poem Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash, a poem about destruction, melding the Periodic Table poem Astatine withe the older poem Fantastic Car Crash, By Chicago Poet and performance artist Janet Kuypers, Astatine poem, Fantastic Car Crash poem, road trip poem, cruise control poem, expressway poem, inside poem, calm poem, traffic poem, decay poem, radioactive poem, destruction poem, explosion poem, short-term flash poem, microscopic poem

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Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash
Janet Kuypers
1/10/13
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 of you
and I know what you’re made of.
There’s no such thing as a calm with you.
You are a fantastic car crash.
You stop traffic in both directions —
In your twisted way, you come from the decay
of others... And what do you leave
in your wake? More radioactive destruction,
as all around you slows down to stare,
and all the gapers gawk, as the decay grows.
Everything shatters with you, you know.
It’s a spectacular explosion,
until your instability corrodes you down
to the basics in the world. And yeah,
what was left of you after you were gone
is so much more stable than what you were,
but still, I’d duck and cover
as metal flies through the air. 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,
and even though I’m careful,
I’m still picking up the pieces
after dealing with only fractional amounts of you.
I’ve only been able to infer what you’re like
by knowing your brethren,
while I’m stuck here, picking up the pieces,
and I’m still on my knees.
The glass cuts into my hands,
because it was only after so much
of your destruction that you left blood
dripping down to the street.
think of this as your contribution,
this radioactive short-term flash of decay...
think of this as your contribution
to this fantastic car crash
that is you, that is me,
that is us.
I’ve tried to learn, I’ve tried to study
these microscopic parts of you
to make sense of you...
But whether or not you ever leave enough,
despite your destruction,
despite this decay of yours,
I have to keep reminding myself
that when it comes to you,
This is what you do.
This happens all the time.
So,
I to 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.

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Like Janet Kuypers’ writing on any of these links below:

See YouTube video
of Kuypers reading this poem 1/11/13 at Poetry Love Letters in Chicago (from the Canon camera)

See YouTube video
of Kuypers reading the 3 poems Astatine in a Fantastioc Car Crash, Argon and the twitter-length poem Lost my Breath, 1/11/13 at Poetry Love Letters in Chicago (Canon camera)

See YouTube video
of Kuypers reading the 3 poems Astatine in a Fantastioc Car Crash, Argon and the twitter-length poem Lost my Breath, 1/11/13 at Poetry Love Letters in Chicago (Android camera)

See YouTube video
of Kuypers reading this poem 1/11/13 at Poetry Love Letters in Chicago (from the Canon cameram with the Edge Detection filter)

See YouTube video
of Kuypers reading this poem 1/11/13 at Poetry Love Letters in Chicago (from the Canon cameram with the Posterize filter)

See YouTube video
of Kuypers reading this poem 3/18/13 at the Frankenstone art center in Chicago (Canon)

See YouTube video
of Kuypers performing 5 poems (including this one) in a poetry reading to “Make people Think” 3/18/13 at Chicago’s Frankenstone art center (Canon)

See YouTube video of Kuypers reading the poem Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash live 6/5/13 as the intro to the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Sony)

See YouTube video of Kuypers reading the poem Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash live 6/5/13 as the intro to the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (Canon)

See YouTube video
of Kuypers hosting the open mic 6/5/13 at Gallery Cabaret’s the Café Gallery in Chicago, which contains this writing

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading this Periodic Table poem Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash in her Opening Act feature (with music by the HA!Man of South Africa, with “amongst hills”), live in Chicago 10/4/13 (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her Periodic Table bonus poem Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash live 2/23/14 at Chemistry, Poetry and a Brat in Kenosha WI at the Brat Stop (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her Periodic Table bonus poem Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash live 2/23/14 at Chemistry, Poetry and a Brat in Kenosha WI at the Brat Stop (C, Posterize filter)

See YouTube video
of Robin Fine reading Janet Kuypers’ poem Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash live 7/22/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (recorded with a Canon fs200 video camera)

See YouTube video
of Robin Fine reading Janet Kuypers’ poem Astatine in a Fantastic Car Crash live 7/22/15 at the open mic the Café Gallery in Chicago (filmed with a Canon fs200, with a Hard Light filter)

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