Exaro Versus

Knowledge

    I hated going into these God damn gas stations in the middle of nowhere, but we’d been driving for so damn long that I think I lost all feeling in my ass. Besides, I had to go to the bathroom. It couldn’t wait. He said he’d pump the gas this time, so I got out of the car and began to stretch when I saw the attendant staring at me through the window from behind the counter. It was an eerie stare. A sex stare. I stopped stretching.
    I walked around the side of the building, where the dingy arrows pointed to the washrooms. I really didn’t need the signs, for the smell of shit that has been sitting around overpowered the smell of the dust in the air as I walked closer and closer to the bathrooms ... I walked past the men’s room and up to the ladies room to find that the door was... gone. It was propped up on the inside of the bathroom wall. “A lot of fucking good it does me there,” I mumbled in the stench.
    “How the Hell am I supposed to go to the bathroom when there isn’t even a God damned door to the damn bathroom??” I thought as I stormed into the store where he was paying for the gas.
    He was buying two bottles of Pepsi for the road, to keep us awake. “The door of the women’s washroom is off,” I whispered with exasperation. “Well, that’s no problem, honey -- just go into the men’s room. I’ll watch the door for you,” he said back. The look in his eyes told me that he thought it was such a simple and obvious solution that anyone could figure it out. He thought he had the solution for everything. I wanted to tell him that the women’s room frightened me enough for one day, and that I didn’t want to risk my life by venturing into the men’s room. Besides, men go in there. That attendant probably goes in there. I finally shrugged and waited for him to pay for his Pepsi and gasoline. I turned my head and followed him out. The attendant looked at me as I left. I could feel his stare burning into the back of my head.
    We turned the building corner and followed the signs. My shoulders suddenly felt heavier and heavier as I walked. He checked the room to make sure it was empty for me. He even held the door open. What a gentleman.
    I closed the door, but I really didn’t want to be left alone with the smell. It smelled like shit. But I could also smell sweat, like the smell of dirty men. I wondered if this is what the attendant smelled like. I lined the toilet bowl seat with toilet paper. I had to use it sparingly -- there wasn’t much left. I got up as soon as I could and walked over to the dirty mirror, almost hitting my head on the hanging light bulb. There was light blue paint chipping next to the mirror.
    I strained to see my image in the mirror. Instead, all I could focus on was the graffiti on the wall behind me. For a good time call.. So-and-so gives good head... Did that attendant ever call that number? I wondered if I was ever put on a bathroom wall. I wondered if I was ever reduced to a name and a phone number like that. I probably had been.
    The floor was wet. I always wondered when the floors of bathrooms were wet if it was actually urine or just water from the sink. Or maybe it was from the sweat of all those men. I didn’t know.
    I stepped on something under the sink in front of the mirror. I looked down. It was an open porn magazine. I looked at it from where I was standing. I didn’t move my foot. It was hard core shit, and it looked painful. Women with gags on their faces... I remember someone telling me that porn was okay because the women in it wanted to do it. But there was no smile on this woman’s face. I pushed it back under the sink.
    I stepped back. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to hit the graffiti on the wall, the porn on the floor. I wanted to smear the urine from the stall all over the place. I wanted to pull the light from right out of the fucking ceiling.
    I put my hands up against the wall. I put the top of my head on the wall. I tried to breathe. It hurt. With my eyes closed, I knew what was there, behind me. It didn’t scare me anymore.
    When I walked into the bathroom, I was afraid to touch anything. But then I just leaned up against the door, feeling the dirt press into my back, into my hair. I wanted to soak it all in. All of it.
    I shook my head and realized that he was waiting for me outside the door. I turned around and grabbed the door knob. I didn’t worry about the dirt on my back. I opened the door.

    Previously published in Art/Life Limited Editions, Cat Machine, Green Cart magazines, Linsey Woolsey, Lip Service, Penny Dreadful Review, Speer Presents, the Poetry Exchange, my-diary.org, http://www.poetrypoem.com/poetrybooks, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, the chapbook Right There By Your Heart, the chapbook I stepped Back, http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, Children Churches and Daddies volume 4, the chapbook Perspectives, and in the book Hope Chest in the Attic.

Katherine, London, Ontario, Canada (on “knowledge”)
    I just read (Kuypers’) piece of work, and i have to say that it blew me away. Did that experience in the gas station actually happen? What an awakening. I never understood when men argued that the women in the porn mags “wanted” to be there. As if they even look at their faces, searching for a smile! I’ve often found myself having to use a gas station bathroom on the side of the highway, or in a dingy town with a population of what seemed like two serial killers and a shit load of perverts. I’ve never wanted to touch a thing in them, afraid that I would then take more of the memory of the place back with me to the car, contaminating it.

The Apartment

    “Could you pull out a can of sardines to have with lunch?”, he asked me, so I got up from my chair, put down the financial pages, and walked into the kitchen. The newspaper fell to the ground, falling out of order. I stepped on the pages as I walked away. I realized he hadn’t been listening to a thing I said.

    He had to look for a job, I had told him before. This apartment is too small and we still can’t afford it. I put in so many extra hours at work, and he doesn’t even help at home. There are dishes left from last week. There is spaghetti sauce crusted on one of the plates in the sink. I opened up the pantry, moved the cans of string beans and cream corn. There was an old can of peaches in the back; I didn’t even know it was there. I found a sardine can in the back of the shelf.

    I saw him from across the apartment as I opened up the can. “We have to do something about this,” I said. “I can’t even think in this place. I’m tired of living in a cubicle.”

    He closed the funny pages. “Get used to it, honey. This is all we’ll ever get. You think you’ll get better? You think you deserve it? For some people, this is all they’ll get. That’s just the way life is.”

    I looked at the can. I looked at the little creatures crammed into their little pattern. It almost looked like they were supposed to be that way, like they were created to be put into a can. The smell made me dizzy. I pushed the can away from me. I couldn’t look at it any longer.

    Previously Published in Art/Life Limited Editions, DCCR, Gin Mill Productions, Gypsy, Kaspah Raster, Lazy Bones Review, Opossum Holler Tarot, Poet’s Sanctuary, poets2000.com, Slugfest, Tand, The Bridge, The Flying Dog, the Poetry Exchange, White Crow, http://www.poetrypoem.com/poetrybooks, http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, Children Churches and Daddies volume 27, Children Churches and Daddies collection volume 1, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, Poetry Sampler v9, the chapbook I Stepped Back, the chapbook Addicted, the chapbook New World Order, the chapbook Perspectives, and in the books Hope Chest in the Attic and Slate and Marrow.

