As a part of Kuypers’ quarterly performance art series (from 2002 through 2005), the material in part one of this book was a performance art show called “Dreams” on 2/3/04, live in Chicago at the Cafe (5115 North Lincoln Avenue). This show consisted not only of her writings (from both poetry and prose), but also the artwork and the background music. There are links at http://www.janetkuypers.com for this show (as well as this book), where you can see color images from the show and listen to live recordings from this show (so background music can be heard as well).

    Before reading an extensive array of assorted dreams poems, first enjoy the Dreams 2/3/04 live Chicago performance.

he told me his dreams 4

fell out again, he said.
This time they fell out one by
one, first slowly, then faster.

Sometimes they all fall out
at once, sometimes they fall
one row at a time. I try to

stuff them back into my mouth.
What is this supposed to
mean? I don’t understand.

I just don’t understand these
dreams. What does it mean
when you dream your teeth

fall out, when you dream it
regularly? I think it means
I’m afraid of commitment.

No, I said, it means
you’re pregnant. That didn’t
go over well with him. And he

walked to the washroom,
brushed his teeth, made sure to
floss, like he would four

more times that day

realistic dreams

I had a dream the other night; my dreams
are different from other people’s dreams:

other people’s dreams aren’t realistic, but
mine always are. They stay with you longer

that way, they make you think they really
happened. Recently I had a dream that someone

wanted to hurt me; they wanted to hurt me
and they followed me and appeared in the

same town as me and one day I was standing
at a street corner and they were just standing

there, talking to someone else, on the other
side of the street. So I panicked, and I turned

around and started running, ran down the block,
dropped what was in my hands off at my house,

and kept running. I don’t know how far I ran,
or where I was running to, all I can remember

is what I was running from.

The Dream

As I walked away,
I stopped and leaned against the jungle gym.
The memories bombarded me--
Why did I have that dream?
Why did I stop myself?
Why didn’t I die?

It was four years ago.
I was walking in a field
where the brown weeds stood a foot tall,
almost entirely covering the wretched, abandoned train tracks.
The pollution-grey sky
occasionally hurled its anger at the ground,
making rippling waves in the dead grass and straw.
I never asked why I was there.
Holding my denim jacket closed with one hand
I put my left hand in the coat pocket.
I felt the cold steel in my hands
and pulled the .22 pistol out into the light.
The polished silver-grey barrel
reflected my fingerprints.
I never asked why it was there.
I stopped walking,
switched off the safety,
turned the gun toward my stomach,
wrapped my finger around the trigger,
pressed my eyes shut, and fired twice.
But I opened my eyes
and stared at the waving weeds
as I felt the heat and the force radiate through me.
As I stood there, I began to hunch over
and all of my senses slowed down.
The weeds moved slowly, and as I started to walk,
my steps became shorter, yet longer to take.
Feeling dizzy, I couldn’t even think.
But I knew it should hurt, and I waited for the pain,
but I just wasn’t dying fast enough.
So I tried to keep walking,
but it felt like I was falling,
and I turned the revolver to my stomach again and fired.
I felt the jolt. I felt the force. I felt the heat.
But it just wasn’t working.
I just wasn’t dying.
So I moved the gun to the side of my head.
One shot rang out.
My ears were ringing --- slowly but violently.
Why wasn’t I dying?
I shot at the temple again, and once more.
Walking, slowly, now used to the heat
and only feeling tired.
Then a voice in my head told me to stop the dream
and I woke up.
Beads of sweat dripped down from my temple.
I tasted them
to make sure it wasn’t blood.

