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.