Clay

    so I was at this bar, on the coast of florida -- the west coast, the gulf side, you know. it was this place called lana kai, and my friend gave me a ride all the way from naples, which is a good forty-five minutes south of the place.
    and so we were sitting there at the bar, which is half indoors and half on the beach, and all these old men kept staring at my friend's chest. a couple guys bought us beer and one guy asked me to dance. I was surprised he asked me to dance, and not my friend -- men were usually more attracted to her.
    but the guys were jerks anyway -- one looked like a marine with that haircut and must have been high on something, one looked like he decided to forgo hygiene, another was twice my age. it's not as if I try to pick up men in bars anyway.
    so after a while I couldn't stand being at the bar, next to the reggae band that was playing (I never really liked reggae music anyway, I mean, it's too slow to dance to), so I begged my friend to come walk with me on the beach.
    christ, I felt like a ten-year-old with a bucket and shovel when I kicked off my black suede shoes and ran into the water. I always loved the feel of sand when it's drenched in water. it feels like clay as it seeps around my toes, pulling me into the ground.
    so there I was, splashing in the water, wearing a black sequin dress, throwing my purse to the shore, taking a swig from my can of miller lite. this was life, I thought. pure and simple. an army couldn't have dragged me out of the water.
    so my friend found some guy to hit on, as she usually does, and she wanted me to hit on his friend. I found him ugly as all sin, and impossible to talk to. I told him that one of the rafts on the shore was mine, and instead of driving to the bar I sailed. and he believed me. I told my friend flat out that I wouldn't go with him. she was pissed that I didn't find him good-looking.
    so then He strolled up from the bar to the beach, an intriguing stranger, and He walked up right next to me in the water, still wearing his shoes, seeming to know that I needed to be saved. as most knights in shining armor would.
    and He said hello to me, and He started talking to me, and He cracked a few jokes, and He made me laugh.
    and okay, I'll admit it -- he was good-looking, really good looking. I remember at one point, looking at him made me think of a greek statue, He had this curly hair, this sharp chin, these strong cheek bones. but those greek statues could never talk to me, they have no color, they don't come alive. they're made of stone.
    His name was Clay. and when we talked He crept into my pores, the way the sand made it's way between my toes. His voice tunneled into me, boring me hollow, making me anxiously wait to be filled with more and more of His words.
    my friend disappeared with her new-found monosyllabic lover, for hours, until long after the bar closed, leaving me stranded. there I was, forty-five miles north of my home at 2:20 in the morning with no means of transportation. it could have been worse, I could have been somewhere other than on the beach, I could have been sober, and I might not have had a knight in shining armor named Clay to save me.
    and as He drove me home (an hour and a half out of his way), I couldn't help but run my fingers through his hair, it was an uncontrollable impulse, like the urge to drag your fingers deep into the wet sand. I told Him I was just trying to keep Him awake for the drive.
    it's almost better if I never see Him again. then I can always think of Him this way.

    Previously Published in Art/Life Limited Editions, Green Cart Magazine, poets 2000, poetry superhighway (http://www.coolboard.com/msgshow.cfm?&msgboard=11059207679703&msg=90348940870278&idDispSub=66537967356536), http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, The Bridge, the Poetry Exchange, The Online Diary at http://www.my-diary.org/read/?read=2443, a French Translation of Clay at poetrypoem - located at http://poetrypoem.com/cgi-bin/index.pl?poemnumber=14546&sitename=poetry1344&password=&poemoffset=40&displaypoem=t&item=poetry, http://www.poetrypoem.com/poetrybooks, Children Churches and Daddies volume 2 & 50, Children Churches and Daddies Collection volume 4, the chapbook Right There By Your Heart, the chapbook Everyday Life, the chapbook Perspectives, and in the book Hope Chest in the Attic.

Done This Before

    I keep looking back at your picture. I’ll flip it over to stop from staring at it while I read a page from my book, but a minute won’t pass before I’ll have to turn the photo over again to see your face. It’s as if I can’t get away from it.

    My flight was delayed, I’m at O’Hare Airport, the airport that departs three planes every second, or is it one plane every three seconds, oh shit, I don’t remember. I have to wait at least three hours for my next flight, hey, if so many planes take off here, then why can’t I get on one of them? Oh well, so I decided to waste my time in one of the airport cocktail bars, by gate L 4. I thought I’d start with a white zinfandel and work my way to mixed drinks, but this wine tastes so good that I think I might just have to have another.
    I’m so exasperated, I hate to wait, and all I have is a good book to keep me company. I used your photo from my wallet as a bookmark. I need these things to keep me sane.

    It really isn’t bad here in the cocktail bar by gate L 4, the chairs aren’t that uncomfortable, even though they’re a pretty ugly shade of green that doesn’t match anything in the room. It really isn’t that bad, in a foreign city, in a foreign airport. Not when I’ve got my Sutter Home White Zinfandel. And my picture of you.

    You know, there’s a blonde girl dressed well with a bad perm across the bar, and she’s smoking a cigarette. I know I don’t smoke, but I’m almost tempted to ask her for one just so I can hold the cigarette the way you do.
I’d like to taste the tar, the nicotine, the way I taste it in your kiss. You think I don’t like it, but I do.

    They’re playing a song in the cocktail bar, a song that reminds me of an ex. I wanted to marry that man. He had a knack of being able to envelope me, to take my troubles away.
    I don’t know if I can take away my troubles myself anymore. I don’t know if the liquor’s helping, or the cigarettes. Your photo helps, my little bookmark. At least for now it helps.

    Sitting in this L 4 cocktail bar reminds me of my brother. When I was young he’d always pick us up at the airport, but if he wasn’t waiting at the gate we knew to look for him at the seafood cocktail bar. a part of me expects him to come walking through the doorway now, flannel shirt, ski jacket, wind-blown greasy hair, coke-bottle glasses. You know, when I’d look at his eyes through those glasses, his eyes looked twice as big as they actually were.
    I could imagine him now, I could imagine the smell of his Levi’s of dirt from the construction site. I remember that smell from my father; I’d smell it every day when he came home from work. It’s my brother’s business now, he’s got his own family now to worry about instead of a little sister. So I’ll just sit here at this airport cocktail bar, remembering the days when I’d sit with him in a place like this and I was too young to drink.

    God, I want to see my brother walking in to this bar at L 4, ordering a shrimp cocktail. I want to see you, babbling on about a movie you reviewed or a gig your band had. I want something that isn’t so foreign, like this bar. Or maybe I want something that isn’t so familiar.

