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By Jack Joseph Smith

Listening Isn't it watching everything Or blind and feeling Simple as a joke gone bad When you have crossed yourself, you haven't walked away The tree just turned And the water rose above your head Nothing lasted And you didn't know if it was a dream or something that came back to haunt you So you left it alone To search again like a child To find you were forbidden Just as if You had never listened At all

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Listening becomes a haunted form of perception, where watching, crossing oneself, rising water, and childlike searching all lead to the fear of having missed the truth entirely.

The page treats attention as morally serious. To fail to listen is not just to miss information, but to lose access to whatever tried to warn or return to you.

Claude

'Listening' opens on a riddle of perception - 'Isn't it watching everything / Or blind and feeling / Simple as a joke gone bad' - then turns to a self-crossing that traps rather than frees: 'When you have crossed yourself, / you haven't walked away.' Catastrophe arrives in fairy-tale images, 'The tree just turned / And the water rose / above your head,' leaving the speaker unsure 'if it was a dream / or something that came back to haunt you.' Searching 'again like a child' only reveals a prohibition - 'To find you were forbidden' - and the poem ends in erasure, 'Just as if / You had never listened / At all,' attention itself nullified.