Page 119

By Jack Joseph Smith

120 How many times: have you been in the newspapers? Plenty, you clown, How doesit feel to be famous$.It must facinate you to look at your bloody face every evening, Yourwrights, it doess Where -do you go from here? . I don't knows The pounding has been strong, and I don't think I am ready to stop the forces It is stibl behind me pushing, and I can't feel a bit of it passing throughs.I guess I have to experience more before I will be able to see my life in front of me,’ The wasteland is endless now, and the weeds are still ag stone BET cui cbenicgsmiihll exincey What were-you fighting about at collage? ; Pornograic pictures | Ponnographie: pictures? He was laughing againg I flushed some gus pornographic pictures down the toflity). Michael the Ark Angels At the time, it was the fastest way I could see toward camaontiattion! ‘ So he came after you? He was a big Irish dummy, He just couldn't handle ite It was the last straw, The | week before I had told everybody that I was a Jewg You see they were picking on ; this Jewish kid, Go ong Well Danii, they hung the star of David on a fig leaf outside the kids window | and sang, don't let the sun shine nelly, What could I dof The-kid was dings So at the point of the pornographic pictures, the Irishmen also learned that you were really a Catholic and had renoueed your faiths

Original Scan

Page 119

AI Interpretation

GPT

Pressed about fame and newspaper notoriety, the speaker remembers being thrown out of college after fights over pornographic pictures and anti-Jewish harassment, including pretending to be Jewish in solidarity with a kid being tormented.

The violence here comes wrapped in absurd details, especially the toilet-flushed pictures, but the anger is not only theatrical. Underneath the boasting is a real disgust with cruelty and a habit of turning moral protest into physical confrontation.


Claude

The college fight is revealed as being over flushed pornographic pictures and an earlier stunt of Michael declaring himself a Jew to defend a hanged Star of David on a fig leaf — Michael the Ark Angel cast out for being too Catholic and too improvisational.