By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Nearness, acting, self-contempt, impossible tomorrow, a flowered hope that cannot stop hell, and the handwritten claim 'I AM NOT A LIAR' make the first sight matter more than any promised ending.
The speaker treats identity as costume, giving himself away while admitting he has no respect for the self doing the performance. The flower image briefly offers growth or beauty as an answer to hell, but the poem cuts that hope off almost immediately. The handwritten denial sharpens the final reversal: the first thing seen carries more truth than whatever end might later explain it.
This 'Near' turns inward to define the word and the self at once. 'Near is supposed to mean / that something important / is happening,' and the speaker answers as performer: 'I am an actor / I love all that is before me / And I have no respect for myself.' Self-erasure is the method - 'I give it all up,' 'Tomorrow is impossible,' 'Be someone else every day.' He then dismantles a listener's hope that words 'had a flowwr in mind,' 'something that grew,' a making 'like / the past to stop rhe helll' - 'not a chance.' The handwritten outburst 'I AM NOT A LIAR' precedes the page's clean final paradox: 'I did not see the end / when I saw the first thing,' beginnings carrying no foreknowledge of where they go.