I pushed myself away from the jungle gym
as I watched the girls on the swing set.
The brunette stared at the blonde in innocent amazement.
They’re all just lies.
I turned around and walked away,
kicking the dead grass.

he told me his dreams 5

from them? they had guns,
they had pistols, machine
guns, as they always

do, and I only had my
feet to keep me away
and save me. I

could feel the bullets
riddling my body. who
are they, why do I

always have to run away;
even in my own dreams,
who am I running from

transcribing dreams 3

Dreams 01/19/04 Three

Once I had a dream
that I went for a hiking walk
though the suburban-like streets
to get to a forest preserve
with Tom.
It’s strange,
I never spent time with Tom,
but we were metting up
to go for a walk together.
Well anyway, he came by,
and he even brought a burrito
for me to eat,
because he thought I’d be hungry.
I thought that was really nice of him,
and we started walking down the street
(to get to a forest preserve),
and I opened up the wrapped burrito
and took a bite.
And I don’t remember the taste in my mouth,
but I know there was chicken in this burrito,
and I thought he knew I was a vegetarian.
So I got really angry,
and I said,
‘hey, wait, there’s meat in this.
Didn’t you know I was a vegetarian?
You had to know.’
And I just got so angry,
maybe he didn’t know
and he was just trying to be nice.
But he was a meat eater
and I wasn’t.
maybe, in my dream, we were together
and we really don’t know each other at all.

he told me his dreams 9

you feel like you’re falling
very quickly and you instantly
wake yourself up? Everyone

gets that feeling sometimes
when they sleep. Did you know
your body does that on purpose?

You see, it happens when you’re
very tired and your body starts
to fall into a sleep state at too

fast a speed. Your heart rate,
your breathing shouldn’t slow
down that fast. So your body

makes you feel like you fall
so you’ll wake up, feel a little
tense, and fall asleep more

slowly. He said: No, no, that’s
not what I’m talking about.
I know that feeling, but

what I’m talking about is
being in a dream and going
to the edge of a cliff and jumping.

She said: Well, what happens?
Do you land? He said: Sometimes
I wake up before I land,

sometimes I land gently and
live. You’ve never had a dream
like that before? She said:

No. He said: Why do I have
dreams like this? Why this cliff?
Why do I fall? How do I land?

A dream about murder.     I had a dream last night, it was different from my usual dreams, usually I dream about stuff that seems pretty real, somewhat mundane and at most usually frustrating. But I don’t know if it was the wine I had at the Thanksgiving feast at Rachel’s down the block, or if I heard some strange story on television earlier, but I dreamt about murder.     Dave and I were staying at a hotel, I don’t know where the hotel was, but it was on a body of water, I think it was a lake, not an ocean or anything. And I remember at some point, it was dawn in the dream, I went for a jog, I noticed two good-looking men outside while I was on my jog, and then I went down the hill to the water. I wanted to jog along the water. But they had it roped off - I don’t even know who “they” would be, but the area along the water was roped off, maybe until full daylight, maybe then lifeguards would be there to protect the people. But the point is, I couldn’t jog along the water, so I sat down at the bottom of the stairs by the water’s edge, right in front of the ropes, and watched the water. And a woman came along down the stairs, and sat down next to me to watch the water, too. I remember thinking that I didn’t like her being so close, I like to keep a sense of personal space, but then it occurred to me that there wasn’t much space for her to go since the whole area was roped off. And the thing is, I don’t even like to jog.     Oh, so anyway, I don’t even know why I went for a jog or at what point in time in my dream this jog occurred. But I know that in the dream I killed someone. It occurred before my dream technically started; I don’t remember anything about the murder, I don’t know if it was me alone that did the killing or if Dave was there with me, all I know is that I killed a guy, I don’t know why I killed him, but I killed someone in another room in the same hotel, someone who I didn’t even really know. And the thing is, I was wearing fake nails during the murder, or at least that’s what I inferred in the dream, because I thought I lost one of them at the scene of the crime and the main part of the dream was me in the bathroom removing all of my fake nails because they might implicate me in the murder.     So I was removing my nails, they were plastic nails glued on to my real nails, and they weren’t even painted, they were still just white plastic. And as I was removing these fake nails I was dropping them on the floor because I was ripping them off so frantically, I didn’t want anyone to be able to link me to this murder. So when I got them all off, I was still worried that I had a little glue left on my real finger nails, so I was trying to scrape that off, and then I was trying to pick up all the fake nails off the bathroom floor. They all fell just to the right of the toilet, and were on the tile floor, and I remember as I was picking them up I also picked up a dust ball and a used piece of clear tape. I remember thinking that was odd, because usually hotel bathroom floors are clean, they’re cleaned every day. So anyway, I kept picking up the nails, trying to make sure I got them all, occasionally dropping one of them back on the floor because I was so hectic and so nervous. This made the whole procedure take up most of my dream.     Once I had all of the nails, the only thing I could think about was how to dispose of the nails, and the rest of the dream became a frantic effort to figure out how I could get rid of them so that they could not be traced back to me. I thought that I could just flush them all down the toilet, but then I thought that there might be a chance that one of the nails wouldn’t go down and would just stay at the bottom of the toilet and I wouldn’t notice it and think I was home free but in actuality I’d be leaving a huge piece of evidence in my own hotel room linking me to the murder. Then I wondered if they’d have a way to sift through the sewer water from the hotel, so then I thought that I shouldn’t flush any of them down the toilet, but go to various public rest room around town and flush a few at a time.     Then I started to worry that if the nail I left at the scene of the crime took more than just the glue with it, that it actually took some of my nail with it, then I would have left DNA evidence at the scene of the crime and there would be nothing I could do.     And then I started to wonder if I actually lost a nail at the scene of the murder, or if I was just overreacting.     And then I wondered if anyone had even found the dead body yet, all this time laying there on the floor of their hotel room. And then the phone rang and I woke up.

