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the elements

the elements

fire
wood
earth
water

scars publications
america

See this link at Barnes & Boble.

The CD from this collection is also available for sale.

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The Elements - The Elements
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the audio CD set for the poetry collection book and supplementalchapbooks The Elements
Now Available: the 2 CD 2007 audio set Chaotic Elements from the book reading sections of Chaotic Radio (from shows 61-65, 67-73) — of the book (and supplement set of chapbooks) readings for the collection book The Elements. This extended (almost 160 minutes!) radio audio CD set (with a 3 poem tracks bonus from the expanded 2007 release of the CD Seeing Things Differently) is available for only $995 (+ s&h in the continental US).

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This page includes writing from Kuypers within the book The Elements, as well as from hcapbook supplements that were released with the book. This is the only place you can find this large collection of writings together.
Some of these are from very old poems, as well as some new releases in this collection. Enjoy these writings, over a large span of time.

the elements
isbn# 1-891470-40-X
$19.45 American
($13.23 for the book, $6.22 for the compact disc)
scars publications
2002
down in the dirt magazine
children, churches and daddies magazine
the unreligious, nonfamily-oriented literary and art magazine
ISSN 1068-5154
ccandd96@scars.tv
http://scars.tv

first edition, private printing
printed in the United States of America

Freedom & Strength Press
You can’t be free or strong until you can speak up

copyright © 2002, Scars Publications and Design
individual pieces U.S. Government © 2004 Janet Kuypers
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any storage or retrieval system, without the permission from the publisher.
Insert usual copyright babble here, something about all rights being reserved by whoever created this junk, and stuff like that... Yeah, all we ask is that you respect what was put together here.


(a letter from the publisher)

In always deciding to test our limits, we searched for ways to change the convention of the “book”. I mean really, think about it, how many books that are 200 pages, with one poem after another, can a person really take? How many places have poetry and prose books out now? What can we do to make things different?
Well, we searches our little brains and came up with a few things:
1. Make the book really huge. Wait, we did that with Torture and Triumph.
2. Add an audio CD. Wait, we did that with Torture and Triumph. Well, that’s not a bad idea, though, so maybe we can try that on another book.
3. Add a computer CD. Wait, we did that with Oh.
4. Turn the book sideways, so it’s a wide book. Wait, we did that with Oh.
5. Mafe the book Square. Hey, that’s not a bad idea...
6. Run a different cover. Hmmm... what about a matchbook?
This is how we set up The Elements, with fire as the prominent element on the pages and on the cover. We took pictures of wood, fire, water, earth, and we even opted to use a sparkler as a bookmark and enclose a real matchbook to match the book (please just don’t set this book on fire!).
We’re always looking for new ideas to make our books better, and we’re always looking for audio to add to future CDs of writings and authors, so look for ideas and let us know how we can change thefuture work from Scars and CC&D to make it better for you!

kuypers
Janet L. Kuypers
Doctor of Philosophy, University of Wexford, 1996, Reverend through the Universal Life Church, 1999




gravesite hawaii


death is a dog

Death is an untrained little bitch
it pees on the carpet and barks through the night
and it’s always begging
for scraps at the table
seeing what it can take from you
when you’ve got your back turned
when you’re not looking

when you want it to heal,
well, it never does
and it never rolls over
and it never plays dead

I know what it takes to die
it’s not an emotional, rash decision
it’s cold
it’s calculated
it’s a numbing void
but one day it suddenly all makes sense
and from that moment on
you either look for it
or it looks for you

Death is an untrained little bitch
and I’ve been begging for it, I tell you
but it doesn’t come when you call

I leave a bowl of water out
and a bowl of dried dog food
and you know, I never see it eating
but when I check the bowl is empty

and I still refill the bowl

and vacuum the dog hair
that sticks to the couch
and spray air freshener
in the living room
because no matter how hard you try
you can never get rid of the smell

Death is an untrained little bitch, I tell you
and what it boils down to is this:
you won’t get along with her
and she won’t get along with you

she’ll claim her territory
under the bed,
eating your slipper,
while you try to sleep
and remind yourself
that there are no monsters
waiting for you
to shut your eyes




fantastic car crash

and our life is one big road trip now
and we set the cruise control
and make our way down the expressway.

and most of the time we’re just moving
in a straight line, and the scenery
blurs. there’s nothing to see

but I know what’s inside you and I
know what you’re made of. I know
there’s no such thing as a calm with you

you are a fantastic car crash. you stop
traffic in both directions as the gapers gawk and
the delay grows and they slow down and stare

everything shatters with you, you know.
it’s a spectacular explosion. I try
to duck and cover as metal flies

through the air. and every time you leave
the scene of the accident
I am left picking up the shards of glass

from the windows. you know, the glass breaks
into such tiny little pieces. they look like
ice. it takes so long to pick up the pieces

even though I’m careful
I’m still picking up the pieces
and I’m still on my knees

and the glass cuts into my hands
and the blood drips down to the street.
think of it as my contribution

to this fantastic car crash
that is you, that is me, that is us
as I pull the glass from my hands

and I wave my hand to the line of traffic:
go ahead, keep driving, this happens
all the time, there’s nothing to see here




You Know It

(fish)

so there are these fish in my apartment
and they’re gold fish, they’re not like tropical fish
or anything
and they just want to rush their little bodies
up to the sides of the glass
and stare at you
and you know, some people have no preference
about these fish

and for some people,
they try not to think about these things
and they try not to tell you much at all
and they try to keep themselves away
from all that
and they try to act aloof
and they try to say all the right things
and the whole time
well, the whole time those little fish
and gawking at you and it’s like they are monitoring you

and when the night is over
you’ve still got those little fish
and you know they’ll be there in the morning
and you know you’ll have to feed them
and you know
they’ll have to depend on you for something

they’ll have to

you know it




Til the Fear In Me Subsides

I can’t say I know what you’ve gone through
That would only trivalize it
and I wouldn’t do that to us

But when a person goes through what you have
Well, you seem to brush it off
Until you come to me crying

They called you Elvira Doe in the hospital
Because they couldn’t find your identity
And your belongings were stuck under the seat

And your family wonders why when you were unconsciuos
They had to remove your clothes
That your family couldn’t find a bra

Hell, I don’t know if they took it or if
You just weren’t wearing one
You can’t remember, either

They called you miracle girl in the hospital
Because no one thought you would live
And just to spite them, you did

Other doctors examined your records
Who didn’t even know you
Just to check on your progress

And you like to brush off everything,
Say that you can do everything
You never let people know when something hurts

You just got contacts for your eyes
The doctors said they fit fine
That is when you told me about your hospital time

Three skull fractures is worse than
Having a broken leg
I’ll break every other bone first

Medical staff watched when your skull reset itself
to make sure your one eye was okay
because one eye could be damaged from it

And you know, I never wanted to tell you this,
But that scared me
And I wanted to know

That the eye doctors now
thought that your eyes were fine

I don’t want to scare you with these details
Because I can’t say I know what you’ve gone through
but, for me, well,

It still scares me to hear the details
And I still want to know when things are okay
And you are that much closer to better




Touch

the lust
her lips quiver anxiously
she wants
desperately
the craving
the longing
the yearning
is no longer contained
His eyes fixed
in a trance-like gaze
the erotic fantasies
the passion
the obsession
his burning
torrid
appetite is released
Her heart quickens
as her breath becomes
a pant
sensual
sexual
she is ravenous with need
His hand moves
his anticipation climaxes
salacious
lecherous
his muscles tense with
excitement
the cyprian
lurid desires
the heat
the fire
they cannot hold back
he touches her




I See The Scene

Every once in a while
I see the same scene again:
I lay in the bed
the field of daffodils
with you draped over me
folding over me
conforming to my body
like a rustling curtain
rippling in the breeze from an open window.
I do not sleep.
I couldn’t,
I would never want to.
Our contours interlock,
our limbs intertwine.
Your breath rolls down my stomach
like the breeze that brought you to me.
I take your hand,
and although you sleep
you seem to hold me
with all the intensity you possess.
And with each beat of your heart,
with your heat,
comes the cool night air in the wind
caressing me
until the light from the morning sun
awakens our silhouette.




Love Poem

You are the air I breathe.
you enwrap me
you consume me
your words
your eyes tear through me
Life is not I, but we.

I want you here tonight.
I won’t fight it
I can’t hide it
there’s nothing
to subside it
I know that this is right.

I can’t wait for the time
please just hold me
please just kiss me
please just tell me
that you’ll miss me
When I can say you’re mine.




Make Me

You know,
you actually do
make me wanna shout.
And if I didn’t know better,
I’d say that I have the capacity
to make you scream a little,
too.
You told me that you
have good hands.
I believed you, but I
didn’t realize how good they were
until you showed me.
You know,
I’m not so bad myself.
Show me how good you are
again.




Nights

If I have to -
I’ll put on the mask
I’ll play the game
the facade
Oh, I’ll do it -
I’ll go through the motions
I’ll live with the lies
the fantasy world.
Just to spend my nights with you.




Religion

“We do expect you to marry someone
who shares in your beliefs,”
the man groaned
as he looked at you and said,
“and that means you too, Joe.”
But tell me this:
when you look into my eyes,
do you want to look away?




This May Sound

I don’t know
this may sound silly
but every night
just before
I’m about to sleep
I think of you
and when I
turn out the light
and crawl into my
empty bed
a piece of me feels
missing
I don’t know
what it is
but I feel a hole
right about where
my heart is
when I have to
lay there
night after night
all alone
when I am with you
I feel as if
I am complete
I feel as if
nothing in the
world matters
when you’re
holding my hand
with your
heart near me
then I can sleep
and then I
fall into my
empty bed
and I feel the
hole again
burning through
my heart
and I wish
I didn’t feel
so alone
and I wish
the hole would
just go away




They Tried

they tried to hold me down
they tried to keep me in
they didn’t understand
“I was different”
they said
as day after day
I led my life
with the interrogation
lamp shining in my face

they tried to change me
they tried to bend my will
they wanted to break me
“We don’t like you”
they said
but every day
I faced the battle
in splendid silence
knowing that all like me
would understand me
and thank me

they tried to make me beg
they tried to make me cry
they wanted me to conform
“We don’t need your type”
they said
and I ignored them
for I couldn’t let those
who didn’t understand
and didn’t want to learn
or respect
or treat me as human
destroy me




Sometimes the Light

Sometime the understanding
Travels into the realms of the unknown
All we can do is hope
search
dream
Because we will never find.
Sometimes the light is not enough.




