Page 109

By Jack Joseph Smith

110 Horns honking and Ge valis belting out their sound of climax through the lites, CaS ears of bee boppers in their orange and pale with a shade of light green; Can you see me behing my elo @iont and jingle jangle? No, You stupid and slovenly bastard, Except him; Watch my long fingernail leaps He laughs, I seeg de, laughs We both fancy the love of death, He will walk in the alley without fears He dosen't rik i aoe where it takes him, And he will pass through unharmed; That's what white spay call a paradox, Is he pointing at me But of courses : What you selling there? Get smart pilla; Let me have one, i Where's your dime? ‘ Here it iss These get suart pills taste like chicken shits Now you getting smarts Winding alleys snaking back to the dismal dragon of the pasts i There is fire on the other side of that doors Boys, you hear meg There is fire brought here from way within the south, It beckons you to pleasures Do you mow : what that is? Have you even watched a fine brown skin move, like it was being : tempted by a wasp that would never sting, Yes sir, just linger over, The wasp F just lingers over her, The senses thrive on loves Do you Imow what love is? ° i He stoped a singular moment and looked at ne otmbights Do you? I think you want top You are walking through the alleys boys I don't mean that word badg I am being polites Your® looking, cause you can't find it nowhere elses You haven't made a mistake boy, and don't let anyone te@l you different, because you have different eyes, There ain't nothing wrong in the dirrection youtewalling: Pull that bottle down from your lips and whipéthem cleang,

Original Scan

Page 109

AI Interpretation

GPT

Michael keeps moving through blues, jazz, streetcars, trolleys, bars, and the city's black carnival while thinking about doubleness, clothes, home, and the world of his father's jukeboxes that he still cannot fully enter.

Music and transit fill the page with motion, but the deeper feeling is exclusion: he knows the owners, the machines, and the streets, yet he remains underage and outside the door. The city lets illusion and reality mingle, which is why he feels both native to it and barred from its full rites.

Claude

The get-smart-pill hustler starts talking to him like an older brother and then bends into a prophecy about the fire behind the door, the wasp that never stings, and the instruction that he is not ready yet but is walking the right way.