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By Jack Joseph Smith

High Watch Just the dial, me and the radio misplaced One thing about America is that she has alot of songs "Lord can you hear me,when I fall Lord can you hear me, when I crawl Lord can you hear me, at all" Like a living savage, the wind can twist,. and say God is done which my savage doesn't Strange across the sorrow, CAN be as correct,, as the stars themselves Wake up if you ever dream you can't find the sky If you can imagine walking into a courthouse on purpose Then you have nothing to do with the Prohibition

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The misplaced radio keeps singing while wind, sorrow, stars, sky, courthouse dread, and a final Prohibition annotation turn American life into a test of whether one can still orient oneself at all.

This version feels more stripped down and aphoristic, with the prayer set against a world where even God may be finished and the handwritten savage line complicates who is speaking. The line about waking from a dream and not finding the sky is the real crisis, because it imagines dislocation at the level of the cosmos. Walking into a courthouse on purpose becomes the poem's emblem for surrendering oneself to a hostile order, while the Prohibition addition pushes that order into explicitly legal and historical terms.

Claude

High Wateh refined: America has alot of songs, living savage, the wind can twist and say God is done. Closes with walking into a courthouse on purpose equals nothing to do.