Page 127

By Jack Joseph Smith

I see baby's crawling with their tongues panting down through the cracks of the floor with hunger, while a man's voice bids a hated hello. Little Beaver and I offered five cops on in the middle of the Mount Lebanon police station, one time so long ago, when we were sixteen years old. His father was there. The great surgon; watching the cops beat his kid, until I shoved one of them up against a wall. Beaver and I stepped back to the other side of the room scared out of our wits. We told them, that if they touched one of us again, we were going to take it all the way. They backed off. Too much to risk. The punks. His father stood there in all his importance, with his mouth open. Well, those young girls behind doors right around the corner, do that every day. Christ it's sad. Talk about Beatnik Neilism. Is the thrill leaving you? Confrontation is bent up inside of me like a steel wire. Once a bouncer in a dance hall pushed me. I flew up against a wall. He thought I would turn around and leave, as he was much older and stronger, and probably a lot rougher than me. I didn't. I put my foot high behind me on the wall and flew at him, like a cat. I wrapped my hands around his neck and drove him backwards. When he started to get away from me, I held on to his tie and started smashing him with my free fist. Finally he went down. He wasn't hurt very badly, but his face showed that he didn't have the faintest idea where he was. Why? His perception of reality was different than mine and we had come together and were acting out two different perceptions in the arena of one world. That kind of thing has happened to me alot, and I admit, that it excites the hell out of me. But does that kind of thing inable you to perceive each other? or Rathe, does it ever give you the possibility to go beyond the illusion? When someone is stung by a bee, the pain is only there and real, until it goes away. Later on that

Original Scan

Page 127

AI Interpretation

GPT

Michael recalls offering to take on five cops in the Mount Lebanon station, then describes another fight with a bouncer and tries to explain the thrill of collision as two different realities crashing together in one room.

Confrontation is still eroticized, but the talk is getting more self-conscious, almost theoretical. Dani's question about whether violence actually lets anyone perceive anyone else cuts straight through Michael's heroic pose.

Claude

Michael remembers how he and Little Beaver 'offered five cops on' in the Mount Lebanon police station while Beaver's surgeon father watched, then describes throwing a dance hall bouncer down by the tie and admits such collisions 'excites the hell out of me'; Daniel asks whether that lets them 'perceive each other', with a handwritten addition: 'or Rathe, does it ever give you the / possibility to go beyond the illusion?'

Michael frames fights as two perceptions of reality 'acting out' in 'the arena of one world', which makes violence sound almost philosophical. The handwritten question sharpens Daniel's challenge from perception to transcendence, and the page ends by turning to pain that is 'only there and real, until it goes away'.