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 This canes second we take task as complete Grabbing our will and twisting the dark flower Joy with the damned lasting is all that Mot is cared for, struggled about almost in a wild womb to strike out ev ad E fo) am to find a clear way ® doom I did not see anything In one door and out the other And what iis left over No one ever leaves The inconsequental 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 giving itself becomes one more instrument of coercion.

The poem is less interested in terror as feeling than in fear as a machine that reshapes will. Dark flower, wild womb, and clear way downward all suggest that violence grows organically once fear is allowed to complete the task. Its last lines are bleak because they refuse catharsis: what remains over is something no one ever truly leaves.

Claude

Fear: fear does not make me love likeness of you, but does make me hate your likeness and your will. The inconsequential act of giving is the instrument of fear.