In 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.