people’s rights misunderstood I had a dream the other night I was walking down the street in the city and a man came up to me a skinny man, he lost his hair and he walked right up to me and told me no one cares anymore and he took my hand and asked me to care about him “I’m not supposed to be like this” he said “I’m not homeless, you know I have AIDS” and I wanted to tell him that someone did care, that he didn’t have to die alone, but you know how sometimes you can’t do things in your dream no matter how hard you try, well, my mouth was open, wide open, but no words were coming out and you know, I’m afraid to go to sleep tonight I’m afraid I’ll be walking down that street in the city I’m afraid that a pregnant woman will come up to me and ask me for a hanger and I’ll tell her there has to be another way and she’ll say this is the way she chooses I’m afraid I’ll be walking down that street in the city and a woman will come up to me and tell me she doesn’t want to live because she’s just been raped and her world doesn’t make sense anymore and I’ll tell her that she can make it that one in three women are raped in their lifetime and they all make it and besides, the world doesn’t make sense to anyone and she’ll say that doesn’t make me feel any better and I’m afraid that I won’t be able to walk down that street in the city again without it looking like a Quentin Tarantino movie where everyone is pointing guns at each other yes, Mr. NRA you are right I feel so much safer knowing everyone out there has a gun that there are more gun shops than gas stations and that everyone is so willing to do the killing why do my dreams have to be so much like real life I’ve got to stop dreaming of that damned street

Dreams 01/14/04

Dreams 01/16/04

Dreams 01/17/04

Dreams 01/18/04

I was at home, and two friends
were coming over, we were going out,
I don’t know where, but it’s like
they were picking me up to go somewhere.
I checked the clock
and they should have been here by now,
and so I walked to the bathroom
at the end of the hall
to put on some eye liner
(I hadn’t put any make up on to go out),
and I remember putting it on
and it was messy on one side,
but I figured
I could smear it around
to smooth it out,
so I put the eye liner pencil down
and started to walk back down the hall.
I could see out the window that
the two women were outside,
so I walked to the door
and looked more closely out the window,
and they were playing with two large dogs.
(Did they own the dogs
or were the dogs someome else’s?)
Well anyway, I opened the door
and they looked up and said hi,
and asked how I knew they were here
because they didn’t knock,
and I said I saw them through the window,
and I’m realy to go if they want to.

