For Donna https://webleedwords.wordpress.com
At the critical
Point
Where paper
Meets pen,
You spend
The magnifying force
Of mind
And the heart’s voice
In concert,
And flourish
At the synapse
Where universe expands
To understanding
Newly defined.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Words wrought
Only for the images
Caused in the self
Called you,
Where writer
Cradles reader
As mother tends her child
And selfless watches
Reader grow.
Or
For pure self indulgence
Of words formed
In the pleasure
Of the pen,
Where writer
Carves the meaning
As close to likeness
As their inner kin,
No matter what the shape of it.
Or
In earthly paradox
Where self bridges
Selfishness to selfless gene,
And floats indifferent
Mid way between,
Unswayed by argument,
Just joyful
In creativity’s
Spontaneous emergence.
In the chalk stone village
Flint glints metamorphic
In shards of black sunlight
Mortared in the strata
Of a time when much
Was constructed from spare
Thoughts left lying around.
In the spring
Fledgling wisteria,
Delicate on the woody vine,
Take to the sky on pale green wings,
And garlands dangle voluptuous
Above each cottage door
And homely window frame.
And in the summer
Swallows spit and daub
Their dwellings under eaves
And flit the pink sky
Scoring invisible patterns
Of impermanence etched
With high swooping cries.
And in the autumn
The plants give up
The flush of summer’s
Vital light, let go the link
For approaching torpid night
And release their fruits
To future’s fertile cornucopia.
And in the winter,
The shabby season’s end,
Expectant bulbs await the sign
To push their green nibs
Beyond the hugging ground
And light the new year
Just as the last was so conjured.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
All loose
From the sap flow
Nourishment.
All ground dwelling
And russet blush:
Egg speckled,
Wrinkle-rind
And pith withered.
All in sepia age
And near translucency,
The fading fruit
Engorged
By the swallowing ground.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Birds
Wet wing above
The scrub and stick
Of winter shrub
And leafless tree
Surfing
The rush and gust
And invisible bluffs
Warping sky’s
Endless grey.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
As you drove away
You looked over your shoulder
And smiled
And though there were ten steps
Of tarmac and the screen
Between us
I felt loved
And took your warm gift
As if you’d put it securely
In the palm of my hand.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Somewhere in it
There is a buried truth
But we
Who blunder through
Find our free words
Banned and restricted,
A gag
Stuffed in the mouth
As if the messenger words
Were the evil
Rather than sentiment
Expressed
Or held in prohibition’s worse
And inward secrecy.
There is much merit
In an ideal
But not one forced,
And not one
Policed by strong arm law
Of uncertain thought
In stance
And put upon the voice,
That makes us speak
With a stuttery tongue,
Unsure of what can
And can’t be said.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
I’m on the London Underground. It’s a bit stuffy. The air is friction electricity, rush and surge. The carriage is about half full, I’d say, not more. An assortment of commuters sway with the movement of the train. Screeches and clattering echo in the dark tunnels but the passengers don’t hear. Or if they do, their faces give nothing away.
Strange faces: slack and free of expression. I wonder: who are these people? I look at each one and classify them with a form of mental taxonomy but my only tools are what my mind has used before. I put my memories to their faces, paint personalities, jobs, dreams on to the canvas of their skin but find the pictures to be mine, not theirs.
I have to admit, I have nothing but the thoughts I’ve thought before. I’ve killed these slack faced people even before they’ve uttered a word or made a movement or facial expression. I’ve fitted them up, put them in boxes, labelled them with stereotypes: colours, creeds, sexes, the way they wear their clothes, their hair. Every single stranger judged. The decision as to their identity, conceived and irrevocably made so they become fabricants wearing the fictions I have projected on to the facade of my contrived world.
I wonder if they killed the slack faced me they saw? Or perhaps they did something entirely different?
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Slow on dormant
Short day
And soil
Chilled stasis,
Yet latched
To the axis
Of the earth
That will
With solstice turn,
Unwind with light
And spiral out,
First shoot,
Then leaf,
Then the flower’s magnitude,
Until
In swelling apex
And full, green flush
Of potential’s plumpness,
All the tangible world
Expresses its ripeness
And rests gladly
In energy’s hands.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
From the ragged beauty
Of the season,
Genetics speculate
A hope
In rose flower,
Half crippled,
Half pert lip
Of summer love,
Sent to test
The possibility
Of love’s emergence
And early awakening
To the surge of imminent spring.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
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