Seven Miles

Okay, so you were going to be in Chicago for a few hours, and then you’d be driving out of town again, and I really wanted to see you, so I said I’d be more than happy to drive to the city to see you for an hour or two. Okay, let’s meet at the Planetarium, I said, because it would be the quickest place for me to get to from the interstate, besides, you were in the city anyway, you’d easily get to the Planetarium before I would. So okay, we’d meet at 3:15, you said, and I got off the phone and rushed out the door.

And I got there, traffic was a bitch, but I got there, parked my car and then proceeded to walk back and forth looking for you. Where the hell was he, he didn’t have much time before he had to leave, where could he be, it’s been over twenty minutes, what trouble has he gotten himself into now? Knowing him, he probably thought I said the Aquarium and was waiting at the building a block away from me, the big jerk. And all these men were staring at me, like they’ve never seen a woman in a suede skirt before, one of them even said hello to me, and I had to sit there and try to ignore everyone and brood because you were late. You probably crashed the car and were bickering over insurance with someone while I sat there. Made me drive for a couple of hours for nothing.

So then I finally see you sprinting up the block. Your oxford is unbuttoned, and the closer you get, the more red you look. Okay, now I’m intrigued. “Where have you been?” I asked, and as you’re panting in a vain attempt to catch your breath you explain that you couldn’t get the car out of the parking lot because the person who has the ticket stub for the car is in the doctor’s office, so you ran seven miles to get here so that I wouldn’t wait.

Okay, I feel like a heel. And you never cease to amaze me. I know you said you’d go to the ends of the earth for me. Seven miles is more than enough.




transcribing dreams 1

I was at a beach, I don’t know
why the dream was there, but
it was, the dream I mean. And
you were there, and your family
too, and at one point your little
sister, the one that isn’t so little
anymore, pulled me to the side
and told me she was pregnant.
She loved her boyfriend, she
couldn’t have an abortion, she
didn’t want to tell her parents.
And she told me, and I didn’t
know what to do. Later in the
dream, still at the beach, she
told you, and your parents, and
you were screaming that you
were going to kill her boyfriend,
and your mother was babbling
what would the neighbors think
and your father was speechless.
And I know that all of you were
hurting her more, that what she
needed most was supportive
words, someone to hold her.
Didn’t you think she was scared
enough, I wanted to ask. But
I didn’t, I watched all of you
do this to her, the poor little girl.
How scared she must have been




transcribing dreams 2

me any my sister and my
mother were driving at night
and we were approaching
and s-curve in the street.
We had to turn right, drive
a half block, then turn left.
When we took the corner
there was a fire in the
building right in front of us,
and there were all these
fire trucks and ladders and
water spraying through the
air. And we couldn’t turn
around and go back, we had
to drive past this, and the
car got faster and faster,
I felt like I was being thrown
toward the inferno. And I
saw firemen that were on
ladders on the second and
third floors being thrown
away from the building by
the flames, falling, screaming,
falling to their deaths. And we
sped around the corner, my
sister was falling out of the
car as we took the turn so
fast. She was holding on to
the frame of the car and we
watched firemen fall from
the sky, and I sat in the center
of the backseat, not knowing
what to think, watching it all




Soybeans

Have you ever jumped in a vat of soybeans before? It’s very strange, it feels like you’re a kid in one of those playground things where you jump in a pit of colored plastic balls. Except soybeans are a lot smaller than those balls in the playgrounds, and I guess they don’t have all those colors. Well anyway, I went over to his grandparent’s farm, and he decided to take me on a tour of the farmhouse. The cows were smelly, I made sure I kept my distance, and I just kept calling to them, saying, “hello, moo-cow.” And there were a bunch of cats running around the field, and we picked up a couple kittens and held them up high in the air. I kept asking the cats, “do you love me?” and he kept asking me why I was asking for approval from cats. Then we gave them some milk from his uncle’s farmhouse. And then he took me up a ladder to the top floor of the barn.

That’s when he proceeded to take off his shoes and jump over into a ledge. He told me to join him. I couldn’t quite see what I was about to jump into, it was almost dusk, but I took off my shoes and socks and jumped in anyway.

And my ankles sunk into the soybeans. And I started laughing. And I fell, and then I started to bury myself in soybeans. And then I jumped around a few more times, then I just started throwing soybeans at him.

And then I just laid down in the pit of soybeans for awhile. They felt cool on my skin. I could feel the dust from them covering my legs, my calves.

There are time like that, times when I just have to let go.




A New Idea Pretty Quick

I don’t know what everyone
says about the
world anymore. I know that
if anyone has anything
to the average mind, if they
actually say anymore about the
world, well. they
probably think the world us
just about as useless
as that great soap opera
they watch on television
every day. That’s just
the average person’s view of the world.

Take that scoop of
information into your own
head if you like it, and mold it
into your own opinion
of the world and come
up wit a better idea pretty quick




for my car or my life

I never once had the chance to grasp
that anything ever happened to me

it wasn’t until after the hospital,
an endless stream of weeks.
moving to another house
with unexpected people

face the facts, girl

put all of my belongings in storage,
my car was gone

was I expected to go through this?

•••

insurance companies wouldn’t fix the car
they gave me enough money
for my time, but not
for my life

No one has paid me back for all lost

I have no car
no time
no chance

who is going to pay me
for all I have lost

no one apologizes to me
I have no one to forgive

they couldn’t even give me that

when I was angry
when I resigned myself to losing anything I valued
when there was nothing I could do
to get that all back

I was invincible, you know
nothing could happen to me because nothing did
but I was in the intensive care unit
I was on a respirator
and I survived it

I could hope that time heals all wounds
that’s what people keep telling me
ask me in a few years
if I forgot
and everything is better




As I Recovered

I was supposed to be
saving a life by turning the wheels
and avoiding an accident. Well,
I did. I turned the wheels
and that saved the other driver’s life.
Since my wheels were turned I was
pushed into oncoming traffic
so another car could hit me,
i think the first car hitting me was
enough, but while we’re at it, let’s
get someone else to hit the car as well,
well as I was saying since
another car could and did hit me
they decided while they hit my car that
they would push me over 100 feet. That’s
what I got for saving a life.

In the hospital, after I
got out of the coma, no one
even visited me. Oh, I know my
family was there and it would have been more
depressing if they couldn’t have been
there for me, but when I say no one
visited me, I mean no on that did this to me
visited me. Not the people
who hit me, not the guy
who’s life I saved. None of
those people even attempted to
pay me back. For my car,
or my time, or my coma, or my
feeling that this is natural, yet even
for being nice. I have the
physical scars and the
emotional scars from that
accident and from that day. And
no one ever apologized to me
for the pain they caused No one
even visited me as I recovered.




Get It Over With

I wonder how much time would
be before it would be woul before
the hurting would stop hurting, and when
you’d start to think that everything
was okay and that you for no
reason could be happy out of the
blue. I wonder how much time
would have to pass before you got
to that point, where the world
seemed good again and you could just
move on with life and get it over with.

Sometimes I think about the
number of people who I have
cared about and who have turned
around on me and died. It doesn’t
seem fair when you think about
death on those terms, but it is
kind of sad when you think about
it that way. My father’s parents
died when I was younger, and my
brother’s ex-wife died, too. And
I’ve seen friends go off to war,
when I was sure they were
going to die, and they came
back, just fine. And I’ve seen
people that I’ve cared about
become hospitalized after they
were hit by a car. No, I
don’t suppose much of it is
very happy or anything. Well,
death as a rule isn’t very
happy or anything, and no one
likes to think about death, not
their own death or anyone else’s
death, for that matter. So how
do we get to that point, where
the pain from such a potentially
awful experience disappears from
inside you. How many years
does it take for that pain to be
acknowledged before it can
be forgotten so everything can be better?

I asked my mother today when
someone I cared about died, I
mean, what time of year did he die?
You see, I couldn’t remember being
sad because he was dead or
anything, and I couldn’t think
of what time of year it had
happened. And my mother seemed
shocked by my question, and she
responded by saying, "he’s not
dead." And then it all came back
to me, that he didn’t die, that he was fine.

After I had that discussion with
my mother, it had occurred to me
that I should have mourned him,
that I should have been sad. that
no one seemed to miss me. It
occurred to me then that I was
missing a huge void in my life,
and that I didn’t know how to
fill in all the gaps in my life that
I was starting to feel and just
starting to miss.

I only have another 60 years of
this feeling in my life to go, if
all goes according to plan.

I sometimes think about all
of the times in my life where
I have missed something that
should have been important,
something that could have made
me laugh. Those moments come all
too frequently, sometimes.
Sometimes you just forget life,
what you’re living life for,
and life passes you by and you
feel like you’ve got nothing
to show for all the years
that you’ve lived that you can’t
remember. I wonder how many people
that happens to, unexpectedly.

Today I thought of someone who
died recently, and I thought
that it would be nice if they
just came up to me and made
an effort to surprise me and
they tried to come up with
conversation and they tried
to make me laugh. And after I had
thought about that for a moment
I thought, wait, he’s dead, he’s
not going to do what he used
to do, and I’m going to have to remember
him this way. I didn’t like that
idea at all, come to think of it.
I wanted him to just be him,
and I wanted him to crack a joke
and make me laugh and be his
usual self.

I think my problem is that I just
don’t want people to stop being
themselves. I want to remember that
people can laugh, and crack jokes,
and be senseless and silly, sometimes,
like I like to be.

Well, to put it all that way I suppose
I just wanted him to be alive. I get
tired of thinking of people
as being dead, when they didn’t deserve
their fates and they deserved to
live on. I just get angry to think that people
who didn’t deserve this got this, and it was
awful luck, so to speak, and that they
needed more. Those are the times
when I try to make myself
remember what they liked and
how they lived. Well, that doesn’t
make me feel much better, but I
try to think of the good stuff anyway.

Sometimes I wonder about things
like that. Who is it harder on when
someone dies? Is it harder on the
ones who have to die? Or is it
harder on the survivors who have to live
with only a handful of memories?

When I almost died, I didn’t think about
death. I mean, I was unconscious,
I was in a coma. But when I felt like I
was starting to feel normal again,
well, all I could think about then was that
I had to get better. I had to teach myself
how to eat. And how to walk. And talk.
And I had to get out of that wheel-
chair that they wanted to keep me
seated in, even though I felt fine. When
people tried to make me different
from who I was, well, that’s when I
learned how to have my own set
of rules, and I also learned not to
tell anyone about my rules. No one
would want to hear my stupid little
rules, anyway. They’ll have to learn
about their own rules on their own time.

