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By Jack Joseph Smith

Jesus Is my life Again my life Still and before sands are steep Even though you haven't been to The desert Crissed acrossed the sand This star leaps withiut dought as though We say hands on Take those nails out of your hands Take that spear out of your heart Stop thos men with their nails and hammer Kill those men with a spear, take them alll now down so left is none, Lay them back against the hill, which we have many times accomplished, To let him, the guy, be crusified again, and again and again, to kiss like a wish Is never the best place to be during death

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Devotion to Jesus becomes an angry wish to stop the repeated violence of crucifixion.

The speaker tries to remove the nails and spear, then directs violence toward the men who wield them. The hill and repeated crucifixion expose a cycle that devotion has not stopped. Unresolved additions beside none and the hill leave the scope of that intervention incomplete.

Claude

'Jesus' opens as a declaration, 'Is my life / Again my life', then moves to the desert and a star that 'leaps withiut dought as though / We say hands on'. The speaker orders the Passion undone, 'Take those nails out of your hands', and ends on letting 'him, the guy, be crusified again, / and again and again', which 'Is never the best place to be during death'.

Devotion and anger sit in the same breath: the speaker wants to undo the crucifixion yet admits it is something 'we / have many times accomplished'. The run-on, lightly punctuated lines and the casual 'the guy' give the sacred scene a blunt, contemporary voice. Handwritten marginal additions beside the later lines are only partly legible and are left out of this reading.