poem White Phosphorus, a Bonus poem from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” series, #15, P, By Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers — White Phosphorus poem, Periodic Table poem, Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers poem, www.janetkuypers.com poem, Janet Kuypers poem, bombs poem, Viet Nam poem, white smoke poem, Willie Pete poem, destroy forests poem, volatile poem, war poem, destruction poem

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

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading this Periodic Table poem White Phosphorus in her Opening Act feature (with music by the HA!Man of South Africa, with “on a gallop”), live in Chicago 10/4/13 (C)

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading this Periodic Table poem White Phosphorus in her Opening Act feature (with music by the HA!Man of South Africa, with “on a gallop”), live in Chicago 10/4/13 (S)

Watch YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading eleven Periodic Table poems in her show “Opening Act” with music from the HA!Man of South Africa in Chicago (filmed with the Canon video camera), including this poem

Watch YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading 9 Periodic Table poems in her show “Opening Act” with music from the HA!Man of South Africa in Chicago (filmed with the Sony video camera), including this poem

Download this poem in the free PDF file
Opening Act chapbook,
w/ Periodic Table of Poetry poems.

See YouTube video 6/24/16 of Janet Kuypers reading 3 Periodic Table poems (that somehow all incorporate the concept somehow of sin), Hydrogen Cyanide, White Phosphorus & Helium Addiction at Georgetown’s Poetry Plus open mic (w/ a Canon Power Shot).

See YouTube video 6/24/16 of Janet Kuypers reading 3 Periodic Table poems (that somehow all incorporate the concept somehow of sin), Hydrogen Cyanide, White Phosphorus & Helium Addiction at Georgetown’s Poetry Plus open mic (this video filmed w/ a Sony camera).

White Phosphorus
Janet Kuypers
Bonus poem from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” series, #15, P
9/30/13)
Seeing bombs from Viet Nam
and the white smoke rising —
with each bomb exploding,
I knew
that smoke...
It was Willie Pete,
white Phosphorus —
you couldn’t put it out
once it started burning.
This stuff would
destroy the forests
foreign to our
U.S. troops.
I know you can’t understand.
But I wanted you to know
that I haven’t felt close
to anyone
or anything
in years.
It sounds sick,
but seeing that footage,
seeing that white smoke
from that file footage,
it brought it all back to me.
It brought the emotions
flooding back to me
like it was yesterday.
Everything that seems
so volatile
about that war,
in a way
has become a part of me,
right down to my DNA.
You look at your tv screen
and think it makes no sense,
but...
It’s a part of me.
I know I’m old now,
I know it’s only
a small part of me,
but I know I need it.
I can’t explain why,
but I do.
When you see the destruction
of Willie Pete...
Yeah, we knew what it was,
white Phosphorus,
but all of us called it that,
it was just easier
to say it then,
but...
When you see the destruction
of that white Phosphorus,
you think of it
on some existential level,
like “oh, violence is bad,”
but when I see those
bombs going off,
and when I think of
what it was like
to live in that war,
that Willie Pete —
that white Phosphorus —
to us, that was our key
to getting through that hell.
You can’t understand,
but that
was the closest we had
to getting out alive.

Phosphorus

White Phosphorus

White Phosphorus, Viet Nam Willie Pete

my hand to an anim of jkchair