Author: distilledvoice

In The Protectorate Of The White Adult

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The soldier wears his face
Expressionless; his body
The unimpassioned tool
Of a government, his self
Hidden deep, but watching
Immobile, as the rolling news
Archives refugees in their movement.

White faces wear white masks
While the multitude are naked.
If you could see the lips speak
Behind the West’s veil,
You’d hear these words:
We don’t want your disease

Or your brown, unwashed skin
Unless sanitised in servitude:
A cocktail offered by a waiter
On a faraway beach –
Given to the money flushed king,
Sweating in the midday heat.

Don’t you know:
Migration is a one way valve
And impoverishment a birthright.
Remain in your grubby seat
For you are the brown child
In the white adult’s protectorate.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

For Sake Of Beauty

~ distilledvoice ~ 1 Comment

For sake
Of beauty
I turn to the pen
To scrawl the music
And the word
And the rhythm’s verse
In gliding ink,
And trace
The shapes
Of worlds,
Following their forms
Like a child
Whose love
Is absolute
And brimming
With what perception
Endlessly births,
In riches unfolded
To the mind’s eye.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Autumn Scent

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Now
With reluctant light
The wet earth
Breathes at last,
Breaks its dry fast
And puts
The eager tendril
Of must and spore rot,
Conveyed in shadow-damp,
To the dismantlement.
For what falls –
The withered leaf,
The stem, no longer turgid,
The petals browning,
– Mould will impregnate
And make an earthly scent
In season rich lament
And sad fermentation
Of soil and soul bound things
Untethered and unfettered
In their sinking sleep
And matters cool release
From forms previous.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Nib

~ distilledvoice ~ 1 Comment

The mind
In the nib
Of the pen
Is the light
Switched on,
The wire
In electrical flood,
The synapse of seeing
Open eyed
And transposing
Ideas
Directly
In ink

As if
Their true form
Were black marks
Made upon the page

And not images
Wrapped in similes
And metaphors
Translating the link.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Pointless Poem

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This poem
Has no point
But
For the pleasure
In the curvature of words
And the feeling of forms
So malleable
In the mouth.

Just writing it
Is beautiful elocution enough.
Speaking it
Is satisfyingly pointless.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

September Spider

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Somehow they are flowers too,
Plump and central
To their strands
And gossamer petals.
Bodies worked at
And made in secret
Through the summer months
Among loam and beneath leaf,
Until the garden
Grown golden and fruitful,
Leaves crinkled
With the sum of age,
Boasts beasts
Materialised to the cradle
Between stems:
Their worldly wears
And accumulation manifest,
Their nets
Set to the bountiful breeze,
Their fingertips poised
For the flower forms of insects
Borne on sunshine
And wingbeats.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

From The Land

~ distilledvoice ~ 3 Comments

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From wooden boxes
Her land
Unclasps
Still warm,
Knobbly tomatoes,
Imperfectly formed
But flush
With the colour of the sun.
Likewise, the just picked grapes,
Dusty with botrytis,
Contain the same
Sun-drunk quality.
And the wine
Decanted
With a funnel
In to re-used plastic containers
Is matter of fact,
Poured for its sweetness
And personality’s distillate,
Not for any labelled
Contradiction
Or propulsion
Of aggressive advert.
With a shrug of her shoulders
The woman says the only thing
She need ever say
To anyone:
‘I am, as I am.’

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015