Lose Not, Lost Not

By Jack Joseph Smith

This This This This This This This This This This This dream that runs against the feaver end of time at the pitch of a dime child birth absolutely alone Sameness when surrounded bandit at a small store holdup in the abstract weakness in the bones of love shouting to be left alone gain of style loss of manner courage gone These things we think of Of going up and down, and coming apart

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

A fractured catalog poem that turns repetition, loss, and emotional collapse into a chant of broken equivalences.

Claude

The triple repetition of 'This' at the opening is a finger pointing at something that refuses to be named — the poem begins in pure deixis, indicating without describing. What follows is a catalog of broken equivalences where losing and having lost are held apart by the force of negation alone.

The title's double negative (lose not, lost not) creates a grammatical shield against loss — as if refusing to conjugate the verb in either tense could prevent the experience it names.