Page 13

By Jack Joseph Smith

Clean Never taking an order that you didn't know was right Working without having a job No matter of the terror never backing down Getting beat and proud to stand Not a lie about money Not a slight about another Being with children always Unclean never being with you children Going under the skirt for pure beauty Putting fear into the hear of a bar Leaving the structure as your our sin Clean eating the best of foods Clean working the toughest jobs Clean and unclean making sex into wine Clean and unclean cutting into and creating violence Just clean is not talking at all

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page defines 'clean' through work, toughness, children, appetite, and moral contradiction.

The poem refuses purity in any simple sense. Clean and unclean are already tangled in labor, desire, and violence.

Claude

'Clean' is an anaphoric moral inventory where the same word brackets opposed acts. The virtues read as a working-man's honor code - 'Never taking an order that you didn't know was right,' 'Getting beat and proud to stand,' 'Not a lie about money' - but the list keeps flipping into transgression: 'Unclean never being with you children,' 'Clean and unclean making sex into wine,' 'Clean and unclean cutting into and / creating violence.' The catalog refuses to separate purity from harm, and closes on the paradox 'Just clean is not talking at all.'