Janet Kuypers
Build Your Own Cross-
why be a carpenter
and build your own cross
when Walmart
can do it for you
selling mass produced
2’ tall
wooden crosses
with glued plastic flowers
to hammer into dirt
at roadsides
for accident victims
why be a carpenter
why build your own cross
when Walmart can do it for you
—-
Thinking. I Hate That.-
I think the reason why I’m doing this
is because I’m lonely.
I’m sorry. I’m rationalizing.
I look over and see the bartender’s yellow bracelet
and I imagine having a conversation
and I ask him if there’s a cancer story
and he says no
and he asks about my blue bracelet
(which happens to have ALS at the top for us to see)
and I have stories with MY cancer bracelet
that I’m not even wearing,
which I won’t get into
and I think about the cancer
and he asks me about the ALS
and then I start thinking.
I hate that.
—-
Left With a Hole-
you ever see tee vee shows, or in the movies
how some protagonist would fall into a coma
i don’t know from what, a gun shot, a car crash
well, every time they wake up from their coma
and they’re under from like four weeks to four years
they come to and they’re mentally just fine
they talk in complete sentences,
and they remember what happened to them
right up until the catastrophe
But let me be the voice of experience
in the real world, that’s not the way it goes
you don’t remember what happened right before
the coma began, you’ll wake up confused
because your long-term memory never got the chance
to save your short-term memories from that fateful day
when you wake up, you’ll have to train yourself
to walk and talk and eat again
you’ll fall out of your hospital bed trying to leave
you’ll want to kill the people who did this to you
you’ll want to scream your story to the world
as they put you in restraints at night
you know, for your own protection
you’ll want to rip that food tube out of you,
but you’ll be afraid to put food in your mouth.
look, you’ll have to remind yourself
that you’ve done this before, it’s not hard, everyone does it
put some food on a fork, put it in your mouth,
remove fork, start chewing, and just swallow.
I know it seems strange, but you can do this.
you have to build your life again, piece by piece,
I mean, you did this from scratch when you were a baby,
you’re an adult now, you can retrain yourself
people will ask you if you remember what happened to you
that fateful day, and they’ll think it’s just like the movies
and everyone just snaps out of their coma good as new
you won’t know how to tell them
that you’ll never be as good as new
and nothing you can say will make them understand
that even though you woke up,
those bastards who did this to you, they took so much
that you can’t even remember
the seconds before your life was forever changed for the worse.
you’re left with a hole. they even took your memories
of the last seconds of your life from you
——-
Janet Kuypers is a professional performance artist, a writer, photographer, and a literary magazine editor, while running Scars Publications, which hosts two literary magazines, publishes books and releases CDs. She has had 53 books published (poetry, prose, novels and art), has sung in 3 acoustic bands, and worked with 8 music groups (combining her poetry with music. Her CD releases (38 in 2008) appear at iTunes and other online vendors, and she also produced a monthly iPodCast and an Internet radio station (2005-2009), found through http://scars.tv or http://www.janetkuypers.com. She is also the host of the weekly poetry open mic at the Cafe in Chicago (http://www.chaoticarts.org/thecafe).
