Page 107

By Jack Joseph Smith

Fear A Fear does not make me love likeness of you But fear does make me hate your likeness and your will E This scornd second we take task as complete Grabbing our will and twisting the dark flower Joy with the damned lasting is all that Not is cared for, struggled about almost in a wild womb to strike out outside of to find a clear way to doom I did not see anything In one door and out the other And what is left over No one ever leaves The inconsequetal act of giving The instrument of fear

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

"Fear" says fear cannot create love but can twist likeness into hatred, leaving behind a world where even giving becomes one more instrument of coercion.

The poem treats fear as a force that reshapes will and language. The handwritten Not and outside of make the middle passage more unstable, interrupting the typed argument as if revision itself is part of the fear-work. Its last lines remain bleak because they refuse release: what is left over is something no one ever leaves.

Claude

'Fear' anatomizes how fear corrupts will and likeness: 'Fear does not make me love likeness of you / But fear does make me hate your likeness / and your will.' The middle, broken by handwritten letters and the inserted 'Not', twists toward damnation - 'twisting the dark flower', 'a wild womb to strike out' only 'to find a clear way to doom.' The bleak close offers no release: 'No one ever leaves / The inconsequetal act of giving / The instrument of fear', where even generosity becomes a tool of coercion.