Page 7

By Jack Joseph Smith

Regret We have no stream in saying Sorry, no fishing, certainly, To SEE things, NO pLACES I'VE NEVER BEEN no hunting left; no lost in the woods, no first time, a loss of stories No street fights, no bugle on the born, no cross step, the dANCE is done our giving away are our loves to leave, gone as a the shaman we knew, away like that shank in a & fight, it has left forscore, down as if not a shoulder knows a drum; this fire has no form, as if it were all by yourself you ever thought, when better is with EYES still ENCOUNTERED known, for just about all of us read the masters either before or during our marches and wandering; while this killing time has throh us as a cast, tell alied and romanticized as lost, Not so kindly and further than any memory still alive has traveled; this counting of thy blessings, this wondering why our minds should stays our graveyards and poetivito the stone, that we know the difference/ between the cross and christ and love the choice; scattered as sand is one and as pitched as power, we of the hell on Earth don't leave alone the wind or its flower, and most of us are children left to grow alone, alone like our mothers and fathers too, who take this task, and fight listening to the dreamers we are, not become, given, a birth...

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A lament for lost streams, woods, stories, and ritual gestures that turns regret into a larger meditation on memory, violence, faith, and inheritance.

The page moves by subtraction: no fishing, no hunting, no street fights, no dance, and finally no simple communal form that can contain loss. Placing saying inside the opening line makes regret more explicitly tied to speech, while the right-margin `NO pLACES I'VE / NEVER BEEN` sharpens the feeling of absence.

Claude

'Regret' builds by negation - 'no fishing,' 'no hunting left,' 'no first time, / a loss of stories,' 'No street fights,' 'the dANCE is / done' - cataloguing every gone ritual until the losses become spiritual. The shaman departs, 'this fire has no form,' and the page strains toward faith and violence at once, naming those who 'know the difference / between the cross and christ and love the choice,' the 'hell on Earth' people who won't 'leave alone the wind or its flower.' It closes on inheritance and abandonment together: 'children left / to grow alone, alone like our mothers and fathers too,' still 'listening to the dreamers we are, / not become.' This reading remains provisional: the page is flagged needs-followup with uncertain handwriting and unresolved struck-through substitutions in the margins.