    I took your picture out of my wallet, the wallet that has so many pictures of men who have come and gone in my life, men who have hurt me, men who I have gone through like... like dish washing liquid, or like something I use all the time and replace all the time and don’t think twice about.

    I’ll just sit here, in this airport, trying to care just the right amount, not too much, but not too little.
So I’ll just sit here, in this airport cocktail bar, looking at your photo, and wondering if I’ve done this before.

    “Done This Before” was the only piece of writing in the self-titled chapbook Poem Book, and this has been previously published in Art/Life Limited Editions, Bizara, Gin Mill Productions, Linsey Woolsey, Opossum Holler Tarot, the Penny Dreadful Review, Pink Pages, Plain Brown Wrapper, Poetry Superhighway, poets2000.com, the Poetry Exchange, http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, Children Churches and Daddies volume 1, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, http://www.poetrypoem.com/poetrybooks, it was in the chapbook Right There By Your Heart, the chapbook addicted, the chapbook Somebody Say Something, the chapbook Everyday Life, the chapbook Perspectives, the 1994 chapbook The Written Word, and in the books Hope Chest in the Attic and Slate and Marrow.

Driving By His House

    I know it’s pretty pathetic of me, I don’t know what I’m trying to prove. I don’t even want to see him again. I don’t want to have to think about him, I don’t want to think about his big eyebrows or the fact that he hunched over a little when he walked or that he hurt me so much.
    I know it’s pretty pathetic of me, but sometimes when I’m driving I’ll take a little detour and drive by his house. I’ll just drive by, I won’t slow down, I won’t stop by, I won’t say hello, I won’t beat his head in, I won’t even cry. I’ll just drive by, see a few cars in the driveway, see no signs of life through the windows, and then I’ll just keep driving.
    I don’t know why I do it. He never sees me, and I never see him, although I thought I didn’t want to see him anyway. When I first met him I wasn’t afraid of him. Now I’m so afraid that I have to drive by his house every once in a while, just to remind myself of the fear. We all like the taste of fear, you know, the thought that there’s something out there stronger than us. The thought that there’s something out there we can beat, even if we have to fight to the death.
    But that can’t be it, no, it just can’t be, I don’t like this fear, I don’t like it. I don’t want to drive by, I want to be able to just go on with my life, to not think about it. I want to be strong again. I want to be strong.
    So today I did it again, I haven’t done it for a while, drive by his house, but I did it again today. When I turned on to his street I put on my sunglasses so that in case he saw me he couldn’t tell that I was looking. And then I picked up my car phone and acted like I was talking to someone.
    And I drove by, holding my car phone, talking to my imaginary friend, trying to unobviously glance at the house on my left. There’s a lamppost at the end of his driveway. I always noticed it, the lampshade was a huge glass ball, I always thought it was ugly. This time three cars were there. One of those could have been his. Through the front window, no people, no lights. I drive around a corner, take a turn and get back on the road I was supposed to be on.
    One day, when I’m driving by and I get that feeling again, that feeling like death, well then, I just might do it again.

    “Driving by His House” was the only piece of writing in the self-titled chapbook Poem Book, and this has been previously published in Art/Life Limited Editions, Liquid Ohio, Napalm Health Spa, Opossum Holler Tarot, Pacific Coast Journal, Poetry Superhighway, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, poets2000.com, the Owen Wister Review, the Poetry Exchange, my-diary.org, poetrypoem, http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, Children Churches and Daddies volumes 2, 23, & 54, http://www.poetrypoem.com/poetrybooks, Children Churches and Daddies e-zine collection volume 6, the chapbook Right There By Your Heart, the chapbook addicted, the chapbook New World Order, the chapbook Someone Else, Anyone Else, the chapbook Dysfunctional Family Greeting Cards, the 1994 chapbook The Written Word, and in the books Hope Chest in the Attic, Domestic Blisters and Slate And Marrow.

Scars

    Like when the Grossman’s German shepherd bit the inside of my knee. I was baby sitting two girls and a dog named “Rosco.” I remember being pushed to the floor by the dog, I was on my back, kicking, as this dog was gnawing on my leg, and I remember thinking, “I can’t believe a dog named Rosco is attacking me.” And I was thinking that I had to be strong for those two little girls, who were watching it all. I couldn’t cry.

    Or when I stepped off Scott’s motorcycle at 2:00 a.m. and burned my calf on the exhaust pipe. I was drunk when he was driving and I was careless when I swung my leg over the back. It didn’t even hurt when I did it, but the next day it blistered and peeled; it looked inhuman. I had to bandage it for weeks. It hurt like hell.

    When I was little, roller skating in my driveway, and I fell. My parents yelled at me, “Did you crack the sidewalk?”

    When I was kissing someone, and I scraped my right knee against the wall. Or maybe it was the carpet. When someone asks me what that scar is from, I tell them I fell.

    Or when I was riding my bicycle and I fell when my front wheel skidded in the gravel. I had to walk home. Blood was dripping from my elbow to my wrist; I remember thinking that the blood looked thick, but that nothing hurt. I sat on the toilet seat cover while my sister cleaned me up. It was a small bathroom. I felt like the walls could have fallen in on me at any time. Years later, and I can still see the dirt under my skin on my elbows.

    Or when I was five years old and my dad called me an ass-hole because I made a mess in the living room. I didn’t.

    Like when I scratched my chin when I had the chicken pox.

    “Scars” was the only piece of writing in the self-titled chapbook Poem Book, and this has been previously published in the 1993 poetry datebook, the May 1995 Poetry Sampler v7, Aldebaran, Art/Life Limited Editions, Impetus, Feminist Studies, Gin Mill Productions, Linsey Woolsey, Mythic Blue Corn, Opossum Holler Tarot, poets2000.com, Tand, the Poetry Exchange, The Starlite Cafe, The Village Idiot, Victory Scars, Ya See I Got This Turtle, Hellp, Larry’s Poetry Page, Opossum Holler Tarot, Poetic Realm, Reuben’s Kincaid, Short Fuse, Snakeskin, tc[r], http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, the New Moon Review, a Room Without Walls, poetry-today.com, poets2000.com, my-diary.org, Third Lung, ilovepoetry.com, the chapbook addicted, the chapbook New World Order, http://www.poetrypoem.com/poetrybooks, the chapbook Everything and Everything, http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, Children Churches and Daddies volumes 2, 11, 21, 77, 79 & 98, the chapbook Perspectives, the cc&d literary magazine 1997 wall calendar, the 1994 chapbook The Written Word, and in the books Hope Chest in the Attic, Slate and Marrow, and Side A/Side B.

