In the Back of the Real

Railroad yard in San Jose

I wandered desolate in front of a tank factory

and sat on a bench near the switchman's shack.

A flower lay on the hay on the asphalt highway

--the dread hay flower

I thought--It had a brittle black stem

and corolla of yellowish dirty spikes like Jesus' inchlong crown,

and a soiled dry center cotton tuft like a used shaving brush

that's been lying under the garage for a year.

Yellow, yellow flower, and flower of industry,

tough spiky ugly flower,

flower nonetheless,

with the form of the great yellow rose in your brain!

This is the flower of the World.