This is a poem I wrote, by copying the format and a lot of the words from Sunflower Sutra by Allen Ginsberg. I feel guilty for butchering his beautiful poem, there is the original version in Gallego below.
I walked on the shores of green salty granite ocean and sat down under the immense blackness of the stormy sky to look overhead at the flashing spotlight beam of a faraway lighthouse lantern and cry.
A blue backpack sat beside me on a weathered wood and steel bench, companion, we carried the weight of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed. Surrounded by the night storm and mist of mischievous waves, rocks appear like animals slowly emerging from the ocean. The churning water mirrored the flashing eye of the lighthouse, glittering, no keeper in that house, just us, sun-faded and tattered, full of sepia memories of the red-poppy summer.
Look at the city, they said, there was a dead grey shadow against the sky, big as a mountain, sitting sodden on top of a pile of ancient stones.
I was enchanted--it was a new city, forget memories of gold--sun--peace of Western rivers, McKenzie, pure white glacial casecade and lazy Willamette,
August brown rock slime, poem of the riverbank, used baby diapers and cigarette butts, only the dank muck and hazy lukewarm river passing into the past. And the grey city poised against the black, dripping salty from the recent ocean storm, full of possibilities with the winking lighthouse for an eye--
Halo of streetlights, shining blurry through water rolling down foggy bus windows.
All those cafés, shoestores, churches. The home-pile of rocks and rain, bars and vending machines, tables on the smokey street, plazas full of children, voices echoing in wet caves.
The perfect unknown! A perfect excellent rain ocean sea city! A piercing eye of the ancient rock light-house, woke up alive and excited grasping in the dark night shadow, lighthouse guide me, endless possibility!
SUTRA DE XIRASOL
Camiñei polas beiras do peirao de lata e banana e sentei
so a enorme sombra dunha locomotora da Southern
Pacific para mirar o solpor encol dos cómaros con casas
coma caixas e a chorar.
Jack Kerouac sentou ao meu carón nun poste de ferro
estragado e oxidado, compañeiro, pensamos igual verbo
da alma, desertos e angustiados e co ollar triste,
cercados polas raíces nodosas de aceiro de árbores de
maquinaria.
A agua aceitosa do río reflectiu o ceo vermelho, o sol
afundiu nos cumios finais de Frisco, non hai peixes
nese regato, non hai ermitán neses montes, soamente
nos propios con ollos reumáticos e resaca coma
vellos nugalláns na ribeira do río, cansos e agudos.
Mira o xirasol, dixo, houbo unha sombra gris e morta
contra o ceo, grande coma un home, sentada no cimo
dunha morea de serraduras derramadas--
--Rubin encantado--foi o meu primeiro xirasol, lembranzas de Blake--as miñas visións--Harlem
e Infernos dos ríos Orientais, pontes renxendo Sandwiches Graxentos de Joe, carriolas de bebé mortas, pneumáticos negros e sen debuxo esquecidos e sen recauchutar, o poema da ribeira, condóns & potas, coitelos de aceiro, nada inmaculado, unicamente o estrume húmido e os artefactos de coitelas aguzadas indo cara ao ceo pasado---
e o Xirasol gris arrandeado contra o solpor, crebadizo
deserto e poeirento co charrizo e a brétema poluída e
fume de locomotoras vellas no seu ollo--
corrola de lagañentas pugas dobradas e rotas como unha
coroa mallada, sementes caídas fóra da súa face, boca
a-piques-de-ficar-sen-dentes de aire asollado, raxeiras
obliteradas encol da súa cabeza peluda como unha
enxoita arañeira de arame,
follas saíntes coma brazos saindo do talo, acenos da raíz
de serraduras, anacos rotos de xeso caídos dos
garabullos negros, unha mosca morta na súa orella,
Impias, mallada e vella cousa fuches, meu xirasol Oh miña alma, ameite daquela!
A roña non era roña de home senón morte e locomotoras humanas,
--Non somos a nosa pel cotrosa, non somos a nosa terríbel crúa e poeirenta locomotora sen imaxe, todos somos por dentro xirasoles belos e dourados, estamos benditos pola nosa propia semente & dourados peludos espidos cohibidos--corpus medrando dentro de loucos pretos cerimoniosos xirasoles no solpor, asexados polos nosos ollos so a sombra da locomotora tola solpor na ribeira en Frisco visión esgrevia de latas na tardiña sentados.
Allen Ginsberg, Berkely 1955
