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video videonot yet rated
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers performing her Periodic Table bonus poem Potassium Chloride live 11/19/14 at Chicago’s open mic the Café Gallery (Canon)
video videonot yet rated
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers performing her Periodic Table bonus poem Potassium Chloride live 11/19/14 at Chicago’s open mic the Café Gallery (Sony, Edge Det. filter)
video See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ 2 poems Arsenic and Syphilis & Juxtaposition, or Irony? from memory; then she read her 2 Periodic Table poems Potassium Chloride and Thallium at Georgetown’s Poetry Plus open mic at Cianfrani’s 2/26/16 (this video was filmed from a Canon Power Shot camera; posted on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr). #janetkuyperspoetry #janetkuypersbookreading #janetkuypersperiodictablepoem #janetkuypers #janetkuypersperiodictablepoetry
video See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers’ 2 poems Arsenic and Syphilis & Juxtaposition, or Irony? from memory; then she read her 2 Periodic Table poems Potassium Chloride and Thallium at Georgetown’s Poetry Plus open mic at Cianfrani’s 2/26/16 (this video was filmed from a Nikon Coolpix S7000 camera; posted on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr). #janetkuyperspoetry #janetkuypersbookreading #janetkuypersperiodictablepoem #janetkuypers #janetkuypersperiodictablepoetry
video Enjoy this YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her v206 4/23 Down in the Dirt issue/book “Floating Island” poems “Oganesson, bending time inside” (which is also in her book “Twitter Verse Periodic Table Poetry”), “Potassium Chloride” (which is also in her book “Periodic Table Poetry”), “Only If She Had a Choice” and “Evil of What They’ve Done” (which is also in the 2023 CyberWit.net book “Testament”) during her “Poetic License 4/2/23 global open mic” she hosted through a Zoom meeting and a Facebook event page (filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera; posted on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr). video This was also a Facebook live video stream (on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, and Tumblr). #janetkuyperspoetry #janetkuyperstwitterverseperiodictablepoem #janetkuypers #janetkuypersperiodictablepoem #janetkuyperspoeticlicense #janetkuypersbookreading #janetkuyperswomensrights

Potassium Chloride

Janet Kuypers
(bonus poem from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” series, based on Potassium, #19, K)
10/25/14

Once worked for a company
who stopped selling their drugs
to state correctional facilities

who used them in cocktails
to kill their prisoners. The company
didn’t have the moral issue —

but religious and political
groups did, and companies
couldn’t justify selling drugs

as sedatives to hospitals
when those same drugs
were used to kill people.

Then I learned that in the cocktail,
pentobarbital was the sedative,
pavilon was the paralytic agent,

and Potassium Chloride killed them.
So I instantly remembered
that us humans need Potassium,

but nobody will sell supplements
because too much Potassium
could easily kill a person.

So, too much of an element
that we need for life
can kill us. Fascinating.

But it’s not straight Potassium
that they use in lethal injections,
it’s Potassium Chloride —

so I wondered, but why
is it not just straight Potassium?
That’s when I heard

that if you take Potassium straight
it would burn, so they use this
metal halide of Potassium with chlorine.

How nice of them, because it would
be cruel if prisoners were in pain
before we killed them. That would be

cruel of us.

#

More than a decade after my state
imposed a moratorium on executions,
then the death penalty was abolished.

And I know the death penalty
costs us taxpayers much more money
than keeping prisoners alive for life.

The death penalty’s not a deterrent,
and the death penalty does take
innocent lives from wrongful convictions.

But all that’s stuck in my head
right now is the Potassium Chloride,
things our body needs, to kills us.

I reflect on the late-night leg cramps
because we don’t get enough Potassium.
Chloride’s needed for metabolism,

and Potassium’s one of the most
important electrolytes in our body.
Still, too much of it can kill us.

It must, somehow, makes sense
that we humans take these elements
and use them as an instrument of death.

I’m afraid I know how us humans think,
so,
of course. It makes perfect sense.

 

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Potassium Potassium Potassium Potassium Potassium


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