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Poetry Strewn Along Life's Pathways

Francis Kroncke

trewn Along Life’s Pathways

  Francis X. Kroncke

  [email protected]

  First sight

  I’ve never seen the softness of you so

  on display in the ease of your smile, I

  found words choking in my throat, eyes

  too much in their exploration of you, were

  you embarrassed in any way knowing that I

  was rejoicing at having found you here

  in a wisp of a town, a godforsaken smudge on

  the map of...of what?

  my heart, my yearning years, I guess

  you will simply have to step up and

  say, “C’mon!”

  Yes?

  Did you know? Could

  you have understood the moment I...

  forget it, I mean, is it my task to

  teach you, am I your maestro or

  are you my blind mute idiotic guide

  to our unknown heart?

  Idiot!

  Still I see you coming, exiting

  say a car and walking up to my door inquiring

  is this...? and

  of course I say, Why shouldn’t it be? you

  a thousand years younger full of wildness, yet

  waiting for the soothing hand of a tired life, one

  struggling with simply stupid stuff as I rifle through this and

  that trying to lift this up and say Are you there? and other

  idioticisms—

  such a word, it now exists to define me, the elder on

  a rampage for the redhead with blue, no, green eyes, laughing

  at my inadequacies which you simply adore and I fool that I am

  can’t figure out that you’ve already said, “Yes!”

  Confusion

  What? Of course I thought it was her, teenager

  your mother, dancing like wild child we

  laughed twirled sweated and heartbeat just

  an inch from one another in an age of innocence where

  a kiss was near a commitment to marry, laugh

  because I do now, but it is you, daughter, long awaited on

  a scale a landscape inconceivable by me but known to you the

  instant you said Yes this is my time, I will find him, let me go

  so born were you to re-birth my soul in a time

  out of place with all that anyone knows but us—come

  I have waited and am happy that you are here, my

  Beloved.

  Mother and Lover on Visiting Day (Sandstone Federal Prison)

  i had never known the power of words

  that one man could harbor such mastery

  in simple language and robot signs,

  "Okay, let's go you guys."

  we hid behind each other's nakedness

  as our weapons of nightly passion

  inspected, checked, "Okay, bend over"

  he pronounced like the magician with a wand

  as prison Yard hardened sphincters parted

  in salutes to the flag of his indifference

  four short steps away from you

  sequestered in a confessional of flesh

  —Regulation 19 (b) Examination Before Visits—

  we recanted the errors of our individuality,

  awaited his blessing, "Okay, you guys,

  get dressed."

  as I sit beside you

  his words rearrange the intentions of my gazes

  his echo haunts my ears

  "One embrace when you meet. Another when it's over.

  Okay, you guys, let's go."

  when he stole my mother's heart from me

  with a word that made her curtsey

  as if before the Archbishop

  i knew that his blood would always

  be stained upon my fingernails

  that memory would never forgive

  his "Okay, get your arm off her, guy."

  in this cloistered room of the children of violence

  i went to the coffee machine, often

  just to feel the comfort of the coin of the realm

  but it only taught me a hatred of freedom

  mother left us during the last half hour

  and i walked my fingers in musical display

  on your knee, pounding out a tune

  of yearning from my flesh which no longer bleeds

  your departing hugs

  stuck to my ribs like lashes from a whip

  I struggled to find a kiss

  that would say "I'm fine. Don't worry. I love you."

  but my message was aborted by the snap

  of his jealousy, "Okay, guys, time's up!"

  back just four short steps away from you

  —Regulation 19 (c) Examination After Visits—

  he boldly took me fervently to himself

  purged me of the lingering desire I had for you,

  "Okay, guys, get dressed.

  It's over, for now.”

