Uncredited Photographer Beat Poets Allen Ginsberg, Harold Norse, Jack Hirschman, Michael McClure and Bob Kaufman, Caffe Trieste, San Francisco 1975
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 hung-over 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 dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.
Allen Ginsberg, "Sunflower Sutra," 1955
--
my head felt stabbed
by a crown of thorns but I joked and rode the subway
and ducked into school johns and masturbated
and secretly wrote
of teenage hell
because I was “different”
the first and last of my kind
smothering acute sensations
in swimming pools and locker rooms
addict of lips and genitals
mad for buttocks
that Whitman and Lorca
and Catullus and Marlowe
and Michelangelo
and Socrates admired
and I wrote: Friends,
if you wish to survive
I would not recommend
Love
-- Harold Norse, "I Would Not Recommend Love" 1973
--
I ran down the street and into the house smelled
of oregano and shook Mickey Monaco, said
C'mon, Balaban's got a breadloaf
climbing over old Gruber's fence, he thinks
the mad dogs is doves.
But Mickey grew up in the bed till he was too old
and besides Balaban was crazy, he sucked
his tongue and got left back twice.
So I ran to Joey Bellino's house but his mother's
black stocking said Joey was out early shoe
shining. And besides a, that Balaban he's a
crazy a kid, he suck a the tongue and Joey says
he get lefback three times.
So I banged on Bitsy Beller's window yelled he was
near the top, the mad dogs waiting down
below he thinks is doves.
But when Bitsy stood up he turned into a stiff
cue stick. And didn't want nothing to do
with nobody cracked upstairs.
And Dickie Miller became a semipro. And Howie Fish
a doctor. So I ran down the street full of hope
by myself because I was on fire. But I got there
too late for Balaban. Two of them had a stretch
of skin between their teeth fighting over it,
and the foam of their mouths and Balaban's blood
spattered in such a way, the most the greatest
picture looked me straight in the eye, made me
sit in the gutter and cry,
and when I got up vow to be
Balaban from that day on
-- Jack Hirschman, "Balaban" 1969
--
for Jack Kerouac
IN LIGHT ROOM IN DARK HELL IN UMBER IN CHROME,
I sit feeling the swell of the cloud made about by movement
of arm leg and tongue. In reflections of gold
light. Tints and flashes of gold and amber spearing
and glinting. Blur glass…blue Glass,
black telephone. Matchflame of violet and flesh
seen in the clear bright light. It is not night
and night too. In Hell, there are stars outside.
And long sounds of cars. Brown shadows on walls
in the light
of the room. I sit or stand
wanting the huge reality of touch and love.
In the turned room. Remember the long-ago dream
of stuffed animals (owl, fox) in a dark shop. Wanting
only the purity of clean colors and new shapes
and feelings.
I WOULD CRY FOR THEM USELESSLY
I have ten years left to worship my youth
Billy the Kid, Rimbaud, Jean Harlow
IN DARK HELL IN LIGHT ROOM IN UMBER AND CHROME I
feel the swell of
smoke the drain and flow of motion of exhaustion, the long sounds of cars
the brown shadows
on the wall. I sit or stand. Caught in the net of glints from corner table to
dull plane
from knob to floor, angles of flat light, daggers of beams. Staring at love’s face.
The telephone in cataleptic light. Marchflames of blue and red seen in the
clear grain.
I see myself—ourselves—in Hell without radiance. Reflections that we are.
The long cars make sounds and brown shadows over the wall.
I am real as you are real whom I speak to.
I raise my head, see over the edge of my nose. Look up
and see that nothing is changed. There is no flash
to my eyes. No change to the room.
Vita Nuova—No! The dead, dead world.
The strain of desire is only a heroic gesture.
An agony to be so in pain without release
when love is a word or kiss.
-- Michael McClure, "The Chamber" 1961
--
I have folded my sorrows into the mantle of summer night,
Assigning each brief storm its allotted space in time,
Quietly pursuing catastrophic histories buried in my eyes.
And yes, the world is not some unplayed Cosmic Game,
And the sun is still ninety-three million miles from me,
And in the imaginary forest, the shingled hippo becomes the gray unicorn.
No, my traffic is not with addled keepers of yesterday’s disasters,
Seekers of manifest disembowelment on shafts of yesterday’s pains.
Blues come dressed like introspective echoes of a journey.
And yes, I have searched the rooms of the moon on cold summer nights.
And yes, I have refought those unfinished encounters.
Still, they remain unfinished.
And yes, I have at times wished myself something different.
The tragedies are sung nightly at the funerals of the poet;
The revisited soul is wrapped in the aura of familiarity.
-- Bob Kaufman, "I Have Folded My Sorrows" 1965
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You know, Silver and Black has my mind gears whirlin! I wonder how the trains of the Strasburg RR, and the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania get along. The United Railroad Historical Society of NJ. The B&O museum! Tennessee Valley, North Carolina Transportation Museum, Museum of the American Railroad, California State Railroad Museum, Nevada State Railroad Museum, Colorado Railroad Museum the possibilities! The Grand Canyon Railway, the Niles Canyon Rwy, Durango & Silverton, Cumbres and Toltec, on and on and on!
Oh, totally! DJ and I sometimes have moments of lunacy flights of fancy where we imagine our letters getting the attention of other transportation museums, how we'd handle their rosters and how it would connect with the already-established lore. Nothing serious, mind, just a fun "what if".
Out of personal investment not related to the letters, we keep a weather eye on the St Louis Transportation Museum (Silver Charger is there alongside another Russian Decapod like Frisco 1630, and of course Big Boy 4006), as well as the Mark Twain Zephyr restoration project. The news of Flying Yankee going up for sale is also something we've been watching with interest. Looks like the Flying Yankee Association put in a bid a few days ago, which is good news!
This is the thing I love about train stuff, you can get invested in so many different aspects of the culture and hobby and never run out of material. For us, it's been the preservation aspect and learning about the local history of not just the trains, but the museums themselves. It's been a blast, and I'm tickled that your imagination is just as inspired as ours was by the possibilities!
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