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in the book
Chapter 38 (v2)
This volume is available in two forms,
with Slightly different contets:
as a 6"x9" supplement book and
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This writing is in one - or both - books.

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A Wake-Up Call
From Tradition
This is the 2nd of a 3 volume 2009 set.

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finally, literature for
the snotty and elite (v1)
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the 6"x9" paperback book: $21.95

Order this writing in the collection book Dark Matter: the Mind of Janet Kuypers available for only 12⁹⁵

Download this writing in the free chapbook the 2010 Lake County Poetry Bomb the 4/18/10 chapbook of poetry Janet Kuypers read in public

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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue of cc&d (v243) (the May / June 2013 Issue, the 20 year anniversary issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

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Scars 1997

I wear my scars like badges.
These deep marks show through from under my skin
like war paint on an Apache chief.
Decorated with feathers, the skins of his prey.

I have a scar over my left knee.
It’s left over from a bout with poison ivy
I had after climbing a mountainside.
The four-inch long slice curves around my leg,
almost perfectly defining the muscles in my thigh.

I have a scar on my right shin.
I slipped on a patch of rocks and cut up the lower
half of my leg and filled it with gravel and dirt.
Joe poured hydrogen peroxide on my leg
and wrapped my wounds with paper towels
because the cuts were so wide spread.
An hour later I was on my way home,
so I could tend to my wounds in greater detail.
Tend to my wounds in depth.
Now all that is left is a two-inch line down
the side of my leg. Although it wasn’t a very
deep cut, it looks like it went straight to the bone.

I have a circular scar on my left calf,
from getting off a motorcycle and sliding
my leg over the scalding hot exhaust pipe.
It has been seven years since I gained that scar,
and with each year I see it fade away just a little.
I can still see it, but the memory is slowly slipping away.

My cat scratched me on my wrist once
when we had to give her medication.
Cats don’t like taking pills, or having ointment
dabbed on and liquid poured over their wounds.
When giving her pills, we’d grab all her paws,
pull her head back by the nape of her neck,
pry her jaws wide open so the pill will fall back
and she is forced to swallow it.
But sometimes she’d move too much
and a paw would slip out of our grasp.
And now, over the bone on my left wrist,
a long thin scar stares at me defiantly.

I tell people that if they wake up
with bruises and cuts they don’t remember,
then they must have had fun the night before.
But each marking, each scar is a story,
is a memory. It is a way to remember how you lived.
And it is with these marks that I gauge my living.
It is with these marks that I feel decorated.

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