Home » Poems » Best » Jason Knight » Best Jason Knight Poems

Best Poems Written by Jason Knight

Below are the all-time best Jason Knight poems as chosen by PoetrySoup members

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Arousing Her: Chicago

At night the city is full of bones
And they
Are very dry

Beneath the trample of urban feet
They are ground

But to live, these dry bones
Must drink words

Sad nervous me, I stammer
Against those arid limbs
Grinding bone-dust songs

Into scattered fragments spun from raging blades

But realizing so many so, I sputter
Thought-hacked soul-flakes, soaring
Crooked in an angry wind. . .

Though stinted, inconsiderable, I say them
Spit them down the papered street
Into a shadow where the dew will stay

And some anonymous day some
Stray seed will grow on them
And suckle upon a speck of misty bone

And though the nights will continue
To align the humps of an un-slaked dune
Something out of this sand will rise

Small, and secretly original

And I will be part of her: 
my bony, blue, and sensual city

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Hermes To Dying Argus

You weren’t aware that notes could kill,
And yet every human sleeps
To the soft melody of their life;
Ignorance is most tragic, and you for
All your vision could not see the blatant world.

You were a favorite tool, and I weep
Seeing myself in you.  You’re leaking 
Our blood as your eyes turn a wax
Disfocus, and I wonder of that which
I haven’t seen, what shadows of this sun?

They’ll be thunder for his lightning –
They will marry agony over you
And rear a family of miseries.  I wished
To oppose, but all stars are fixed and I 
Too have my place and purpose in Heaven.

I live now to know my flute is a spear,
And from this day, the blade of each
Note will hack some flesh of memory
Unto the plate of my eyes, and I will
Know, and do know, what darkens the light.

I pluck these feathers from my sandals
So as to close your  abandoned orbs
And shield them from the unseen one;
And I add these tears to the river
Of sorrow and my heart to the stones
		Which smooth in Lethe.

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Mr. Burns

Later in life, as much a mess 
As a disorderly garage 

Each tool truant to its place
Lured away 
by carelessness:

Oily rags of memory slouching
Slack over the edge of a name,
Sockets of knowledge 
Rolling beneath a table, 

An engine of wit rust-caked, grass smothered,
Lying idle in its crusted cleverness,

And how the son aspires to ratchet the machine:

Welds those reminisces, cranks
Down the loose logic’s bolt,
Solders the tangles of wiry 

Moods that once strayed thanks
To the freedom of weeds, the jolt
Now sewn together ordinary,
Deposited in banks.

He smiles at the repaired dolt
His form newly throttled, gear-y,

Shelves him next to an ancient
Cog that’s been painted

The color of a lost sun
That sputters 	and coughs 	through a gray 	horizon.

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Late Summer Cicadas

The cicada in autumn claws its love
Sounds against the glass door – I know
Love this way.  

These thoughts, upturned tables tossing
Contents, ours, mimic the grind of 
Violence sweet sugar, soot, love.

I don’t whose raspy voice 
Whose jagged-edged lips
Who raggedy broken tipped 
Claws life-splintered these 
Remembrances are,

	But I’ve heard the same raging rise 
	Scraping fade on battlefield’s: ghostly New Lisbon, 
Morgan’s Raid.

Many hopeful days crank I would
Pedals backward giving gravel 
The same great growl.

Now the greatness in the rough voice is between
The notes, the gap, the place where he waits
For an answer, so full of hope
 	We both could burst.

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Coon Season

Your gun was as a beam of light
in the house; it split the haze 
of smoke and childhood, 
scored the jaw of the ceiling
into its rows of endless caries
festered with the slightest grains of sugary hope

The dogs bawled a chorus
while you waved it like Hollreiser.
I croaked cockatoo quips against
the yodeling air turbid with 
instinct and begging, but the storm
slid outside beneath the gapped door.

When you left, I sat in place of
the dogs and howled against 
the smoke and night and moon,
not being able to forget the song
until buckling with sleep to clutch
the cool post like some sacred piece 
of presbyterial iron

Details | Jason Knight Poem

The Birthplace of Tornadoes

Storms are brazen, often rude,
Lighting the sky with invectives
Of white-blue light terrible.

The rains carp the submissive
Ground wearing it so slowly
Down into curves, mud.

The thunder stomps through
Heaven’s empty rooms above.
It knows the children tremble

Beneath, conjuring punishments
Through tall silken crowns
Where venomous rodents erupt.

In boredom, the storm sulks
Away.  

In time, 
The rodents and children trade places.

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Whowhenia

when I
a rock-chucking stick-slasher

patch-monger
was

there was a waterless
		well

where we would await sprites and goblins in ambush


shoe-lace lariats
piles of rock for cannonade

this and all  all the angels
at bay

for there is nothing gay grisly meaner than

restless
idleness

caked with efflorescing dandelions
raging raiding sun

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Out of the West

The thunder had shoved from sleep
What would the soul’s anchor seem:
So deep and falling men’s fears are
When eyes no buoyancy provide.

The trees, conspiratorially hissing,
Exhorted, it seemed, the angry
Masses of air that I knew now the
Storm that was early rumored in wind.

The heavy slugs of rain tore
Open the flesh of the ground and
Mud ran everywhere, and me, 
In some hotel room, by kisses
	Gunned down.

Yes, I had seen all this early
In dark battalions westward 
Mounting who had become so 
Long impending, familiar, death
	Grew beautiful. 

These things come out of 
The West, where late it becomes
So red, so full, that the onset
Of night is full-well assumed,
	Received courteously.

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Momenta

I.


Silver apple of the moon
Laying prostrate on the lake

Silver apple of the moon
Smooth, un-moved, unmarred by wake

Lean down, finger
The bright skin –
It peels. Linger,
A flicker of flocking moths congeals within.


II.


An old maternal willow
With rheumatic roots
Leans low

Over the water, tilts
Its fretting yellow
Mane, covers the deep 	& heart-shaped 	hollow

III


The ocean is dark
And settles like onyx iron

These are the hardest surfaces
In a ship’s journey:

A starless sky, an engine
	Sobbing in a distant room,
		Thoughts, objects without shape;

A nauseated heart leaning over
Memory’s rail

Details | Jason Knight Poem

Deracination and Uprooting the Rose

This moment of Rose and her
 -- sun soaked seconds dispelling 

Careful shades,
Reticence

Til the clouds breathe
Warm breaths

Against the blue void

This of rose – her:
Aching caresses of green and brown

Within the 
thaw 

of days, ice routines
running down tree-legs

toward a gold-licked floor:

this moment of rose 		and her

Veins of water, renewed, bursting 
Bulging on the straining arms

Of dark Earth bronzing in the light,
Bracing itself: 

Overwhelmed, flushed, panting

This moment of a rose, of her/of me, 
of being	                                              swept away