Death is a pretty scary subject. It
can cover a bunch of different
territories that the average person
isn’t ready for. Even when some of us
think we have it all together, well, that’s
when someone throws us the curve ball
of death to tell us that we might have
been wrong, that we might not have
been prepared for everything.

How do you prepare for something like
this, though? What do you do?




On the Flip Side

I don’t know if there’s anymore
sanity in the world. I just can’t believe
that it exists anymore. I haven’t seen
any proof
With that I’ll trust that
there is no evidence I rest my case.

I’ve been missing love. That’s my
problem, I guess. Sometimes I wish the
world would stop working, but the
people stuck on Earth would have to
deal with a planet that just didn’t
know how to work anymore

Sometimes it seems that some people
are ready to work for others. On the
flip side of the same coin, sometimes there
are some people who don’t want to
work for themselves, much less in a place
for anyone else. So how are you supposed
to make people work then whey should,
and well, before we get to part two of the
question I suppose I should say that
I’ll have no idea about how to
answer part one of the question.

Sometimes it’s hard to go through the
hard parts. That’s when I don’t
even spend any time thinking about
the easy parts.




and flowers and funerals

my head didn’t hurt all the time
there are supposed to be grand kids, and meals
and flowers and funerals

that can’t be more than I’d forget.

My life used to make sense
then I’d see something else.
I wonder how my grandfather was -
I wonder how my grandfather lived.
I can’t imagine his life in the past -
I can’t remember anything but the present -
I know he lived before me,
I know he lived with me,
and he’ll never understand any after me.

I hope one day it all comes together.
I hope one day it all makes sense.

Hope I’ll explain it all to him.
Maybe then he’ll understand.

I wonder what details I lost in my life.
That he lived too.
That he lived too long,
That he cared too little.
Is that accurate?
I wish I knew him.
I wish I hated his face.
I’m sure it will mean something someday.
And now I write, and hope it all gets better.
Maybe that’s when he gives me memories of myself.
With my dreams.




Pool Together Our Money

spill the beans and get it over
with - but that seems valid like such,
like a natural thing to say
that is veny physical, well,
it’s something we should all know
like something we were forced

if only we could have been
strong enough to pool together
our money and tried to
beat the bidding for blood
for the next to get the damage.

when i learned very little
I learned vas little.
Sometimes the most
insane people somehow
got in charge of teaching,
I’d guess that it would be
probably because they
lied their way to the
right job, but I haven’t
done a lot of research
on this so I could be wrong,
but I think somehow,
somewhere, someone
was put in charge of deciding
who would learn what,
and I think those people
who really actually know
very little, decided to pull
one big joke over on the students
and the world, well, I think
that all of these
people, all the ones with no real brains to
speak of, all these people just
decided to screw up all
the good things that were
supposed to be
produced by intelligent
people in intelligent parts of
that we should think of as
the possible intelligent world.
Well, that’s my story and I’m
sticking with it.

well, what I think happened
was that all of these people
with no real intelligence
decided to create a joke
or take over the would
or whatever and they
decided to make all the intelligence
they could find, and they
decided to destroy that
intelligence. There’s really
no other way to explain it, other than
to just make people stupid, in a way that no one
could ever think to be
aware of
but no one would get it, and all the
stupid people would gain their
strength somehow. At
least that’s ny little theory.

and now, no one has the
skill to persons themselves,
much less the skill to set busy
defending anyone else. Well,
that would kind of be what
the world would be like if we lost all
intelligence, but it would kind
of also be like the way the world is
kind of like Now. Don’t get busy
thinking about that idea now, let’s just
figure out what we can do about it.

so this is the way that people
with no talent manage to screw
people with talent over, so that the
people without talent can rise in their
fame and everyone can suffer in the
process.




So To Speak

i just thought I’d let the
average joe know what life is
really all about, and well, n
carse the average joe should also
know when people are lying and
what lies really mean to you
and me ad the otherwise
average guy. Go get ready

The average personal problems would that
not let the problems little the modern
world occupy their little brain. Well,
those average little problems are more
than a problem, Hell, they are more than
a slew of problems that seem disturbing
to the average joe, without inspection.
Well, the underlying problem with this whole
mess is with the problems is more than the
origintal mess the undoing of this mess of
problems could cause - the real potential
problem is in ignoring the problems,
which seems to be what the average
joe does with daunting problems.
Well, that’s what the average joe does
with as many problems as he can hold
in his grocery basket. Well, you get the idea.

The problem here is that there are
too many problems, and no one is doing
anything about the side problems,
and the problems are just getting worse,
and no one is around to save us from
what we accidentally caused by trying
to do nothing about a non-existent problem.
Well, that’s the problem, as I see it. So we
can instantly become all better again.

Well, the solving of this problem
could be problematic, because no one
might be able to tell that there is
a problem, and no one might be able to
solve said problems that no one
was willing to previously tackle.

Oh, forget it. Maybe there is no
solution to these problems.
I figure that eventually someone
has to come up with an answer,
and then once someone does we can
agree with it and then proceed
to act upon it. That’s just my theory.
Well the current problem
seems to be that no one can come
up with a single solution
for a single problem. Maybe the
average joe needs to be
reminded of the problems.
So you go and get to work on
that, and I’ll attempt my little
speech on solving all of the
problems of the world shortly.




Stilts

I wish life just could get
automatically easier

There should be
more money, and if people would work,
I’d wish for more people
and come up with their own conclusions
the world would just be easier
if everyone automatically just got what
they wanted and needed.

Wouldn’t it just be easier if
people always got tickets and lost
money and got screwed
That would
make life so much simpler, if some
people were just automatically punished
and some people just never got
punished

If I knew how many classes I
had today, if I knew how much
hell I’d be forced to go through
today, maybe then I’d be less
irritable.

Is this as good as it gets
does the usual pain
seldom end

I want to be
mean here but I have to be nice
and I have three more hours
and life still sucks
and I have four to five minutes
of time off before the new and
improved hell starts

I don’t
know how the average person
deals with this lack of
patience with a lack of any
answers for hours a day
every day
Is this what
my life is supposed to be like
Is this the best of my news
Does anything in life ever get
any better than the pain I
usually feel

They who
don’t know how to teach you
anything
made typed versions of
the schedule for the day for
everyone, including myself,
and I had a long day today
with long hours, like every other
day last week
No one has a
happy ending for anyone here.
I mean, people who were in
accidents and are in
wheelchairs 5 or 6 years after
their accident can’t
feed themselves or talk to anyone or
even smile

Everything is still the same
I was
given a confusing test that had to do
with my lack of reading or vision.
So then I talked about my problems
and I’m sure it got me nowhere
I should have learned my lesson
years ago
Nothing ever gets
better in my life
I should
just know that it will never change
Does that mean I should just face
it
I guess it doesn’t matter
Welcome to my life.

I’m getting tired of seeing people
here walking on stilts




The bad stuff that could be

Sometimes it doesn’t matter
when you learn something, when you learn how
to do something, but the thing is, you have to learn it.
And so many people can be taught
the same things over and over again but if
they are never taught how to learn or how
to understand, then all the teaching in the world
isn’t going to make an ounce of difference.

When I was in grade school
I just couldn’t master gymnastic activities
and I just couldn’t do a backward-flip and even
things like the balance beam were weak spots
with me. And the teachers every year
would try to get me to do it
and that would just make me want to fail
more and more until I actually tried it
and I actually did fail at it. It was embarrassing.
And I was a tall girl, and they had to give me a chair
so that when i was jumping to the, well,
I don’t even know what they called those things,
they were like balance beams where you keep your head
over the bar and you hold yourself up
with your hands, well my point was that
I needed a chair so that I could make the jump
up to this bar so that I could fail, or rather,
so I could try, that’s what I meant to say.
Well, finally after all these years of now knowing
what I was supposed to do to make this
exercise work for me, well, this one year
the gym teacher told me that since I was so
tall I shouldn’t jump so high, even with
the chair helping me. So she told me
to just jump until I got to the point I was
supposed to be balancing at, not to jump
higher, and then I wouldn’t have to work so hard
at it for the next test. So I did what she said.
And she was right. It was the first time
I didn’t fail that gym test, all because someone
explained it to me in a way I could
understand.

I know that was a silly story, I know that
probably everyone has a story like that from
how they had a hard time in school or how
no one understood them, but my point from
all that was that there are people out there
that want to learn, and there are people out there
that want to teach, but we all just have to find the
right way to do it. The right way to teach and
learn, that is. And then it comes naturally.

I didn’t want to fail at things, what I knew how to do
I did well, and I wanted to learn. And I’m sure
that other kids want to learn, too. And other adults
want to teach. But we just have to figure out
how to teach so we can make learning
easier. I think it’s possible, figuring that all out,
if someone is interested in trying to figure that
all out.

I don’t know how all of that is supposed to be
figured out. But someone has to do it,
has to figure it all out. Then we might not have all the
drug problems, or all the violence, because
children will be too busy learning that they
won’t even think about all the bad stuff that could be.




The Third or fourth
Fourth of September

I tell you, some times you just
have to grin and bear it and take
the punches you have coming. I
think it’s just appropriate to
admit to yourself that you’ve done
wrong and just grin and bear it
and roll with the punches. Just
take your medicine and get the
whole business over with.

Sometimes people just forget
when they might
actually deserve a punch. Don’t
you think it would be nicer of
people to just walk out into the
street and admit all their
wrongs and get ready to take a
punch or two or a few from whomever happens
to be walking by at the time
of the person’s admissions. If only
more people came foreward and
made the effort to be openly honest




Think of It

What if you are told
your entire life that
your brain doesn’t work

I mean, if you were
strong enough to come up
with your own ideas
and people told you
your ideas were wrong
would you get tired of
telling people about your
new and improved ideas

Think about it
Think about the number of times you
are told your ideas
are wrong

Think of it

What if you worked all
your life and you made
something of yourself and
you made more money at what you
wanted to do and you lived
on your own time and life
was good
What if you had
accomplished all that
and what if then you hear from
everyone that you must be mistaken, that
you are wrong

what if family and friends told you that
you had to go see therapists
a number of times a week and that you
were wrong
How long would
you be forced to listen to a
bunch of people who don’t
know any better tell you to
change, I mean, how long do you think
it would take before you wanted to join a new race,
or a new culture, where for once you
could spread your ideas and feel like
yourself without everyone telling
you that you had to always be wrong

If you worked all your life and
created a philosophy or a meaning
of life that you liked for yourself,
or maybe you created something that
a bunch of other people liked and
agreed with, and you were what everyone
else would have called successful

If you created all this, and then a bunch
of less intelligent people who
didn’t know how to use their own
minds came up to you and took away
your life bit by bit
because they drank
all the time because
they didn’t know any better
because they wanted
beliefs around that agreed with
everyone else’s beliefs
what
it would have to be like to live and work
and beat everyone else and then have a bunch of mindless
people take your life away from you?