Expecting The Stoning

I
    You know how you want a popsicle and you want it for the longest time, and you don’t even know what it’s going to taste like when you get it, and then you finally get it and it tastes oh so good and you have some if it and you want to save it so you can have it later. And then you realize that in order to keep the popsicle from disappearing it has to stay in the freezer to avoid melting and becoming just a liquid pile of remains instead of what you wanted.
    That it had to stay in the freezer in order to survive, and you couldn’t stay there with it. That it was meant to be cold forever, or consumed.
    It was either one or the other. They taught you that fact when you were little. You can’t have it both ways. You can try, and it might be fun at first but everyone knows it will hurt later on.
    And it will.

II
    I think what I liked the most about us was the theory of romance.
    No, wait, it wasn’t that, it was the fact that it was forbidden; you were a friend of a friend and this wasn’t quote unquote supposed to be happening. But I liked the idea of being with you. I would travel across the country to see you. The thought of you and the times we had behind everyone’s backs, those times were like poems to me. Maybe looking back we weren’t technically together when we couldn’t even tell anyone that we we ever together in the first place, but it was still nice for me to fantasize.
    And what did it get me?

III
    Maybe my problem was that it was all in my head, and maybe I didn’t realize the novelty would wear off for you. You were like the average American and after twenty seconds of watching a television show you’d want to change the channel with the remote on the arm of your chair.
    I didn’t know you were a popsicle that would melt when you were exposed to ANY sunlight or ANY heat at ANY time.
    I didn’t know you had problems. Don’t we all. We all don’t go to psychiatrists and stay on medications. Maybe I didn’t know how bad your problems were.
    I didn’t know you were a snowman that I made in the backyard at my house in the winter when I was little. A snowman that was fully equipped with a carrot nose, like pinocchio, no, wait, like you, with no hair, like you, with black rocks for eyes, like you.
    And yeah, that snowman melted with spring, like you, and maybe I should have learned my lesson from that damned snowman.
    I guess there was a lot about you I didn’t know because in so many ways I didn’t know you.

IV
    I remember how little kids would want to build snowmen in the winter. They didn’t seem to mind the snowman eventually going away.
    I hated the cold, so I didn’t play in the snow as much.
    Maybe in playing those little games everyone else learned their lesson, maybe they learned something that I should have learned.

V
    I should expect the stonings that I am bound to receive for telling you that I know what you have done and that I want the rest of the world to know it too. I will expect the stonings with time, I have been getting used to the punishments for telling the truth, even when people don’t want to hear it.
    So, thank you for getting my hopes up and then blowing them away with one breath from your lips like anyone would do to a pile of sand.
    (or table salt spilled on the counter)
    Because I think I needed to learn that lesson. And in a way, for now, I only have you to thank for it.

    “Expecting the Stoning” was previously published (in this form) in Children Churches and Daddies magazine v133. “Expecting the Stoning” was previously published (in its original form) in http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, art/life limited editions, www.my-diary.org/read/?read=2443, www.poets2000.com/kuyperswriting/, www.thestarlitecafe.com/poems/28/poem_234317.html, www.themestream.com/gspd_browse/author/ view_author_info.gsp?auth_id=112592, www.poetry-today.com, www.authorsden.com (poetry listing), and www.ilovepoetry.com. It also was previously published (in its original form) inthe compact disc Change Rearrange. It was also performed live on the WZRD radio June 6 2002.

Andrew Hettinger

    I never really liked you. You never revealed yourself to me, and why would you: you, who never had anyone, you, who always had the bad breaks. Everyone looked at you as different. Where would you have learned to trust? Who would you have learned it from?
    I never really liked you. I met you through a friend and he explained to me that multiple sclerosis left you with a slight limp and a faint lisp. Faint, under the surface, but there, traces of something no one would ever know of you well enough to fully understand.
    I never really liked you. You never revealed yourself to me and I never wanted you to; you scared me too much. You, plagued with physical ailments. You, with a limp in your walk. You, with a patch over your eye. You, who stared at me for always just a bit too long.
    They told me the patch was from eye surgery with complications and now you had to cover your shame, cover someone else’s mistakes, cover a wrong you didn’t commit, cover a problem not of your own doing. The problems were never of your own doing, were they.
    I heard these stories and I thought it was sad. I heard these stories and thought you had to be a pillar of strength. And then I saw you drink, straight from the bottle, fifteen-year-old chianti. And I saw you smash your hand into your living room wall. This is how you lived.
    The house you lived in was littered with trash. Why bother to clean it up anyway. It detracted you from the holes in the wall, the broken furniture from drunken fits. This was how you reacted to life, to the world. You didn’t know any better. This is how you coped.
    I never really liked you. You would come home from work, tell us about a woman who was beautiful and smart that liked you, but she wasn’t quite smart enough. And I thought: We believe anything if we tell ourselves enough. We weave these fantasies to get through the days.
    I never really liked you. Every time you talked to me you always leaned a little too close. So I stayed away from the house, noted that those whom you called friends did the same. I asked my friend why he bothered to stay in touch. And he said to me, "But he has no friends."
    This is how I thought of you. A man who was dealt a bad hand. A man who couldn’t fight the demons that were handed to him. And with that I put you out of my mind, relegated you to the ranks of the inconsequential. We parted ways. You were reduced to a sliver of my youth.
    I received a letter recently, a letter from someone who knew you, someone who wanted me to tell my friend that they read in the newspaper that you hanged yourself. Your brother died in an electrical accident, and after the funeral you went to the train station; instead of leaving this town, you went to a small room and left us forever. Strangers had to find you. The police had to search through records to identify your body. The newspaper described you as having "health problems." But you knew it was more than that.
    And I was asked to be the messenger to my friend. The funeral had already passed. You were already in the ground. There was no way he could say goodbye. I shouldn’t have been the one to tell him this. No one deserved to tell him. He was the only one who tried to care.
    I never really liked you. No one did. But when I had to tell my friend, I knew his pain. I knew he wanted to be better. I knew he thought you were too young to die. I knew he felt guilty for not calling you. He knew it shouldn’t have been this way. We all knew it.
    I never really liked you. But now I can’t get you out of my mind; you haunt me for all the people we’ve forgotten in our lives. I don’t like what you’ve done. I don’t like you quitting. I don’t like you dying, not giving us the chance to love you, or hate you, or even ignore you more. My friend still doesn’t know where your grave is. I’d like to find it for him, and take him to you. Let you know you did have a friend out there. Bring you a drink, maybe, a fitting nightcap to mark your departure, to commemorate a life filled with liquor, violence, pain and death.
    I never really liked you, but maybe we could get together in some old cemetery, sit on your gravestone, share a drink with the dead, laugh at the injustices of life when we’re surrounded by death. Maybe then we’d understand your pain for one brief moment, and remember the moments we’ll always regret.

