Loving Oakland is a Plywood Maw

Where the doors to the store used to be 
The atm scraped along through glass and twisted metal.

Of watching dumped cars along our block dwindle
each day a tire, a wheel, a seat, a window—
‘till only a lonely frame sits propped up 
like a dead cockroach.

Of waking to a string of M80s 
knocking the pictures off the walls 
car alarms wailing 
it feels war torn 
and I’ll never understand the thrill.

The neighbor’s kids filling my steps 
basketballs against the house 
bicycles upside down and worked on in the driveway 
A van with a bullet hole through the windshield
Is the bike shop and kids from all over
come to tinker on theirs here as well.

—A swerving thread of dread heads and Edgar cuts
up and down and over the speed bumps
a car makes the block gas, brake, dip 
but the kids ride joyfully into the smoke. 

Loving Oakland 
is a series of tripping 
with no luggage 
Of baggage without a place
to put it down.

Gunplay and robbery hurt 
when it’s the cupcake lady
or one of your old friend’s kids—
Stores are emptied out 
and traffic stopped by machete-wielding fiends.

The necklace of lights 
the scum and brackish waters
the monsters guarding 
the steel gray gate of us.

This is a story of home 
of maybe you can claim a city 
if you can say I used to live there 
or work over here— 
walk to the daycare and the WIC store
if you still call International, E. 14th

There were always some— 
who climbed through that small crack
between the lake and crumbling asphalt of E. 12th
left hollowed dirt beds in the ground.
But there weren’t tents and trucks and literal shanties 
sprouting up all the way around.

There was one homeless man 
on my daily walk to BART
He carried trash bags 
through the turnstile
one at a time
one day I saw a little mouse crawl out 
and run across the train station’s floor.

What I’m saying to y’all is when I first stayed 
over here my homie Leonard 
born and raised told me:
“See, we don’t have homeless over here 
like you got in the city. 
See, we have family
We have houses. 
We ain’t got to be sleeping in the streets.”

Now I hear an OG in Uptown say: 
“Everyone I grew up with in West Oakland
lives in a tent.”
Or in the East yesterday, 
When a man on a motor-scooter declared:
“I did twenty six years. 
Come home to find 
Oakland turned into a third world country.”