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

Order this iTunes track from the poetry audio CD Hope Chest In The Attic 13 Years of Poetry & Prose ...Or order the entire CD set from iTunes:

Listen to this track off the CD Live at the Cafe, now available in a 3 CD set through iTunes.

Watch this video: (2:41) This 1990s film is from the Internet Archive

Watch this YouTube video (2:47)

Watch the YouTube video live 08/27/05 at Poetry Fest

Watch this complete video: 12:22, of this poem in the entire 2005 Chicago Poetry Fest show on video (This film’s at the Internet Archive)

Listen (3:44) (mixed 11/05/09) to this poetry, combined with GUMBO jazz from the HA!Man of South Africa creating “from Chicago the South Africa”

Watch this YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem the Muse, the Messiah at Poetry’s “Love Letter” in Chicago 5/8/15 (filmed with a Canon fs200 camera)

Watch this YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem the Muse, the Messiah at Poetry’s “Love Letter” in Chicago 5/8/15 (filmed with a Canon Power Shot camera)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems the Muse, the Messiah and the Cycle at Poetry’s “Love Letter” in Chicago 5/8/15 (filmed with a Canon fs200 camera)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems the Muse, the Messiah and the Cycle at Poetry’s “Love Letter” in Chicago 5/8/15 (filmed with a Canon Power Shot)

the Muse, the Messiah I I can see you now hunched over, pouring yourself into your work, scattered papers, dim lights flooding white over the glaring screen, in your otherwise darkened corner of the world. And I know you can feel me now, feel me rushing in through the window that you leave only slightly open at night, rushing in with a faint whistle, circling around your neck, curling up around your jaw, opening your mouth so slightly. You can feel my rush chilling your teeth. You tilt your head back, closing your tired eyes from your problems, from your future in front of you, on those pages, on that screen, under that white light. You let me open your mouth more and more, you feel me swirling around your tongue, down your throat, into your lungs, like smoke from a clove cigarette when you hold your breath to feel the high, feel the ecstasy just a little longer, or like steam rushing down your throat when you take a deep breath the summer morning after a heavy fog. You open your eyes. You lick your lips. I make you do that, I make you forget your world. You can feel me there, you can’t escape me. I’m there. I’m your muse. II And I’m sitting in my apartment, and when I reach out my arm shadows of my hand stretch across the wall. There is no music, but I begin to move my hands, like a ceremony, as if to a drummed out rhythm, like the pant of a mistress as she walks down the hotel steps into her car after seeing her savior, like waves at the sea slowly crashing at the shoreline. The phases of the moon are changing, and the waves are crashing with more and more intensity, with more and more power, faster and faster. And at this very moment you walk down a street somewhere, it is daylight, and you see the white moon peering toward you from the sky. The moon was looking for you. It wanted to watch you. You divert your eyes, step off the curb, and for no reason walk in the middle of the street. There is no traffic. You are safe. And the moon watches the stride of your step, and the moon watches my hand, and the moon hears the rhythmic pant of intensity, and the moon rises the water. We feel the drumming beat. The phases of the moon are changing. There is no reason why you should question this. You can feel me. I will keep you safe. I will keep you alive. I’m your messiah. Copyright Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.

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