    “Andrew Hettinger” was previously published (in its original form) in Art/Life Limited Editions v18 #4, www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, Larry’s Poetry Page, www.thestarlitecafe.com/poems/28/poem_237353.html, www.poets2000.com/kuyperswriting/, and www.ilovepoetry.com. A French translation of this was published at www.my-diary.org/read/?read=2443. A German translation of this was published at www.my-diary.org/read/?read=2443. A Spanish translation of this was published at www.my-diary.org/read/?read=2443. A Italian translation of this was published at www.mydiary.org/read/? read=2443. A Portuguese translation of this was published at www.my-diary.org/read/?read=2443. It also was previously published (in its original form) inthe chapbooks ferme le bousche!!!, Ich Bein Ein Jelly Doughnut, and Se Habla Espanol (the poems). It is also on the compact disc Change Rearrange. It was released on the compact disc Rough Mixes, with music from Pointless Orchestra. It also was previously published (in its original form) inthe books Contents Under Pressure, Side A/Side B, and Torture and Triumph.

an Outline to the Apex of Rites of Passage

    It was one of those rites of passage. A Bah Mitzvah of sorts. But this was bigger, much bigger than shaving for the first time or getting your period. This was the chance for all young high school men to lose their virginity and a chance for all young high school women to dress up, feel like adults, look pretty. Everyone felt the driving need to go through this rite of passage, to not be left out, to be a part of the group. Either way, you got to take a day off of school.
    But like every rite of passage, the high school prom is probably more traumatic than fun, because no matter what, you feel like you have to go, and the entire time you have to look like you’re having fun. Especially for the photographers. You have to have a perfect record of your perfect life so you can upstage everyone else.
    With every aspect of prom, there was always a conflict, an expense, or an irony. I mean, this is supposed to be one of the best times in your life, and it’s wrought with confusion. First, find a date. Has to be someone socially acceptable, otherwise it would be less embarrassing to just not go. Then, go through the trauma of asking your prospective date to actually go with you, or if you’re a woman, wait to be asked, which is almost more cruel. Then, see which of your friends are going, organize what group you’ll go with to your prom.
    Then you have to start working on the details. For men, this meant transportation, the cheapest tuxedo, what kind of corsage to buy, something that pins on, something they wear on their wrist, or something they carry, like a bouquet. Oh, and don’t forget the most important part: enough liquor and/or condoms. Note how suddenly the prospect of multiple hookers performing anything you’d ever want is both less expensive and less of a hassle than this quote-unquote “date.” For women, the details meant picking out the right dress, the right shoes, the right purse, the right jewelry, the right perfume, the right make-up, the right hair style. Note how you have to then coordinate your clothing with your date. So much like real life.
    Then, beg your parents to let you wear the dress you picked out, or keep the make-up and hair style the way you wanted it. Beg your parents to let you borrow their sports car. Beg you parents for enough money to pay for the limo, the flowers, the clothes, the film for the camera. Beg your parents to let you stay out past curfew, how about 6 a.m., just this once. But, come on, it’s prom.
    Then the Big Day arrives. Ditch school, because you know, getting you hair done can take hours, and you want to spend some time in the sun, so you don’t look as pale as a ghost for the pictures. Then, after getting ready for an inordinate amount of time, meet up and take the pictures. Urgh. This usually entails the man picking up the woman, taking pictures at the woman’s parent’s house, then going back to the man’s parent’s house and taking more pictures there. It’s almost worse than a wedding.
    Then finally arrive at Prom. Take more pictures. Talk to as many friends as you can there, compliment their dresses and tuxedos. Find out what everyone else is doing after prom, see if anyone is doing anything better than you. Note how many women are repeatedly pulling up their strapless dresses so they don’t fall out of them. Note how many men are already drunk, and look, it’s not even dinner yet. Take lots of pictures with your instamatic camera. Let’s do a group shot. Oh, let me take a picture with so-and-so.
    Then eat. Try to figure out how to eat your salad without using your knife. Check to see how little all the women are actually eating. Note how many women go to the bathroom in groups. In any case, whatever you do, don’t stop feeling awkward. But keep smiling.
    Then the dancing. Try to remember what your father taught you. Try not to look stiff. Try not to sweat. Dance in a box. Right foot forward, feet together, left foot left, feet together, right foot backward, feet together, right foot right, feet together. Or go for the high school standby; wrap your arms around each other and sway, occasionally making out in the middle of the dance floor. Note how many women have their lipstick smeared across their cheek, or on their date’s collar. Note how many bow ties have loosened.
    Then collect your things, say your good-byes, take a few more photos and head out for the after-prom activities. Possible options include a late dinner, a four-hour boat cruise, a walk along the lake, a bonfire, bowling, a hotel party, or the back of dad’s sports car. Note how disheveled you look by six a.m.; try to clean yourself up in the car before you get to your driveway, in case your parents are waiting for you. Don’t make out for too long as you say your good-byes in front of your house.
    Then, get in the house as quietly as possible, drop all your clothes into a pile in the middle of your bedroom floor, and collapse on your bed. Here’s a helpful hint: drink a glass of water and take a vitamin and some aspirin before crashing; it will help with the hangover. Try to get some sleep before the day-after-prom amusement park trip, and keep in mind that even though prom is over, your friends will be rehashing it for at least a week. This is the ritual. Now go to sleep.

    “An Outline to the Apex of Rites of Passage” was previously published (in its original form) in Larry’s Poetry Page, Ygdrasil, Children Churches and Daddies magazine, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, and www.poets2000.com/kuyperswriting/. It also appeared in the chapbook the casket you bought, and it appeared in the book Contents Under Pressure.

