Joseph Kreydt

Category: Poems

  • Sometimes You Just Hurt

    Sometimes you just hurt.
    You wake up feeling beat up,
    And then you hear they’re choosing her.

    They’re choosing her,
    The one you loved so much,
    Who did not want you to exist.

    She didn’t want you to exist,
    But no one saw the hate she gave,
    So they chose her and so she wins.

    You want to hate her for that.
    You clench and grimace and cringe,
    But all you can muster is pain,

    And maybe that was her hate too.
    It wasn’t hate of you.
    It was just some other pain.

    Still, you want to hate her for it,
    But you don’t because you understand.
    You’ve done the same to others as she’s done to you.

    So you try to forgive her for it,
    But you don’t because you can’t.
    Maybe yesterday, but not today.

    And you carry all of this
    Without a friend to walk beside
    Because they all chose her.

    They all chose her,
    And the clock keeps moving forward,
    And you’ve got to get to work.

    So you do what you do sometimes,
    You just hurt.

  • Adoration, Wednesday Night

    On My Knees, In Adoration Wednesday Night

    Show me a miracle,
    One I don’t have to believe,
    One I can see.

    I want to know.
    Then I promise I’ll follow
    Wherever you lead.

    I know I’m not blessed.
    I know I’m not happy.

    I know I am aching
    For something I need.

    I see the pooling blood.
    But I can’t figure out
    What is making me bleed.

    I know this: I am lonely.
    I am lonely, please,
    Come close to me.

    Show me a miracle,
    One I can see.
    Show me a miracle.

    At the End of Adoration Wednesday Night

    After showing him this mess of mud,
    This man who bled water and sweated blood,
    I had no will to leave,

    And so I clung, like a child, on my knees,
    Until I recalled something,
    From where I do not know.

    It said, "I will be with you,
    Whatever happens, trust me.
    Go."

  • The Man Who Just Sat Down

    The man who just sat down,
    You smiled at him.

    He did not smile back.
    He’s a large man.

    You might have been offended
    By his lack of courtesy,
    But you’re wiser now.
    You’ve received the grace of pain.

    And so instead of taking offense,
    You wonder if his age and size
    Have amounted to a painful walk
    That felt, to him, like a marathon.

    And then you see his knee,
    The scar down the middle,
    The oceanic swelling.

    It wasn’t that he didn’t smile,
    This man who just sat down.
    It was that he couldn’t smile.

  • Permission to Lament

    There’s something beautiful, something like solidarity, about lamentations. I used to hide my own. Men, it is often believed, must not show pain.

    But “Jesus wept.”

    “David seized his garments and tore them, and so did all the men who were with him. They mourned and wept and fasted until evening…”

    Lincoln wept. Washington wept. Grant wept. These men were not weak.

    Still, I hid my lamentations. Last year, when I rediscovered that part of myself, I wrote the following poem.

    An Old Part

    I fell in love with an old part of me today,
    A part I'd hid away so many years ago
    Because I thought his antics were the reason 
    Someone left me, hurt me, left me hurting, bleeding.

    Today, I saw him staring, peeking from the dark,
    Peeking from behind the dusty stereo,
    A relic of the songs we sang so long ago,
    Their echoes fading in my heart, rippling apart.

    I said, "come out," and he came out.

    To my surprise, he wasn't ugly, and he wasn't evil.
    He wasn't angry either. He was what I'd forgotten to be.
    He was hurt. That was him, this sub-soul of my soul,
    This notion I'd betrayed so many years ago.

    I'd said, "your lamentations drove her away."
    But I lament, now, by letting him come out.
    I lament at having hid that rare, essential part
    So deep beneath the shadows of my heart.

    All the wisest souls in all the wisest books
    Sing lamentations. Half of life is lamentation!
    And without it, how could we ever know
    The joy of claps and laughs and jubilation?

    That innocent soul I locked away so long ago,
    He hasn't changed a bit. But I have changed.
    I have found I couldn't live so thoroughly
    Without his heartfelt, melancholic shout.