See what it would feel like
to go to a library and find
out that all of your books are
gone
Suddenly everyone managed
to take away proof of your
existence of the fact that you
had ideas, that you wrote books
that you were someone
Who are you now
It’s like you never lived
How would that feel

Think of what the world
would seem like for a small
minute, where most of the world
lived in desolation, where there
was only a few remnants of old
fires that once burned down
things that could have been good
Imagine a
world that was mostly sad like
this, and maybe in it, while
you were walking down the deserted
street, you’d see a diamond. In
all the darkness and desperation
there would be one loose random
stone that glittered more that anything
else on the planet
Could you imagine a
world like that
Could you imagine a
simple diamond




What Do You do

what do you do
if you almost die

do you wear your seat belt more
do you not go for motorcycle rides
do you walk closer to the side of the road

someone can hit you there, you know

what do you do
if you almost die

do you tell people you love them
do you eat healthier foods
do you exercise more

what do you do




What It All Means

I don’t know how many times
I have to hear the same story
over and over again.
How many people are going to tell me
the same news, each time a little
differently, with a little more
information. I wonder how many
time I will get to hear the
same news, each time told to me
just a little differently. I wonder how long
it will take before I get a real
picture of what happened
and what it all means to me.

I still didn’t remember being there,
I think someone put something
into the diet soda I was
drinking from. I know I never took
that drink out of my eyesight,
that that drink had to be tainted
before I ever took my first sip
of it. Well, I know I was getting
lunch while I was at work, and that’s
the last I remember of my work day.
I was at the Gorton’s Cafe, where
you usually had lunch when I forgot
to bring my own food. The next thing I
remember was that I was in a hallway of
the building, I only discovered it was the
basement after I had escaped.

They had a witness there and they
were asking him questions on who he
thought was attractive, and if he lived
alone. I didn’t know why I was there or if
they were going to ask me questions
like that too. Then I saw one of the men
asking question and I saw that he had a gun.
So I figured I had to have been knocked out
and I knew I had to keep myself together
and so I thought for a brief moment
and checked in my head head whether
any parts of my body were in pain. They
weren’t. I thought that had to be a good
sign. So I pressed my forehead, and I
tried to squint my eyes just a little,
so that it looked like I was in pain.
I thought that may be a natural way
to act like I was in pain and still
concentrate on what the other guy was
saying. I might be next, I thought.

There were a couple of guys that were dressed the
same way, wearing grey slacks and when i
started to look I could see that they all
had guns too. But just before I noticed that there
had to be like ten of them in this
room the water sprinklers came on only
like five seconds after the fire alarms
first started going off. Everyone in the
room with me went into a sort of panic, and
then the guy next to me, who was in
regular business clothes, grabbed my hand
and said, let’s go around the side door
on the right. I started to look around and
I could see that everyone who was running
this show, who had guns, was also in
a state of panic of sorts, and so I followed
this stranger out the door. No one even
noticed us leaving the room in the basement.

He must have been conscious when he fitst
went into the room. I didn’t know my way
around the basement. I followed him until
we got to the lobby level and this guy
wanted to keep going out the front doors
and I stopped and told the people at the
front desk that there were men with guns
in the basement. It was right by the
elevators, that’s what I told them.

Okay, so I wasn’t a hero in that scene. I
never get caught in scenes where I have to
do something that I normally wouldn’t
do. If it wasn’t for this guy, who was
right next to me in the basement,
I probably would never have moved
from my seat. They guys with the guns
got caught that day, they tried to take a hostage
or two before they gave up. and they
didn’t get any of the money they wanted.
I guess there was a happy ending, after
all. No one got hurt. What does it mean to -
to anyone - that sees this story on the news?
Probably not much, because she didn’t
live through it. No. It was just I who lived it.




So Many Lies

I wish that people wouldn’t feel the need
to lie to me so often, I’m so sick of people
feeling condescendung to my face and
telling me that I am the one that
doesn’t understand of feel good

that they understand how they think and
how I think. i’m sure no one has any
idea of how I think. I’m sick of hearing
people that that I thought I could

because they have nothing to say to
me anymore. they lack something to
say, well, usually.

people I once trusted told me
well# wait, it is probably more
accurate to say that everyone
tells me
it’s not that they
told me
it’s past, present and
future
they tell me
they tell me
they tell me
over and over again.

people I used to know, people
I used to trust, well, these people
I once trusted told me so many
lies about what I know about life.

I wish that the understanding
world was easier, I wish that
ever once in a while people didn’t
tell me so many lies.




Princess Diana, 1 Year Later

I wonder what it’s like
to lead a near-perfect life
to have servants clean up after you
or to prepare all of your meals. What if
you hated everyone, including
yourself, and you couldn’t eat
food without throwing up or
gaining weight. What
would it be like if you
couldn’t leave your building
because you might be
photographed by some
unknown stranger.

What must it be like to have
anything you want
sometimes, and sometimes
you can’t have anything
you could even
remotely want

I wonder if that’s
what it’s like to be
royalty
That’s what
it has to be like
to feel important
all the time
I wouldn’t know
I wonder if any member
of royalty, on any given
morning, on any given day,
I wonder if someone
like that would ever feel
anything other than the
usual pain that they fee
would
you hear from everyone
that you were perfect,
but would you still
keep telling yourself
that you were nothing
with a
question like that, with
an issue like that, wouldn’t
anyone wonder what
would win the daily battle?




Supposed To Make Us Laugh

The whole time when we went out tonight
I kept thinking about
how a stupid retro song would
come on on the radio
and we’d sing along with it
and sometimes we would do a little
made-up dance to go along
with the song

and that was supposed to make us laugh
and it did




Make Things Better

I don’t know where the answers are supposed to be
I know it sounds trite to say that, but I’ve...

there it goes,
that woman that’s always suppsed to say something
of value is once again coming to a stumbling block
and I have nothing to add to this whole idea

but I wanted to finish it
I did

Okay, maybe I do have some ideas about this whole
answer thing, but don’t think that anyone wants to hear them
So, I’ll offer insight about this whole answer problem

No, I can say with some certainty that I don not know
where the answers are
it’s tough
to see someone you care about die though
Even when you were
preparing for it in your head, before the death actually
happened
You could find out that someone you care
about is dead, and you might have to be the one to tell
the doctors and nurses in the hospital that they’re not
living anymore

You can be the one that is expected
to give that news
And maybe you need help in
dealing with this, maybe you have to tell this
awful news and maybe just need to be held
because you don’t know what else you can do to
make things better for you
But no one tells you
these things, and no one is there for you, because
well, they’re suffering too, and you don’t understand
what they feel and they don’t understand what
you feel either

Well, maybe there are a lot of things that we can’t know
everything about and therefore understand at the snap
of our fingers
I don’t know those answers, either
But maybe we just have to remember every
once in a while that other peope have pain too, just like
our own pain, or maybe they have a pain that could
be completely different from the kind of pain we are
used to
Maybe we just have to remember that
people hurt
Maybe we can’t come up with the
answers for them either, but maybe they’ll
appreciate the effort you make to try to make things better




Men Are Dogs Is True

It was nice that you made the effort
For such a short term
If I didn’t know any better
I would have fallen for it

I know people do not mean what they say
And they don’t think
And they say what they have to
So they can get what they want

I guess the theory that men are dogs is true




Making Sense Out Of The Insane

There are many things that I have needed
And there are things that other people call mere wants
But to me they are the same thing

I have had too many things happen to me
And I am supposed to take the good with the bad
And I am supposed to see the silver lining for every cloud

And sometimes I can’t see the silver lining
Sometimes I only get to see the dripping blood from
The wounds that were cut poorly

And haven’t had a chance to heal

That’s one of the things about modern life
Sometimes there is no happy ending
And sometimes you can look and look, but you can’t find it

And sometimes making sense out of the insane is pointless
Because sometimes the insane starts to make sense
Maybe you can’t understand that

Maybe you can’t understand that because you haven’t done what I have
And you haven’t gone through what I have
And you haven’t learned how to bottle up all the hate

I don’t know where the silver lining is supposed to be and
I don’t know where to look for the things
that are supposed to make me happy

Because I’m getting pretty tired of looking

I’ve changed all my goals in life
The short term ones and the long term ones too
And after a while that has an effect on you

After a while you start to feel like a prisoner who
Is just getting the life kicked out of you
By a bunch of other prisoners who for the moment have the edge

While all the other guards are paid to look away
It’s funny how the prisoners get the coin from their

Drug deals to pay all the good guys off

When you start to see that
And when you start to feel like that
the line between sanity and insanity becomes blurred




My Height Any Longer

That’s the thing
I hate the most
about being a girl

I mean, I won’t even
make this an essay
about how men look at
women’s hooters first
and how men think women are
stupid because, well,
they’re girls

well, I’m smarter than you
that much I’m aware of
whether or not you
choose to believe it

but the one thing
that has bothered me
is not in the issue
that people think men
have to be different from women

well yes, in some ways they are

what bothered me
and granted I’m a girl,
and I’m almost five feet
eleven inches tall
well, I’ve been told more than once
from men that I can’t be that tall
because they are five foot
ten and I can’t be taller
than them

that’s another problem altogether
trying to prove to men
that you’re taller than they are

but I usually say
to them after they spew out a line like
"you can’t be that tall"

well, that’s when I usually say
"well, I’m wearing flat shoes now
and just standing here my
eyes are clearing your head
altogether

so either you slouch a lot
and you aren’t five foot ten
or you doctor told you that
you were that high
because they assume that men
have to be tall and women
have to be shorter

so it has to be one of the other
either - you’re not that tall
or your doctor was a liar
which is it?

they don’t like that answer either

oh well

so I’m taller
just find me a tall man
and let’s not talk
about my height any longer




prepared for the worst

I was fully prepared for the worst when I thought
it was going to happen. I had to be the strong one,
I had to show everyone that they could count on me.
The thought had never crossed my mind.

But I never thought about someone close to me
dying, someone I just thought would always be
around, someone that would live to their old age.

Well, I guess people worry about me and my heath
because bad things could happen to anyone, but I
thought I proved myself before, I proved myself
to all the doctors and the nurses and all the technicians

and even the cardiologists. I wonder if all of
those people thought of me now. I’m sure they don’t.
They’d have to be reminded of me. They don’t
know me, why would they remember me, it’s just me.