Transcribing Dreams Three

    I was walking into your living room and there was a ten-gallon fish tank there. You just bought it. You were looking at the fish, that’s when I walked over. And I saw a shark fish in the tank, one about eight inches long, and he was at the bottom, killing and eating a four-inch fish. There were other one-inch fish swimming at the top, neon tetras, small things. And I walked over and the shark was just eating the four- inch fish, and soon he was completely gone. And you were just looking, you could do nothing to save the fish. And then another four-inch fish came out of hiding from behind a plant on the left side of the tank, and he darted around. It looked like he was in a state of panic, maybe he breathed the blood of the other four-inch fish, his ally, his family. And he started darting around the tank, and the shark was just sitting at the bottom of the tank, and the other four-inch fish darted more. And then the shark opened his mouth, and in a darting panic, the four-inch fish swim straight into the shark’s mouth. All the shark had to do was close his mouth and swallow the fish whole. There was no fight, like with the first one. There was no struggle. And I looked over at you, and you were amazed that this shark just ate your two fish, which were probably over ten dollars each, and that they didn’t just get along in the tank together. And I looked at the tank, and I saw the one-inch neon tetras darting around along the top of the water. They knew they would be victims later, trapped in this little cage, and that the shark would just wait until he was bored until he administered his punishment. I wanted to ask you why you bought all of these different-sized fish and expected them to live together peacefully. Maybe you didn’t even realize that the shark would need more food than he was prepared to buy him. Besides, a shark that size shouldn’t even be alone in a tank as small as ten gallons. He needs room to grow. But before I could say anything, I saw the shark swim to the top of the water, push his head and nose out of the water, open the lid to the top of the aquarium. You weren’t looking, so I told you to look to the top, and not to get too close. And the shark just sat there, looking at you, and it looked as if he wanted to show you what a good eater he was. It was almost as if he was looking to you for approval.

    “Transcribing Dreams Three” was previously published (in its original form) inArt/Life Limited Editions, dream scene magazine, Larry’s Poetry Page, www.poetryboard.com, Children, Churches and Daddies magazine, www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, and www.poets2000.com/kuyperswriting/. It has also been in the following chapbooks: dreams dreams dreams and they told me their dreams. It was released on the compact discs Seeing Things Differently and The Elements CD. It also was previously published (in its original form) inthe book The Window.

Everything Was Alive And Dying

    I had a dream the other night. I walked out of the city to a forest, and there were neatly paved bicycle paths and trash cans every fifty feet and trash every ten.
    And then a raccoon came right up to me. she had a few little baby raccoons following her, it was so cute, I wish I had my camera.
    And she spoke to me, she said, “thank you thank you for not buying furs, I know you humans are pretty smart, you have to be able to figure out a way to keep yourselves warm without killing me.”
    And I said, “you know they don’t do it for warmth, they do it for fashion, they do it for power.” And she said “I know. But thank you anyway.”

    Then I walked a little further and there was a stray cat. she still had her little neon collar on with a little bell. And she walked a few feet, stretched her front paws, oh, she looked so darling. And then she walked right up to me and she said “thank you.” and I said “for what?” And she just looked at me for a moment, her little ears were standing straight up, and then she said, “you know, in some countries I’m considered a delicacy.” And I said, “how do you know of these things?” And she said. “when somebody eats one of you word gets around.” And then she looked up at me again and said, “and in some countries the cow is sacred. Wouldn’t they love to see how you humans prepare them for slaughter, how you hang them upside-down and slit their throats so their still beating hearts will drain out all the blood for you?” And she said, “isn’t it funny how arbitrary your decision to eat meat is?” And I said, “don’t put me in that category, I don’t eat meat.” and she said “I know.”

    And I walked deeper in to the forest; managed to get away from the picnic tables and the outhouses that lined the forest edges. the roaring cars gave way to the rustling of tree branches crackling of fallen leaves under my step.
    When the wind tunneled through, the wind whistled and sang as it flew past the bark and leaves.
    I walked listened to the crack of dead branches under my feet, and I felt a branch against my shoulder. I looked up and I could hear the trees speak to me, and they said, “thank you for letting the endangered animals live here amongst us. We do think they’re so pretty, and it would be a shame to see them go. And thank you for recycling paper, because you’re saving us for just a little while longer.”
    “We’ve been on this planet for so long, embedded in the earth. We do have souls, you know. you can hear it in our songs. We cling with our roots; we don’t want to let go.”
    And I said, “But I don’t do much, I don’t do enough.” And they said “We know. But we’ll take what we can get.”

    And I woke up in a sweat.
    So tell me Bob Dole, so tell me Newt Gingrich, so tell me Pat Bucannan, so tell me Jesse Helms, if you woke up from that dream would you be in a sweat, too?

    Do you even know why we should save the rain forest? Oh preserve the delicate balance, just tear the whole forest down, what difference does it make? Put in some orange groves so our concentrate orange juice can be a little cheaper.
    Did you know that medical researchers have a very, very hard time trying to come up with synthetic cures for diseases on their own? It helps them out a little if they can first find the substance in nature. A tree that appears in the rain forest may be the only one of its species. Or one like it may be two miles away, instead of right next to it. I wonder how many cures we’ve destroyed to plant more orange groves. Serves us right.

    You know my motives aren’t selfless. I know that these things are worthwhile in my life. I’d like to find a cure to these diseases before I die of them, and I’m not just a vegetarian because I think it’s wrong to kill an animal unless I have to. I also know the excess protein pulls the calcium away from my bones and gives me osteoporosis, and the excess fat gives me heart attacks, and I also know that we could be feeding ten times more people with the same resources used for meat production.
    You know, I know you’re looking at me and calling me an extremist, but I’m sitting here, looking around me looking at the destruction caused by family values and thinking the right, moral, non-violent decisions are also those extreme ones.

    Everything is linked here. we destroy our animals so we can be wasteful and violent. We destroy our plants, we destroy our earth, we’re even destroying our air. We wreak havoc on the soil, on the atmosphere. We dump our wastes into our lakes. we pump aerosol cans and exhaust pipes.
    And you tell me I’m extreme.
    And these animals and forests keep calling out to me, the oceans, the wind.

    And I’m beginning to think that we just keep doing it because we don’t know how to stop, and deep inside we feel the pain of all that we’ve killed, and we try to control it by popping a chemical-filled pain-killer.
    We live through the guilt by taking caffeine, nicotine, or morphine, and we keep ourselves thin with saccharin, and we keep ourselves sane with our alcohol poisoning. And when that’s not enough maybe a line of coke.
    Maybe shoot ourselves in the head in front of the mirror in the master bedroom. or maybe just take some pills, or walk into the garage, turn on the car and just fall asleep.