I don’t know,
I think John was doing something
in the kitchen, he was there,
but doing something else.
But I was determined to get going,
it seemed like I wasn’t interested
in inviting them in,
not because I didn’t want them to see the house,
but because we had a schedule,
and I didn’t want to be late,
we couldn’t have that,
so my brain was thinking
that we should just get going
so that we keep on time.

Dreams 01/19/04 one

I think I watched a comedy sketch on television
that talked about ways women should behave
to turn on men, and this is why I dreamt this.
But All I can remember of my dream is that
I was walking outside of my room,
it wasn’t in my house, I don’t remember
the place, I just know it was my room,
and I was wearing an all tight black vinyl sleeveless
top and pants, and my sister Sandy was there,
and she asked me what I was doing, and I asid
“nothing.” And I think she asked, but made a guess
about why I was dressed like this, and I said
“no,” and then she guessed if I was dressed this way
to attract men, and I got bashful, so she knew
thatm ust have been my answer.
I think that might have been the end of my dream
because I remember nothing else.

Dreams 01/19/04 two:
Dog Stuck To My Face

There was an open area,
kind of like a cafeteria,
and women were at it,
all gossiping and stuff,
and they had a dog with them.
They were trying to
show the dog love,
and the dog was being affectionate,
not never getting too close
(kind of like how my cat Zach
will be, like to be near you,
buy doesn’t need to always be
close enough for you to hold).
Then I walked up, and I thought,
“hey, this dog loves me
(it was a little, friendly dog),
this dog will want to come to me”
so I walked up to the table,
get between a chair and the table,
and called for the dog. The dog,
instantly got onto the table and
came running up to me,
started licking my face,
and the next thing I know
the dog managed to somehow,
while licking my face, he
managed to start sucking on my cheek,
and made a suction on my face,
so this dog was then stuck to my face
(I don’t know how a dog can make
a suction with their mouths,
the way their mouths are shaped,
but that’s what he did).
I just started trying to
gently push the dog away,
because I didn’t want to be forceful,
but the dog was stuck there
and wouldn’t move.
So I said, “hey, help me,
this dog is stuck to me,”
after I stepped away from the table,
and this dog stayed stuck to my face.
Now he was just hanging from my face
without even standing on anything.
No one had panicked
because a dog was stuck to me face yet,
but this is when I woke up.

Dreams 02/10/04

This last dream find of
confuses me. I was ona road trip,
it was me, john, and two other
guy friends, one was friend of ours,
and the other guy was someone
I didn’t know too well,
maybe it was a friend of the other guy.
either way, we went on a road trip
and we ended up at a hotel.
We were in the hotel, just hanging out
because we were tired of sitting in the car,
amd I think I was wonderinng if our friend
(not John, not the guy I didn’t know)
was checking me out
(maybe I wanted to be flattered
by someone checking me out).
But I eventually got up and said,
hey, let’s check out the rest of this hotel,
and see the bedrooms
(because we apparently got this hotel
and didn’t even know about the bedroom).
And one guy said, “hey,
this place has bedrooms?”
and we got up and started waking
toward the bedrooms, and I saw two doors,
and I said, “hey, there are TWo bedrooms,”
and I went to one of the doors and opened it.
The first rooms had one twin bed and one large beg
(full or queen sized, I coulfn’t tell),
and the other room had two twin beds in it.
So I called the room with the larger bed,
thinking that would be better
for John and I for the beds.
Then I walked back to the kitchen area,
and there was a stranger in the room,
a woman, and she shd brown hair
that came just to the bottom of her neck,
and she was wearing a men’s suit jacket
over her top and jeans,
but she was looking down doing something
and he hair was falling onto here face;
but she was thin and looked good.
So I turned to John and tried to say something
to make him look at this person
I didn’t know in our hotel.
I was thinking that maybe
she was a friend of the other two guys
who lived in this town,
but they weren’t in the room,
so I was just trying to tell john to turn around
and look to see her.
When he finally turned around,
he looked blankly that way for a minute,
then he turned around and said,
“Yeah, I noticed those curtains,”
(interesting cover-up, I thought,
so she wouldn’t think he was staring at her)
and then he turned back and
acknowledged that there was this
female stranger in our hotel room.
And so I said, “I don’t know who she is,
but is shw looks just like me.” I was thinking
about what I looked like before I met john,
when I seemed younger,
because she didn’t look just like me,
but then I wondered if she was a friend a our firend,
and if he was interested in this girl
who looked like me when I was younger.

