Page 59

By Jack Joseph Smith

Karma Sutra Being afraid of women is a state of mind Politics and war; business, and inter Magic Kelling and watching, a fight, against nature we will die Into the women we will work as sons of gods given grace Watch seconds slip into streams while I go back to Indian territory The purity of the dream, in the dark, left alone For moments of sleep, gone in flight, the colors, sharp and very strict There is no need to insitute your own No coward cares when children are involved The likes of love is little to the mishaps of kids Grandeur kisses itself and has its own doing I wonder with you without a watch A tidied up life without a d i me This song sure and from my gut Mischief will attempt to scratch away See how simple it is yo get a war Form it all for a reason And if you stay standing in one place my dear You have problems, that perhaps, you were too far above, to hear

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page mixes desire, culture, war, and childhood into a restless argument about how private feeling gets pulled into public violence.

The title invites one register, but the poem quickly expands into politics, memory, and moral injury. Its power comes from how abruptly intimacy and social damage keep crossing each other.

Claude

'Karma Sutra' (the title's misspelling preserved) opens by psychologizing fear -- 'Being afraid of women is a state of mind' -- then yokes intimacy to public violence: 'Politics and war; business, and inter Magic / Kelling and watching, a fight, against nature we will die.' Desire is mythologized as 'Into the women we will work as sons of gods given grace,' set beside a retreat 'back / to Indian territory' and the dream's 'colors, / sharp and very strict.' The middle stanza moralizes about children -- 'No coward cares when children are involved / The likes of love is little to the mishaps of kids' -- while 'Grandeur kisses itself' mocks self-regard. The poem names its own provenance, 'This song sure and from my gut,' and the typed 'd i me' is spaced out as written. Its closing delivers the book's title phrase as a warning: 'if you stay standing in one place my dear / You have problems, that perhaps, you were too far above, // to hear.' Misspellings 'Kelling' and 'insitute' are kept as written.