Reason Breeds Insanity

Sunflower Sutra

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 enchanted–it was my first sunflower,

memories of Blake–my visions–Harlem

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-dirt–industrial–

modern–all 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 dynamos–all these

entangled in your mummied roots–and 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.

Allen Ginsberg

Berkeley, 1955

What poem will you write today?

Ah! Sunflower Sutra

Sunflower tips tracing sun
head bobbing agreement with progress
seeds dropping descendants.

Metal cyborg flowers grow tall
heaps of ashes phoenix stems
buds open too fast in warmed globe.

Petals fall.
Dreams die.
Progress progresses.

Alpha Zulu
by Gary Lilley

I know more people dead than people alive,
my insomniac answer to self-addressed prayers

is that in the small hours even God drinks alone.
My self-portrait; gray locks in the beard, red eyes

burning back in the mirror, the truths of grooves
and nicks on my face, one missing tooth.

I’m a man who’s gathered too many addresses,
too many goodbyes. There’s not much money

or time left to keep on subtracting from my life.
Except for needs I can pack everything I have

into my old black sea-bag. To all the bloods
I’ll raise a bourbon, plant my elbow on the bar

and drink to the odds that one more shot
won’t have me wearing a suit of blues.

I’m so exposed, with you all of me is at risk,
and if that’s only one side of being in love

that’s the one deep down that proves it.
Here you are sleeping with me, narcotic as night,

naked as an open hand, and the skinny of it is,
what makes you think I am afraid of this

when I once lived in a cave, moss on the cold wall,
all my bones scattered across the floor.

Modern Day Jesus Song

Alive am I in you; you alive in me; we alive in we—
prayers you hear and sometimes do not answer.

Alone, a lonely hawk on wire bobbing rhythmically
eyes searching for food. You take care of these. Too. It feels like instead.

Grooves carved in pain and sweat, sweet anguish, a
tooth clicked, cheek sucked, knocked to ground. One less.

Addresses, envelopes. Envelope me in your greedy, ready,
money laundering. Send money but don’t write. It is only

life after all. Lived long without much food. Poverty. The poor
have social services to live by. Turn the other fat cheek and chew.

Bloods dripping diseases. Famine distending bellies. Apathy. Coffee
bar slips our drinks and we go crazy. One shot? I said two. Add one

shot, and the blood pours for diamonds, clothes, shoes and we sing the
blues over spilled milk. A man sits cold, on the corner. And we

risk nothing. Seven cloaks in the closet. Demons. Skeletons. But
love? Greater love has no man than to lay down his life (or give a coat).

It is finished. But the world turns on, turns off, turns on again.
Night turns. Day turns. We turn away. Insular. Isolated.

Is this what love is? Do they know us by our love?
This is what love has become. They know us by our latte, our full closet.

Walls built keeping out the vagrancy, degeneracy, otheracy, only me you see.
Floor-ed. Cross-ed. Double cross-ed. You and me. Not you and we.