Page 34

By Jack Joseph Smith

One More Truth It didn't mean a damn when we said it All that space out there for two to do There is no last dance and temptation, will never reach an end Don't go down on those who mistake you All souls see the same when their done Falling in the weeds firing a rifle if As you will have bent fall on a wooden floor Your forehead against a brass bed; asking for forgiveness, while the pardon of our Lord has us make a table, that will not be broken by a fist. It is all that anyone should want; ah hugh, the tumbleweed, with quad dots, poison that is and a turning line; and don't let your brain go away from the first time Something was true

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This revised version sharpens the scene into bodily collapse and forgiveness, where violence and absolution occupy the same room.

Compared with the rougher page, this revision pulls the poem toward a clearer physical theology: mistake, fall, floor, brass bed, forgiveness, table, fist, brain, and the inserted poison image all become tests of what truth asks the body to carry.

Claude

'One More Truth' here is the cleaner revision of the previous page, tightening the same images into a physical theology. The scene of collapse is sharpened - 'Falling in the weeds firing a rifle,' 'As you will have bent fall on a wooden floor / Your forehead against a brass bed; asking / for forgiveness' - and tied explicitly to grace: 'while the pardon / of our Lord has us make a table, / that will not be broken by a fist.' The poem keeps the spare close - 'tumbleweed, with quad dots, / poison that is / and a turning line' - and the imperative to hold onto origin: 'don't let your brain / go away from the first time / Something was true.' The revision makes violence and absolution share a single room.