An Americans Televised Lebanonese Philosophy

By Jack Joseph Smith

Guilt forces its way into the soul Guilt knows how to construct a cage It supposes the darkness no human breathes a way through without the gun business Twentieth century infidel can no longer abide by the classical crusader King of Concept lonely but willful (must be done) Secret: SO arriving at the curve of scorn THE EVERYMAN decides to academic, away God knowing, the He of Him is not oblidged to change time individually just for a second coming for the whites left in, our eyes? To make a point for history in the self of our theology; guilt grins pallid under frozen flesh, and likes looking back How long must the spirited soul stay terrible Unquestions the walled cry of the letting man of shoulder clips down NOTICED by In an alley retrive... newsreel: Atlantic shock, satellite sure on programed reality knows not how this deadly actor has kept out of this American's picture We are afraid of pinned hatred in half eyes on watch he uses for his next touch on forward film At the place where distance makes its twist His cause refrained him from taking the gun Tight alone, to the right or left side of a ... coming singular brain ending his cultural pain About the explosion that left children without skin While Lebanonese Philosophy remembered bows on the Sun Telling what is old oddly enhancing the new in life exists not in the redish whisper or the purple ghost when camouflage will always let both side power seekers see who you have become
Listen for a completeness in all mathematical nothingness That touches beneath the fury of flesh At your vast soundlessness of collision That feels meaning happen; before the collapse into the aftermath of necessarily termed justification, that takes over with another loss to (is I am) for the so called politics of the totalitarian that cheats to rip behind the statement of the State - that there is wisdom only... when the idea of beginning and ending inbetween becomes a restricted thing: Man must deal with more than the competitive terror in understanding Earth's imaginative way to the Sun On a last challange seeking the blast of unclashing interchange; sight of violence in front of the Sun is so large, that the Sun will recognize painful struggle, rather than organizational anger to get there While being is the entire way, if one desires life and light at the same man made moment... To consider existence is first over the huge second of war Existence perceives existence; war experiences war: Which troubles the abyss between all those gods and demons Pre-historically worshiped for being peopled in religion While equal down from man's scientific place on the Moon, essence in glass squared is the sequence of insect birth Now; about to be his visions (under the fire named justice) The marble of a killer mind, begins to be formed by the fathomlessness In a stomach of quick intellectual guts That moves inner against two types of mortar Transcendence not so different when tank might has a pyramid involvement with eternal doom... And both reaching the top point on angled hunger: The comradeship of hope arched all iron and stone; Its sculptured heart over Hell's reality inbombment YOU ARE COLD AND DRIVEN TO A SICK MOVEABLE SLEEP BY THE GOAT BLOOD COMPANY COMAND MASTERED TOWARD GENERALIZING UNIDENTIFIABLE DEATH AS HUMAN SHEEP
Back when Lebanonese Philosophy came to New York City The poet-man Kahlil Gibran; (where Hell beats out all but Limbo on its jagged jaded jettison through Purgatory to the Heaven of the Dead industrialist priest) made that underground walking up World Worker rocks, a flowing stream for simple space A hard bargained challenge soldier To ease out the emotion of murder In connection with tongue to hand, as what is left in the eye in the stomach in doing: While the memory .of live and let live; does not grasp the micro-watchful... At all; maneuvering tables of suit and sash Desert eyebrows oil smooth; missile eyeballs are suncken to the sockets with that weight FIBER TO TISSUE ROLLS ALONG THE QUIET STIR OF POWER Lebanonese Philosophy tells all the men in the Halls to go to the fields to get their hands dirty But T.V. told New York City; that blood in the fingernails, isn't any different than make-up The gain on guilt... is like the horses lungs over the stones From the castle window? Just another believer in the wind; until SHE'S shoed for work or war The gain on guilt? There is none but the Devil on this level: As Lebanonese Philosophy begins to dance... down in white turns spinning through the red as a Dervish Its got a cross for a brain, and this lone witness can see through its head and this cross is crossed in the steel of swords glowing again with Medieval silver, yet with studded jewels instead of a body of art for an altar When Lebanonese Philosophy spun into ashes, and floated away through the rifle fire The soldier witness heard the voice GAINING STRENGTH
Can't there be conception Through the upper bent lipped sush of women for a sister Within the market place On the run for homes... Fired molten to the sand stone By abstract noses they paint in L.A. Doing the done down govern rule of thumb on a machine-gunned American magazine cover That would sicken any Frenchmen loving "Flowers of Evil" When even the concepts of cycle and transcendence in religious afterdeath In the sameness of man to monument in cathedral or mosque Will stay forever suncken by deadly constructed CANNON Blood at least beneath the bomb blown concret of shrapnel streets Between Christian and Moslem, oiled over street fighter faces For the long range goal of rubble Absolutely singular Whenever the circle of the World is mentioned Get the timing of truth through your particular gravity ring of Earth Sealing souls ageless To deliberate demands Gone with hate in the spellbinding strength; that can not be accepted, as unincouraged by fear While it remains... To tell a worm to stop feeding off a graveyard is incorrect While it is also understood by America; that a boy must worship the fabled quicksand of the father, or he will never carry the heart of the mother with him as a wanderer Let alone a gunner for a slaughter
When his ear decided not to follow its disappearance; it was because it was more of the windless void, that moves from a force beyond language From Earth's standpoint the Sun had just passed; the other way through the last side of the Moon: Some do by day; some wait for night... It was all the same in Beirut Except, on account of the shelling, the old men can't listen politely, to the twenty four radio anymore The best caf'es were always on the corner, he recalled And he noticed that the wise crusty jaws look more so when their dead And it occurred to the warrior, that his worlds major light, simply used the Moon or Sun to find it So warrior man, did not drop his hands, fold his knees, or bend his head Until the New Lebanonese Philosophy hit him between the eyes with the automatic light NOW you will be able to see beyond me; witnessed the Old Lebanonese Philosophy For that is where you have just seen me also be

Original Scan

Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker describes guilt, televised warfare in Lebanon, and religious claims amid shelling and death. The speaker invokes Kahlil Gibran and ends with a warrior encountering New and Old Lebanonese Philosophy.

The speaker links American pictures of war with blood, make-up, and rifle fire. The final warrior's encounter follows recollections of Beirut's cafes and old men who can no longer listen to the radio.


Claude

Across five pages the poem treats televised conflict as an inner event: 'Guilt forces its way into the soul' and 'knows how to construct a cage', while a 'Twentieth century infidel', 'THE EVERYMAN', a 'newsreel' and 'the explosion that left children without skin' crowd the viewer's mind.

Broadcast imagery and religious vocabulary run together in long, unpunctuated lines, so violence seen at a distance becomes a question of conscience. Source spellings such as 'Lebanonese', 'oblidged', 'retrive' and 'programed' are kept, and the poem's figures are not identified with real persons.