Page 16
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This page mythologizes Prankster through winter Chicago, cycling, women, anti-drug posture, speed, and a dreamlike escape from the road.
The language keeps trying to make character out of motion. Style, weather, women, and travel are not incidental details here; they are the machinery by which the figure of Prankster is being invented. The scan-reviewed spellings keep the prose rough and unstable in useful ways.
Prankster Chicago-memory poem - late fifties, chain belt to his ribs, winter wind off the lake, hating drugs and the fashion of its coming, becoming the lie to know the lie and fade past film, dreaming of the desert as he mounts. Road not literate to him, release a dedication confronting the weary, thought may only look upon a mashing mind traced on wind. Origin-myth for the Prankster figure.