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

Listen in different versions: on the 5 CD set the Chaotic Collection

Listen to the DMJ Art Connection, off the CD Indian Flux or Listen to & download this from the DMJ Art Connection

Listen to the CD recording of this piece from the CD (used for the show) Changing Gears

Get this studio track from the CD release based on the first Janet Kuypers performance art show (at Red Lion 8/14/97) Seeing Things Differently

See this archive.org film (8:28, 05/15/07)

Watch this YouTube video (8:06, 05/15/07) This video was also published in the Hyperbolic Poetry Ezine (08/14/08 issue) and World-Class-Poetry.com

Watch the YouTube video (6:32) live at Changing Gears 06/17/03

See the entire performance of the live show Changing Gears 06/17/03, hosted by the Internet Archive

Watch this YouTube video (3:22) from the Poetry Fest 2006 Lake County Poets Society practice performance, live 08/22/06

Listen (7:49) (mixed 04/24/08) to this poetry, combined with music from the HA!Man of South Africa creating “from Chicago the South Africa”

see the entire performance at the Lake County 08/22/06 Prep Show live, via the Internet Archive

Listen to the full show or the poem read live as the final scheduled feature 08/26/06 for the Society of Professional Journalists show thru Chicago Poetry Fest ‘06.

Order this iTunes track: from Chaots in Motion (a 6 CD set)...Or order the entire CD set from iTunes or Napster CD: CD:

Watch this YouTube video of this poem read live in Chicago 09/12/03 at the “the Cycle of Life” DvA art gallery show

Or watch the FULL video from the Internet Archive of the whole live the Cycle of Life DvA art gallery 09/12/03 Chicago show

Listen to the live track (1:54, 09/12/03) or listen to the studio track (1:32, 10/25/06) from the DvA Art Gallery Chicago 09/12/03 performance The Cycle of Life.

Watch this YouTube video listen: (8:58) in Chicago w/ the HA!man of South Africa on cello, the Café 10/05/10

Watch this YouTube video listen: (8:00) live 10/08/10 at the Chicago Public Library (Avalon Branch), with cello from the HA!man of South Africa

Watch this YouTube video 03/05/11 from the TV camera in Lake Villa at Swing State, live in her show Letting it All Out

Watch this YouTube video listen: (6:47, of just the poem) 03/05/11 in Lake Villa at Swing State, live in her “Visual Nonsense” show Letting it All Out

Watch this YouTube video of Kuypers from the TV monitor in the “Letting it All Out” show, live in Lake Villa 03/05/11 at Swing State

Watch this YouTube video listen: (34:48) to the Letting it All Out show, live in Lake Villa’s Swing State 03/05/11 with this piece

Watch the YouTube video Published in her book Close Cover Before Striking, read (for future audio CD release) 06/28/11 on WZRD radio, from the main camera

Watch the YouTube video Published in her book Close Cover Before Striking, read (for future audio CD release) 06/28/11 on WZRD radio, from the mini camera

See feature-length YouTube video 06/26/11 of the majority of the WZRD radio show with her reading poetry (including this poem) from the main camera

See feature-length YouTube video 06/26/11 of ~45 minutes of the WZRD radio show with her reading poetry (including this poem) from the mini cam

Watch the YouTube video of this Kuypers reading the poem live 1/26/13 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (Canon)

Watch the YouTube video from IPB: the feature 06/29/11 of Impromptu Poetry on the Beach

See feature-length YouTube video of many poems read at Beach Poets from IPB: the Impromptu Poetry on the Beach feature 06/29/11

Order this iTunes track from the poetry music CD the Elements ...Or order the entire CD set from iTunes:

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading the poem Everything was Alive and Dying live 8/28/13 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her Periodic Table poem Everything Was Alive and Dying from her book Finally, Literature for the Snotty and Elite live 11/20/13 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem Everything Was Alive and Dying from her book Finally, Literature for the Snotty and Elite live 11/20/13 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (S)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading 2 sets of 3 poems each, including the poems Death is a Dog, Everything Was Alive and Dying and Fantastic Car Crash in set 1, and Too Far, the Burning and Under the Sea in set 2, 8/11/15 at Quenchers open mic in Chicago (Canon fs200)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading 2 sets of 3 poems each, including the poems Death is a Dog, Everything Was Alive and Dying and Fantastic Car Crash in set 1, and Too Far, the Burning and Under the Sea in set 2, 8/11/15 at Quenchers open mic in Chicago (Canon PS)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers in her 9/2/15 show “Like a Lamb to the Slaughter” in her feature at Poetry At The Gallery Cabaret in Chicago (Canon fs200), with her poems Entering the Lake of Fire, unless it happens to you, Open Book, electromagnetism, an edited version of the poem Everything was Alive and Dying, Death Takes Many Forms, and Under the Sea.

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers in her 9/2/15 show “Like a Lamb to the Slaughter” in her feature at Poetry At The Gallery Cabaret in Chicago (Canon Power Shot), with her poems Entering the Lake of Fire, unless it happens to you, Open Book, electromagnetism, an edited version of her poem Everything was Alive and Dying, Death Takes Many Forms, and Under the Sea.