    Over the next few days, I’ll post a few more “melancholic shouts.”

  • The Curious Groundhog

    Where I live, there are lots of groundhogs. I see them all the time, but not during winter. Last spring, as the world was finally coming back to life, I saw one who also saw me. This poem came to me then. Happy Groundhog’s Day!

    Most of the trees and shrubs
    Have begun to bud.
    As I walked past a field
    Of last year's grass and frozen mud

    I saw a groundhog waddle toward
    The bank beside me.
    He ducked behind a culvert pipe
    But didn't crawl beneath.

    He waited 'til I passed beside him —
    Peaking like he wondered what
    This thing that moves so high above,
    And with so strange a strut,

    Might be or do or be and do,
    Or how he smells or how he sounds —
    And then, when I could see his face,
    He swiftly climbed beneath the ground

    Into a hole where, I assume,
    He has a blanket and a book,
    And having gathered vegetables,
    He hums as he begins to cook.

  • A Poem About a Hope

    The following is a poem I wrote very recently, based on a very true event. It’s most-likely unfinished, but I wanted to share it anyway. Merry Christmas!

    I walked over the hill, at dark,
    Past the willow by the frozen pond,
    Then slowed my gait and steeled my gaze
    ‘Cause something caught my eye beyond.

    Make it newfound love, this thing I sense,
    Or a run-in with a few old friends,
    Or at least an angel singing songs, I prayed,
    And prophesying better days.

    Finally, the lamplight bent just right,
    So I could see the sad, and sadly funny, sight.
    A goose stood upright on the ice
    Alone, there in the dark of night.

    I walked as close as I could get,
    And saw the goose was frozen stiff,
    Unmoving,
    Motionless as a monolith.

    Afraid the ice would not support my weight,
    I recommenced along the normal way,
    But the goose was frozen in my foremost thoughts.
    I ruminated, thinking of the poor bird’s fray.

    Webbed feet frozen to the icy pond,
    He must have flailed his wings and yanked.
    But, in the end, instead of freezing contorted
    Like a scared, pathetic, dying thing,
    He stood up nobly like a king,
    And gave his life into a marble work
    Of Michelangelic beauty–quiet, strong, strange.

    I went back out in the light of the next day.
    The weather’d turned and a thaw’d begun.
    The pond was still half-frozen,
    But the lonesome, solid goose was gone.
    And where he’d stood, my hope had sprung.

  • I Published My New Poetry Collection!

    The collection is called Finding. You can buy it here.

    It’s a book of poems and a few reflections that are meant to feel like I am walking through the poems with you.

    Cover of the poetry collection titled 'Finding' by Joseph Kreydt.
    Cover of the poetry collection 'Finding', featuring abstract artwork and the title prominently displayed.

    BUY IT HERE

  • The Tower Cafe

    When the trees were small –
    The trees that grow all through
    The patio at the Tower Cafe,
    Where we had breakfast Sunday,
    Where you had the most delightful French toast –

    The trees, now tall, when they were small,
    The cafe’s keeper gave them faith.

    “Whichever way you grow,”
    The keeper said, “it will be okay.”

    Faith, that is why they were allowed to stay.
    Faith is why they were allowed to become
    The beautiful cafe patio protectors they became.

  • Fourteen Stories

    Something caught my mind
    – A buzz like a bee, no, a buzz like bourbon.
    A thought broke free.

    I wondered what the ants
    On the ground would think
    If they saw us way up here,
    Fourteen stories high, clinking drinks,

    Dressed in red hue mood lighting,
    Shifting, laughing, drifting,
    Among our own tribes, uniting,
    Wondering about the other tribes and their princesses,

    And what the ants below must think
    Of the ways we shift and the ways we sync
    And the ways we dance and the ways we drink.

  • Steam

    Maybe the steam is a small tax,
    The cost of this drink’s warmth.

    Maybe the steam is a prayer.
    Maybe it is His share.

    Maybe it is the drink’s quest,
    Venturing out of the cup,
    Heaven bound, pouring up.