Page 421

By Jack Joseph Smith

Power Paint your door Rearainge the mess on your desk Give your grandkids a gift Spend eight hundred dollars for a good gum Just say lier when anybody talks about gangsters And no matter how much you abhore and don't like it, Jesus is a street person, and homosexuality is a living end

Original Scan

Page 421

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page uses a string of blunt commands to mock ordinary ideas of power before ending with identification with people pushed to the street or to the margins.

Domestic tidying, gifts, money, and lying about gangsters are all treated as shallow gestures of control. The final turn is intentionally jarring, forcing power to be measured against dispossession rather than status.


Claude

''''Power' -- paint your door, rearrange the mess, spend eight hundred dollars on a good gun, call anyone who talks gangsters 'a lier.' Closer: 'Jesus is a street person, and homosexuality is a living end.''''