Ruins beside a tree
Did they argue or sing
as they dug the root cellar,
as they made these bricks?
They lived their lives
beside this old oak.
I can hear their laughter,
the children calling to each other
as they ran beneath the limbs.
You have to be an old oak tree to remember the laugh,
to hear them run beneath you.
Someone has moved the pile and have built
a new house beside the tree now
pioneers of the internet
the cell phone
and they argue about the bricks
that built our country under that oak.
Is that hope I see in the distance,
old tree, or
a mirage of hope?
See YouTube video 7/25/15 of Janet Kuypers interviewed and reading poetry on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed from a Canon fs200 video camera)
See YouTube video of the first 16 minutes of the Janet Kuypers interviewed on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed from a Canon Power Shot camera)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haikucover from her book Bon Voyage! live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haikucover from her book Bon Voyage! live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera, video flipped, cropped and saturated)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haikudon’t from her book Bon Voyage! live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haikudon’t from her book Bon Voyage! live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera, video flipped, cropped and saturated)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haikupoor from her book Bon Voyage! live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haikupoor from her book Bon Voyage! live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera, video flipped, cropped and saturated)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her haikuVisakhapatnam from her book Bon Voyage! live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera, video flipped, cropped and saturated)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem On a High Horse Like This from her book Bon Voyage! live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera, video flipped, cropped and saturated)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem ever leave me live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera)
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poem ever leave me live 7/25/15 on Chicago’s WZRD 88.3 FM radio (filmed with a Canon fs200 video camera, video flipped, cropped and saturated)
This is a poem I wrote while sitting at a white castle restaurant here in Tennessee. It was December, and early Saturday morning, when I heard the sound of a train in the distance while reading the life of Vincent van Gogh. It was inspiring.
Sound of a Distant Train by Agnes Thomas
Here is original artwork by Agnes:
Girl with Pen and Paper by Agnes ThomasHere’s another one of my original works of art. I did this one because I’m also Creek Indian, I want to do something that reflected the strength, I saw on my father who is also Creek Indian as well as his mother who was full-blooded Creek Indian. I hope you like it.
Agnes Sarje Cherokee Rose Thomas is a poet and artist from Murfreesboro Tennessee.
I’m not all that political. I have no record. I could not have lived my life as a mechanical engineer with one. The records we are creating with our outrageous number of people in corporate run prisons in the U.S. is racist . It is the sharecropping shanty shack of our times.. It is excluding large segments of our population.
When we create so many casual “felons”, mostly black and hispanic, we lose the ability to tell who is indeed dangerous and too many of our citizens end up living outside of our system.
I wrote this song and have assigned a Creative Commons license.
Joe Clark
Oh I can’t get a job cause
I sold that weed
to that cop in
ninety three
On the piece of paper they always ask me
have you had a felony
I was fighting my war on poverty
when the war on drugs got me
now there’s no work at all for me
no Social Security
Oh they threw my tail in the company jail
and threw away the key
so I told her to find her someone else
and forget about me
So I work at outside in hot and in cold
and we live in this trailer park
and when people ask me who I am
I say I’m….I’m Joe Clark
So I’ll build you a fence
and work in your yard
if ever there was a worker
that was Joe Clark
so if you’ll give me a chance
I won’t be a slob
I’m Joe Clark
and I need a job
Oh they threw my tail in the company jail
and they threw away the key
so I told her to find her someone else
and forget about me
