Inevitable

By Jack Joseph Smith

When the lie is seen. As it goes Then the same thought Around Everyone knows And when it cuts the spirit of your love Or just burns terrific pain to your back Wait until you feel the beads of sweat After tears of blood run your faceless Then above the mind the heart began to pound Forever across soul: Into an undoing fate Until an Id of I is emptied the deep; and form could hate

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A poem that follows the exposure of a lie through escalating bodily pain — tears of blood, beads of sweat, the heart pounding — into a fate that cannot be escaped or undone.

Claude

The poem's logic is merciless: once the lie is seen, everyone knows, and knowledge cuts the spirit or burns the back — there is no third option. The inevitability of the title is not fate in the abstract but a sequence the body already understands, moving from sweat through blood to a heart that begins to pound 'forever across soul.' The closing fragments suggest the poem itself breaks under the weight of what it describes.