Page 179

By Jack Joseph Smith

I$ Was all Hindu The slapped concrete wound like a mixed lariat Along the Hollywood hills down from Temple St. to Beachwood Bulvd; loss of wit and family too I had not direction except that I felt hoollywood as my home, while the guy who had turned me onr to my studio told me to walk on down to talk On the way I pased a mosque and thought that's Him the first of us seems Explicade among the stars we are blinded, so as the last of us in to make footsteps are only history

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This variant keeps the same Hollywood-and-cosmos frame, emphasizing directionlessness, a studio life, and the conversion of streets, a mosque, and footsteps into personal mythology.

The scan-cleaned text clarifies the page's geography and its deliberately rough spellings. The poem reads Los Angeles as both route and revelation, with history reduced to footsteps after the cosmic flash.

Claude

It Was all Hindu, continued. Slapped concrete wound like mixed lariat along the Hollywood hills from Temple St. to Beachwood Blvd. Loss of wit and family too. The mosque passed on the way to his studio — thought that's Him, the first of us. Footsteps are only history. The prose-verse hybrid held together by the LA geography.