By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page treats organ music as a strange sacred test, where only charged phrases like 'holy fuck,' 'holy Hell,' 'Holy shit,' and 'Holy Jesus' seem to apply before the poem turns toward Christ and the unspeakable.
The corrected transcript clarifies the poem's argument. It is not just a list of profanities; it is measuring what language can approach, where humor fails, and where religious feeling becomes something nearly impossible to discover or say.
The poem tests sacred language against organ music and finds only the profane-holy registers fit: 'Make holy fuck', 'Make holy Hell', 'Holy row', 'Holy shit', 'Holy Jesus', while 'All the rest do not apply'. From that it draws a chilling reading - 'There is no humor happening / other than Christ' - and then forecloses approach entirely: 'Approached would be out of the question; / just never was', the sacred left 'Left alone, not to be discovered / Unspeakable'. The blasphemous litany becomes the only available reverence, and Christ is held at an untouchable, wordless distance.