microphone and podium





Summer 2007, Volume 3

Poetry by Blake Love

Internal Rhythm

Sometimes like now
I am composed of only awkward

silences and these solid
cowboy boots.

Often I am lost in my own
inner world rich with wanderlust

as cicadas twist their limbs,
click their passion into the night.

The silent trees twist against
a violent sky of stratified

and uneven colors;
indigo and bruised flesh.

The oppressive stillness of night
matches and outlasts my own as I     

with a cigarette in one hand
trace my name in the dust with the other.

My name in the sand is a relic, an ancient
artifact, as if I have always existed in

some symbolic form, that nature
has bore me without inclination.

I, who lack purpose, of gapped teeth, prone
to guffaws and these cowboy boots

planted firmly into the chalky
earth of the heated desert skin.

So sing birds, softly twitter a curse to
reign in the night,

bring in the sun and make it rise,
a fat matzo in the sky.

Sing it cicada with instinct
that doesn’t miss a beat.
Will I always feel so forlorn?



BIO:  Blake Love recently turned twenty three years old and feels really, really old. He was born in Riverside and spent his childhood living in Tehachapi, across the street from a creek where he would catch tadpoles. Very Huckleberry Finn. He began lessons in precocity and contempt around fourteen, and withdrew into words and the heroes of books. He was given a book of Rimbaud s Illuminations at fifteen, read it and knew its power. He moved to Long Beach three years ago and is currently working towards a B.A. in creative writing and has received an acceptance letter from San Francisco State University.



back to home