Page 309

By Jack Joseph Smith

fhe First Instruction Eat you meat, chicken and beans, up to the day you smell deaths in your good young lifes \ between tongue and soul When they go bad you go pad too “ A rifel and a knife are a pleasure to look at Make sure you haven't seen noth’ in: yet _.. A beer and car are reall prettey and a.glass of whiskey too Don’t forget to tell the kids to wateh out for you

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The First Instruction reduces youth to appetite, rot, admired weapons, and pretty intoxicants, then oddly asks children to guard the adult.

The command to eat until death is smelled makes bodily life sound like a bargain already turning bad between tongue and soul. Rifles and knives are granted surface beauty, which is part of the danger: they attract before they wound. Beer, car, and whiskey extend that same seduction into adulthood, and the last line inverts care by making children the watchers.

Claude

'The First Instruction': same eat-meat-till-you-smell-death refrain, young life between tongue and soul; 'they go bad, you go bad too'; rifle and knife; the beer and car; tell the kids to watch out for you.