Doug Knott ~ Featured Poet at Second Sunday Poetry Series ~ November 2012

Doug Knott
    Doug has been writing and performing poetry in Southern California for more than twenty years. He is the author of one collection, Small Dogs Bark Cartoons, and many chapbooks. He has been published in local and national poetry magazines ranging from Caffeine and Pearl to Chiron Review. His work has been included in several anthologies such as Grand Passion: Poets of Los Angeles and Beyond and The Outlaw Poetry Bible.

    Besides literary work, he has performed his poetry in hundreds of different venues on the West Coast, ranging from coffeehouses to the LA County Museum, and has hosted several poetry reading series. He created and produced a seminal L.A. underground variety show at the Lhasa club, had his own nightclub and produced readings at Club Lingerie, Highland Grounds, and the Ice House in Pasadena. He has performed extensively in local bookstores and TV, and had his own poetry cable-access show.

    With several other poets, he wrote and performed more than 100 shows under the group names “Lost Tribe” and “Carma Bums.” The group won the late 80’s network-TV “Gong Show” and performed at many venues in Denver, Albuquerque, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Ashland, Portland Vancouver, and many other cities. The tours, performances and antics of the Carma Bums were the subject of a 1996 book, Twisted Cadillac.

    Additionally, he has written and/or produced and/or directed six poetry videos, four of which have one national awards. His video “Psychic Defense Training for Ex-Lovers” was a “poetry spot” on W-NYC in New York, and “Wings” (with L.A. Bogen) won national awards and played on PBS TV in Chicago. He taught a class in poetry video at Beyond Baroque in Venice, CA.

The Aware Wolves

To the aware wolves belong
The space between ghosts
And night of eggplant dark

The moon, himself a wandering lost soul,
Peers through tree-tops for
My heart – a deer frozen
In a forest of eyes
Shaped like leaves

I know the wolves are near
I see them when they
Blot out the moon
Hear them when they call
My name. Summoning them
Is an entertainment
At my own expense

They lope alongside me
And when I look at them
Their eyes get bigger

I treat them now as my children
Feed them everything I have
They all live with me
And I am everything I wanted to be
Except I am living it backwards

“It’s time to wake up,” I say, “It’s
Time to make furniture and food;
it’s time to open the big front door
and find the Universe whizzing by
in peak form, and true”

And at night I draw these new friends around me
Like a fur coat, and look up at the moon
Awash in darkness, and the hunger
Comes out of me
A long wail in the night