Paving the road to hell
Denial
Emptiness crowds
into crevices once
overflowing with you —
all I know of love,
what it could be,
how it rises and falls
Secreting the blade
and hilt behind its back
while it parries and thrusts
leaving gashes
silky as red ribbons,
upon my soul,
all of it I learned from you.
Truth, staid and sticky
barges out of the shadows, clumsy
and blundering
forbidding my eyes to blink,
my head to turn.
You grip my face digging
your fingers into hollow cheeks
Forcing me to grant you Sainthood
instead of hating you
Oh, sweet relief,
permit me to deny
the wound and the knife,
allow me to worship
the dream I had of you
a little while longer.
I promise my heart
as sacrifice, if you would be
satisfied.
©Sandy Knight 2019, All rights reserved. image credit: Upslash
You will not be trusted
The gilded heart of a poet
historically rife with
treacherous romantic
notions spilling blood
colored secrets onto pages
whipping hearts into
frenzied gasps and
hand-wringing rages
from towers on high
Oh how you deceive us
for the sake of what —
Truth? which is fickle by
the least of good standards
apt to fly like a flock
of fetid city pigeons
flapping wings against
history and the whispering lips
of stalwart legions!
Sifting through crowded
gutters, and books for
artifacts of life,
suppositions of existence
soliloquies of cheer
contrived from falsehoods
Poets too far removed
to recognize your words
have no authority here!
Sandy Knight, 2019, All Rights Reserved
Ordinary Things
I found her
in the folding and unfolding
of a fitted sheet
sharp corners gathered
then disguised
in elastic roundness
her life will never be
one I can neatly put away
nor would I try —
I need to hold it up to the light
spread my arms wide then
tuck it under my chin
while I pull the edges in
to my chest
in a misshapen square
turning it this way and that,
spreading it on the table or bed
while I sort the rest of
the laundry in my head
How long will ordinary things
remind mind me of her?
©Sandy Knight, 2018–All Rights Reserved
Hiatus
Liars
Lies of omission
grown in
the silence between
take on lives of their own
robbing from each
our secrets
stolen from the justified
and vulnerable
borrowed on fear
until grown
so bloated and taut, truth
springs from unguarded lips fully
formed, as virulent
as a virus without
an antidote
yet, having the power
to heal the troubled
heart of a liar
© Sandy Knight, All Rights Reserved (PREVIOUSLY APPEARING IN A CORNERED GURL on Nov 18 ·)
Sleepless at 3 am
She believes too much
In her own intuition and the ambiguity
Of a convincing dream
Remembering how her hand felt
On the splintery rudder of the tiller
Turning over the night sky, dividing it
Into parcels of starless black soil
She would clear a space
To divine futures from the pitch blank
Of uncertainty; planting fragile seeds of hope
Into furrowed fields yawning with pretense.
Isn’t all life
Thus so, as to be an undiscovered
Meadow fertile among the stars,
Dense with potential to be harvested amid
The stark brilliance of mornings that challenge
Reason’s capacity to distinguish life
From what had grown and what had not?
Though she knows too much
Romanticism may ransack the common
Sense residing within the least of her wits
She will resist plucking stars from the brooding night
For a few more moments of fruitless sleep.
Copyright Slk, 2019, All rights reserved.
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