By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The page is confrontational and domestic at once, mixing drunken truth-telling, family grievance, bodily self-awareness, and arguments about lying, habit, place, and the hard knowledge of difference.
This one feels closest to a spoken outburst. Its power comes from refusing to smooth over anger before turning that anger into judgment and a vow not to lie again.
A drunken, untitled confrontation pitched at a whole family. The opening claims a hard-won ease - 'For the first time / in my entire life / I am not on a bed of stone' - then dares the listeners, 'So stop it, if your weak / Get used to it'. Bodily self-knowledge needs no witness, 'I do not have to have a mirror / in order to feel it', and the grievance turns on habit and place: the others are 'not necessarily lying / But having it your way cause your used / to it', and 'your place isn't your place / And never will be; difference is knowledge'. It ends on an unstable vow, 'Say, I will never lie again', sorrow more than repentance. Source forms 'your weak', 'your used', 'Horrow' are kept verbatim.