The pure thought
In blossoms open
Upon the branch
Nothing but this
In blue sky and air
As fresh as newness birthed.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Poems
Poems
Living Myth
The incomprehensible bud
Unsheathed of winter,
Awaits
Unbelievable expansion
In to the living myth of spring.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Penfriend
Through the window of your pen
Come words flitting
On the breath of memory,
Their heart beat
Rich on wings of poetry
And love’s prospecting reach
In to the unknown.
I watch the corner of your world
From the corner of mine,
And find there, similarity
In the mind’s agile tool:
Your eye open
As mine too is seeing.
There remains now
Only the conveyance
Via electrons and emanating light,
As I touch individual finger prints
To the keypads of a screen
And hear your soft keying
Responding in kind tapping
From another far continent.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
First Fine Sustenance
If I could drink the sky’s cool mood
And mix
The light of first blossoms
So delicately sprinkled in
Then I would
Or breathe a draught of first warmed air,
White fragrance bathed
In sunshine’s friendly face
Arriving to the newness in me
Then I would
Imbibe them both
To feel this first fine sustenance.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Teenage Smoker
He smokes
Like he might find
The answer
Dragged through the filter tip,
As if his mood
Were hunger
And the inhalation
A type of food.
His smoulder
Is in his eyes,
His low hung head
And in dark shadows
Beneath his hood,
Where the ember burns,
Pulsing brighter
With each insistent pull.
He smokes
As if it were a cloak
Of defiance
And comfort mixed,
A dressing
For his sulking bruise,
An action instead of words
Passing the gateway of his lips.
He says it all
In silence
And half smoked butts
Finger flicked
And littering
The thresholds of doorways
And the brick walls he’s leant against.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
The Celebrity Face
The fear of movement
Steers the knife
And stills the flesh
In to a mask,
Free of wrinkles
And evidence
Of time past
And existence happening.
As if the demanding child
Were given
Its every shouted wish,
To go against
Life’s natural ageing path
And join
The Yes-Men horde
Branding the tampered
And augmented look
As the ‘must be’
– New beautiful –
For every old
Who holds too tight
To that which
Has long since departed.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
We’re All Wearing Our Beards
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Geometrics
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
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
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