I fully prepared myself for the bed news, I was
wondering if I would even get the chance to see
the corpse, depending on our timing and when we
got to the hospital. I don’t deal with death much, I’m

usually not at the hospital as it’s happening,
I’m just not used to this. But I knew I’d have to
emotionally clean up for this and I’d have to
be ready for this and this was something I might have to

be prepared for, in case it happened.
How do you prepare yourself for something like that?
I mean, I’m a girl, I’m used to women wanting to
openly cry when they hear bad news. I’m used to

women falling apart at the seams and I’m used to men
never falling apart at the seams. Is that something
that makes men and women different, or is that
something men and women just learn with time?

Anyway, I was busy preparing myself for the worst, so I
wouldn’t fall apart when the bad news was sent to my
door. Am I supposed to deal with news like this when
I just hear it, when it’s just told to me, am I supposed

to just fall apart then, or am I supposed to be the strong
one and take it all and be prepared for it?
Well, I was prepared for the worst and I was
prepared for people to be crying when they got to the

hospital with me and I was prepared to be strong
and help them through this. I made this decision
that this was something I had to do and I was
just going to have to deal with that fact, maybe

today, maybe later.
I got there and there was no bad news, no one was
dead or dying, and everything was normal. Well,
normal in a hospital as far as I can tell. I’m not an

expect on normalcy in hospitals. I’m not an expert
on these things. But there was no bad news, and I
visited people and talked a little in the
hospital, and everyone wanted me to talk to prove

to everyone they knew me, well, they wanted me to
talk to prove that I was normal and I was fine.
"And this could happen to you," I said, "And you have
to want it and you have to make yourself better."

I didn’t know what else I was supposed to say.
I still haven’t entirely dealt with what that day could
have been like if it was someone else’s last day. But I
prepared myself for it. Just in case.




Not Getting Better

everyone is thinking
that I’m getting better

but no one knows what it’s like
no one knows what pain
I still go through

yes, I’ve been fighting
but I still don’t see the signs

that anything is getting better

people can tell me that it is
but that doesn’t do me
any good

I don’t wear my glasses
even though wearing them

would make it easier to see
but I don’t,

because I have to train myself
to not need them anymore

maybe that will make me better
at least that’s what I think

I’ve wanted things to be better
for three months now

I haven’t wanted to wait
for everything to get better

and now I still have to wait
and it’s already past due

this getting better thing isn’t fair
at least not to me, it’s not

people think my vision is better
because I’m not wearing my glasses

that’s a good example,
but it’s not

I still can’t see, but I have
to come up with a way in my

head to make it better. So
no one can see the difference.

but i still feel it. I still feel the
difference, and it’s not getting better.




Pressure On Me Again

Man, you put a lot of pressure on me
and I feel this pressure so many times
and there’s nothing I can do about it

I’m so sick of not being in control of everything
I’m tired of defining how everything goes

I have to define my own life
and I don’t know how to make all the changes
I want to happen well, happen in my life
it’s hard for me to make these
changes actually, happen
when I’m all alone on this one
and have to do these things myself

I have to define my own life
I need to take a magic marker
a big black bold marker
and create the path that defines who I am

I need to make my own choices
and color them in
so no one can put that pressure on me again




short-term advice

I wonder why people have sides
on any political issue when the
political leaders are only trying
to serve the needs of the people for
this job

Well, besides that, I wonder
why people take sides on politics,
when no political people seem to
do anything for their country

Why
take sides

The politicians are usually
crooks, or people who cheat

The better political
leaders manage to hide their "bad"
side longer than the average person.

Well, they have a bunch of paid
people coming up with their speeches
so they can always look like they’re
saving face

I need to learn how to save
face, for all of the things I do
wrong

So... Why take sides

They’ll always use the same lines
over and over again until people
actually forget that the news isn’t
even telling them what the problem was

How do you find someone honest
when you’re used to people who cheat and
liars

Well, don’t look in
politics, that’s the best short-
term advice I can even give you




Seasons 1998

the entity of Earth lives
attacked by its denizens.
Spring follows winter.

Winter fire burns bright.
Warmth flows over my brick hearth.
Summer fire is shunned

Grandchildren bring joy,
vigor, love, fun, liveliness.
With age comes calm, peace, knowledge.

Soft loose wrinkled skin,
white coarse bristly chin whiskers
mark the wise woman.

Limbs etched against sky,
full white clouds gathered in close
foretell winter’s snow.




Slow Painful Death

I have to try to remember the good things
I am usually so filled with anger that
I can’t help it but
I’ll try

It’s hard to remember the good things
When all you can think about
Are the bad things

Maybe it’s just that I wanted someone
To care for me
I needed that a lot then, you know

But that wasn’t a good enough reason

Looking back, I know that

It’s funny how hindsight is twenty twenty
And it’s funny how I was going to
Write something about you that was good

But you were are liar, and still are one
And I wasn’t immune to your violence
And all of the good memories I have of you
Are clouded by your anger
And rage
And insolence
And idiocy

so I guess I can’t do it this time
I have to write about things that matter to me
So I could write about how I
Want you to go through a
slow painful death

but you probably know I think that
And I probably don’t need to go into that at length




Someone Give Me the Answers

I don’t think I can respect
people Can anyone give me
the answers I’ve been looking
and looking, and none of the
solutions are coming to me

Have I been taught to be so different
from the rest of the world
Maybe I have been Maybe I’m the
one with the different answers,
and maybe I don’t know where to begin.
And maybe no one can help me through this

My dictionary is older than my schooling
and my encyclopedia set is older than I am

I’ve been looking for answers to what
I thought were simple questions and the
people who are supposed to be smarter
than I am never have the answers for me

I’ve talked to a lot of people in my
lifetime, and with each day that passes I
lose more respect for the people I’ve known

This doesn’t seem like a fair thing for me
to admit

I mean, to hear a woman complain
about how awful everyone else is isn’t
nice, fair or reasonable

Maybe I’ve just had some bad breaks
I don’t
know what my excuses are, or what my reasons
are--but the problem is that I don’t think anyone
has a reason for the majority of the actions
they engage in

Or should I say commit instead of engage in

I can’t even finish a sentence and I’m
expecting finished sentences and sense and
answers from all of the people I’ve already
lost so much faith in

But that’s enough about me
I’ll get back to a more
interesting subject right away

I was recently in the hospital for 6 weeks
When
I regained consciousness,
I was given the same meal three
times a day
Most every day I slept in the hospital,
I was physically strapped to my bed so that I would
stay in my bed all night

This is not meant as my defense against anyone’s
actions, my own or others

This was not an
uncommon occurrance for my treatment
I don’t
know how anyone else was treated,
but I am guessing
I was one of at least 20 patients in the same institution,
in the same ward,with the same teachers

Take from this what you will

Sometimes the answers don’t come easy
The
answers haven’t come to me for quite a while
not
since my accident, or since my hospital visits

Not since most of my school days
or since a lot of
my friendships

Maybe the events in my life haven’t
given me the answers
but maybe the events in
everyone’s life also have missing answers.

I don’t know where the answers are
I don’t know where
my answers were
I’ll try to find the answers one day,
and if anyone can help me, let me know




Sometimes It’s Not

there are many things you learn in life

the key is:
figuring out when you learn them
and what you can do about them

there are some things that you can’t avoid
and there are some things you can put off
for as long as possible
and then you’ll have to face them
there are some things you want to run to
and you want to do everything you can
to make sure you don’t let go of those things

and sometimes that’s enough
sometimes it’s not

sometimes I look for the answers
and usually I can’t find any answers
and that’s supposed to make me feel better
and it doesn’t

sometimes I wish I could
turn back the hands of time
and maybe I would think
that the things in life that are important to me
well, maybe I’d think they weren’t so important

then again, I might still think
that I could live forever

well, we all have our hope
and we all have our dreams
and usually we don’t think about them
and often we try to avoid them

but all those thoughts, well,
they still find a way to manage their way
back into you life like that




Supposed To Be Done

I was ten when they buried you

At twenty-eight, I tried to die

At twenty-eight, I tried to die
And get back, back to you

I thought even the bones would do




take it all away

What is it like to be
almost on the verge of death
for a long time
I know
that seems like a silly
question
is it pointless to
actually go through it and life
for a brief moment to know
what it’s like to almost fly

I found out weeks after I
was in the hospital
it was
then that I found out little
details about my being in the
hospital
what the
doctor did to me
while I was in there
and unconscious

whether or not
they were helping me or
hurting me
I wouldn’t have known
if I was oncunscious

they put a piece
of metal in my leg to stop
future possible blood clots from
travelling to my heart, or lungs,
or brain

I don’t know
if I need one of these pieces of metal
in my body for the rest of my life,
but it would have been nice if
someone informed me of this after it
had already been done to me

there can be
all sorts of things done to you
when you are at a weak moment
these things being done
to you could have an effect on you
good or bad

X-rays were taken of me
a ventilator was on me for 6 days
All I knew at the time was that
most of my rights were being taken
away from me
and I didn’t have my
car
and I couldn’t live at home
I really just otherwise be myself

I mean, what if one day something went
wrong in your body, and while you
were laying in bed to take a nap, your
heart just stopped beating

what would happen to you
and your life if you heart just
went out, and then something just
happened and then almost suddenly,
what if just then you were slipping away

Okay, don’t use that example, but maybe
it will help you think about what it
must be like to vanish

What if that happened to you

if something shocking just sort of
happened to you
and you made it just fine
and people were worrying about
you and they thought you might
not make it and they had to think
that you may be gone and they
had to come to terms with that

Would you clean up
your room
Would you stop making
all of the frivolous purchases
on things you don’t really need
Would you try to be nicer
It answers
so many questions when you
suddenly start to think of things that way




the effects of nine one one

It’s strange when you think about the September 11 crashes, 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 ovet and over again on television, where 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?




new to chicago

I’m still new to this city
I know, I know, I’ve been here for years
but I haven’t gone to the Sears Tower Observatory
since my Junior Prom

but when I walk by the First Chicago building
the beams along the north side
sloping up, parabolic pillars curving up to the sky

when I walk by the First Chicago building
I walk up along the side
and lean up against one of the sloping pillars
press my body against the cold concrete
feel the cold against my chin, my breasts, by thighs

and look up along the curve, stretching up towards the sky

you know, these pillares look like race tracks
and I could see something come rushing down that curve
a matchbox car, a race car
a marble, a bowling ball
a two-ton weight

I see the seed, the power, and it
almost makes me afraid to look up

and every time I walk by the First Chicago building
I do the same thing, I do this little ritual
and it feels like the first time




grab the other’s neck

I don’t know where to start
I don’t know where all these feelings come from
I don’t know how to stop them

