Page 87

By Jack Joseph Smith

Bedroom Law Quite like a warrior after a battle won Perversion is the way of going back, before the duplicity of the mind bore God When not of the modern texture of rooms, the mirror of man and woman, in the lake, were a remote, a mingling reflection A time when animal gods were lonely, unattached creatures With one emotional, erotic function, that of multipliable organs fighting off all fear So let the pale bedsheets roll Like sea side Scotish grass Over the dew of your wetness And let the lengths of your earlobes ring till churning With the knawing sounds that deepen Down past the last Earth's layer Into the fire of your bellies dropped disappearance For you are the challenger who has made hands change Flung through the bottom floors of your sleeping places To where final human locks, have been forgotten before being unfastened; to where the door of the soul, senses no death in its behavior.

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Sex is imagined as a return beneath civilized restraint into a more primitive, bodily force.

The poem pits perversion against the duplicating mind and even against God, then moves through bedsheets, wetness, earlobes, and fire to make desire feel elemental rather than shameful. Animal gods and fighting organs strip intimacy down to fear, function, and challenge. By the end, soul and body are fused in a place where locks, doors, and death lose authority.

Claude

'Bedroom Law': 'Perversion is the way of going back, / before the duplicity of the mind bore God', to a time when 'animal gods / were lonely, / unattached creatures / With one emotional, erotic function', ending where 'the door of the soul, / senses no death in its behavior.'

The poem argues the erotic as archaeology: under 'the modern texture of rooms' and 'the mirror of man and woman, / in the lake' lies an older, pre-duplicity body, reached by 'going back' beneath the mind that 'bore God'. The strangest and strongest phrase is the 'emotional, erotic function, / that of multipliable organs fighting off all fear' - desire framed as anti-mortality logistics, multiplication against death. The imperatives that follow ('let the pale bedsheets roll', 'let the lengths of your earlobes ring') drive sensation 'Down past the last Earth's layer / Into the fire of your bellies'. The closing image, where 'the door of the soul, / senses no death in its behavior', fuses body and soul and refuses the easy apostate reading the title 'Bedroom Law' might invite. Source spellings 'knawing' and 'Scotish' are preserved as written.