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By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The poem is a raw confession of murderous anger that struggles to square itself with intellect and Christian conscience.
Violence is named without disguise and without temporary excuse, which gives the opening its force. The speaker keeps testing that fury against ideas of mind, truth, evil, and justification, as if thought can expose the false but cannot fully stop the urge to kill. The closing line turns chillingly casual, making the whole outburst feel like both a moral crisis and a grim boast.
An untitled typed poem in which the speaker admits 'If ever I have had violence in my heart / I have it now', names people he wants to murder, sets that against 'My Christian force knows evil' and faith in a mind that 'can not tolerate the false', and ends after a gap with 'The Hell of it is / I just got away with it kid'.
The poem is a confession of rage that keeps trying to argue itself into order, invoking Jesus, Dostoyevsky, Christian force and the mind as checks on the anger. Private grievance and 'gossipp hate' drive it, while the aside about remembering the spelling shows the speaker catching himself mid-fury. The closing couplet swerves into a wry, almost boastful shrug that leaves the moral struggle unresolved.