Dreams 02/12/04

I woke up at 5:30 this morning,
as now I usually wake up
six hours after I fall asleep.
I don’t know why,
but I got on top of the blankets
and moved my pillow to where my feet go
and laid down upside-down
on top of the blankets in bed.
John touched my ankle
at seven this morning
and asked me why
I was laying on top of the blankets
and laying upside-down in bed.
I didn’t know why I did it;
all I could remember was the dream
he woke me up from.

It seemed to be in two parts,
I don’t know,
but I was - I think -
in New Orleans, and
I think I was traveling with John,
and we were getting all of our bags
so we could walk across town to leave.
We didn’t have suitcases -
all of our luggage was just
a bunch of cloth bags
we carried over our shoulders.
Well, I had probably five or six
of these bags, and I think
John had a bunch of bags too.
But anyway, we were walking for a bit,
and it occurred to me
that I didn’t have me purse
or another bag that we needed
to take with us, so I turned around
and said my purse was missing,
we must have left it at the last place
we went to,
and then I just started running
with all of these bags
to get back to that place.

I think I arrived back at the last place we were,
and John was right behind me,
but now the dream seemed to change,
because we were at my parent’s
second small mobile home in Florida.
And mom and dad were sitting there
in those matching couches
in front of the tee vee,
and I just had to try to make sure
that I had everything,
but I had to not be out of breath
because I just ran with all these bags here.
So I think I went to the back of the house
and made sure I had everything this time
and I said we were going to go now.
Dad asked me, “Did you put the
water buckets at all the faucets?”
because apparently we had to collect
the dripping water from the faucets
while no one was in the house,
I don’t know.
But I didn’t do that,
so I said, “Oh, I forgot,”
and I turned around
and was about to take care of this
for the house
for my parents.

That’s when John touched my ankle
and woke me.

Dreams 02/13/04

I think I had three dreams,
I remember thinking that
when I woke up this morning,
but I didn’t write them all down
immediately
and now I can only remember one

we walked to a doorway
of some sort of art reading,
like a poetry performance artist show.
And old male friend of mine
was one of the people on the stage,
I hadn’t seen this friend in a long time,
so I had to at least make it to his show.
I didn’t know what the show would be like.
All I can remember
is that the room where the show was in
was dark,
there were no lights on.
We stood in the open doorway,
but there was a light on
past the doorway
and that distracted from the lack of light
in this performance art space

anyway, my friend and another woman
(I guess she was in this show too)
walked to the center of the room
which was kind of small,
so they were close to everyone
as they stood on their stage,
which was just the center of the room
that was framed by their standing audience.
So my friend started talking
as the intro of this show,
and the woman sat down
at what looked like a keyboard
(but I couldn’t really see
because of the lack of light).
But my friend started talking,
and I have no idea what he was saying,
but apparently the lack of light
was a part of the show,
because he had one of those
touch lights,
or wall lights
(or stair lights,
or whatever you want to call them)
and he had one of these lights
on his shirt over his chest,
and he took his arm
and just pounded on his chest once,
and that turned this touch light on.
And he left it on,
and he was just talking
with this light on his chest,
which apparently was a part of the show.

And that’s all I remember of the dream.

Dreams 02/20/04 one

I remembered a dream,
when John told me that
I was talking in my sleep
from some dream last night
that I have no memory of.
He said that at 2:07
I woke up saying,
“The hat cat photo
on top of the books
is blocking the view
that I want to see.»

That’s all I said.

I have no memory of this.

