Page 97

By Jack Joseph Smith

nA = 98 nowe Pretty longs . That will make them perk, The women I mean, Got to keep those eyes dancing, No life above, no life belows can facinate like a girls dancing eyes, You have got the trick Frost, Keep it in your pockety and never let it get aways When you've got the trick, you need no fortune, you need no fames You see Frost, we are poets and philosphers, because we are between the corners But as the corner walle go away from uss they also come to use We are at the point, where everything else seperatess. Ha ha, Or he he, as the case may bee Laughter has a strange effect Frosts Watch it closely, Yes sir,.a good puff of smoke, a good puff of smoke, Why did you burn it down? I sew myself walking away from them, alone through the after nine quiet of Beverly Roady as I answered her, Because it was haunted, ' Then you will have to go aways If you really did burn it down, you will have to gol away, Everybody! says‘so, No matter who you are, or how much money your parents haves Ohg +. just can't believe its Maybe for a little while, but not for a long time, I put my arms around her and : pulled her close to me, My senses mingeled with her freshness and the sickness of the alley lost its pull. “he had said she watched me from the balcony playing basketball, My father taught r | me how by taking me to see the Harlem Globetrotters, It was the finest experience } of my life, Their blackness was so loud, Goose Tatum shouting from the highest { steeple, I did tricks for all of them in the early spring, wishing I was black for the road and only a ball and trick to care about. What else was theres now that they were going to send me aways It was in the papers, and money couldn't buy me

Original Scan

Page 97

AI Interpretation

GPT

Corner wisdom shifts into talk of girls' dancing eyes and poetry between the corners, then breaks when Michael tells a girl he burned the haunted place and hears for the first time that he may be sent away.

The mood changes from swagger to dread in a single turn, because the corner's boastful language cannot protect him once the rumor becomes consequence. Basketball tricks, Harlem Globetrotter memory, and longing for black freedom all flare up just as exile starts to feel real.

Claude

The Lincoln-bums monologue riffs on Harlem Jack as Michael's true name, the trick-of-the-hooper-spinning-on-the-finger as the one gift he must keep in his pocket, and poets-and-philosophers-between-the-corners as the bums' ontology.