The July Selected Poet is
Benjamin Blake
Please feel free to email Benjamin at: benjaminblakeyrtw@gmail.com
BOO RADLEY
Door creaks open painfully slow
Is anybody home?
An apparition of his mother's basement
Haunting the space between the brick walls
Something stirs in a damp corner
Next to the musty mattress
Untrusting eyes scatter across your face
Poignant feeling rises from the pit of your stomach
It's good to take you in
You've been dead since twelfth grade
A SENDING
A terrible screech comes from outside
Followed by the tinkle of shattering glass
Which can barely be heard
Over the howl of the wind and roar of the rain
Letting out a string of profanities, you stand
Knocking the antique oak chair to the floor
The sound came from above
In that stale attic room, in which you fear to tread
It holds near-forgotten diaries
Journals that keep your secrets safe between their battered pages
And walls in which irksome poltergeists and revealing Polaroids call home
Every miserable failure, laid out for you to take note
A trophy cabernet of the defeated
Though it is not something you need reminding of is it
You know all too well
Each step groans and creaks underfoot
The flickering candle you hold
Casts dancing shadows on the wall
The door swings open by itself
And you step through
HALLOWED EYES
She stands, in a pyramid of light
Hands clasped tight against her chest
Counting the beads in her rosary
While limbs of countless trees
Reach out to embrace her dying love
Hallowed eyes,
Losing their candle flame reflection
Hollowed faith,
Dissipating in the passage of time
She sighs, and lets the shadows envelope hope
Fingers gnarled, like those ancient limbs
Counting down the days till Death’s somber embrace
She reaches out to a God that has ceased to exist
Benjamin Blake was born in a small town in the July of 1985, and after
spending time in Southern California and Australia, now leads a
relatively reclusive life in the New Zealand countryside. His fiction
and poetry has been published online, and in print, in Australia, the
UK, and the States. He is a regular contributor to Danse Macabre
(Nevada’s first and foremost online literary magazine) and also
appears in the recent Horror Zine anthology, A Feast of Frights.
He is currently in the throes of completing his first novel. You can read more of his work (and view his photography) at www.benjaminblake.com.