Page 117

By Jack Joseph Smith

ACID III With ego as an echo Seen are the devils With which the balance in eternity comes to life No single shadow without the light of duel angle Invisible walls do prevail Small head hate peers down. Preventing the interchange. Inaction to Action Action to Inaction. The light house tower of war Killing of a human That gives no light Controls the sword Is useless to climb Until both do fall. Off stranded waters Hand then neck beyond reality. Any confiscation of life before birth Must total the formula of the planned Yet awakened then walked with a sound Yea again appears the gift of visions Through the womb to living Not as the matter of facts But as a matter of courses New willful sperms have arrived alive God bless this fire As we learn it upon coming Into wanting it for deaths We induce judgement Yet; watch the free on their mountain top thoughts leaving high; Though focused we do knowingly See the decendents of the deadly But for THE FOREVER the nature of mankind goes on Toward the passover of no turf turned graves at all

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem turns spiritual conflict, war, birth, and judgment into one unstable cycle where human will keeps recreating both violence and vision.

"ACID III" moves by sharp oppositions: ego becomes an echo, devils appear alongside light, and action flips into inaction. The war imagery is especially severe, with the "light house tower of war" offering no guidance and the sword ending in bodily destruction, while the poem also presses backward toward birth, the womb, and "new willful sperms" as if life itself enters already burdened by conflict and judgment. Its logic is jagged and visionary, but the through-line is clear: mankind remains caught between destructive inheritance and some enduring force called "THE FOREVER."

Claude

'ACID III' closes the Acid sequence in its most structured form, setting 'ego as an echo' and 'No single shadow without the light of duel angle' inside a two-column war passage, ending on 'the passover of no turf turned graves at all'.

The page is the manuscript's metaphysical finale, arguing rather than describing. Its facing columns oppose 'The light house tower of war / That gives no light / Is useless to climb' against 'Killing of a human / Controls the sword / Until both do fall,' staging mutual destruction in layout itself. The thesis turns to origins -- 'Any confiscation of life before birth / Must total the formula of the planned' -- before birth-imagery ('Through the womb to living,' 'New willful sperms have arrived alive') yokes vision to inheritance. The benediction 'God bless this fire' sits against 'we induce judgement,' and the eschatological close, a 'passover of no turf turned graves at all,' is as far toward final things as the book reaches. Source spellings 'duel,' 'decendents,' and the preserved column spacing are kept as written.