These feelings seem to come rushing up to me
And I don’t seem to have any control over them

And I hate myself for this
And I’m not supposed to be having these urges
And I hate myself for thinking that you may want me too

You know, I don’t know much of anything about you
And I guess you don’t know much about me
But I like what I know
Because in some respects you seem like me
Yes, I like what I know
That you work too much
And have too much drive
And you have a wild side
And you do your best to keep your wild side in check

And I still want to
Be able to straddle you
Take off your glasses
Mess up your hair
So you get strands falling around your eye
touching your cheek
And touching you
To remind you of me
And grab the hair at the back of your head
And cock your head back
Just so I can see your mouth starting to open
Because God, I want to see that
And it would make me know I’m right
And it makes me know that you want me too
And I’d let your hair go
And you would stare at me
And give me a look I just can’t explain
And can’t argue with
And have to submit to

And when I want this
I would wonder
Who would grab the other’s neck
For the kiss

I still don’t know who would make that move
Or who could make that move
So I’m begging you to start this cycle
I’m pleading you
I don’t want to be the only one with these fantasies

Tell these stories to me
Tell me you’ve thought these things too
Tell me you know that we’re both stuck
Because you know there’s nothing we can do

And I know this too

But I’d like to hear you say it
To validate my fantasies, in a way,
Because I’d love to hear you talk that way to me

I’m a sucker for that, you know

But tell me I’m not alone in this
So I’m begging you
I’m pleading you
Tell me I’m not insane for thinking about you
Tell me you have these fantasies too




after 7/11

on seven eleven,
I almost died in a car accident, unconscious for eleven days, had severe skull fractures.
After losing my car, my home and my health, all I could do was try to recover.

They even called me Elvira Doe in the hospital because they couldn’t find any identification, which was buried under the seat of my totaled car.

But while in the hospital I kept imagining Dave coming to visit me, he came in through another hospital entrance
so no one saw him
and no one knew he was alive, and he was
there for me.
And I wasn’t alone.

I felt so alone in the hospital all those weeks, maybe it was my brain’s way of trying to fill in all the unexplained gaps in my life.

While recovering I even imagined my friend Brian, who now lives in San Francisco,
Dressing up in old woman’s clothing and staying in the room like a patient with me so I wouldn’t be alone.

And no, he was never in the hospital,
and yes, I shared my hospital room with an old woman who was a patient I had never met before,
and no, I never even talked to this lady,

While recovering I even hallucinated that I was in my apartment and not in a hospital bed
Because I REFUSED to believe that ANYTHING was wrong with me

I was in pain all the time, painkillers didn’t help, my back was sore, my head ALWAYS hurt, my sinuses were terrible. I wanted the Hell out of the hospital but I couldn’t take the first steps to do it. I could barely even stand. They strapped me in my bed at night,
and once I contorted my way out of the harness, wrapped it up and set it on the nightstand; the nurses thought it was strange that the straps were next to my bed,
and when my mother saw how the harness was wrapped, she KNEW that I had to have done it.

I had to fight every step of the way in that hospital. Three different doctors viewing my records even knick named me “miracle girl”, but learning to walk was no miracle to me,
I just had to work harder to prove everyone wrong and try to get my life back.




Changing Garments

Agonies are
one of my changes of garments,

I do not ask the wounded person
how he
feels
or
who he
is

I myself become the wounded person,
My hurts turn livid upon me
as I lean on a cane and observe




learning to eat after 7/11

After walking, I had to learn how to eat
Because they kept a tube in me while I was unconscious
And after a while it became time for me to eat again
And I thought,

I don’t need to eat
I haven’t been eating this entire time in here
Eating is really overrated, what do I need it for
So when they told me I could eat
I didn’t.
They offered breakfast and I told them no.
They offered lunch and I told them no.
And by the time dinner came along
my stomach was making more noise than I was
I think it started a language of its own

So being a vegetarian I got an egg sandwich
and then I was faced with this task I didn’t know how to undertake.
I had to rationalize it to myself.
You’ve eaten before, I told myself, you can do it again.
I know it seems foreign to you, but you can do it.
Put some food on the fork, put it in your mouth, remove the fork, start chewing, and then just swallow it. You can do this. I had to talk myself through every step, the first bite was the strangest thing to me, I ate only half of the food,
But I did it.
I know that once I got used to eating I ate ravenously, but
The next morning they offered food and I ate an egg sandwich again and I had to tell myself,
You did this yesterday, Janet.
I had to goad myself into eating again.




Each Morning

it is like a contest
me and the sky

I stare out
at the horizon
until it gets up

and comes to embrace
me
I feel it, I swear

I make believe
it is my father

This is known
as genetics

I go through this
each morning
I think this each morning




driving car into ditch

sometimes it just makes
more sense

i mean
do things make more sense
to everyone else
can people see
the sense in anything?

maybe I shouldn’t
turn the wheel of my car
maybe I should aim
for the side of the road

maybe it could be a
quick and painless death that way
maybe it could




Good Things Have Happened to Me Too

I’ve wanted to baul my eyes out
but I don’t think I have the emotion in me any longer.
My share of bad things has happened to me, and I can say
that the good things have happened to me too
But
when you’re like me all you can think about is
the bad stuff, and you can fixate on that,
it doesn’t matter how many months go by,
or years, or whatever, but you get my point

My point is that the bad stuff is there,
and there’s nothing you’re going to be able to do to get rid
of the bad stuff
You can try to deal with it
with a good attitude, or you can have a temper-tantrum
every time something bad happens to you,
or you can try to take all the bad stuff for as long as you can

I don’t know how you deal with that pain
I suppose
that bauling your eyes out with a problem would help
for now, but the problem is not going to get any
easier just because you cry

No, the bad stuff doesn’t go away
The key is
to be able to figure out
how to make all of the bad stuff go away,
like it was never there in the first place
Well,
I don’t know if anyone has been able to
figure that out yet
I suppose there has to be some way
to make yourself just blink and then you can forget
all the bad stuff
People for the most part have been
able to do that most of their lives

Unless they kill themselves first, But
I’m not even going to go there
That just seems
like too touchy of a subject to even come near.

So I guess the burning question
is to figure out how to make all the bad stuff
go away, like it was never there in the first place

Well, it seems that no one so far has
come up with a way to figure out how to do that

If anyone has an idea, let me know. Thanks.




Here’s your chance

Sometimes the most unconscious things
happen in life

Or I guess,
I should say that about
“my life,”

but then I’d sound like I was
complaining

So I have to keep it all
to myself,
and I just have to take all of
the crap that is dished out to me all
the time, and
then when I wat to let my
anger out
no one wants to take the
time to listen to me

or even act like
they’re listening to me

I kept my life
a secret from the rest of the world
for so many years,
and now that I feel
I have to let out my emotions and my
disgust with everything in the world
that is so wrong,
well then,
then no one
wants to take the time to be there for me

They’d rather bitch back instead of
attempt to make any attempts to help
That’s my luck
I should just
get used to it
that’s what the world does
everyone would rather
kick me when I’m down
Well, I’m down now
This is your chance
Go nuts

I have been told all of my life by certain
people
usually the ones that should be
considered the smart ones
well, I’ve been
told by of my life that I should talk more
and I should get over my problems and that
things will get better when I least expect it

Well, things aren’t better, things are just
getting worse, and no one can help me
through this pain or this anger, and I want to
change so many things
in my life
and no one
will let me make any attempts
to make my life better
If I’m supposed to make a
difference in my life and I’m also not
allowed to change a god-damned thing
in my life either, then I suppose I should
just tell you all that this is your chance
and you can do with me what you will

Nobody knows how to live a life nowadays.
The people who know how to




how I imagine you

walking on the power line
like those success posters

I’ve seen you like that before
I’ve thought you were worth
all of that and more

is that silly of me
do I dream too much

do I imagine you
as something better than you are

is that how I imagine you




How many times I’ve done it

I wonder how long I’ve been like this
I wonder how long I’ve been forgetting things
where no one has been able to fill in the pieces for me
I wonder how many time I’ve gone thought this
how many times has it happened in my head
where I’ve had to put all the pieces back together
I wonder how many times I’ve done it

I wonder how crazy I’d sound
to always ask for help
if someone else
will put the pieces together for me
maybe then someone would know
what I go through and what I think
and maybe people would start to think something different of me
and maybe then people wouldn’t think
i was something special




I Know It’s Not Going To Happen

There are so many things that I think about

maybe that is one of my curses

but I think of these things every once in a while
things that are supposed to make me smile
and things that are supposed to make me angry too

and sometimes I like to think about the good things
whether or not they happen to me

but I can think

and I know these things are not going to happen
but I can fantasize about it
every once in a while

and because I am here
and I have the time here to think about it
I can think about you
I can think about how you liked me
and I can think about how strong you were
and I can think that you could have been
a good challenge for me

that you would have put limits on me
that you would not have let me
do whatever I want

and maybe that would have been good for me

and I think about how mice it would be
just to hear that you still like me
even after a decade
and I know I should never have let your down
and I know I should never have
looked for someone else

well, for that I am still paying

and I do not know if you are married now
or if you ever got married and now
you are going through a divorce
I would like to think of it that way, you know

I suppose you could be single
but I assume that some woman
would have swept you up by now
and someone would have taken you away
from the rest of the women out there

including me




I’d Laugh More

I’ve been looking for something
that will make me smile
that for a little bit,
every once in a while,
well, I’ve been looking
for something that could
suspend my beliefs

something that will just make me laugh
something that will make me
think of nothing

well, and something that I won’t mind

I’ve been looking for a reason to laugh
I’ve been looking for anything
that looks like a reason

and maybe that’s my problem

maybe I should just let
the good things happen
and maybe I shouldn’t get so worried
and maybe then I’d laugh more




Is To Blame For It

When I think of all
the spots that hurt on my body,
it could be because I’m getting old,
it could be because I was in an accident,
I don’t know

and I try not to talk about the problems
too much, even though I think about
the pain

it’s like a regular thing
in my life

but at least I know that the
sinus problems aren’t going away

the loud noise of my breathing
gets louder on one side of my head
that happens when my sinuses
are acting up on me

I’d rather breathe out of my mouth
than my nose
because the noise of my breathing
isn’t so loud when I breathe
out of my mouth

and I keep getting reminded
that I should be breathing
out of my nose, not my mouth

I think I knew that.
thank you.

the pain is still loud in my head.
I still have that problem.

but no one wants to hear about
problems like that, do they?

I hear that they don’t.

