[the Writing of Kuypers] [JanetKuypers.com] [Bio] [Poems] [Prose]
I never really liked you. I met you through
I never really liked you. You never revealed
They told me the patch was from eye surgery
I heard these stories and I thought it was sad.
The house you lived in was littered with
I never really liked you. You would come home
I never really liked you. Every time you talked
This is how I thought of you. A man who was
I received a letter recently, a letter from
and instead of leaving this town you went to a
And I was asked to be the messenger to my
I never really liked you. No one did. But when
I never really liked you. But now I can’t get
I never really liked you, but maybe we could get
Order this iTunes track: 
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(a 6 CD set)...Or order the entire CD set from iTunes
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Listen 
to the CD recording
of this, from the CD Change/Rearrange
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“Oh.” audio CD
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from WZRD Radio (in a 3 CD set)
Order this iTunes track:
from the Chaotic Collection
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Listen to the CD recording from the
CD Rough Mixes, by Pointless Orchestra
Listen to this w/ the DMJ Art Connection
Listen to & download
this track from the DMJ Art Connection
Listen live to the 2nd Axing
at the open mic Sing Your Life
Watch this YouTube video
(6:55) at the live Jesse Oaks live “UNcorrect” feature 06/21/07
See this YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem “Andrew Hettinger” (6:18) live at the Café weekly poetry open mic 2/26/08 (this video was posted on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr). #janetkuypers #janetkuyperspoem
Listen: (8:46)
to this recording from Fusion
And order this track, or ANY track, off the cd Fusion available at iTunes.
Listen to the live reading
from the Side A/Side B feature 12/09/03
See YouTube video
Live at St. Mary’s Cemetery (at his gravesite) in Champaign IL 05/27/11
See YouTube video 9/24/16 of Janet Kuypers saying her poem “Ever Get It Back” in conversation, then reading her poems “Earth was Crying” and “Andrew Hettinger”, then she sang her song “Why” live in downtown Austin’s one-time only reading at Brave New Books (from a Canon Power Shot camera).
See YouTube video 9/24/16 of Janet Kuypers saying her poem “Ever Get It Back” in conversation, then reading her poems “Earth was Crying” and “Andrew Hettinger”, then she sang her song “Why” live in downtown Austin’s one-time only reading at Brave New Books (filmed from a Sony camera).
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ August 2018 Book Release Reading 8/1/18, where she read interview portions and her prose poem “Scars”, then interview portions and her poem “Children, Churches and Daddies”, then interview portions and her poem “Andrew Hettinger”, leading to her poem “And I’m Wondering” from her interview/journal/poetry book “In Depth”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ August 2018 Book Release Reading 8/1/18, where she read interview portions and her prose poem “Scars”, then interview portions and her poem “Children, Churches and Daddies”, then interview portions and her poem “Andrew Hettinger”, leading to her poem “And I’m Wondering” from her interview/journal/poetry book “In Depth”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (video from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera, with a Posterize filter).
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ August 2018 Book Release Reading 8/1/18, where she read interview portions and her prose poem “Scars”, then interview portions and her poem “Children, Churches and Daddies”, then interview portions and her poem “Andrew Hettinger”, leading to her poem “And I’m Wondering” from her interview/journal/poetry book “In Depth”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (tfrom a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera).
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ August 2018 Book Release Reading 8/1/18, where she read interview portions and her prose poem “Scars”, then interview portions and her poem “Children, Churches and Daddies”, then interview portions and her poem “Andrew Hettinger”, leading to her poem “And I’m Wondering” from her interview/journal/poetry book “In Depth”, in Community Poetry @ Half Price Books (Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera, with a Sepia tone filter).
See YouTube video live 10/19/19 at Austin’s “Open Mic Showcase”, where Janet Kuypers read poems from a variety of books in multiple rounds to the live audience at the bookstore, including this poem (filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera); on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram & Tumblr.
See YouTube video live 10/19/19 at Austin’s “Open Mic Showcase”, where Janet Kuypers read poems from a variety of books in multiple rounds to the live audience at the bookstore, including this poem (filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera); on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram & Tumblr.
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “ends of the earth”, “Listen to Life”, “Amber Beads”, her prose “Driving By His House”, and her poems “Andrew Hettinger”, “Death”, “Anything for the Liquor Fix”, “Chess Game Again”, and “Children, Churches, and Daddies”, in set 4 from the cc&d July-December 2018 expanded issue collection book “Among the Debris” during the “Poetic License open mic 6/7/20 home edition” she hosted in Austin through a Facebook event page (this video was from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera, and was posted on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr).
