Insulting the Abstraction

By Jack Joseph Smith

Death gets tired of yearning for time Talking with the re-visited has no shame In order to be insulted Someone else does have to be there The power you don't want to split, that places the body and the mind, at that bare curve over the top; is not retorical like a bully, rather, it is just communication without a camera, not even a foot upon the stage It should be particular among the young To know that sophistication is not messing with anyone else's mind

Replete is the vision of yourself Everyone is caught by, even challenged with your being a household word Say you strut your stuff, and look back once Memory and the dream you do, while you are awake, sleep together And it is impossible To shine the gem stone When you are alone Now when I was a child I thought that I could at least kill one man And here far grown I am asked to accept slaughter as just, the way you have a nightmare twice

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker connects insult with another person's presence and describes communication without a camera or stage. After considering a household name, waking dreams, and solitude, the speaker recalls childhood thoughts of killing and an adult demand to accept slaughter as just.

The speaker asks the young to understand sophistication as leaving other people's minds alone. The ending compares the demand to accept slaughter with having a nightmare twice; it does not record agreement.

Claude

The poem begins 'Death gets tired of yearning for time', argues that 'In order to be insulted / Someone else does have to be there', and describes a power that is 'not retorical like a bully,' but 'just communication / without a camera'. Its second page recalls 'when I was a child / I thought that I could / at least kill one man' and now being asked 'to accept slaughter as just, / the way you have a nightmare twice'.

Real presence and plain communication are set against performance and bullying, and the scale jumps from one imagined killing to accepted slaughter. The closing simile makes that acceptance feel like a repeated nightmare rather than a settled judgment.