Vignette: Le Savant
"However much I studied, the more I found
that I did not comprehend. I decided
that I had spent too much time in
metaphysical realms, among abstractions.
So, I experimented with physical reality.
Debauchery, drugs, and so forth. It
did not lead to truth, of course. I
learned a bitter lesson. The metaphysical
realms are safe to traverse for any man.
Ah, but..."
He did not finish the sentence.
Great sorrow showed in his face as he
placed his flippers on the table in front of him.
Chris James Kulkosky © 1970
To Await The Sunset
But that the tonic for evil was evil
If he remembers the curtain of black cloud,
Stone shores washed in white water,
The cliffs fallen out of echo,--
Then, free the flock above and what
Was said, "All that matters..."
Remembers that it was all-- "All that matters
Is the beauty in the matter."
What to speak when the marble grows clear,
Light throws veins on the hands,
The wind redoubles its violence;
In the changes that came first, mere anarchy,
And in the last, a way to the peculiar
and mighty delineation of perfection.
Puget Sound, Washington
August 15, 1973
Chris James Kulkosky © 1973
Why I Am A Poet
The symbol of young life,
This sea of normal light I step through
Down the linear perspective of
Lampost and oak to the end of
The path where the sky is
Half sun, half mercury.
Ecstasis, for the real January:
I believe everything it says,
As the fields crumble,
Illusion melts in the patch of sun.
I raise my arms beside the shore
Where the god no one believes in lives.
Bell-clear, the spirit sings.
Morningside Heights, January 25, 1974
Chris James Kulkosky © 1974
Short Poem 17.
Life can be bad,
And you can dance.
Life can be bad,
Flip off your shoes,
Dance, dance.
January 13, 1975
Chris James Kulkosky © 1975
Secret Poem
The words of this poem are secret.
October 15, 1975
Chris James Kulkosky © 1975
Rayograph 7
There must be a black spot
Inside all of your beauty
A black spot you do not know
I want to reach
My hand in there
Watching your eyes
December, 1975
Chris James Kulkosky © 1975
In Montana
Broken self . . .
meanings are less
in the blue and white blur
the cracking plaster of that sky.
The woods grow up;
The moose flee;
The field suddenly stops, trimmed in quiet.
Stars appear, the milky hailstones.
Darker blur of lips on my chest,
This cruel, quickly done, evening.
Screech owl over broken self
Where it hurts to hand down in
The cool love to
The blood we both use.
And bubble moment, realize miracle,
That luck, we have not
stopped in existence . . .
October 8, 1978
Chris James Kulkosky © 1978
1980
No more champagne.
January 1, 1980
Chris James Kulkosky © 1980
The Tomb of George Armstrong Custer
"Fecemi la divina potestate,
la somma sapienza e 'l primo amore.
Lasciate ogni speranza, vol ch'entrate."
Dante, Inferno
That motto he would not heed. Blues, reds, greens,
and yellows amid that nothingness of hues converge
over the bitter, empty land. I dream I see you
coming towards me in your blood rage. When I step
back, I see the blur of your white coat in the storm
of blood raining upward from the soil. I hear the
cry of braves; their feathers whisk on sharp wind.
Now I am moving away: the empty soil still gnashes
its white teeth, your soldiers' gravestones. In
my dream, I did not like to see you standing there
pennant unfurled. The grit of your deathground slides
into my throat. The taste I carry away to my own
decline beneath no less bitter landscape, hidden
in laughing winds.
August 27, 1980
Chris James Kulkosky © 1980
Poem
There was zero might to accomplish this task.
I am pitched headlong from the block of ice.
The lake, ever placid, accepts the frozen plummet.
One stone for my head --
While it grew there the stars shooed away centuries.
Where my lips spoke of love, death, and other
Bric-a-brac of soft flesh,
The foam of lake waves scuds over.
May by chance the gnarled hand reaching into
The crystal water with no memories retrieve
And discard again the tiny bone
That held my heart in place.
September 4, 1980
Chris James Kulkosky © 1980
Near Pueblo, Colorado
Silence of a century waits, hangs
Near the land, a solace of grass hills,
Trees glisten, no one walks by,
Eagles seen aloft, afar,
But the wind, less than we thought,
More than we believed,
Seems kindred and grows,
As my hands dip blue water of a creek,
A face I had not looked for arises.
May 9, 1988
Chris James Kulkosky © 1988
This poem also appears at A Little
Poetry; Voted poem of the month at A Little Poetry
To Anne Who Stumbled, August 25, 1991
In that flash of sunlight and bees,
By the green canal and above the mule path,
While I stood feeling the scalloped edge
Of a rough wool wrapper from Peru,
You stumbled suddenly where bridge pavement
Sloped sharply down Mechanic Street
That afternoon of glittery copperware vases,
As the Arubian sandals failed to hold,
Not weighted by amethyst paperweights,
Nor tiny glass pumpkins, nor mugs of bikers,
Nor pink paper shoes, unbraced by the weathered figurehead,
But brought low,
Thinking of pale snowdrift prints,
Thinking of incredible handwrought rockers,
Thinking of refulgent mirrors, gilt and carved,
Thinking of the patch of paint we wanted...
Crepuscular gloom of the yard where
Roadside statuary you did not care to see looked on,
Close by the remembered spot where you fell,
In memory vivid, the curl of a satyr's marble lip,
As you struggled to arise, the engine nimbly whistled.
near New Hope, Pennsylvania
Chris James Kulkosky © 1991
1963 Rookie Stars
Something I saw or felt
Or heard in the twilight
The color of a cornflower
The gesture of silence
In the clouds
The picture of hands clasping
That long ago
January 27, 1994
Chris James Kulkosky © 1994
Advent of Spring
Say that the crocus has the white
Of another page that we turn
As we venture this way again
Into that uncertain light where
We begin or end our dreaming.
Easter April 3, 1994
Chris James Kulkosky © 1994
Remembering a Barbecue
This Fourth of July, Niagara Falls
As a shower of sparks from the roof
We threw the monkey doll from,
Noosed, the cops came to interrupt
But the barbecue lived on:
"Get me a beer while you're up," Mibbo yelled.
"Leave that hot dog on the grill, maybe
someone is hungry later" Dad said,
night very old, near midnight under our
friend maple tree, we separated,
the stars very faint, the hot dog
still crisping...
S-man is laughing in the tent.
June 21, 1996
Chris James Kulkosky © 1996
The Advent of Spring
One scratch opens a nut case
One scratch opens the sunrise
This long mist of a morning
For the squirrel on the dark hill lawn.
March 3, 2002
Chris James Kulkosky © 2002
New Poem 3-20-02
The rain and the river are gray
The rain falls gray
Into the river gray gray
Crossing Bridge Street Bridge
Rain and river are one today.
March 20, 2002
Chris James Kulkosky © 2002
The Moon
Sealing foil-colored sky with real clouds,
Moon slow to rise
Sinks again, bides its time.
August 12, 2006
Chris James Kulkosky © 2006
Poem For The New Year
Some sounds lift and drift on this pleasant wind
From his spoked helmet the sun punches
Above a lilac shimmered great bay
Where clouds gather in coppery balloons
This is the first word I hear in a year
"Live life for life, that's all, it all works out,"
Drifts and turns into my ears from the breeze
Reminiscence of Tarrytown that fall.
I had the kind river behind me then.
January 1, 2008
Chris James Kulkosky ©2008
