By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
"New Hell" denounces a young America hungry for war and trapped in recycled scapegoating that keeps people from ever getting grounded.
Its rage comes from how familiar the mechanism is: hatred simply swaps targets and keeps marching. The line about not being able to stand life without war makes violence sound like a social addiction rather than a policy. By the end, the failure is not only moral but physical, because nobody gets grounded before they are blown apart.
'New Hell' (title combining typed 'New' with handwritten 'Hell') reads American violence as appetite, claiming 'the young in America / want war really badly' and 'can't / stand their lives / without it.' Its bitter insight is that scapegoating only swaps targets - 'Now it isn't the Jews, / it is the gay people / who run the United States' - while 'The illusion is so serious' that no one gets grounded 'until little by little / where all blown up.' The collapse is physical as well as moral.