It’s not allergy season
and I still have allergy problems

the pollen count should be
going down outside
but I still have this problem

maybe somebody’s just hit my head
too many times
and now my sinuses aren’t right

i’ve had this problem for months

but maybe someone else
is to blame for it




Late for a Class

When the answer seems
always quite that simple
the answer is never as
easy as that. I know
that the answers are
supposed to mean something
but no one will tell me
what the answers mean.

I don’t know if I have
four hours of classes
today. The teachers
will never tell me in
advance until I am
late for a class and I
am late for somewhere
to quickly go.

I wonder if everyone’s
life is filled with so many
questions. If so
many people are verging on
death or fighting for
basic rights that should
have been given to them
years ago.

I’ll have 10 more minutes
to kill before I’ll be late
for a class I
didn’t know I was
supposed to be in

This
is a story you’ve possibly
heard repeated times
everyday of your life

When do people get
tired of it and fight back?




Kill Yourself

what if you wanted to kill yourself

what if, after all the bad stuff that has happened to you,
you thought, I can hang myself or
I can take some pills or I can shoot myself
in the head or I can just lay there and wait for a car
to run me over

where would you be to get to that point
where you thought it was an option
that you’d rather be dead than alive

even if the family has to prepare your belongings
even if everyone who cared about you
has to mourn you

how do you get to that point
to want to let your life stop

to try to seek out and end to your life

how do you get to that point

how do you think of someone
who killed themselves
do you think, oh, they were nice,
they cared, I miss them,
they killed themselves

will you ever be able to
think of that person
in the same way again

would their death
be tainted to you
by their suicide

how did they get
to that point, you ask yourself

how did they get to that point




Needy Person

There are so many things
that I’ve wanted to say to you

I’m too afraid
would you know what I wanted too say

Then you would have
treated me differently

I’m not joking when
I say I love you,
and I don’t mean the l word
the way most people mean it.
I wanted to spend my life
with you, and
I wanted you to want that, too.

I wanted you to feel
the kind of passion I’ve felt
I’ve wanted you to make that effort for me.

I’ve wanted to be able
to have that life with you
and I’ve never wanted to tell you that

I’ve wanted you to just know

What if something happened
to me, what if I couldn’t talk,
or what if I died? Would
you know the things
I think? Probably not

Maybe you’d have an idea

Maybe you’re just used
to not having to think
about things life this

But I do

Yes, this is what
I think about. You’re tall,
have blonde hair and blue eyes.
You’re not perfect, but
neither am I. I’ve been able to get
past all
the imperfections
with you, but are
you capable of doing that for me?

I’m a needy person sometimes
and sometimes my needs
seem obvious
and you never notice that I need

you never think there’s anything
you can do to make me life better.

maybe I try
and work like a giant
and am good at what I do

but maybe sometimes
I can’t do it alone

and that’s what I need you for




Not For Me Yet

There are so many things
that I want to remember

and so many things
I want to remember about you
I don’t know if I choose
to remember things
in a certain way
or if I see them
the way everyone else does

I’m sure it’s not like that

I’m sure I come into
any given situation
with certain ideas
with certain hopes
with certain fears

and all the hopes and fears
never happen that way for me

I’m used to that too, you know

You started to rub my back today
before you guys were about to
take the long drive home
and I even had
to say out loud
that I didn’t want this to end
that I was enjoying this too much

well, I knew it was because
I wanted you near me
and I didn’t know
how to ask for that
and I didn’t want to tell you
that you shouldn’t go

I had no security yet from you
I had no assurances yet either

and nothing was resolved

not for me yet

And I always have hopes
I know that I do
and I know that all my hopes never
amount to anything
and you’ll always look at life differently
this I know

but that doesn’t mean
that I can’t hope things
are different
I can’t hope that yet




Suspend My Beliefs

and I don’t know what the answers
are supposed to be anymore

I’m tired of looking for the answers
sometimes, you know
and sometimes I just want someone
to come along and tell me that
everything is going to be okay
and that they are going to be there for me
and that they’ll take care of me

and that they’ll love me

and when i say love, I don’t mean
the kind of garbage that you hear
people say to each other when they
don’t even know what love is

I’m talking real love, lifetime love
the kind of love that doesn’t go away

well, as I was saying, I want someone
to come along and tell me that everything
is going to be okay and that everything will
get better
and you know, just hearing someone say that
and mean it
would be enough

I’d be able to suspend my beliefs for a moment

so what should I make out of this world
what should I make out of this world that
doesn’t make sense
what should I make out of it

I can hope, I suppose
but I’ve done that for years
and it gets me no where

this whole belief thing
in things you have no proof of
really doesn’t get you anywhere
I’ve learned that much

So what do I want

I want someone to come along
and let me not think for a while

someone to come along
and excite me
and make me feel alive
and make me feel that I’m safe

I haven’t felt that in so long

I’ve wanted you to be a part of my life
in so many ways
for so many years now
and I think I’ve wanted it
for so long
and I’ve never told you

well, maybe I should have told you
when you would have wanted to hear it

so many years ago

and then maybe I wouldn’t feel so lonely for you
and maybe I wouldn’t want so much more from you

and maybe then things would be different




The Same For You

there are certain things I’ve learned in life
and the are certain things I have wanted

and I’ve gotten used to
never getting what I want

I’m used to that now

and yes
maybe my standards
are different from the average guy’s standards

you would have to ask the average guy that

and I am at the point where
I am getting used to
not getting married when I want to

I mean, at the rate I am going
I may just not get married, I guess

and yes, I have been told
that you must be a lucky guy
because you get the chance
to hold me
and give me attention
and all that other gushy stuff

but you have not wanted
to take that chance
that is something I have learned too

and you kissed me
last night
and I kissed you too
and for me, well, that was with
all the hassle and aggravation
of not being around you
in your mind
in the first place

maybe it is not the same for you
I do not know

well, we made the comical references
of having sex for hours
and we knew we were both
saying it in jest
and so nothing ever happened

and if that is the way it is
got to be
well, then, I can deal with that, too

***

I have learned to deal
with a lot of things in my life
some are good, some are bad
but now all I want is some good news
and I want you to fill in the pieces
and make everything better for me

and maybe you do not have the answers
well, I know I don’t have the answers
and maybe you have problems that
you are fed up with
and maybe I want to make all those problems
go away for you
and maybe you worry about things
that you should not worry about
because of our miscommunications

***

I told you that
maybe it was the accident
maybe it was my lack of a car
maybe it was my desperate need for attention
well, attention from you
you
know what I mean
but I told you that I
wanted to be held
And I
noticed that after I told you that
you held me more, and
you hugged me more,
and maybe it is just me reading into things
and maybe you were actually thinking of me

well, either way, thank you for that
because there are only
so many times where I got
nothing from you
before I lose my mind

yes, we didn’t have the night of my dreams
and yes, I ask too many questions to you sometimes
and maybe it is for the best
that last night was not the night of my dreams

because I have to get used to that, you know




Telling What you Want
And Hearing What You Want

there are many things
you’ve got to learn
about how to deal with other people
and how to talk to other people

and some of the rules seem obvious
and some of them take
a little getting used to

to tell a man how to talk to
a woman, well, you might
as well tell them to read war and peace
and maybe that would be easier

for that matter, tell a woman how to talk to a man
and it’s like telling her
that she can’t go shopping anymore
it’s just that drastic for her

and if there was a handy guide
to tell you how to deal with other people
well, that would make people get along
so much better

when someone wants to hear something
is it that hard
to actually tell them
what they want to hear?

or is it
that traumatic for you
to say the words
you want to say
or are you just
too scared




Want That Too You Know

I have heightened awareness
I have this tendency to notice the details

and I know, maybe I have this
heightened sense of awareness

I don’t know what it is

but what I’ve noticed
is something other people wouldn’t notice

I’ve noticed when you say something
in passing
and maybe you didn’t
mean anything by it

well, I noticed the double meaning
and maybe you weren’t trying to
give me any double meaning

maybe I’m just being too aware

maybe I need attention from you
maybe I want to hear you say
nice words to me

maybe I want something to
work out for me

we women want that too, you know




well, someone is

where do you draw the time
over what is too much
and what is not enough

I’ve been thinking about that

really, I’ve been thinking about you
and I’ve been wondering
how much thinking is too much
and how much is not nearly enough
where do you draw that line

you never want to see me
and yes, I’m beginning to get used to that

maybe that’s what I should be thinking
that I can be used to you not caring

maybe you don’t know that I care

well, I told you

you must have just changed your mind
or lied to me
one of the other

and I don’t like either option

we were supposed to have a happy life together
we were supposed to get married
remember us talking about it?
I’m sure you don’t remember.
I do. I remember

But now you don’t think of marriage
that’s one of your little ways
to let me know
how you feel

and yes, I’m beginning to understand
and I’m beginning to feel it

are you trying to make me
feel this way

well, someone is




Well, What About Me

How can I say goodbye to you
when you don’t even know I was looking for you
when you weren’t even listening

have I been letting myself down
all this time
have I been hoping for something that wasn’t there

I’ve just wanted to be alive
and I don’t know if that means anything to you

people tell me they care
and you know, if I died
they’d cry for a few days and
then they would get
used to the fact that I was gone

yes, I’ve thought of that
the person that thinks too much
who is a perfectionist
and a bitch
she has thought all of that too

I know you want to make everything better for everyone
I know you want everyone to be happy
I know you want to try to do everything
so that everyone is appeased

but what about me?

I’ve wanted those things
and that doesn’t mean I get them

I don’t know what to do anymore for your problems
and I don’t know that if I had planned
on spending the rest of my life with you
if you would change

I can’t be your beacon anymore
I need a beacon for me, you know
and it’s not going to be just anyone
because I want too much

but I’m trying to learn
that that beacon isn’t going to
be you anymore, either

I know what you have to do to make your life better
but I can’t tell you that
because I have to draw the time somewhere
because I’m tired of giving all the time
and getting nothing in return




Which I Like

You know I know that you think about me
because I think, and I know you think

and I think about these things

And you know you’re the only person
around here I feel comfortable
talking to, because you listen, you
listen to my ideas, and you talk to me

And you know, I know no one wants
to think, and people would rather
settle for brainless activity

I know this.