See a Facebook live video stream of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “ends of the earth”, “Listen to Life”, “Queueing in Line and Shaping Your Life”, “Amber Beads”, her prose “Driving By His House”, and her poems “Andrew Hettinger”, “Death”, “Anything for the Liquor Fix”, “Chess Game Again”, and “Children, Churches, and Daddies”, in set 4 from the cc&d July-December 2018 expanded issue collection book “Among the Debris” during the “Poetic License open mic 6/7/20 home edition” she hosted in Austin, but globally through a Facebook event page (from a Samsung S9 camera).
See this YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “More than we Should Have”, her bonus poem “The Truth is Out There”, “Andrew Hettinger”, and “The State of the Nation (2016 edit)” from the cyberwit.net 137-page 5½" x 8½" Janet Kuypers poetry book “Eternal Never Ending Now” for “The Café Gallery 4/13/21 Book Reading” in The Café Gallery Book Reading series 2020+ (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera; on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr). #janetkuypers #janetkuyperspoetry #janetkuypersbookreading #janetkuypersthecafegallery
See a Facebook live video stream of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “More than we Should Have”, her bonus poem “The Truth is Out There”, “Andrew Hettinger”, and “The State of the Nation (2016 edit)” from the cyberwit.net 137-page 5½" x 8½" Janet Kuypers poetry book “Eternal Never Ending Now” for “The Café Gallery 4/13/21 Book Reading” in The Café Gallery Book Reading series 2020+ (this video was filmed and streamed from a Samsung S9 camera). #janetkuypers #janetkuyperspoetry #janetkuypersbookreading #janetkuypersthecafegallery
Andrew Hettinger
I never really liked you. You never revealed
yourself to me and why would you: you,
who never had anyone, you, who always
had the bad breaks. Everyone looked at you
as different. Where would you have learned
to trust. Who would you have learned it from.
a friend and he explained to me that multiple
sclerosis left you with a slight limp and a
faint lisp. Faint, under the surface, but there,
traces of something no one would ever
know of you well enough to fully understand.
yourself to me and I never wanted you to;
you scared me too much. You, plagued with
physical ailments. You, with a limp in your walk.
You, with a patch over your eye. You, who
stared at me for always just a bit too long.
with complications and now you had to cover
your shame, cover someone else’s mistakes,
cover a wrong you didn’t commit, cover a
problem not of your own doing. The problems
were never of your own doing, were they.
I heard these stories and thought you had to be
a pillar of strength. And then I saw you drink,
straight from the bottle, fifteen-year-old
chianti. And I saw you smash your hand into
your living room wall. This is how you lived.
trash. Why bother to clean it up anyway. It
detracted you from the holes in the wall, the
broken furniture from drunken fits. This was
how you reacted to life, to the world. You didn’t
know any better. This is how you coped.
from work, tell us about a woman who was
beautiful and smart that liked you, but she
wasn’t quite smart enough. And I thought: We
believe anything if we tell ourselves enough.
We weave these fantasies to get through the days.
to me you always leaned a little too close. So
I stayed away from the house, noted that those
whom you called friends did the same. I asked
my friend why he bothered to stay in touch.
And he said to me, “But he has no friends.”
dealt a bad hand. A man who couldn’t fight
the demons that were handed to him. And
with that I put you out of my mind, relegated
you to the ranks of the inconsequential. We parted
ways. You were reduced to a sliver of my youth.
someone who knew you, someone who wanted
me to tell my friend that they read in the
newspaper that you hanged yourself. Your
brother died in an electrical accident, and
after the funeral you went to the train station,
small room off to the side and you left us forever.
Strangers had to find you. The police had to
search through records to identify your body.
The newspaper described you as having “health
problems.” But you knew it was more than that.
friend. The funeral had already passed. You were
already in the ground. There was no way he
could say goodbye. I shouldn’t have been the one
to tell him this. No one deserved to tell him.
He was the only one who tried to care.
I had to tell my friend, I knew his pain.
I knew he wanted to be better. I knew he
thought you were too young to die. I knew he
felt guilty for not calling you. He knew it
shouldn’t have been this way. We all knew it.
you out of my mind; you haunt me for all the
people we’ve forgotten in our lives. I don’t like
what you’ve done. I don’t like you quitting.
I don’t like you dying, not giving us the chance
to love you, or hate you, or even ignore you more.
My friend still doesn’t know where your grave is.
I’d like to find it for him, and take him to you.
Let you know you did have a friend out there.
Bring you a drink, maybe, a fitting nightcap
to mark your departure, to commemorate a life
filled with liquor, violence, pain and death.
together in some old cemetery, sit on your grave
stone, share a drink with the dead, laugh at the
injustices of life when we’re surrounded by death.
Maybe then we’d understand your pain for one brief
moment, and remember the moments we’ll always regret.
Copyright Janet Kuypers.
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