Xenon, poem from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” by Chicago poet Janet Kuypers

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Xenon

Janet Kuypers

from the “Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#054, Xe)
4/27/13

I don’t care
that you’re no
Zena warrior princess,
I just can’t stand
those high-intensity
headlights of yours
at night.

You may numb me
from my pain
if I breathe you in,
but the only good
your brightness may do
is that your excitement
may add color and life
to my plasma tee vee.

But, you know,
if I love outer space,
I should like the fact
that you are the propellant
in Ion drives —
because if Xenon is the ion,
it can be shot out of a rocket
in outer space,
forcing the rocket
to move faster and faster
through the void
of outer space.

Then again,
I’m not going to outer space,
and there’s no funding
to get us humans
into outer space
right now anyway…

So I’m sorry.
you may think
you’ve got some
bright ideas,
but when I’m driving
at night,
sometimes I think
you should keep
some of your ideas
in check.

Post by John Yotko.

I am the clown by Dandelion de La Rue

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flatsm

I am the clown

On the red bicycle

Riding through the foggy streets

Blaring my little horn

Laughing wildly, madly

at all the

irrelevancies

And absurdities.

And the reverent quests

For self-importance.

The clown can also

watch the dance,

The struts and strides

And smiling well dressed

Charms of those who

Claim to know Reality.

And when it gets too Serious

He can jump up shouting,

His red nose on his face

And orange hair and big white mouth

Permanently smiling

And he can shout

But it’s absurd! It’s all just

So absurd!

And ride his bicycle away.

Cat Haiku

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So, you call that thing
Your ‘cat carrier”. I call
These my blades of death.

White Phosphorus, poem from the “Periodic Table of poetry” series by Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers

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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.