My erstwhile dreams of love surround
Our hearts and minds and souls.
Our eagerness at last has found
What satisfies and yet cajoles.
Inspired to ever greater heights,
We live and love and breathe.
Fixed clearly, hope within our sights
Our inner selves we now unsheathe.
Stricken by our sense of glee,
Pale sorrow takes to flight.
In love, our love-filled eyes can see
A world of life and light.
One heart speaks to its counterpart,
United, they bid the night depart.
Richard James
***
This corn is just corn
and the words are just words
sitting on a page like a barn in a field
and behind the barn, a boy
among the chickens
with a stick for gathering the cows
on a path worn by cows walking in a line.
Heaa up there
He waves the stick.
The sun shines among shadows.
The wind blows.
The birds don’t rustle
because they’ve seen this painting.
The corn is just corn
and the words are just words
sitting on a page like the plow
being pulled pulled by the mule.
Gee
Haw
Whoa
Come up there.
In continuing with the tradition of the annual meetings of the Poetry Comb (started on the last Sunday of April in Chicago), Janet Kuypers decided to go sponsor Austin’s 2018 Poetry Bomb at Graffiti Wall at Castle Hill outdoors for her Austin, TX installment of this annual Chicago poetry tradition on April 29th, 2017, starting at 3:30 in the afternoon. She invited people to got together to read poetry at a place that is not an open mic, to just share poetry with passers-by — and people did go there to join her to read poetry — usually Janet Kuypers would not go to the same venue more than once, but because the Baylor Street Art Wall (the Graffiti Wall) was being shut down this year, Janet Kuypers had to come back to this iconic location one more time.
See YouTube video from 4/29/18 of Janet Kuypers reading her prose “Type “A” Person”, then her poems “Venture to the Unknown” and “I’m Thinking About Myself Too Much” from her performance art collection book “Chapter 38 v1” toward the end of the Austin 2018 Poetry Bomb at the Baylor Street Art Wall (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera).
See YouTube video from 4/29/18 of Janet Kuypers reading her prose “Type “A” Person”, then her poems “Venture to the Unknown” and “I’m Thinking About Myself Too Much” from her performance art collection book “Chapter 38 v1” toward the end of the Austin 2018 Poetry Bomb at the Baylor Street Art Wall (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
See a 36+ minute YouTube video of Janet Kuypers and Thom Woodruff going back and forth with poetry; where Janet Kuypers read her poems “Helping Men in Public Places”, “I Want”, and “Last Before Extinction”, then John Yotko read a poem he just wrote the day before, then Janet Kuypers read her poems “Warren Stories” and “Kurt Irons”, then Thom spoke, then Janet Kuypers read her poems “Never Did the Same”, “All These Reminders”, “Who You Tell Your Dreams To”, and “You and Me and Your Girlfriend”, then Thom spoke, then Janet Kuypers read her poems “My Mother My Mother My Mother”, then her prose “NASA Project”, and finally her poem “Moonlight”, all read from her performance art collection book “Chapter 38 v1” at the official beginning 4/29/18 of the Austin installment of the 2018 Poetry Bomb at the Baylor Street Art Wall (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera).
See a 36+ minute YouTube video of Janet Kuypers and Thom Woodruff going back and forth with poetry; where Janet Kuypers read her poems “Helping Men in Public Places”, “I Want”, and “Last Before Extinction”, then John Yotko read a poem he just wrote the day before, then Janet Kuypers read her poems “Warren Stories” and “Kurt Irons”, then Thom spoke, then Janet Kuypers read her poems “Never Did the Same”, “All These Reminders”, “Who You Tell Your Dreams To”, and “You and Me and Your Girlfriend”, then Thom spoke, then Janet Kuypers read her poems “My Mother My Mother My Mother”, then her prose “NASA Project”, and finally her poem “Moonlight”, all read from her performance art collection book “Chapter 38 v1” at the official beginning 4/29/18 of the Austin installment of the 2018 Poetry Bomb at the Baylor Street Art Wall (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “Everything was Alive and Dying” and “Communication” from her performance art collection book “Chapter 38 v1” before the official beginning 4/29/18 of the Austin installment of the 2018 Poetry Bomb at the Baylor Street Art Wall (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera).
See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “Everything was Alive and Dying” and “Communication” from her performance art collection book “Chapter 38 v1” before the official beginning 4/29/18 of the Austin installment of the 2018 Poetry Bomb at the Baylor Street Art Wall (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
See YouTube from 4/29/18 of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “Coquinas” and “How Do I Explain It” from her performance art collection book “Chapter 38 v1” before the official beginning of the Austin installment of the 2018 Poetry Bomb at the Baylor Street Art Wall (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix T56 camera).
See YouTube from 4/29/18 of Janet Kuypers reading her poems “Coquinas” and “How Do I Explain It” from her performance art collection book “Chapter 38 v1” before the official beginning of the Austin installment of the 2018 Poetry Bomb at the Baylor Street Art Wall (this video was filmed from a Panasonic Lumix 2500 camera).
Janet Kuypers was live — at Baylor Street Art Wall.
