Insipid Gone

By Jack Joseph Smith

Geer. Incipid Gone I never thought the deposessed would find me caught For with the night talk or the walk the light fell not Wish candlelight to have thunder like a grand Cascade 4nd watch electric begin to bend all that was ever made While the garlanded ash of the Sun and of the Moon Will oneday call dust their lost rivers in their ruin Yet Harth fists fly folded far across seas in firelight As strange military visitations contend only to pretend Accordingly minds are deranged with the might in down-sight Less a ritual country neck blade across a vanquished hen Comes deadened eyes youthful lost on their way to crime And appointed gangs that guard gates and highways over walls Who find the lower down being just fine for their time While displaced ladies who have taken our dangerous calls Remain disinterested under tongues of very dry wine "View the entirety," says the vendor. "Unromantic are alleys, locked like milk with dope..." He shoutss, "they are refrigerated with women standing om their kneesi" While little the world has in engagement to its hopes - When our baths, just hot, for pigs and skinning Release our premeditated masturbated murder Across the ancient sets of getto stone into a wounded whining Where-upon our parted souls in riddle couldn't get dirtier

Original Scan

Page 48

AI Interpretation

GPT

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.


Claude

The title's pun — 'insipid' for 'incipid,' tastelessness standing in for beginning — sets the poem's terms: what has departed is not flavor but origin itself. The dispossessed find the speaker 'caught,' not the reverse, and from there the poem descends through military visitations that 'contend only to pretend,' gang-guarded gates, and displaced ladies under tongues of very dry wine. The vendor's shout — 'they are refrigerated with women standing on their knees' — makes commerce and degradation a single cold image.