Page 58

By Jack Joseph Smith

A POEM TO A PAINTER BEFORE: When I went to the calling that was the magic of this horror show I saw minds winding through darkest parts of the eternal currents into down below trailing upon twisted memories I went so slow on the screaming edge of my hanging lungs at the final moment when the last reded eye went into me and I caught a life in time to say I saw through men over knowledge as timeless with wisdom as an untouched tree after they had captured a brain and on scalpel sharp surgical stone cut it raw; IT ALL: When I see water rolling white in the night within winding grays I think of the day that sank away to feelings going on the flow of men's sounds carried alas on the stillness in time to where there would have been other men as Will could have gone beyond toward turning teacher into brother but thought of all the gravestones along the way and could I walk there pretending I never witnessed deep dread face of the spirit or what would I write after again to again the wine went dripping from my mouth walking from doors of closing taverns with tears running a down my lines like fading colors of a worn out hobo's tie? HAPPENED: Men among lost men blessing man's soul in the wild of the black alley the world has yet to tally your understanding and consecrate lone agony in wreaths false wrapped round the tombs they place above you yet with art I deepen my own still passing beneath strength knowing movement gives not good leave with reply.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem answers a painter with a vision of horror, memory, and artistic kinship, treating art as a way to witness suffering without escaping it.

The opening section is crowded with violent, almost surgical imagery, where perception itself feels invasive and painful. Later movement through water, taverns, gravestones, and fading color turns that intensity into a question about what can still be written after dread has been seen so closely. The ending addresses another artist with respect and grief, suggesting that true consecration happens not through public honor but through shared endurance beneath it.

Claude

'A POEM TO A PAINTER': a triptych marked 'BEFORE:', 'IT ALL:', and 'HAPPENED:' - a surgical horror-vision of 'minds winding through darkest parts', then water-and-tavern recall with 'tears running a / down my lines like fading colors of a worn out hobo's tie', and finally 'Men among lost men blessing man's soul in the wild / of the black alley'.

The three section-headings read as one broken sentence - BEFORE / IT ALL / HAPPENED - so the poem's own structure enacts a witnessing that arrives in stages. The first movement is invasive and almost clinical, perception itself a wound, with brains cut 'raw' on 'scalpel sharp surgical stone'. The second turns the intensity into a question about what can still be written after such dread, and gives the title its key: the poet names his own craft 'like fading colors of a worn out hobo's tie', a colorist addressing a painter. The last movement consecrates the unhonored dead in 'the black alley', then refuses stasis - 'movement gives not good leave with reply' insists that endurance, not rest, is the only fitting answer.