Does it mean there’s a reason that
we’re together
I don’t know
I know that
my reason to exist is to make people think
And, as for you, well, it works, which I like




Wrong Attention

I’m tired of being alone so much
and I’m tired of missing you
and I’m tired of wanting a future with you
and I’m tired of wanting you around me

sometimes I think when I’m about to sleep
that the extra pillow could be you

as I said, maybe I’m just dying for attention
maybe I’ve been looking for
the wrong attention




you will

pieces of the puzzle:
i know how they fit

i’ve had to do this
puzzle thing for years
and I’m good at it

i make you whole

i know it won’t take long
as i said, i’m good at this

you’ll feel good
about it when it’s done

you don’t think
you will, but you will




Have To Ask

Elissa was surprised
she was surprised that I thought
that Eugene didn’t have a photo of me in his wallet
but she never told me why she was surprised
so I’ll have to ask




everyone else does it

it’s funny how you get an image
in your head as to how to want
to lead your life, and you have
these ideas, and maybe they’re
not like anyone else’s ideas, but
is it funny that you think this way

Well, would you get tired of
thinking that way if everyone
else thought something different

well, you probably would start
thinking differently, but what
would you do with those ideas,
once you have them? Would you
just throw those thoughts into
the trash, into the garbage, you
could do that you know, I know
they’re just your ideas, but everyone
else does that, you could do it too.




Feel So Much

There are some points where
you just have to stop caring about things

Well, maybe I care about too much stuff
and that is why I have to stop myself

Sometimes you just have to draw a line
to separate yourself from other people
because you can care too much
and sometimes others don’t care enough

It’s hard to draw that line, you know
because to say that you don’t care any more
is like killing a part of yourself

Well, I’ve been doing that for years
am I dead yet

Does it seem cruel to want to kill
a part of yourself
Maybe
But
does it seem cruel to feel so much




First

I walked to the tight rope
through a decision in the
fact that now who has that
much will to live, to their life, to all life
that just one step could come
and they would be carried down.

I could tight rope,
I had thoughts when I
would see the tight rope walkers go
I had thoughts that they
would hold on to an extra
rope, when they should keep
their arms free. would a man
decide on a tight rope
well, decide to play it safe and
just once hold on to a rope?
I mean, if I was somebody
else, and it was just me
and that simple white light?

I would wonder if people like
that would ever get to that
place. can’t it - can any
I wonder why I’ll let get to
that point, like right before
that moment, when you think you’re going to fall.




To Get To That Point

I haven’t figured out how to relax yet
I see people do it
I see people lounging around
but I’m always thinking
and I’ve been trying to figure out how to stop that

it’s like, I wish there was just a switch
for your brain, so that
when you don’t want to think you could just
shut the brain off, or put it in
"sleep mode," as they say
for computers

well anyway, I’ve just been thinking that
I need to learn how to relax

I even bought one of those
massage mats for chairs
that vibrate and stuff
and I have to admit, it’s a nice mat
it is very relaxing
I enjoy it
but the key is, I have to
get me to the may in the first place

because I could buy all the traps in th world
to help me relax more
but I have to want to use them

and I have to use them too, I guess

and that’s where my dilemma is
I don’t know how to get to that point




Getting Used To Something New

It is like, they let me take the golf cart to
drive around the park, and I am thinking,
Jeez, I have not been driving a car for months
so why are they giving me this cart?
And they tell me not to speed with the cart,
and I am thinking, I can not speed on the
seventy five mile per hour speedways when that is
the speed limit, that is when I am only going
seventy three miles per hour. I do not think
I would get in trouble if I broke
the break-neck speed of
ten miles per hour
in the golf cart

It is just a theory

I guess it is just a matter of
getting used to something new

It has been years
since I was in the park
in Florida and I had to drive a golf cart

Maybe it is just a matter of getting used
used to something new.




Given A Warning Early On

this is a warning:
the operation can continue, but
the files you are trying to save
should not be recovered on the same disk
because you may not in the future
be able to access other files

what they’re trying to say
is that what you want to save
you might write over
something you’ll want in the future

well, i can’t see any of my files
and I can’t solve any of my problems
and I don’t know what my choices are

I wish instructions for life
were written on note cards,
in readable formats,
the way instructions are written
on a computer program you’ve never used

the decisions you’d have to make
wouldn’t seem so daunting
when you’re given a warning
early on




A Smile On My Face

I don’t know what it is about you
whenever you enter me
mind
joyous thoughts are stirred
and a smile emerges

That happy times we’ve had
the memorable times we’ve shared
will alwats put
a smile on my face




All My Problems Disappear

I don’t understand
I try to think
yet whenver I look at you
I can’t
Your voice sends a shiver down
my spine
Each time I look into your deep
brown eyes
my world turns into fantasy
and all my problems disappear
Whenever you come into my mind
everything else is forgotten
A mere moment with you
serves as an eternity
You have so many good qualities
that it wouldn’t justify
to name only a few
I couldn’t image a life led
without you
for it would be a life of dreary monotony
The days would never end
and life would serve no purpose
I don’t understand
why I feel the way I do
maybe I love you




An Innocent Glance

An innocent glance
turned into a lengthy stare
A simple hello
turned into an intimate conversation
A common aquaintance
turned into a lover
My heaven
turned into my hell

for another woman
turned everything we had
into nothing




Do You Know

Do you know that I love you
Probably not
for I do not have the courage or the
power to tell you
Yet
each time you look into my eyes
you give me the gift of your courage
and power
kindness
sensitivity
and caring
Maybe the only way I can tell you
is to write it down
I love you




Good Bye

A tear rolls down
my cheek

I read the note
once again

“Good bye”

I was in love

Why -
why did he leave
me?

I need him now
more than
I’ve ever needed him
before

“Good bye”




Have A Friend In Me

I’ve seen you though
the good times and theb ad
the happy and the sad
and through every single high point
and every single low point
you’ve always been my friend

I can put my trust in you
my faith in you
my hope in you
and I thank you with all of my heart

I have told you my fears
and I have told you my dreams
you have listened intentely
and understood
you have pulled me through
some of the hardest times
in my life
and I’ll never forget what you’ve given to me

And if you ever need
a shoulder to cry on
an ear to talk to
a cane to lean on
a smile to cheer you
a heart to love you
you’ll alya have it
You’ll always have a friend in me




I See More

I look up at he sky
In the night
And see what no one else sees
I look, and I
Don’t just see
White dots twinkling in the night
I see glitter
Shining
On an artist’s canvas
Painted midnight blue

And yet I see more

I see pictures
Of Roman gods and goddesses
Loving, and hating,
Caring, and fighting

And yet I see more

I see a whole universe
Looking down on me
And it makes me feel very small

Yet I believe that
each star is my friend
And I feel special

I look up at the sky
In the night
And see what no one else sees
I see more




Nothing Colorful In My Sight

I wake up to a dark room
I put on my brown sweater
And eat my burnt toast
I see the aged blackboard
I walk on the dirt road
I see the clouds up in the sky
I don’t know where to go
I go back to a pile of work
To fill my darkened nights

There’s nothing interesting in my life
Nothing colorful on my sight




The Place

Tree
Reaching higher and higher
It seems as thoguh the tree
goes on forever
Forever

River
Going farther and farther
It seems as though the river
runs forever
Forever

People
Hoping they go on forever
Hoping, hoping
Finding an end




Weeping Willow

I am the weeping willow
The branches hang downward
never reaching upward
outward<

So do mine<

It stands alone in a forest
full of mighty towering
maples and oaks<

So do I<

And like me
the weeping willow
can only bow its head
and cry




When I Am Weak

There are many times when I an weak
My poor legs can no longer endure
I start to fall
I search for something to hold on to
And I usually find something to
Lean on until I am no longer weak
But there are times when there is
Nothing for me to grab on to
I feel lost
I continue to fall
But then I see you
You extend your arm and uncurl your fingers
You reach out to me and
Give me support
You help me become strong again




A New Life

A new life
A bundle of joy
Your flesh
Your blood
Your love
Your life
This little child
an individual
is yet
an extansion
of you

A new life
A bundle of joy
Your hair
Your eyes
Your laugh
Your Cry
This little child
a separate life
is yet
an extansion
of you

A new life
A bundle of you
Murroring your smile
Reflecting your live
Being your life
This little child
this life that’s new
will always
be
an extension
of you




After the Bomb

after the bomb
there’s no longer anything to see
there’s nothing to see but ashes
and the charred remains of what used to be
planet earth
there’s no talking
for there is no one to hear you
there’s no longer anything to hear
no voices, no music, no laughter
just the wind
and there’s nothing more to smell
no roses, no perfumes, no fresh baked bread
just the fire
for, you see
after the bomb
there’s no longer anything




An Extension

A new life, a bundle of joy
your flesh, your blood
your love, your life
this little child, an individual
is yet an extension of you

A new life, a bundle of joy
your hair, your eyes
your laugh, your cry
this little child, a separate life
is yet an extension of you

A new life, a bundle of joy
mirroring your smile
reflecting your love
being your life
this little child, this life that is new
will always be an extension of you




Simple Things

A patch of daisies
waving in the wind
on the side of an
isolated road

A butterfly with
vibrant red and
yellow wings
flying through the
branches of a berry bush

a kitten cleaning her paw
in front of a fireplace
lit at night

some of the most
beautiful things
are also the most
simple ones




The Joshua Tree

The Joshua tree
is a tree with long branches
said to point toward
the Promised land

You remind me of
the Joshua tree
because you help me
and lead me
in the right direction




Trapped

I feel like a prisoner
locked in
a never-ending
maze
Trapped
Confused
Is there
any way out?
Twists and
turns,
and never a
moment
without the
greatest feeling
of severe
frustration
and
absolute
hopelessness
Trapped
Confused
Is there
any way
out?




Untitled

A song has never made me cry so hard
my work has lost its meaning
and life has gone too far




hand in hair


http://scars.tv

Books
sulphur and sawdust
slate and marrow
blister and burn
rinse and repeat
survive and thrive
(not so) warm and fuzzy
torture and triumph
infamous in our prime
anais nin: an understanding of her art
the electronic windmill
changing woman
harvest of gems
the little monk
death in m‡laga
the svetasvatara upanishad
Hope Chest in the Attic
the Window
Close Cover before Striking
(woman.)
Autumn Reason
Contents under Pressure
the Average Guy’s Guide (to Feminism)
Changing Gears

Compact Discs
MFV the demo tapes
Kuypers the final (MFV Inclusive)
Weeds and Flowers the beauty & the desolation
Pettus/Kuypers Live at Cafe Aloha
Kuypers Seeing Things Differently
Pointless Orchestra Rough Mixes
Kuypers “Overstating” (voice sampling)
The Second Axing, Something is Sweating
Scars, Torture and Triumph compilation
Kuypers Change Rearrange
Tick Tock 5D/5D
Kuypers Stop Look Listen
The Entropy Project Order from Chaos
Kuypers Six One One
The Second Axing, two Live concerts in Alaska “Free Parking” shows




Copyright Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.