Page 209

By Jack Joseph Smith

Or was it worship or a better winged bird Or to take the family under would make adore,, killing at will the first thought before wine, while the timing of things is as useless as the rock you watch roll Reason and the knife the same with such silence,, bonds of men through the reagons of the earth, your side take me says Christ Let me leave the last of the overhanging stars, for for you after that there are none left; eternal is difficult, and thus it's enterance and when there not coming after ya, and you take their head off anyway, your luck has ran out; look at Shakespeare, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, all alive in the play when we believed they are dead

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Worship slips into killing, Christ enters the argument, and Shakespearean death is overturned by the strange persistence of life inside the play.

The poem keeps breaking and revising its own language, especially around "worship" and "adore," as if devotion cannot stay free of violence. "Your side take me says Christ" abruptly inserts scripture into a field already crowded with knives, stars, and severed heads, making the appeal sound desperate rather than serene. Hamlet, Lear, and Othello remain alive because theater suspends finality, which may be the only refuge offered here.

Claude

The Shakespeare sequence closes with devotion sliding into violence - worship that 'would make / adore,, killing at will the first thought / before wine' - and the unsettling equation 'Reason and the knife the same with such / silence.' Scripture breaks in mid-field: 'your side take me says Christ,' an appeal that sounds desperate amid 'overhanging / stars' and severed heads ('you take their head off / anyway, your luck has ran out'). Its consolation is the theater's suspension of finality: 'look at / Shakespeare, Hamlet, Lear, Othello, all / alive in the play when we believed they / are dead.'