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

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.

Ununpentium, “Periodic Table ” poem by Chicago poet Janet Kuypers

Ununpentium

Janet Kuypers

from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#115, Uup)*

A month before you died,
on the day that she was born,
that was very possibly the last day
I talked to you.
I know you loved me,
but in the grand scheme of things,
you had to know
this relationship couldn’t last.

When you first asked me out,
My answer was quick:
I think it was
a hundred milliseconds
before I said no.
You had to know
that with a half-life so short,
we didn’t stand a chance.

And on that day, February second,
I sat on the other side of the country
at a bar with a man
who introduced me to philosophy.
It was good to see him,
to remind myself
of how I wanted to live.
Remembering how chemical reactions
were supposed to last,
I then realized
the ununtended consequences
of this pent up friction
between us.

Try to smash the right
ions from us together,
see what happens.
See if anything survives
long enough to even measure.

You know you had an uphill battle with me.

#

A hundred and fifteen days
after February 2nd,
three months after you died,
that was when I almost died too.
Because even though you bombarded me
with your high excitation energy,
this hot fusion would never work.

And look at what was left of me.

I didn’t want you to die.
I didn’t want you to be destroyed.
Did you seal your fate
by trying to bond with a part of me,
or should I have trusted my first instincts
so that your destruction would hurt me less.

I wish I could have told you
that this systematic elemental
bombardment of us,
this radioactive reaction,
was only temporary,
this doesn’t occur in nature,
we had to work so hard
to merely try to make something of us.
And as much as I hate to admit it,
I wonder
if this
was never meant to be.

* A Russian and American scientist team bombarded americium-243 with calcium-48 ions to produce ununpentium, historically known as eka-bismuth. Ununpentium is a temporary IUPAC systematic element name derived from the digits 115, where “un” is from the Latin “unum-” for one, and “Pent-” is from the Greek word for 5. Scientists usually just say element 115. Discovered February 2nd, 2004, it has a half life of 200 milliseconds, with decay at 100 milliseconds. (“Hot” fusion reactions deal with the synthesis of nuclei of ununpentium at high excitation energy.)

Ununoctium, “Periodic Table” poem by Chicago poet Janet Kuypers

Ununoctium

Janet Kuypers

from the “ Periodic Table of Poetry” series (#118, Uuo)

I first only heard of you a decade ago.
You seemed so reactive, so unstable,
and yet I was so attracted to you.
I should have known better.

I should have known that
your radioactive personality would
cause your destruction, so I guess
I’m glad I’m not around to see it.

I have only seen you three or four times
since you started to self-destruct,
so from afar I can only guess
what you’re made of, or what you can do.

But still, I can’t get you out of my mind,
so I’m left here to guess about you,
based on what little I could ever infer
about you. This is all you leave me.

When I saw you before, you seemed
kind, and noble when you were with me…
But that was before I saw what you
were made of, how hard you could be.

So much emanated from you with me,
but you’ve systematically shattered
any preconceived notions of who you are,
that I don’t even know what to believe.

You’re that explosive, and I’ve been
unsuccessful in any attempts to synthesize
with you… It’s funny, you seem
like you want to be discovered,

but I can only predict, calculate, or
extrapolate what I think you can do.
If only you would let me crack your shell
so I could see what you’re made of…