In the emptiness
Of geometrics
There is peace
In the mind’s line.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
for and inspired by theo chalmers http://www.theochalmers.com
Month: January 2016
Tourist
At first they’re ghosts,
puffy eyed and white as money,
unpeeling themselves from the cocoon of the plane.
Then they are red as shellfish,
wearing shades and fear
as if their flight hibernation
were still clinging
and predators were crouched
behind every door.
Then after a few days of sun,
stupid in the heat,
they flick notes and order cokes
and beers before midday,
and lie idle with a book rested
on the bridge of their nose.
Then they eat out:
breakfast, lunch and dinner, dispensing currency as if
they weren’t sure what it meant,
fingers fumbling like a stutter’s punctuated speech.
And then their skin
becomes brown and golden
and they find their wits
and barter skill, becoming fluid.
Yet still they are adrift our money, and play careless with phones beyond our reach and watches from TV and jewlery adorning, as if they inhabited another world where affluence is a normal, everyday right
not a rarity for the people.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Drift Dive On A Coral Wall
A fan worm spreads out its feathery tentacles to collect the plentiful nutrient.
Coral polyps reach in to the current
and grab minuscule particles, while in symbiosis with the sun, they feel green algal blood oxygenate their livelihood.
Palatial sponges sift and gulp
vast quantities of the plankton soup.
Encrusting species cling to every
projection, cliff face and under hang, ever tasting blue movement.
Flecks of fish in sinosoidal pulse
weave and dance on the constant
flow, and shoal in bodies of mirroring.
Anemones and soft corals loose in
the waft, put up their ploom and
await sustenance borne upon the
liquid conveyor.
And more fish flutter in plethora of
colour and swim like May cherry petals fall.
One might infer trust, if a thought
were at all buoyant on the coral wall but thoughts aren’t currency
underwater, and to think is to divide from the source of it all. Yet the coral wall endures as ever it has. And millimetre coral growth spans perfect meters in a statement of enrichment sustained.
Only man conceptualises a synario in opposition to what the corals and the fish simply know.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
The Contrast
Flower,
Bright in sunwash,
Vibrant as the only real thing.
The rest,
Just memory
In bricks and mortar
And all that built
Misunderstanding.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Blue Elation
Lone cloud
In nothing but blue elation.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Robinson Crusoe
Palms swoop to blue utopia
And sands are refined powders
For the wave washed feet.
And sea water is full spectrum
Aqua marine, visiting every
Denomination between
Palest lagoon and deep oceanic.
And the fish are straight from Eden,
As is each paradise bird,
Paint pallet dipped to definition
By God’s own artful hand.
And from a spring, among rocks,
In the shade of ancient trees,
Sweet water froths and gurgles
To a pool in which a man
Might wash his skin
Of all the sins his choices
Have brought and indelibly marked,
And rise anew,
His face clean, his mind refreshed
As the unlearned infant child
Comes naked and without a thing
In to the clutches of this island world.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Sunset
In the last hour
When the setting sun
Elongates our shadows
And en-goldens our skin,
There is stillness
Of last long light
In the gentle stroll,
And quiet in the wavelet’s
Sodary pulse,
And timelessness
In the lulling
Of seawater swishing
Upon the cushioning sand.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Authenticity
With a face from the front cover of the National Geographic the old man carries the burden of paddy baskets with entrepreneurial spirit, balancing his load for each photographer and grinning with a toothy and well practised smile. More than anyone else, he knows the value of authenticity and clucks eagerly for the next shutter click to capture his own in the stillness of film.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Old Boat
Half a boat
Long ago dragged
To moulder on the tide line,
Relaxes in splinters
Shed like bark.
One day
They’ll be but bevelled plank
Jutting from the sand
And a fibrous thought
Left in the memory
Or perhaps
Another wreck
Lent sideways
And slack upon its keel,
Fading in the inevitable time.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
White Sand
In the geometry
Of blue horizons
And skirting beach
I find a boat
Paint peeling
And silvery
In the coral sand.
In the end
All things bleach:
The wooden seat,
The coral shingle,
The old man
Whose facial stubble
Grows white
As the particulate
He stands upon.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
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