I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and 
          sat down under the huge shade of a Southern 
          Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the 
          box house hills and cry. 
     Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron 
          pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts 
          of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, sur- 
          rounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of 
          machinery. 
     The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun 
          sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that 
          stream, no hermit in those mounts, just our- 
          selves rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums 
          on the riverbank, tired and wily. 
     Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray 
          shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting 
          dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust-- 
     --I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower, 
          memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem 
     and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes 
          Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black 
          treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the 
          poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel 
          knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck 
          and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the 
          past-- 
     and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, 
          crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog 
          and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye-- 
     corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like 
          a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, 
          soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sun- 
          rays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried 
          wire spiderweb, 
     leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures 
          from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster 
          fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear, 
     Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O 
          my soul, I loved you then! 
     The grime was no man's grime but death and human 
          locomotives, 
     all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad 
          skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black 
          mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuber- 
          ance of artificial worse-than-dirt--industrial-- 
          modern--all that civilization spotting your 
          crazy golden crown-- 
     and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless 
          eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the 
          home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar 
          bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards 
          of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely 
          tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what 
          more could I name, the smoked ashes of some 
          cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the 
          milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs 
          & sphincters of dynamos--all these 
     entangled in your mummied roots--and you there 
          standing before me in the sunset, all your glory 
          in your form! 
     A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent 
          lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye 
          to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited 
          grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden 
          monthly breeze! 
     How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your 
          grime, while you cursed the heavens of the rail- 
          road and your flower soul? 
     Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a 
          flower? when did you look at your skin and 
          decide you were an impotent dirty old locomo- 
          tive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and 
          shade of a once powerful mad American locomo- 
          tive? 
     You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a 
          sunflower! 
     And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me 
          not! 
     So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck 
          it at my side like a scepter, 
     and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack's soul 
          too, and anyone who'll listen, 
     --We're not our skin of grime, we're not our dread 
          bleak dusty imageless locomotive, we're all 
          beautiful golden sunflowers inside, we're bles- 
          sed by our own seed & golden hairy naked ac- 
          complishment-bodies growing into mad black 
          formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our 
          eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive 
          riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sit- 
          down vision.