Dreams 03/08/04

I was sleeping in Jim’s apartment in China,
and an American guy (apparently a friend of Jim’s)
opened the door to the room we were sleeping in
(apparently they expected to storm in on Jim).
I didn’t act surprised that some stranger to us
came in an woke us up;
I just saw he looked confused, and I said,
“He’s over there,”
Motioning with my head to the other room.
And the guy just left to go to the other room,
to talk to Jim.
And the thing is, I didn’t think it was strange
that a friend of Jim’s just busted in to surprise him.
And the thing is, Jim doesn’t have any American friends
here in China.

Dreams 02/20/04 two

I woke up at 5:30 with this dream,
I apparently was working
in downtown Chicago again,
and it was night time
and I got to the building I worked in
with a coworker.
I don’t know what I did
at my job,
and I don’t know what
this big black woman did
that was at the building
at the same time as me.
Well anyway, we were standing there,
because the building was locked,
but you know we could get in
because we worked there,
we must have had keys or something,
and the lady said,
“There’s a fire
on the fourteenth floor.
We can’t go in.”
And there was no fire that I could see,
and I didn’t know how
this lady could know there was a fire.
But no one was there,
and I wondered of we should go in,
but she left,
and I walked away with her.

We were walking through downtown
so we could get to our train stations,
and I knew my train was an hour long
for me to get home,
and I think I wanted someone I knew
to join me
so I wouldn’t have to deal with
being alone for the entire ride home.

Then I went back to sleep
for another hour
and there was more to my dream
when I woke up at 6:30.

I seemed to have picked up
on where I left off in my dream.
I was walking through downtown at night
with this lady, and I started talking about
things in Chicago I remembered.
I mentioned that
there was a building on Wacker Drive,
north of Randolph or Lake,
in that east-west curve
before it goes north again,
and the building had huge windows,
a few stories tall,
and they had huge statues in their lobby.
I remembered this because at Christmas time
the people from the building would put
big Santa caps on the statues
for everyone to see through the windows.
And then for some reason I talked about
meeting Charlie Trotter at my old job,
he spoke at our trade show,
and I was reading an Ayn Rand book,
‘Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal,’
and he started talking to me about Ayn Rand.
And then I said that he was
a really well-known chef,
because Emeril Lagasse was there too,
but this was before he had his own show,
and Charlie Trotter was as well known
as Emeril Lagasse was.
Well, anyway, I then remembered
that while I was at one of our trade shows
we had dinner at Nola’s,
and Nola was Emeril Lagasse’s wife’s name.
That was when I woke up.

dreams 09/24/05

Like I’d buy a phone because it was a purse
and matched my shoes.

I think I might have looked up
and saw you waiting in the car.
Like you like garage sales.
You knew better than to join me.

Dreams 03-11-04

    This dream made absolutely no sense to me. It was night, and I was outside with a man (I don’t know who he was, but in my dream it was someone I trusted and was supposed to be with; it was someone personality-wise that was more like Eugene, but it wasn’t him). So anyway, there was snow on the ground (like a little dirty sold snow, not a fresh snowfall), and I didn’t have a coat on. The Eugene-like guy I was with was inside of a truck that was on the bed of another truck (the back of the big truck was backed up to a three foot ledge, so you could drive the smaller truck on the truck bed off of the big truck). He was yelling at me to get in, that this was the only way we could do what we had to do. I don’t know what we had to do (I don’t remember form the dream), and I got the impression we could drive this truck back onto the other truck when we were done, so I went to get in. I remember that as I was getting in this guy I was with moved some stuff in the truck for me and that inadvertently got some snow on to me, and that got my (quietly) mad because I had no coat on. There were even chains on the tires of this truck (apparently to keep this truck ON the other truck)but he just drove backwards and broke the chains as we drive off the bed of the bottom truck. Then we just drive off the three foot ledge like it was a curb or something, and we started driving down the road. I don’t know where we were going, but our mission had started. And then I woke up.

