D.K. McKenzie—Warwick poet, pianist, and founder of The Poe Underground, a spoken word and music project—plays an original piano composition under his recording of Futility by Wilfred Owen and Ghost Hats by D.K. McKenzie.

Futility

Move him into the sun—

Gently its touch awoke him once,

At home, whispering of fields unsown.

Always it woke him, even in France,

Until this morning and this snow.

If anything might rouse him now

The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—

Woke once the clays of a cold star.

Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides

Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?

Was it for this the clay grew tall?

—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil

To break earth's sleep at all?

Ghost Hats

I come here to absorb the lunacy

of the mischievous sea

Fallen sailors

tip their ghost hats to me

bobbing up and down in the summer’s tide

The dreaming sun sinks

saying its last good-bye

while gently introducing

the unstoppable night

The scattering of sun

highlights a fragment of moon

bringing a prospect of peace to all the inhabitants of metropolis

Watch D.K. create his keyboard solos for Futility and Ghost Hats⁠.

Check out ⁠⁠The Poe Underground⁠⁠.