Poems
Out of the mouth
Via the air
To the ears.
Imagination plays its part
In conception
Of ideas,
Of how
And why.
And like that
The view point
Expands,
Resembles a fact
Becomes a bit like a truth,
Ever Growing
In to something like
The real thing.
And then
Once cooked,
Once fiddled,
Once deceived
It spews out dogmatic
And unrestrained,
Exits
As it is born,
The truth formed,
The truth made,
The fact ejected
Out of the mouth….
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
What blindness is this
That sees
The mind
Creative
On the page
Even where the ink
Is absent and forgetting?
For surely
I see the words
Formed perfect
On the paper
With these eyes
Of mine.
Yet others
Find
In the form,
Omissions
And lack
Where my mind
Has conjured
And bridged
And leapt
Across the cracks.
And if
In my blindness
I still see
Words fully formed
And correctly ended,
Then what
In the real world,
Beyond the pen,
Have I also
Made perfect?
What gaps
In reality
Have I
Fabricated?
What have my eyes
Seen
In the jurisdiction
Of belief,
Unreal to all but me
Who paints
Stencils and stained glass
On lenses
Through which
I look
In order
I might see
The things
I wish
Rather than
What is actually present.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Somewhere between
The infinite
And the minuscule
Globes quiver
In skin
Spherical and lensing
Chlorophyll light:
Every one
In pert tension,
Succouring
To leaf
In mist cleanse and refreshment.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The idea for a novel arrived this morning. I was quite surprised. But I was more surprised when it burrowed through my mind and then crawled out of my ear, perching on the arm of the sofa, as natural as a young novel can be. It blinked at me and then, much quicker than I thought novels could move, scurried in to the next room. I tried to catch it but my fingers were quite stiff from not typing and my body co-joined to the sofa. When eventually I managed to pry myself off the couch I went to look for the little bugger. To my annoyance I found that it had completly disappeared.
I spent an hour looking around the skirting boards on my hands and knees, shouting out abuse for the sheer joy of being in a bad mood. I once lost a short story in the same way, only to find it cohabiting with a house spider under the sofa. I never managed to get it back and it lives there to this day, taunting me with perfectly formed quips and insults wrapped in spider webs. I try to ignore its outbursts but they are just so – to the point – and without the verbiage of self indulgence. Anyway, digression will earn me a sticky web on my lips if I speak a word of this out loud.
Eventually I found the little blighter (the novel) hunkered in a mouse hole, crying softly. Curiously it had taken the form of a squat lobster and had a pair of tiny but perilously sharp pincers for a voice. I have the lacerations to prove I am not deaf and my fingers smart: salt and cold sting hot. Of course, I tried to reason with it. And when that failed I whispered a lullaby and calm words, to tell it that I loved it just the way it was. But alas, the lobster was having a crisis. And no words of mine could bring it from its hiding place.
I’m going to leave it over night and hopefully the fresh new day will give it wings and the metamorphosis from skeptical, armoured idea to the plump, soft juvenile that it might just be. I really hope that the cat doesn’t get it in the night. So many fledgling thoughts have succumbed to that fate: gobbled up whole or left as lifeless gifts on my back door step, trouble no more but unfulfilled in their infancy, their potential dashed.
I might just feed the cat an extra helping of ice cream and trash tv so he is fat and happy and far too lazy to hunt a young novel on its first day. Lethargy makes a cuddly pussycat out of a killer, I find. And a full belly makes his claws retract so his hands are but soft pads and gentle mittens, and a flannel to wash his beautiful face.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The world spins
On instant access
Where secrets
Divulge
In the second of their conception
And news
Burns like star-fall
And dies as quickly
To the black
And old.
And time,
Shackled workhorse
To the mind
Careers
As never should
It fall precious
Past uncaring hand
And fingers barely touching,
Racing
Itself to panting
Wreck and ruin:
All of what it’s worth
Spent
In a flash
Of fast food
And capitalism,
Memorised
Even before
Its moment
Of occurrence
And physical birth.
The future
Travelling
To the past
But heart bypassed
So as not to happen
In the now
At all.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Cold as condensing night
Shadows permit
The dew plump air
Burden’s respite
In perfect spheres
Scattered release
On every magnified
Leaf top, crevice and edge
So the garden is justly jewelled
And each strand or stalk
Or equal cobweb,
Gilded silver light,
Is for a moment
Raised from damp
-To king-
And robed in crested finery
And majestic, sparkling transience.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Warm as I wake,
Still clothed
In the arithmetic
Of dreams;
A few sentiments
Found
Like gold flecks
In the pan,
Tangible and inert
To oxidising approach
Of the fast and probable day.
Yet there they are,
Untarnished evidence
Of my mind’s wandering,
Its sinuous, filamentous
Questioning
In to that untapped,
That mystical
And incorporeal.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Through white noise
My lines
Find your eyes,
And for an instant
Our minds touch,
Bridging
Inconceivable distance.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
The door
To this staircase
Is made of gravity
The conundrum
Is written
In my reflective frown
Some days
Life just seems
Impossible.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
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
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