[the Writing of Kuypers]    [JanetKuypers.com]    [Bio]    [Poems]    [Prose]

See this YouTube video (5:07) live 06/14/11 at the Café in Chicago

See this YouTube video with the Edge Detection filter, live 06/14/11 at the Café in Chicago

See this YouTube video with the Sepia Tone filter, live 06/14/11 at the Café in Chicago

See this YouTube video with the Film Age (older) filter, live 06/14/11 at the Café in Chicago

See this YouTube video with the Threshold filter, live 06/14/11 at the Café in Chicago

See YouTube video of Kuypers’ feature Ten Minutes With Warren at the 06/14/11 open mic at the Café in Chicago, of her poems The Things Warren Says, No One Will, Warren Stories, Before I Can Put a Smile on my Face Again, It’s Someone’s Job, and You Carried It, & her covering the Eurythmics song I Need you, + her MFV song What We Need In Life (this was posted on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr). #janetkuypers #janetkuypersfeature #janetkuyperspoetryshow #janetkuypersmusic #janetkuyperssinging

See YouTube video from camera #2 of Kuypers’ feature Ten Minutes With Warren at the 06/14/11 open mic at the Café in Chicago, of her poems The Things Warren Says, No One Will, Warren Stories, Before I Can Put a Smile on my Face Again, It’s Someone’s Job, and You Carried It, & her covering the Eurythmics song I Need you, + her MFV song What We Need In Life

See YouTube video from the intro to the 06/14/11 open mic at the Café in Chicago, & Kuypers’ poems The Things Warren Says, No One Will, Warren Stories, Before I Can Put a Smile on my Face Again, It’s Someone’s Job, and You Carried It, & her covering the Eurythmics’ I Need you, + her MFV song What We Need In Life

See Youtube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “Eat me Alive”, “Escape My Brain Somehow”, “Broke the Reflection”, “My First Time”, “It’s Someone’s Job”, and “Before I Can Put a Smile on my Face Again” from her v5 cc&d boss lady poetry collection book “On the Edge” for the 2019 Poetry Bomb 4/29/19 at Circle Brewery (on a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).

See Youtube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “Eat me Alive”, “Escape My Brain Somehow”, “Broke the Reflection”, “My First Time”, “It’s Someone’s Job”, and “Before I Can Put a Smile on my Face Again” from her v5 cc&d boss lady poetry collection book “On the Edge” for the 2019 Poetry Bomb 4/29/19 at Circle Brewery (Panasonic Lumix T56 camera; Sepia).

Before I can Put a Smile on my Face Again Janet Kuypers 06/08/11 when the people who organized your high school class reunion found out you had ALS and for the past six months you were bound to a wheelchair they moved up the reunion date to the fall because they wanted to make sure you were alive long enough for all your high school friends to see you once more and I thought, wait a minute Steven Hawking has ALS and he’s lived for decades while bound to a wheelchair they’re really jumping the gun here you’re not about to die # since I didn’t go to school with you I wrote our band name on my name tag at your class reunion held at your favorite local bar saw you there in your wheelchair now unable to speak but still holding court with all the girls from your high school days (yeah, in your high school yearbook, you were rated the Biggest Flirt) the girls still swooned as you periodically played pre-programmed messages in the computerized Steven Hawking voice when you saw me, he told me that I looked really beautiful today and I blushed (what am I supposed to say?) and I heard you later on with other swooning women telling them one by one that they looked really beautiful today and it made me smile, and then John was there when you complimented one more woman that’s when this man responded (loud enough for the group to hear) “stop complimenting me like that in front of everybody” and everyone had a good laugh, reminding me of how you always put a smile on people’s faces how you’d crack jokes and make everyone smile later in the evening I saw your buddy ask you if you wanted a drink you agreed on rum so he got some in a syringe and injected it into a tube it’s hard to see you like that, you know # you were always the one cracking the jokes driving to my place in Chicago to practice music with me or joining me at bars for our performances you drove to central Illinois with me to perform music live at a local radio station and before we appeared on the air you kept singing a once popular song because it repeated your wife’s name so yeah, I’m far away and it’s hard to see you like that now when there’s nothing I can do for you # after that reunion I couldn’t call you to tell you how I feel if you could have answered you wouldn’t want to hear it no matter what you were going through you didn’t want to hear others tell you of how seeing you made them suffer how selfish of them they’re not the ones knocking on death’s door everyone else needs to keep on their happy face it’s the least we could do # when I heard you just died I had the hardest time not crying but if I started crying, I’d stop myself what am I doing he’s no longer in prison while his body is destroyed cellularly I have to keep telling myself, look, I know this hurts you but you knew it would eventually happen and now he’s no longer in pain I’d be living at that point where I’m always about to cry until I was asked, What Would Warren Want? and I’d stop and then I’d say he’d want me to laugh he’d want me to be happy just give me a minute because after seeing such bad things happen to such good people I need to pull myself together before I can put a smile on my face again Copyright © 2011 Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.