  Hope

  In hope, she comes

  on nights like this, listening to Piaf

  an empty bottle and an empty soul, waiting

  for a refill but no waitress comes, no

  companion to lift my arms and take me home, no

  false hope of finding you, not tonight, no

  I am just a guy lost in eons of longing, no

  sweet kiss from you as you ready to go to bed, no

  wink of the eye and the rise of my excitement, no

  I am just alone, song my mere respite, wine but forgetfulness, not memory, no

  it is as it is, alone, no

  never so without memory, but such fails on the nights I sleep alone, no

  let me be, let me be, I am here just for this moment, all is gone: no

  longer the desire or the need of the universe to continue itself, no

  I am here just eternally in love with you, what else? but love, always love, no

  I do not recede from that, rather I embrace it, I am—no

  I am not—I am all that is no longer that but only this, know

  the time is now and so now I shout down the halls of forgetfulness that I love, no

  that I adore you even in the emptiness of your fleeting shadow, know

  that I live, ever in love with you—yes!

  she comes, in hope

  30 comes after 29

  it's hard to be white and really mad.

  that is, bona fide mad.

  sick eccentric a-bit-off-the-stride,

  yeah, okay

  but not

  mad as madness should really be.

  i've seen the raving assholes

  who would never merit a shit in country club johns

  wag their butts around the playgrounds of really serious philosophers

  who gave their lives

  so that these prison stones could

  hug others not so blessed.

  you don't have to be a mathematical genius

  to know that some gook

  long before Einstein

  figured out place and time warp

  relationships

  while chanting fuck! for the eighty ninth millionth

  time as the Hack tried to remember

  that 30 came after 29

  at “Lock-up and Count!”

  you have to be on the outside

  to definitively misunderstand

  the inside.

  now, that is profound.

  that's not white-man bullshit,

  that's the real scoop

  dribbled in the dirt by

  real mad madness assholes

  whose journey is only through the inside.

  it's too bad


  this enlightenment that says

  “you are ever to be deprived, white-man"

  is all that I have to latch

  my sickness onto,

  because it is so tantalizing

  i mean, shit, i too want

  to be reborn

  but we forgot that jesus said

  you have to be born again of a Third World woman.

  fucking shit!

  so, jack, there’s no way inside

  from the outside,

  get my meaning?

  yep, i’ve ac-cepted

  —as you know they say,

  “will you ac-cept this parole?”—

  yeah, just that way

  is how i received all of this

  calmly

  on the track one day

  as some moses sauntered by

  walking like i can’t walk

  laid a paper on me

  like all those too hip lay fives

  winks and gaits away.

  the note says,

  “You are a winner!”

  motherfucker!

  so i left as i came

  a babe in arms

  actually, someone’s orphan

  but with the realization

  that not only could i get out

  anytime i wanted

  but that i could get back in

  with all the privileges

  of the creator of the place.

  see, in me the serious philosophers

  haunt the world.

  it’s a comfort to know

  at least

  that i’ll never be madly mad.

  i hate to misplace

  adjectives.

  get my meaning, jack?

  A Definition of Freedom

  the crimped man on the rock

  whose eyes never tire

  peels the wall for a magical crack

  he has sat sentinel there

  for 25 years and his encore

  is applauded beyond life's grasp

  long-timers have their privileges

  those who wished for death but

  were denied and

  redefined as life’s sentence

  so who'd but excuse him

  if he ogles a wall of pendulous weight

  and like Joshua seeks

  a paralyzed midday sun?

  he was someone's child, after all

  a kitty-coo and looks like Uncle John

  which was "Scene One, Print!"

  now fading on a fish-eye shot

  into his final scene

  who knows the apocalyptic quest better than he?

  on Patmos little John could see no clearer

  so when he told me

  that one day—the hour he was not sure of as to number—

  but one day,

  "YES! one day"

  the magical crack would fissure

  the Greyhound bus driver would swing

  the hydraulic switch

  the door would hiss! serpentine

  and he'd step up, juttingly

  {a note is on its way}

  the rumor lashed through the inside yard

  like a tidal wave uprooting sunbathers

  you got parole! you got parole! goddamn it, man,

  "you got parole!"

  eyeless in a foreign city

  where a 1000 addresses bear no friendly names

  her heart breaks at mail time

  as she weeps waiting for my return

  framed in the doorway, "Admission and Orientation," the sunlight

  strangles

  shadows dance in eerie contortions

  dread