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. Pick up this CD for sale at Amazon.com. You can also order individual tracks from this CD on line... Additional links to tracks available for sale include Chaos Music • eChoonz • Go Mobile • JB HiFi • Leading Edge Music • mp3.com Au • Rome • Smithfield 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). name address 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! Janet L. Kuypers Doctor of Philosophy, University of Wexford, 1996, Reverend through the Universal Life Church, 1999

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

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.