Hold That Nasty Language
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A voice poem about blunt truth, rough codes of conduct, and the way everyday speech reveals character and threat.
This poem is performative in the best sense: it sounds like it knows it is being spoken aloud.
A blunt, vernacular monologue on honesty: 'I don't tell lies / Ask my football coach; he still lives / Ask my ex wives'. In a voice full of ranch and rodeo idiom ('not my first rodeo', 'Stay off my ranch'), the speaker condemns lying - 'Liars find fruit full of foulness / Lies are the beleagurement of the brain' - and warns a 'Judge' to 'Stick to the facts' since one must be 'qualified. / to be a head hunter'.
The poem's persona is a plainspoken Western tough who treats truthfulness as a credential to be verified by living witnesses ('Ask my football coach; he still lives / Ask my ex wives'). Its grammar of dialect - 'Ya' go after work and war', 'the're on a run' - is part of the meaning, an unschooled directness set against the polished lies it scorns. The standout line 'Lies are the beleagurement of the brain' (preserve the spelling) makes deceit a kind of mental siege, and the closing turn on 'head hunter' sharpens the title's warning to 'hold that nasty language': to judge or hunt others, you had better be qualified and clean-tongued. The speaker's pride is in accountability - his coach and ex-wives could expose him, and they have not. Preserve dialect spellings and punctuation throughout, including 'beleagurement', 'the're', 'war,.', and 'qualified.'.