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 surrounded 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 ourselves 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 enchantedit was my first sunflower memories of blakemy visionsharlem 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 sunrays 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 protuberance of artificial worse than dirtindustrial modernall 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 dynamosall these entangled in your mummied rootsand 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 railroad 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 locomotive the ghost of a locomotive the specter and shade of a once powerful mad american locomotive 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 blessed by our own seed golden hairy naked accomplishment 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 sitdown vision 1