[the Writing of Kuypers]
[JanetKuypers.com][Bio][Poems][Prose]
the state of the nation
My phone rang earlier today and I picked it up and said “hello”and a man on the other end said,
Is this Janet Kuypers?
and I said, “Yes, it is, may I ask who is calling?” and he said,
Yeah, hi, this is George Washington, and I’m sitting here with Jefferson and we wanted to tell you a few things.
And I said “Why me?” And he said
Excuse me, I believe I said I was the one that wanted to do the talking. God, that’s the problem with Americans nowadays. They’re so damn rude.
And I said, “You know, you really didn’t have to use language like that,” and he said,
Oh, I’m sorry, it’s just I’ve been dead so long, I lose all control of my manners. Well, anyway, we just wanted to tell you some stuff. Now, you know that we really didn’t have much of an idea of what we were doing when we were starting up this country here, we didn’t have much experience in creating bodies of power, so I could understand how our Constitution could be misconstrued
and then he put in a dramatic pause and said,
but when we said people had a right to bear arms we meant to protect themselves from a government gone wrong and not so you could kill an innocent person for twenty dollars cash
and when we said freedom of religion we included the separation of church and state because freedom of religion could also mean freedom from religion
and when we said freedom of speech we had no idea you’d be burning a flag or painting pictures of Christ doused in urine or photographing people with whips up their respective anatomies but hell, I guess we’ve got to grin and bear it because if we ban that the next thing they’ll ban is books and we can’t have that
and I said, “But there are schools that have books banned, George.”
And he said
Oh.
U.S. Government Copyright
Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers
on all art and all writings on this site completed
before 6/6/04. All rights reserved. No material
may be reprinted without express permission.
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