Page 108

By Jack Joseph Smith

than a pimple faced black man. Why is it that we secretly want them to be better than beautiful? Justification for our lost dreams. Cannibals, the Barbary Coast; distance turns itself into a never ending demension of size. Red bulbs in windows streaming through the shadowed webs of twisted childrens voices, crying for the milk they have lost to men. I took my long neck bottle of beer and lifted it to my lips and drank hard, until my mouth foamed over with wet dripping. I'm still under age, I thought, what a lousy joke. I know more about the street than a rat. And the little fucker doesen't even have the temptation of a soft bed. So I go home and sleep on a pillow, I'm in to life for all I can get. Except money; fuck that. It holds you down and makes you look at it. It stares you in the face so hard, you can't go beyond it. Not for me; I've seen more. I love these people inside; it kills me when they bow. They live on the rein of a wicked steed. They are thunder in the wasteland, without promise, without tomorrow. Let the wind blow and let the garbage lay. Who gives a damn, when we are dancing. I can't even get drunk; I move too well with everything. So let the wind pass between me too, as I walk along watching here and there. A child in her underpants. She looks like she has an old fashioned bloomer on, the way she runs away. Kiss the street, Michael, as you chase her footsteps to her mommy. To comfort her and offer her tea and cigarettes. My love must be some kind of blind love, for I can't see anyone but you, a song, a song; they are listening to a song. Only a song. Sing me. Yes, please I want you to sing me. A woofull cry I hear in whispers coming through the curtains of breeze flapping dust for a spider's bed. Thirsty is my soul again spinning in the color of deep brown. The beer is being lifted again. Ah. O my single moment of mercy.

Original Scan

Page 108

AI Interpretation

GPT

The Hill District walk turns into a feverish meditation on beauty, money, hunger, race, street life, and the childlike tenderness Michael imagines beneath the district's heat and appetite.

Swagger and compassion share the page. Michael rejects money as a dead end while watching street life through loss, music, appetite, and mercy. The child's flight toward her mommy pulls his roaming street attention briefly toward domestic comfort before the song and beer become his own mercy.

Claude

Drinking an underage 'long neck bottle of beer' in the Hill district, Michael boasts that he knows 'more about the street than a rat', rejects money because 'It holds you down and makes you look at it', and says of the people 'I love these people inside; it kills me when they bow.' He watches a child in her underpants run 'to her mommy', drifts into a song ('Sing me'), and lifts the beer again as his 'single moment of mercy'.

The monologue swings between swagger and tenderness, so that boasting about the street keeps giving way to pity and longing. Images of red bulbs, 'twisted childrens voices', and 'thunder in the wasteland' make the district both glamorous and desolate. The closing turn to beer as mercy suggests loneliness under the bravado.