Month: June 2015

For The Racists

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

Worse than hatred;
The blanking hand
Demises those blanked

And withheld acknowledgment
Disappears the subject of a self
As if it were a ghost
Of no magnitude or apparentcy.

A crime to be blanked
And yet also,
Crime in the one who blanks,
For the racist cauterises his own
Wholesome self in the violence
Of his denying

And lies as injured as his victim
In the victimhood of his division:
No longer seeing all the beautiful
Faces who are the whole of him.
Half his heart he disowns and cuts
From his being, settling in to the
Fraction of the self remaining,
So colourless and drained,
And denied of life’s real meaning

In the face of otherness rejected.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Virus Of News

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

In our reality
Thoughts shape the space
Of our dream.

A news item,
A Facebook outrage,
A horror,
Flares like guilt in the brain
And an abdominal twist of pain.

These are the food of nightmares.

Are they facts?
Possibly,
Probably,
Perhaps not.

For all the circled world is but a myth
Of savoured and soured dreams,

Where truths
Are malleable

And thoughts are bent

And perception
Is first machined by bias,
Changed by the colour of memory.

Our facts
Are not the solid stones we think
But slippery fish

With faces in multitude.
Not facts at all
But tellings and stories,

Mixed fictions and truths,
Happenings and imaginings,
Wishes and fears both,

Reported as the proper news

But perhaps not news at all,

Just the incessant re-posting of a viral fantasy.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

An Unexpected Ease

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

In a war
Somewhere far away
And in the thoughts
Rained down upon the body

Something different arises,
Something fresh encroaches:
A broader, slower force
Seeps in like a summer breeze
To lift where there is heaviness,
To cool where there is heat,
To free where is entanglement.

A feeling like a mother’s hand
Gently cradling her baby’s head,
Watching benignly yet purposefully,

Administering kindness
To every need.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

In The Rose

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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Nose first
And all the body
Thrust after it,
For I go
Gladly to the rose’s
Soft flesh,
Plunge myself within
To be enveloped
Wholly in petal silk
And scents of dreams,
Sweet as the loveliest
Material or lovers skin
Impregnated with sunshine,
Fine nectars, oils and essences.

For a moment I am lost,
Dipped as I am
In relaxation
Of all but the only sense in the world:
The pure thing found
In candied whorl
Of the rose’s
Delicate unwind
And fragrant shimmering.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015