Untitled ("My body is upstairs all the time")

By Jack Joseph Smith

My body is upstairs all the time I refuse to go gown on myself When I bend down to pick up an acorn I saw forget it Sometimes I wish I had a wild sea in front of me But then I might leave Yeah, I am not a dreamer so maybe I would Now I know that they have nothing to worry about downtown But I told them I had another bank I led them around about a city or two I just said I heard these bigger banks like digging in to the smaller ones, and then did a shoulder thing, and walked out

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A poem of bodily refusal and hustling wit, shifting from private discomfort into a sly meditation on money and escape.

Claude

The poem opens on a body kept 'upstairs all the time' and a speaker who 'refuse[s] to go gown on myself' - even bending for 'an acorn' is dismissed with 'I saw forget it'. The longing for 'a wild sea / in front of me' is raised and instantly disowned ('Yeah, I am not a dreamer'), and the second half veers into a con about banks, where the speaker 'led them around about a city or two' before doing 'a shoulder thing, and walked out'.

What holds this together is the gap between a stalled body and a quick, evasive mind. The sea is the one image of release, but the speaker cancels it twice over - first by self-diagnosis, then by half-admitting 'so maybe I would' leave anyway. The bank passage is the poem's real escape route: storytelling itself becomes the wild sea, a fabricated 'another bank' and the folk-truth that 'bigger banks / like digging in to the smaller ones'. The dismissive shrug of 'a shoulder thing' is the same gesture as 'forget it' about the acorn - a body that will not stoop, a mind that walks out of every demand it can talk its way past.