Month: April 2015

Aunty Jan

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I always thought my Aunty Jan was a film star.

Perhaps it was her long nails varnished to a glossy red or her lip stick and carefully applied make up.

Perhaps it was the twinkle in her eye and the prettiness she wore so easily or the way she bent down to look at we adoring children, paying us a rare and beautiful moment, a snippet of another life, a gift other worldly and mysterious.

Thirty years on
and I can’t shake the feeling that she glides on charmed, celluloid magic and lives the screen life, passing effortlessly between the real, the silver, and the flickering multicoloured.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

She’s Hot

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She’s hot:
So hot she’s taken to shrinking
Behind dark glasses to avoid the
Harsh glare her reflection causes:
She wears her hair as a glossy veil.

In the beginning she sunned herself
In boys clumsy praises, and young
Mens’ too, but then came the daily
Recognition of all men; the staring,
The hungry eyes seeing her beautiful
Status and wanting some of that
Improving brightness to burnish
Themselves, like a ointment of
Loveliness applied to their skin.

And so now she hunkers down
Between her shoulders, shades
Herself in the arms of a celebrity,
Seeks out their star-touched kind,
For her lovely face has made her
Kin to them.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

The Very First Beginning

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I’ve been living in the cave of winter
and only knew it fully when spring’s
pulse flushed first in snowdrops and
buds bulging on the stems.

I’m awakened to the ground rush,
natures upsurge and levity behind
each tender shoot: the whole earth
intent to leaf and reclined to the
photon sun, its matter poured
eternally.

Like this my new garden arrives to my
eyes: a new flower gift each day, the
unexpected brought on spring wave
as herbaceous kind are called and
charmed, powerless on the tendril
energy.

With the scent of first flowers and
the colour of first butterflies, and first
bumble bees quick on the first sun
blasts, I realise the spring and wake
once more, as creatures wake from
their hibernation. All of us drawn from
the darkness to the light, new
warmness, the air crisp and perfect
as the very first beginning.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

Writing Poetry

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I reach out in to the right side of my
brain, two inches back and two inches
above my right eye. I look through
that lens and call what I find to my
tongue, where I roll the matter until
vowel like and three dimensional.
Somehow my heart coats the thing
with a feeling until I can almost taste
the roundness of spoken word.
It lives for a moment in the excited
now until I cast it to the paper of the
page where, in ink, it lies back down
like a photograph or a pressed
flower’s two dimensional memory.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

The Evening Is Still

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The evening is still:

But for the blackbird bold on his
chimney pot promontory, his
conversation a shrill and beautiful
song.

But for the wood pigeons clumsy,
erotic flapping.

But for the silent gnats dancing in
scriptures and fine invisible writing.

But for the red setting sun behind the
silhouette of new spring trees.

But for the purr of a distant car
comfortable on the road.

But for the gurgle and murmur of a
conversation in a garden two fences
along.

But for the imperceptible growth of
plants.

But for tulips drawing closed with
nights subtle encroachment.

But for all that is happening.
But for all that is happening.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

Genie

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Spring calls Genies 
From Horse Chestnut branches
As buds split
And New leafy hands
Grasp for light’s urgency,
And haul themselves forward 
And on.

From nothing they come
As if Big Bangs
Were our greatest fallacy 
And called forms
Were drawn 
By loving expansion alone.

Life emerging in endless renewal,
The mysterious reborn in magical leaf,
Flower and fruit, expressed year 
After year, filling to full all the futures 
Thought possible and granting each 
Spring a bountiful wish.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.