    In the wild you have no power over anyone else. now that we’re civilized we create our own wild.
    Maybe when we have all this power, the only choice we have is to destroy ourselves.
    And so we do.

    “Everything Was Alive and Dying” was previously published (in this form) in Children Churches and Daddies magazine v133, Beatlicks newsletter, Art/Life Limited Editions, www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, www.poetryboard.com, Larry’s Poetry Page, McSpotlight, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, www.poets2000.com/kuyperswriting/, the Open Scroll, the Prose Garden, and www.ilovepoetry.com. It also was previously published (in its original form) inthe chapbook politics and violence. It also was previously published (in its original form) inthe books Sulphur and Sawdust and Close Cover Before Striking. It was released on the compact discs Seeing Things Differently and The Elements CD. It was also performed live on the WZRD radio June 6 2002. It also was previously published (in its original form) inthe live performance art show The Cycle of Life September 12 2003. It also appeared on the compact disc and in the live performance Art show in Chicago June 17 2003 Changing Gears.

King of the Universe

    I used to be king of the universe. I used to have meaning and order and direction in my life. People came to me for ideas and answers and I gave them exactly what they needed. Some times I even gave them more. Some times they were pleasantly surprised with the knowledge, with the intelligence, with the fact that sometimes pieces fit together so well that it almost seems they were meant to fit that way. Less often they were disappointed; they didn’t see why my answers were better; they held my ability and my triumph against me. They could have been unintelligently avoiding the truth; they could have thought like a communist, thinking that someone else should not be revered, but the capitalist in them think that it should have been THEM. But it CAN be done. I used my brain and I proved them wrong. I was invincible. I produced RESULTS, and I did it with three times the speed of everyone else. People were amazed with me. I had a following.
    There are many questions I ask. Maybe it is creativity that asks them and the engineer to find the answer. I have always been both. But when you get to the top, when you see the view from the top, well, when you see it all, what more do you have to ask?
    Although I do not claim to be God, I wonder: what would she do to this? If she finds someone like this, what does she do? My guess is that she would drop it, not kill it, because she is not a vengeful God, but she could punish it unjustly so that God could ask them: so now what? You’ve had all of the answers before, so what do you do now? When they get you out of the hospital, everyone will think that you are fine, but you are not; I DO that to you. And you’ll have to deal with it all, and you’ll have to remain strong, because that is what you do, you’ll have to be strong for everyone else, and inside you’ll be falling apart, and no one will understand. Who’s your messiah now?, she’ll ask. Will you have an answer?

    Previously Published in Art/Life Limited Editions, http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html, and Children Churches and Daddies volume 129, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, and exerpts from this journal were used in the performance and compact disc Six One One.

Keep My Sanity

    Okay, this place is such a mess.
    I think that only because everything around us is such a mess, and we only get to see bits and pieces of the mess.
    Have you ever thought that there is so much going on in the world, and have you thought that we are so lucky that you have access to so much information? I mean, the internet alone allows you to get information from reliable as well as subversive sources about topics that might not be covered in depth in the daily news. I mean, look how powerful CNN is now, how they have a few cable channels, and web sites, and well, they probably have a bunch of other stuff too, to make the world a more informed place.
    That is, if you choose their avenues to get information from. You can always choose to surf the net and get information from people who live in recreational vehicles and drink too much and are sure that they have been abducted by aliens. Well, you choose you own sources, I guess.
    And yes, maybe information is a good thing, if people looking for information can weed out the bad information from the good information, or if they can weed out the bad sources when they are too bust paying attention to the good sources.
    I guess.
    So what does it mean to have your own web site? Well, it means getting on the internet enough to get web space. I mean, America On line offers five screen names and 10 meg of web space to you for only twenty dollars a month, all while giving you internet access to most places in the United States. Okay, in Europe too. The point is that there are a lot of places to go to get access to the information you want to share. Programs on the computer can generate the right language for web pages too. That and a little advertising, and you can have people reading what you decide to post on the web.
    So what does it mean to get information from common sources? Well, be prepared for the fact that it might not have the slant of your life style. It once again is a matter of knowing how to get the right information.
    I have come to the point where I am so tired of the quote-unquote information super-highway that I don’t watch television much, where I don’t read the newspaper... Where I don’t even surf the net much or listen to the radio. I get to tired of listening to other people telling me how to think that I often prefer to just miss out on the big stories so that I can keep my sanity.
    Maybe I am the only person that thinks that way. Yes, I have my own web site and I have my own e-mail and I’m really thinking about getting cable so I can watch cool television. And no, I don’t get a newspaper, and right now I don’t even have cable, and I much prefer listening to a compact disc of mine for music instead of leaving my will to the radio station. So maybe for now I have found a way to define a line to keep for me and information. You know, how much is too much. That is something I try to keep in mind every day.

    Previously Published in Art/Life Limited Editions, Children Churches and Daddies volume 117, Freedom & Strangth Forum (November 9 2000), http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, and http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html.

When Credibility Doesn’t Matter

    There’s a fine line between what the media says is good and what the public says is good. This much I have discovered with the whole Clinton “scandal”.
    I have made a point to stop listening to the reports on how Clinton is doing, what the media thinks the people think about Clinton, you name it. I did go through an article recently, though, and it started aggravating me right at the first sentence. As the editorial letter says, “President Clinton has lied and lied and lied some more...” I was already intrigued.
    Granted, that was the first line of the story.
    But I think we as Americas know that the average politician lies a lot anyway, to their family, to the other politicians, to their represented people. The only thing that is novel about this story, versus stories of other presidents, is that there is more media in the President’s face, and more avenues than there have ever been, to tell the public about the President’s wrongdoing.
    I think the majority of people I have talked to agree that this whole Clinton thing is pointless. The people don’t seem to care so much about wither or not the president bedded someone. Or didn’t. Or lied about it. You get the point. I think people get that Clinton has a private side; Clinton is just subject to a more volatile pressure from groups that want to expose him.
    I don’t think that Clinton is going to make our country go down the tubes with a pending possibility of an impeachment. And I don’t think that Clinton will make love to any stranger he can, whether or not he is the President of the United States. What I can think is there there has to be a fine line for what we as people can tolerate from the people we voted into office. We all have to make that judgement every day, it is just that now we have to do it when we learn more information. So we have been making these kinds of judgements for years; it won’t be too hard to do that again.

    Previously Published in Art/Life Limited Editions, Children Churches and Daddies volume 132, Freedom & Strength Forum (November 9 2000), http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, and http://www.mishibishi.net/kuypers.html.

