Four Poems by David Alec Knight

 

Alienare

From the industrial centre of concrete

and steel, factories and processing plants that exhale

smoke over the grim streets

lined by brick houses in bleak rows,

            this city, grimey and dark,

            winthin cinder air and asphalt,

            to the rural air of farm and field,    

            the country ever encroached upon,

resident feelings manifest...

Deprivation

            lures in extremity.

Debauchery

            anesthetizes dreams lost.

One must

            see the city, see

            past the city,

            sense something more

than what was settled. 

 

Augury & Ides

It is almost tomorrow and She knows full well.

Lamplight tendrils entwine and She knows full well.

Blood is blood and, this too, She knows full well.

She stands behind the dead tree with Her enveloping wrath.

The night sky reddens behind the dead tree.

There is no moon behind the dead tree.

Grass dies beneath Her feet, behind the dead tree.

Ash rides breeze into the crimson sky.

A circle scorches and a black rain falls. 

 

Blues For Freeman Lowell 

I listened to Randy California sing “The stars are love”.

Why are we doomed as we've done below to also do above?

 

And I listened to Jim Morrison sing “Not to touch the Earth”.

I ask you friend, what is the value put on the last tree's worth?

 

I heard David Bowie sing, just as Perry Rhodan once said

“Take your protein pill and put your helmet on.” - I shake my head.

 

I'm drifting away

            as I sing these blues

                        for Freeman Lowell

I listened to Randy California sing “The stars are love”.

Why are we doomed as we've done below to also do above?

I'm drifting away

            as I sing these blues

                        for Freeman Lowell

Won't we all drift

            until we see

                        it’s written in the stardust? 

 

Chasing The Deer      
                                                                        

"Hush ye, hush ye, little pet ye,

Hush ye, hush ye, do not fret ye,

The Black Douglas shall not get ye."

Lightning skips across

choppy lakes of night.

Rain wanders weathered windows,

erratic like a hapless hiker who --

footing lost along the edge of the scree --

falls, as does night.

 

My sleep is a slow struggle,

curled foetal within serpentine

cling of my ice sheets.

Far from a hiker's haven, I fall down

into a dream -- an abandoned keep.

I seek refuge in the tower

from the grey and white storm.

Walls crumble, snow enters

on forceful wind, drifts arch

against support beams, roll

along the floor, small

preliminary gusts.

Something can be seen

beyond where I stand --

dark eyes, eternal crystal.

I glimpse the deer

behind mountain ash.

It runs to shelter in the tower.

The hart, the deer before me,

stands proud, then bends antler

to floor and the floor cracks.

From there, grows up entwined,

rose and thistle: they grow up

conjoined, as if always one.

Midlothian's sky upon my ceiling,

rain stops, echoes, flows from trough,

slapping dirt into mud beneath

the moon-glowing shrubs.

David Alec Knight is from Ontario, Canada. David has had many poems printed in American and Canadian journals and anthologies. Recent poems have appeared in print and/or on-line in Verse Afire, The Rye Whiskey Review, Cajun Mutt Press, The Lothlorien Poetry Journal and in By The Wishing Tree - A Canadian Poetry Anthology. In 2021, David was recipient of The Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry. His first book of poetry is called The Heart Is A Hollow Organ (Cranberry Tree Press, 2021). David works in healthcare.