Who's Technological Revolution?

By Jack Joseph Smith

WHO'S TECHIOLOGICAL REVOLUTION? I demn near fell asleep in the truck for a buck Riding Shotgun out the Pittsburgh Parkiey smogefog Sheme on a laborer who's simll won't let him dean A drunken ego naturel enough to dreem But how was I to kmows.. Theat Whore House Restraunt “Jolly-John's" show Would be nice this morn without rot and a bus boy yet No yellow yoke left like a Sea spirm Seal Giving one the face of a river Cat Fish For a cat to lick up who would not- Mede the-table different from weekday Granting great quality to each quarter tip This five :o'clock Saturdays . For uss morningmoor ment overtime pay Brick lay'in World Wer II tank driving “Devil Den The Furnace Man" With 57 aged ‘varieties -of stomach desease- No less caused: over-worry from leg Phlebitis~ Long before ‘Nixon ‘ When Dan had stopped drink'in: aidAnd ‘leborer-eight child father ‘Himgarien: Joe- OP all mighty ages ~- knowing that in this one > Tocwail'a-man means ‘going to jeil” As his conversation allowed‘a wit beyond concentration Instead of pest problems educated in the crags of hie face - While I see mysél? defenting-the Welfare Progren sone anéiii we corner nodded watched; : like on the fascinating nibble by a derelict's last tooth A big beautiful shoulder boned white girl's back to our booth; with two terrible bleck men smiling with leve- There; avoiding the esnerl*in a stare Theat swirling worker's head bent recognitior ‘ . To the Pinel served coffee alveys with a strangers thank you Hed us sentss. through the cash register *usual _ ¢ = Again; out into the derk Ohio River Jermeary wind’ On our wey in we had mentioned the fortune of stars: And now certainly-out - there ves din JUST FOR LIGHT... on the sidm of siz o'clock dawn; that had us on iron below vast riveted corrigation ATOP the spenking new Furnace of our domain Ye would with chemical cesteble pour A ceiling able to eat up for sure The power blezed within ans ee 4 we all on our psychologic: own 2 nthe Test wild figure of eighty bled into the sound That stopped the count of lined furnace’
These are the ten hour houses of pronged men Possibly unshezed but slowly changed Or simply rigid with fittings for fingers And now the first metaphor using a yesteryear, that would not consider’an alloy within iron In wheels turned by miles; while up to our time, the subtle -lethalness of ges can do the work (And only for modern costs does the image remain extinct from distruction) ds each wheel still reels up its smashing hammer To “force-drop* -forge out- super ferm equipment: To cooly ‘be shipped out cf a cast Ment to cast out farm lebors=> While my failed ‘normal vision Increased‘ into the perception of the new-man's menace industral’ Contimed from-Dante's disected ‘forms~ Borm out of the huge wheels; to be like William Blake grownt Ironically cut on the curve at the risen brim Below my-mind along-a tiny blocked wheels rim Giving to science another easy images (Cf never shall the old roll forever) hen, a physics unseen has-made production : move faster" Under; the strain of a laborer's *piece work" with no peece-at all” . For the ruin of lazy sins to-the ain of imaginations ruin and sworn alone to his lost moon No part-time apple farmer can be Able-to-seesce: : Enough reyed light of the sun through the union To ask to know about abstract revolt While any bolt of lightening blowing brains Exists in a spaced steel space "way under space Living over-the worker like a tracer’ Where from behind some kind of nind Absolutely disengaged from, “seek ani Ye shall fini® aa This FORGED FORCE also molded a rental mutation -to the very place of particuler Punetion= That eyedropped ‘children Are whispered wanely todsce Not to pursues
By seperately organic women Secular only to their men Who's touch on existence I saw holding the women to their homes: Over the mist where it was faintest on another "Heavy Hill" Through an expansive new -alumimm door gap AT THE WAY BACK opened‘ out from that sleeker extentioned grip Modern Mill Men usually refer to as "The-Plent" and viewing that shivering splice; of also a sumer!s shimering world I wondered of those threshold ladies Somehow above the river and railroad’ While wooden housed tamed together Along the scrub treed‘ridges edge af milltown IN IT, washing yesterdays cloths for tomorrow While through a deeper rotunda of steam sound They peered vacant eyes worthy down Into another: “fired up" progress valley” That would smash any lens shooting their Hellish Men" This cof course, "Coraopolis Pittsburgh Forge* While across -the bridgeNorth over: the river: within the antiquated wealth of Swickley town; a maid's facial remains might-stop a professional clown, while she-cleans Burbon off management’ lace: RIGHT ON THE SET OF THE SCENES: I would have cracked’ from fear if not distaste > Had I not known through her- poems Ya! can't: Vand I dreamed, how our garden would be- Come springee when I would see My-man with his beer In the day-off Lounge chair He also being King. All ‘abiding to his first breath: : in marriages thet never would we hock Grenimother'e gold ring" "ya! can't; rum out on a prick-layers® ' As that last of the four in the morning Vodka Hellucinated Immor in this head TA1l it-twitched a mind to turn in crook this impossible neck to the root///
and here at seven There was light on the middle ages agein For through a sly/crack in the tin A lucky days Gaybreak showed ny Fluorescent blue bulb of a sky i. [77

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AI Interpretation

GPT

A four-page industrial epic set in a Pittsburgh steel forge, following a laborer through a pre-dawn diner, a furnace shift, and the women on the ridgeline above the mill, measuring technological progress against the human cost of piece work, phlebitis, and domestic confinement.

The poem moves from the social comedy of 'Jolly-John's' diner through an infernal vision of forge and wheel to a moment of unexpected tenderness when a mill wife's poem reveals the inner life that industry has walled off, ending with a crack of daylight through tin that stands for fragile, accidental revelation.

Claude

The question mark in the title is the poem's thesis — the technological revolution belongs to no one who actually lives inside it. The speaker rides shotgun through Pittsburgh smog to a forge where wheels, hammers, and gas do the work that men's bodies once did, but the cost has merely shifted: from muscle to nerve, from visible injury to 'the subtle lethalness of gas.' The poem's moral center is not the furnace but the women on the ridge above the mill — 'peering vacant eyes worthy down / Into another fired up progress valley' — and the wife's whispered poem about her man in the lounge chair, which is the only art the industrial system cannot forge, drop, or ship.

The four-page span lets the poem perform the ten-hour shift it describes. The diner scene with Devil Den the Furnace Man and Hungarian Joe establishes a comedy of exhaustion — men bonded by phlebitis and overtime pay — before the furnace sequence turns Dantesque. The closing image of a 'fluorescent blue bulb of a sky' glimpsed through a crack in the tin is the collection's recurring motif: revelation arriving not through effort but through accident, a sly crack in the material world.