Page 20
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Fear, judgment, and religious language are tested against weakness, violence, and survival, with Jesus split between brokerage and power.
The page stages faith as divided authority: one god uses Jesus as broker while another holds Jesus as power. Around that split, weakness, fear, waste, and violence become practical tests of judgment; the added lower-line corrections make the deer image sharper, though several surrounding handwritten revisions still need closer review.
'The Paper' sets a rootless speaker - 'I have no sourse from which to climb,' 'Worried as a rabbit I seek life' - against a theological split: 'This god has Jesus as a broker / My God has Jesus as power,' with the standoff 'Your god stays your god for sure.' The speaker owns his violence plainly ('I've killed and left / And it matters why') and defends 'the dartful and uncaring / Who have chosen the lose of fear.' The closing deer image - 'The deer you ran into and gave away to go / To' - and the muttered 'morbid is natural; the lack of taste, / Let it / not my own' leave the page deliberately unresolved. This reading remains provisional: the page is needs-followup with uncertain lower-margin handwriting. Source spellings 'sourse,' 'distain,' 'sogugst,' 'dartful,' 'lose,' and 'sighning' are preserved.