By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page warns against getting too close to danger while recognizing that fearlessness on stage or in the ring is usually something performed and paid for second by second.
The poem is short but tense. With the spacing cleaned to match the evenly lineated scan, its clipped warnings read as one continuous instruction about fear, performance, and the body counting what it survived.
'Watch yourself' is a clipped string of warnings about fear and performance. The opening imperatives guard the self - 'Don't get so close / Don't claw yourself / Don't forget the correct / way to death' - then locate fearlessness where it is staged and paid for: 'The loss of fear / is on the stage / or in the ring'. The poem appeals to anyone who has 'ever been near' such places to confirm 'that is just / what they say', and ends on the body's grim arithmetic of survival: 'Maybe with guts / Each second there / After it / You go' - courage measured second by second, the going forward all that remains once the fear is spent.