By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Suggestion imagines innocence becoming criminal through mere presence, then turns the choice of testimony through a Heaven/Hell correction and the wisdom of the tongue.
Crime is displaced from intention to circumstance, which makes the whole scene feel juridically absurd and spiritually charged at once. Putting an arm around someone becomes either comfort or fatal contact, and the collapse that follows leaves the speaker punished simply for being nearby. The handwritten shift from a struck-through Heaven line to After Hell sharpens the spiritual risk while the closing All insertion widens the refusal of the absolute.
'Suggestion' stages innocence turning criminal by proximity: 'Crime is not in your mind / Death maybe an unconscience.' You 'put your arm around them' and reassure 'you have little / to fear,' but 'they faint and fall / There gone / And they lock you up / Because you we're there.' The dilemma is whether to confess what 'you whispered' - the handwritten 'After Hell / with what you said' replacing a struck 'Heaven' line - or to 'stay out and about / with the truth )just at the wisdom of your tongue,' the closing handwritten 'All' widening the refusal to 'avoid the absolute.'