Dreams 03-19-04 one

Dreams 03-19-04 two

dreams 04/20/05

although his motorcycle has a flat tire now,
John and I were out on his motorcycle
in my dream
and for some reason he had to leave me
with the motorcycle on the highway
while he did something quickly

while I waited for him, I tried to remember
which exit we were supposed to take
and I started the motorcycle
(even though I don’t know how to drive
a motorcycle)
and sort of coasted it toward our exit,
then left it on the small shoulder

I apparently managed to stop the motorcycle
and hoist it up without it leaning over,
because the next thing I know
I was laying on the motorcycle
asleep
waiting for him to come back
he found me,
and I asked him why it took him so long
and he told me that he ran into
someone he went to grade school with,
they wondered if he was going to the
middle school (or junior high school)
dance, and he didn’t know they were
having one, so they told him to visit the
school.
This is when he told me that his middle
school building was owned by someone
who actually had it as a bar in the evenings
and I thought, that has to be the coolest thing
to have your school be a bar

so apparently we were supposed to be going
to his school, which was like a one-room bar
and I didn’t know any of these people
but when we got someplace
(I don’t think it was his school, but I
can’t remember)
and he left me again,
I don’t know what for,
I don’t know why

but the next thing I know
is that people were wanting
to have a knife fight with me
and I was at this place,
and there were a few people
planning to fight me,
I remember even one of them
working on sawing and sanding a table edge
I have no idea what that had to do with the fight
but apparently people were getting ready
and they were doing everything they could

and it confused the Hell out of me,
and I managed to leave
without anyone noticing,
and I went to look for John

I think I managed to get home
to see if he was there,
and he was laying in bed
and when I got close
I saw him laying there, shirtless,
with a knife sticking out of his chest

I freaked out, figured those people
wanted to knife fight him too,
but was he all right
I called out to him
and he was conscious,
and laying there
he said said
that he didn’t want to pull the knife out
because it could cause more damage.
I didn’t ask why he didn’t go
to the hospital,
because that’s when I woke up.

dreams 05/26/05

but I was waiting to meet up with Eugene and Brian
so we could go out for drinks
I hadn’t seem Brian in a while
and he was going to go out of town again
so I was standing outside with a beer in my hand
waiting for them to show up

I didn’t even bother opening up the beer can yet
because I had the feeling
that they were going to be late
or not want to drink
or something,
so I was standing outside
with an unopened beer in my hand
waiting for them to join me
because we were going to walk over to another place
and have drinks

But I saw them coming out
of what looked like my car,
so I knew something was wrong,
because they could just walk outside
and meet me

when I saw the car pull around the corner,
I stepped into the street more
so they’d see me,
and Eugene was driving,
and I could see him signal with his hand
to walk over to the side there so we could talk

they stopped the car
and the window rolled down,
and I was very confused
why aren’t we going out
we were supposed to be meeting up for drinks
where are you going
and Eugene did all of the talking,
Brian barely spoke at all,
but Eugene made it clear to me
that Brian had gotten a woman pregnant
(I don’t know who the woman was),
and Brian was single,
and he needed some time to think

And I looked at Brian
and got the impression
that he hadn’t even eaten in a while
and they were just going to leave
so I told him he at least had to eat something
and Eugene, in all his wisdom, said
that if he wants to fill up his belly
he could at least be having beers with us
but Brian didn’t say much of anything at all
he wouldn’t even turn his head to look at us
and he pretty much only grunted out answers

and I was standing there,
outside the car,
and my friend was leaving in my own car,
and I didn’t know what to do

