Insipid Gone
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A sonnet-like poem of dispossession and urban decay, moving from candlelight and thunder through military visitation and gang-guarded highways to a final image of premeditated murder released across ancient ghetto stone.
A long-lined apocalyptic survey, titled on the page 'Incipid Gone,' in which 'the deposessed' find the speaker 'caught,' candlelight wishes for 'thunder like a grand Cascade,' and 'electric' begins 'to bend all that was ever made.' The poem descends from cosmic ruin, where 'the garlanded ash of the Sun and of the Moon' will 'call dust their lost rivers in their ruin,' into a city of 'appointed gangs that guard gates and highways over walls' and 'displaced ladies' kept 'under tongues of very dry wine.' The vendor's pitch 'View the entirety' delivers the cold thesis - alleys 'locked like milk with dope' and 'refrigerated with women standing on their knees' - before it ends in 'premeditated masturbated murder' across 'getto stone,' where 'parted souls in riddle couldn't get dirtier.'