It’s as if the spirit,
Pale green and new,
Brushed our realm
For the briefest instant,
Igniting the cool magnitude
Wrapped in guts of plants
So all are suddenly aware
And blinking and charged
And rolling on in lattices
And internal xylem flows,
Abandoned to their task
To raise the sexual forms
Of flowers in to the high air,
Burgeoning with all the winged
Busyness and assistance
Brought by the sun’s worship.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
He spins his breath
In to a spell
Of enigma circling,
Like an auric cloak of twisting fog
Behind which he ducks
In the maintainence of mystery.
What dwells within the vortex
Behind the wall of half
Answered questions
And glimpses
Drawn away by the spell?
Is there a mystery within
Or only the wish of mystery
And its subtle trickery
Of the hidden man?
I invite you,
Wizard behind the spell of
Manipulated wonderment:
Step forward, naked and without the
Swirling clothes that hide your name
And deflect every question
To a riddle in a cul de sac.
Step out, Wizard.
Is not real magic,
To be visible, straight forward,
Unclothed and vivid as the thing
Unashamed and confident:
The mysterious wand set down,
The spell dispersed,
The conjuring acquitted,
The self beneath, unmasked.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
A day or two at most
In this floriferous moment,
Where white is defined
In garlands
And upon the breeze
And strewn upon the green.
The garden in pale fresh notes,
Hardly even a thing
Before altered
And borne away
Upon the wind filled clouds
Searching in the blueness.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
For Mima
She drifts on a dream
That is a river,
One hand playfully trailing
In her wake,
Fingers idly
Tracing the ripples
At her fingertips.
She hums in sweet mellow moods:
Time unravelling
Like the gentle welling
Of the slow current.
She thinks:
Some live their lives
Adrift the river,
Holding nothing
Of the passing life
But the feeling
Flowing on meander’s
Subtle pondering.
She thinks:
I should like that life
And the peace
Found in the waltzing leaf,
In its slow and submerged tumbling
And ever rolling motion forward,
Drawn on always by the river’s irresistible pull.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In the countryside
Hawthorn flirts salacious,
Fluorescing champagne heady
In puffs of magic breath
Strung light upon the hedgerow’s
Dour skeletal winter branch,
Split and thankfully broken
By plethora encrustations
In scores of tiny white flowers.
In the town and village
The roads become boulevards
In which magnolia offer
Perfect molluscs
To the neat and leafless,
And cherry blossoms
Enlighten the spirit
Like wedding bells
And confetti heaped,
While winter jasmine,
In shocks of vivid yellow,
Leaps out and streaks
In lurid flares of flagrant disbelief.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The blue mists
Of evening’s closure
Blurs vistas
To dreams
And wending paths
Petering and smudged
Until the far hills
Clump with tree forms
To places adrift
White vapours
Plump with beginnings
And mystic spaces
In which only the shrill bird call
Punctuates.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The cool dawn
still tendrils damp
on dew cloaked leaf
and humid mist
of the night breath diminishing.
Each and every blade
of the mop flop grass
wears a sparkling jewel
in which the sun quivers
as a white hot fragment.
And the concrete path
mottles transpiring art
in patches of sunshine
scolding from behind
swift passing clouds,
while every vigorous plant
is flushed to upthrust,
called and prompted
by firm osmotic grasp
and fluid’s turgid evaporation.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The lusty heart
strains and fills to full,
pumps for the pen,
swells with the voice,
reaches through the hand’s device:
unburdens oratory cascade
in reams of white sheets impressed
with the ink of its desire to be,
and speak of what it feels
and finds upon the page.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In the myth of science
there are all the beautiful stories
you could ever wish to contrive.
In the religion of science
there are the stiffly clasped
doctrines of zealots.
In the science of science
there are symbols, and arguments
over the meanings of things.
But we are still the people
as we were the people before,
hearing fragments and rumours,
pasting them in to the pastiche
of our fears, our dreams
and the myths we’ve believed.
Yet another relentless turn of the age
sees misunderstandings told,
preached as the truth,
our power deflected from self
and put to Gods of numbers
and statistics, pushed away
from the heart’s human yolk
that weeps to discern truth
from confusion’s intellectual maelstrom.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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