Download poems in the free chapbook Like a Lamb to the Slaughter of the NEW poems read 9/2/15 at the Café Gallery show in Chicago

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems Everything was Alive and Dying and On a High Horse Like This 1/10/16 at the Austin open mic Kick Butt Poetry (from a Canon Power Shot).

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems Everything was Alive and Dying and On a High Horse Like This 1/10/16 at the Austin open mic Kick Butt Poetry (from a Nikon CoolPix S7000).

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers saying part of her poem Everything was Alive and Dying about bad dreams, then listing 2016 Republican candidates for President 4/3/16 at the Austin open mic Kick Butt Poetry (Canon Power Shot, w/ a Threshold filter).

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers saying part of her poem Everything was Alive and Dying about bad dreams, then listing 2016 Republican candidates for President 4/3/16 at the Austin open mic Kick Butt Poetry (from a Canon Power Shot camera).

everything was alive and dying Janet Kuypers I I had a dream the other night I walked out of the city to a forest and there were neatly paved bicycle paths and trash cans every fifty feet and trash every ten and then a raccoon came right up to me she had a few little baby raccoons following her, it was so cute, I wish I had my camera and she spoke to me, she said, thank you thank you for not buying furs, I know you humans are pretty smart, you have to be able to figure out a way to keep yourselves warm without killing me and I said, you know they don’t do it for warmth, they do it for fashion, they do it for power. And she said I know. But thank you anyway. II Then I walked a little further and there was a stray cat she still had her little neon collar on with a little bell and she walked a few feet, stretched her front paws, oh, she looked so darling and then she walked right up to me and she said thank you and I said for what? And she just looked at me for a moment, her little ears were standing straight up, and then she said, you know, in some countries I’m considered a delicacy. And I said how do you know of these things? And she said when somebody eats one of you word gets around and then she looked up at me again and said, and in some countries the cow is sacred. Wouldn’t they love to see how you humans prepare them for slaughter, how you hang them upside-down and slit their throats so their still beating hearts will drain out all the blood for you and she said isn’t it funny how arbitrary your decision to eat meat is? and I said, don’t put me in that category, I don’t eat meat and she said I know III And I walked deeper in to the forest managed to get away from the picnic tables and the outhouses that lined the forest edges the roaring cars gave way to the rustling of tree branches crackling of fallen leaves under my step when the wind tunneled through the wind whistled and sang as it flew past the bark and leaves I walked listened to the crack of dead branches under my feet and I felt a branch against my shoulder I looked up and I could hear the trees speak to me, and they said thank you for letting the endangered animals live here amongst us we do think they’re so pretty and it would be a shame to see them go and thank you for recycling paper because you’re saving us for just a little while longer we’ve been on this planet for so long embedded in the earth we do have souls, you know you can hear it in our songs we cling with our roots we don’t want to let go and I said, but I don’t do much, I don’t do enough and they said we know but we’ll take what we can get IV and I woke up in a sweat V so tell me, Bob Dole so tell me, Newt Gingrich so tell me, Pat Bucannan so tell me, Jesse Helms if you woke up from that dream would you be in a sweat, too? VI Do you even know why we should save the rain forest? Oh preserve the delicate balance, just tear the whole forest down, what difference does it make? Put in some orange groves so our concentrate orange juice can be a little cheaper did you know that medical researchers have a very, very hard time trying to come up with synthetic cures for diseases on their own? It helps them out a little if they can first find the substance in nature. A tree that appears in the rain forest may be the only one of its species. Or one like it may be two miles away, instead of right next to it. I wonder how many cures we’ve destroyed to plant more orange groves. Serves us right. VII You know my motives aren’t selfless I know that these things are worthwhile in my life I’d like to find a cure to these diseases before I die of them and I’m not just a vegetarian because I think it’s wrong to kill an animal unless I have to I also know the excess protein pulls the calcium away from my bones and gives me osteoporosis and the excess fat gives me heart attacks and I also know that we could be feeding ten times more people with the same resources used for meat production You know, I know you’re looking at me and calling me an extremist but I’m sitting here, looking around me looking at the destruction caused by family values and thinking the right, moral, non-violent decisions are also those extreme ones VIII everything is linked here we destroy our animals so we can be wasteful and violent we destroy our plants we destroy our earth we’re even destroying our air we wreak havoc on the soil, on the atmosphere we dump our wastes into our lakes we pump aerosol cans and exhaust pipes and you tell me I’m extreme and these animals and forests keep calling out to me the oceans, the wind and I’m beginning to think that we just keep doing it because we don’t know how to stop and deep inside we feel the pain of all that we’ve killed and we try to control it by popping a chemical-filled pain-killer we live through the guilt by taking caffeine, nicotine, morphine and we keep ourselves thin with saccharin and we keep ourselves sane with our alcohol poisoning and when that’s not enough maybe a line of coke maybe shoot ourselves in the head in front of the mirror in the master bedroom or maybe just take some pills walk into the garage, turn on the car and just fall asleep in the wild you have no power over anyone else now that we’re civilized we create our own wild maybe when we have all this power the only choice we have is to destroy ourselves and so we do Copyright Janet Kuypers. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission.

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