Dreams 09/06/05

The other dreams I had is so retarded,
I know it was based on seeing the show “Iron Chef”
before I went to bed last night, because the food
that was the secret ingredient was a short-
necked clam, because for some reason I had to do
like they were doing, and pull the muscles out
of the clam shells without destroying the muscles,
so I was doing this, I know I’m a vegetarian, but
I was believing I wasn’t hurting anyone or anything
by doing this. I must have believed that, because
I had to do one that represented my cat, I mean
my cat was right there, I think it was Katie,
and she was there, all whole, so I must have thought
that this is something that wouldn’t hurt anyone
or anything. So anyway, I was at the time needing
a better knife for pulling the muscle out of the shell,
but at the same time I was trying to tell Katie
that it was okay, and that this wouldn’t hurt her,
even though it was a part of her (I told you,
I can’t explain this so that it will make sense).
But we must have been outside and there was a pool
separating us from the door to the house,
it looked vaguely like my parent’s house
but I can’t say for sure, but while I was
trying to convince Katie that it was okay,
she jumped to get away from me and jumped
into the pool. Now, unlike how you’d expect a cat
to freak out by getting into water, she just
started swimming diagonally, almost like she
was doing the breast stroke or something,
so I got in the pool to chase her across the swimming pool
by swimming, so I started watching her
do what looked like the breast stroke to avoid me
and I was just so stunned that my cat was swimming
to get away from me because I wanted to
convince her that pulling muscles from a shell
wouldn’t her her, even though it was supposed to be a part
of her body, even though it wasn’t attached to her.
I think at that point my mind just freaked out
and I woke up.

about the author

    Janet Kuypers graduated from the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana with a degree in News/Editorial Communications Journalism (with computer science engineering studies). She had a minor in photography and specialized in creative writing. In the early 1990s she was an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and edited to two literary magazines.
    Since she got fed up with her job as the art director of a few magazines for a publishing company, Janet Kuypers, to relieve the stress:
    (a) vents her twenty-something angst musically with acoustic bands called Mom’s Favorite Vase, Weeds and Flowers and the Second Axing, and attempts to learn to play the guitar,
    (b) writes so much that she irritates editors enough to get her published in books, magazines and on the internet over 8,800 times for writing or over 17,000 times for art work in her professional career, and has been profiled in such magazines as Nation and DiscoverU and has been interviewed on ArtistFirst dot com’s Internet radio station, and has repeatedly been highlighted with interviews and readings for years with WZRD 88.3 FM radio in Chicago,
    (c) turns that writing into performance art on her own and with musical groups like Pointless Orchestra, 5D/5D and Order From Chaos,
    (d) writes so much that in order to make her feel like a big shot she gets ten books published: Hope Chest in the Attic, The Window, Close Cover Before Striking, (woman.) (spiral bound), Autumn Reason (novel in letter form), the Average Guy’s Guide to Feminism, Contents Under Pressure, Changing Gears (travel journals around the United States), The Key To Believing (2002 650 page novel), and etc.
    (e) gets tired of thinking about her own pathetic life, so runs a non-profit publishing company, where she does internet work and book design, and edits a literary and art magazine so she can read and broadcast other people’s depressing stories,
    (f) performs spoken word and music, both locally and across the country - in the spring of 1998 she embarked on her first national tour, with featured performances, among other venues, at the Albuquerque Spoken Word Festival during the National Poetry Slam, in 2003 she hosted and performed weekly at a poetry and music open mic called Sing Your Life, starting in 2002 she was a featured performer, doing quarterly performance art shows with readings, music and images, in 2005 she started monthly iPodCasts and an Internet radio station of her work,
    or (g) all of the above.
    When doing all of that didn’t work, Janet decided to quit her job and travel around the United States and Mexico, writing travel journals (collected into a book called Changing Gears) and starting her first epic novel (The Key To Believing). She also released a final collection of poetry called Oeuvre, a final collection of prose called Exaro Versus, and an art book called L’arte.
    But after that work wasn’t enough, she thought she would try to get her life back into order by moving across the country once or twice, getting married and getting a house with fireplaces, a jacuzzi and a sauna. After venturing to Puerto Rico, to nine European countries (Germany, Austria, Italy, the Vatican City, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland), and to China (Shanghai and Beijing), Kuypers thought she would (because she’s psycho on never being at rest) do more design work, master compact discs and Performance Art shows in Chicago, and yes, have more books of hers published. Doesn’t she know how to rest?