Tick tock
You cannot stop
Scrolling
Your
Time away
Tick tock
You cannot stop
Endlessly consuming
The slop
Tick tock
Tick tock
Tick tock
You cannot stop
Images
Rolling
And scrolling
In and infinite loop
Never giving
Enough of what you need
Tick tock
Tick tock
You cannot stop
Giving you life
To the machine
That feeds
And feeds
And feeds
From your attention
But never returns a thing
Tick tock
You cannot stop
Tick tock
You cannot stop
Poems
Scrolling – a cautionary tale
It seems such an innocent
Picking-up-of-the-phone
A moment of boredom
Fleed from -
The first video watched
Then a second
Then the endless stream
Of promises never kept -
Searching mind
Looking for the end of a rainbow.
To disengage
Is like tearing our sticky eyes
From the screen’s magnetic touch
As we pop back into the real world,
Shocked at how far we fell
Under its influence.
Someone conceived
This hand-held drug,
Intended the capture
Of the mind,
Wished the restless hand
Fidget for the scrolling picture
Which feeds on emptiness
And delivers more of the same.
Casually, we’d say
What’s the harm in it?
And yet all of us know
That half the walking world
Are caught in the phone,
And scare even look where they go.
It’s as if an evil hypnotist
Had created a magic device
Into which he bid us all look,
Yet, hid the dire cost;
His corporate wish
To enslave us to his corporate tool
And make us forget
The route home,
Calling us to climb into our phones
And never look back.
Forget your bodies, he says,
You no longer need them.
Rose
Some are green buds
Barely begun
But pushed
By the weight of the universe
To become
First the pursed lips
Of an imminent kiss,
Then the ripe indulgence
Of a beauteous flower
Generous scent
Wished to all,
Then loose
With joy
As petals relax and fall
Scattered like confetti
Abandoned
As the church bells toll
Marking the ever-passing moment
Of celebration.
Equals In Seeing
You cannot really share the light.
It does not travel
from here to there
from you to me
or me to you
as if there was
some sort of ownership
and transference.
But you can rise to it -
find the frequency
of yourself
attune to the light
in another
which is only
the light of yourself
and be
the light you are.
For all
are equals in seeing
equals in light
equals in being
and there are none among us
without this divine capacity
to be
and live
and love
in truth.
http://bentruesdale.substack.com
Come find me at Substack
The Precipice
Could it be
That the great precipice,
That peril conceived,
The fall from form feared
Is but an invitation
From fear itself
To ward you from the truth
That the cliff is no cliff
From which you must jump,
But instead
Is the gentlest slope
Like the soft sand
Of a gorgeous beach
Where a warm sea
Reaches to meet your feet
And invite you in
To something so vast
That all your worries
Would dissolve
Into the whole loving truth
That what is you,
What is real and true,
Recognises itself.
–
Copyright distilledvoice 2025
How Sweet
How sweet
The sweetness within,
That effulgent broadening
Like a unbelievable dawning,
A bright remembering
Of how it is
To be me.
–
But how subtle
The return to darkness
As if the night drew in
Without my noticing.
Here,
That found sweetness is a dream
And I am lost in gloomy woods
Seemingly without my bearings.
–
Oh but,
How sweet the sweetness within
When I remember the key to my life
Rests in my hand always,
When I come upon the truth
That though I appear lost,
I am never lost,
That though it seems dark,
It is never dark:
Oh, how sweet is the truth
To know I am here,
Bathed in love and bliss
Throughout my life
Despite the appearance
Of my troubles.
–
Copyright Distilled Voice 2025
The Thoughts Of Us
When the heart swells
And thoughts are glossed in wonder,
Coming to the world
Wet with love
As if they had drunk deep
Upon the source
And imbibed
A draft’s worth
Of that subtle, unformed substance,
It matters not
What these thoughts are
For all are equal
Under love’s law,
All are painted in love’s sheen,
All are born of love’s significance,
And none are higher or lower,
Weighted bigger or smaller,
Nor judged to be greater
Or deemed to be less than any another.
Like us,
They are materialised
And glossed in wonder,
Coming to the world
Wet with love
As if they had drunk deep
Upon the source
And imbibed
A draft’s worth
Of that subtle, unformed substance.
Like us
They come to life
Imbued with light,
To dance
For the fleeting moment
Of their being.
Myself
Dearest and closest
Most intimate friend,
You are made of nothing
But being.
When I acknowledge you,
When I fall back into you,
I return molten with love
As if you had dissolved
All but the essence of me,
Dissolved all
But that which you are,
Dissolved all
To which I was bound
In mind, body and thought.
And for a moment
And maybe moments after
Or even when moments stretch to hours
And perhaps really
In the truth of timeless always now,
I am free,
Free in being
And free in love,
Free to be myself.
Old Lives
Sometime the old lives rise
From where they lie,
Undisturbed
But fully functional:
Scripts we once called ourself
And followed unconsciously,
Ideas we believed
But forgot we believed,
Whose presence
Steers us
On courses
Now obsolete and irrelevant,
The machine trundling on
In a groove set
Years ago,
Thoughts we ceased to see
Guiding us
In the robotic program
Of our walking sleep.
Sanctity Beyond Arithmetic
The past is littered with casualties:
And mind
Will go back
And count the lost,
And perhaps dwell there
As an unhappy accountant
To that which should have been.
–
But love is never lost:
The wise
Cast away the past
With all its woe and misery,
And hold only
To principle love,
The heart warmth
That tells of eternity
Beneath the messy arithmetic,
An inward wealth
To right all wrongs,
Solve hurts
And salve wounds,
A truth that swells
As it is acknowledged,
A truth that wholes
And reveals
That beyond and behind
The persistent ills,
Love holds all
In sanctity pristine
And being,
Ever perfect.
distilledvoice 