On the mellow mild
In the yellow breath
Beset the bare branch,
Spring flowers undid
Before the unfurling leaf
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2017
Author: distilledvoice
Season’s Earthen Man
The great man of seasons
Wakes at the apex of deep night
And winter’s shrunken solstice.
He tries the cracks of his eyes
In January’s skeletal underworld,
Perceives only the dormant trees
Upturned and rooted in freezing mists:
Their faraway lives in the ethers of dreams.
In February, time stretches.
The birds summon the bulbs.
Dawn steals two minutes from night
And dusk lingers, pinches two more.
By the seventh day
All the minutes of the month
Come as one welcome approach,
Snowdrops forerunning,
Outriders of the coming urge.
The earthen man stirs from slumber
In the barren mud,
Sits up in the flower bed
As a myriad of poking spears
Aimed at the newly sprung sun.
The coronations of daffodil kings
Are coming. As are the meteoric
Gear shifts of light,
And growth’s succulent mirroring
As air goes fresh to the breath
As is clean and clear to the head
In spring’s minting of newness.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2017
Hermit Celebrity
Hunkered in a coat
he flees celebrity’s never failing tail:
and for a spell walks incognito,
half disguised and almost normal,
breathing hesitantly
before his fresh air
is recognised
and wonder struck eyes
paint him all sorts
but the man he is.
They’ve believed his brand
and it burns him everywhere
but in the bejewelled cells
of gin palaces and five star hotels.
In his youth he wished for this:
to be someone famous,
hoarding furtive looks
and whispers, and awe.
But the truth is a prison
of tinted Mercedes,
bundlings from clubs
and parades of intimate questions,
like hooks barbing red carpets, searching for the gutter slugs
of secrets hidden in his closets,
behind the caging,
ever encroaching walls.
Now he wishes to be sweet nobody:
free to walk and breathe and be
without a billboard face
calling stalkers and weirdos and
beautiful women in hungry hordes.
He wishes himself
rid of the image-gloss
which knocks ordinary folks
from their confidence,
turns them nervous and skittery,
and loved up and feverish:
transforms them
into starry eyed pariahs
who scour him and search
for injurious signatures
and selfies,
both thieved
and respectfully acquired.
Copyright 2017 Ben Truesdale and ditilledvoice
Stumble Of Words
From the stumble of words
Comes the fall,
The pen stuttering,
Tripped,
Flung forward
Unnerved by the slip
And in-breath,
Drawn quick,
As the writing
First leaps
And then flies:
The body
Flailing in space,
Skipping
Like a heartbeat
Freed and alive.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2017
Stain Of Hatred
Daubed on skin
And words alike:
All the shades
So coloured.
Hued by burning finger
And anger’s pointed flame:
Projection hurled
As flying wounds inflicted.
The stain: not on pure black skin
Or brown, or pink, or lily white
But on the eye
And on the mind,
On the filter
Through which we look
At the world
In its richness.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Immigrant
In chill October England
the African waits incongruous
by the grey concrete divide
of a duel carriageway.
He wears a leopard skin hat
and the curly white beard of
an old man. In his hand,
a tool dangles like a nonchalant
machete. He has bare feet
and baggy shorts and has
come from the woods,
filled with cool heartbeats
of high latitudes. He hears
as he heard in his homeland:
the voices are different
but still voices, greener
and more tidal, sleeping
for half the year at least.
Yet his heart beats as full
of blood as when his calloused
feet scuffed red, dry earth,
and though all through his
eyes is a paler brother,
less rich, quelled
rather than vibrant,
the murmurings he feels
through his soles
are so similar in vibration
he cannot help but
accept the meek light
as home, and breathe in
the arrival of happiness.
copyright distilledvoice & Ben Truesdale
Road Towards Stasis
The old man watches
as time races:
all the young
frothing in its leading edge,
powerful on its surge,
the wave on which they surf:
confident like fearless children.
He was like them
in his unbeknownst youth,
careless with the ideas
of others: tossing them
for the new and exciting,
rubbishing the staid
and stilled establishment.
It irks him now,
not to see his work dismissed,
but that he has succumbed
to ageing’s inevitable drift
into beliefs hardening:
all of what he knows torn,
by the turn of the unconcerned,
from his grasp to hold it static.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
