour Revenge Therapy LP/CD
I rode down to the tracks.
This is my condition:
Read and I felt so small.
This is my condition:
Thinking that 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.
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?
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.
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?
Note: The sample in the outro is Jack Kerouac reading his own work on the Steve Allen show; that's Mr. Allen on piano in the background. The text from which Kerouac reads is in his book Lonesome Traveler. Specifically, the words are in the third section entitled "The Railroad Earth." In the Grove Press
paperback edition, you can find them on pages 38 and 39.