By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Out in space, quiet turns loud inside the head, exotic places flatten into sameness, and the promise of the next stop stops leaving anyone alone.
The comparison to being black in one's hometown makes travel feel racially charged even before the poem expands into "space." What matters is not scenery but psychic pressure: silence thickens until it becomes noise inside the skull. The next stop should promise relief, yet anticipation itself becomes another form of disturbance.
'No time change' charges travel before it widens it: 'Like a black in his home town / You got to watch your ass, / when you get out there in space / It is an extream.' What matters is psychic pressure, not scenery -- 'As quiet as you can get, / then it gets louder / in your head' -- and exotic places flatten, since 'all middle people, / are about the same.' Even anticipation becomes a trap: 'once you get happy / about seeing the next stop; / forget about it leaving / you alone', before circling back to 'And first comes the thumb.'