Ginsberg: soot and steam. Ginsberg: howl
and scream. Ginsberg: grit and grease, bleak
peace, dark moon, heat of June. Ginsberg: steel
and steal, machines too real, plight and fight, a
workman’s meal.

Ginsberg: Yacketayakking. Stolen nights,
breathing boxes, tubercular skies. From the ash, a
flower does rise, stares you down, right surprise.
The opposite of ripe: withering grey sunflower,
brittle smoking pipe.

Look at that sunflower. Man. A hint, a message,
a hope. Lest we forget—obliterate memory of
things gold, honest, gasping. Gasping,
gasping for glint, a stalk (even a dead stalk)
to climb, into clouds, above smog and
rotten soil, crude oil. Breathe, breathe.

Take the flower. Hold the flower. Be the
flower—sun and glean, son of dream. Take the
shadow of it home, specter and shade, pull
it from sawdust, a yellow-star bone, a banana
dock sermon.

Yes. In this thing: meaning.
Look, look: a perfect mummy of a sunflower, soul,
souling—singing sunflower, wildflower,
wild, tender, dead-eye flower. Take us home.