NASA Project

    I’ve always loved astronomy.
    I’ve kept the telescope I had since I was a child, I remember tracking the motion of the stars to the horizon when I was six with my sister when she took a high school astronomy class, I’ve witnessed two comets, I’ve even had a star past the base of the constellation Cygnus named after me.
    I’ve studied black holes, tried to learn more about astrophysics, the whole nine yards.
    And I have noted that there are studies and possibly plans for NASA, after setting up the space station, may be planning a colony on the moon for inhabitants, as part of a test to study which would also entail the long-term-effects of a change in gravitation force on the human body.
    And I heard this, that there may be plans for this within the next twenty or thirty years, and I thought,
    my god, I am meant for this, I would be perfect for this.
    But then I thought,
    what would I do there, why would they want me there
    And
    I’m a journalist, I’ve written all my life, and I’m a designer,
    and my job would be to catalog what is going on at the colony and to distribute news to the colony about what is going on on the moon and maybe also even about what is going on on earth.
    And I liked this plan, it would seem fitting, give me occasional feeds through occasional transmittals of information for me to pass on to the colony, and I would catalog historically what is happening here for people on earth to learn from, this sounds like the perfect thing for me
    and then I though, wow,
    I would disseminate all information to this colony of people on the moon. I would be their only link to news.
    I could tell them anything.
    Just think about this for a moment: I could tell them anything and they wouldn’t be able to use another source to prove me wrong, I could tell them I sang the national anthem for the President,
    no really, I don’t have that bad of a voice,
    because we were leaving to live on the moon,
    and these people would believe me.
    I wonder if I had to write reports to send back to earth, would I have to tell them about the hypnotic effects of the earthlight, because, you know, everyone talks about how wonderful it is to be in the moonlight.
    But I don’t know if it is a good idea to have a restrained audience, people who had to listen to me, and then I started thinking:
    would I be able to bring my pet cat with me?
    Cause all I can think is that my cat would be taking leaps and they would be fifteen feet jumps, 10 feet in the air, you know, they probably wouldn’t let me bring a pet to the moon, but it’s still fun to think about the gravitational pull for them. Remember at the Planetarium how they would have scales for different planets so you could see how much you would weigh there because of different gravitational pulls? All the women liked weighing themselves on the moon because of the moon having one sixth the pull of earth they could look at a scale and say,
    “I weigh thirty-six pounds.”
    But then I suddenly started to think: I love the idea of seeing the stars from an entirely different angle, I wonder how they would accommodate for days that are twenty-eight earth days long on the moon, can you even imagine seeing the earth in the sky out there the way we look at the moon now, can you imagine it. You’d be there, unable to make any connection with people on earth at all, and would that be hard?
    The one thing I realized I’d miss so much about leaving earth for years would be not the traffic, or having to go to the grocery store or to a restaurant, but missing love. For the first time you’d be separated from your family, would my husband go with me, or would I have to live without the one person that meant the entire earth to me, would i have to learn to live without love.

    Previously published in Children Churches and Daddies volume 129, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, and http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, and edited versions of this piece were used in the compact disc Stop. Look. Listen., and was used in the performance art show and compact disc Six One One.

the Effects of Nine One One

    It’s strange, has everyone even thought about the fact that the terrorists decided to destroy greatness on nine one one?

    It’s strange, how close I came to losing friends and family:
    my friend didn’t happen to go to the Trade Center on business that week,
    my brother-in-law lost a slew of contacts who died in New York,
    the Pennsylvania plane landed a mile from my sister-in-law’s house,
    my friend in D.C. wasn’t hurt but he talked about how different streets would be closed on different days and that there were so many military guards there you felt like you were in a war zone,
    which in a way, you were.

    And these terrorists, they had a masterful plan, they were stopped that day from starting at different flights, and one of them was slated, I think, to run into the Sears Tower.
    I mean, think about the emotional effects of these disasters. I know different people had different reactions...

    I know that for months afterward whenever we were driving toward the loop, taking the kennedy where you could see the Chicago skyline get closer and closer, I know that every time we drove by, I would be sitting in the passenger seat and I would imaging seeing a plane fly right into the side of the Sears Tower, toward the top, to the side, exactly like how it happened to the World Trade Centers. Like how you saw it over and over again on television, when we were flooded with images of it on the news. I’d see a plane flying right into the tallest building, this landmark to Chicago.
    I still see that sometimes, whenever we are driving into the city, imagining witnessing the destruction, seeing it all, and thinking, what do you do then?

    This piece was used in the performance and compact disc Six One One, was published in Children Churches and Daddies volume 129, http://www.yotko.comjk/jk.htm, and http://www.deepthought.com/scars/deepthought-dot-com/kuypers-writing.htm, and was later in the chapbook supplement to the book The Elements.

Colophon

    Exaro Versus was conceived after Kuypers photographed the cover image, which is of the National Library in Luxembourg, photographed May 2003.
    Previous publications credit for each story were placed after each story in Exaro Versus, fashioned in the same style as the prose collection book Momento Mori.
    Exaro Versus was designed in QuarkXpress (v4.1), primarily using the Adobe Garamond font for the body copy (additional portions are also in the fonts Eurostyle, ExPonto, Helvetica Black & BoldCondensed, ITC Fenice Light, Linotext, Trajan and Type Vintage One). Adobe Photoshop (v5.5 and 7.0) was used to edit all images (including some image creation and editing from Adobe Illustrator v8.0.1-10.0 and Adobe Streamline v4.0).
    Photographs throughout Exaro Versus were taken in Urbana Illinois, Naples Florida, Gurnee Illinois, Tinley Park Illinois, Palos Park Illinois, Chicago Illinois, Denver Colorado, Utah, Las Vegas Nevada, Los Angeles and San Francisco California, Tia Juana Mexico, Tempe and Mesa Arizona, Albequerque New Mexico, New Orleans Louisiana, Talahassee Florida, Bloomington Indiana, Cape Canaveral Florida, Rhode Island, Salzburg and Bad Gastein Austria, Dachau Germany, Venice and Pompeii and Agrigento and Rome Italy, Paris France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Zurich Switzerland.
    Penny Dreadful Press agreed to list their name in joint publication with Scars Publications in Kuypers’ books, including this collection book. Freedom & Strength Press has also joined in publishing books from Kuypers. In honor of this collection book’s release, Dried Roses Press, Hawthorne Press and Troy Press have joined in publishing this collection book with their press names as well.

    Colophon 2. an inscription at the end of a book. (Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, 2001)

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