Love sees you
Dwelling shameful,
Harbouring secret thoughts
Too ugly to own,
And puts its hand upon your shoulder,
Turns your face
Towards the sun
And whispers
‘You are not alone in this
For I hold all in warmth,
And all your shameful thought
Is but a heavy weight
You need not lug about
Nor even believe.
Come out
From the shadow of your thinking,
There is no weight in love
Only fullness
Of the heart absolved
And the infinite wealth
Of joyous being.’
Breathe upon
The subtle scent,
Allow your lips to linger
On its soft flesh,
Then,
Take a bite,
Chew the sweetness
And swallow the juices running freely:
Feel the plenty
Absorbed and nourishing,
Sustaining your life.
–
Look again,
For the peach is whole,
Untarnished, unbitten,
Perfect in its entirety.
–
Breathe upon
The subtle scent,
Take a bite,
Shortage was just a dream
For the peach is infinite
And you may take all you need.
Feast upon the ever-giving gift
And eat whenever you are hungry:
The peach of plenty
Is always yours.
Ⓒ Ben Truesdale 2020
What else
But sweet oblivion
To solve the angst
Of worldly living;
Its pleasures and pain?
Where else
But the heart’s here and now,
To quench
The ever-shifting appetites;
The changeling mind?
Who else
But the you behind the you,
The self itself whole
And happening;
Spontaneity immediately alive?
When you see it,
It is there,
For your seeing is like the hand of God
Reaching out,
Touching the emptiness
And turning it golden and solid.
Hold the image in your mind’s eye
And it is done:
A thought
Realised in an instant,
Made in the moment,
In the very moment it was conceived.
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
The lusty heart
strains and fills to full,
pumps for the pen,
swells with the voice,
reaches through the hand’s device:
unburdens oratory cascade
in reams of white sheets impressed
with the ink of its desire to be,
and speak of what it feels
and finds upon the page.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Upon your mortal flesh
my eyes, excited to new seeing,
find windows
in which the script
unravels like quicksilver ink
heart-fast across the page,
and sees off
the mood mundane
written boring in to static fact
of joyless unbecoming,
and instead
thrills the moments in their chain,
and makes them
stones for stepping,
and feet, light for skipping,
as if life, after all,
were not ceaseless, aggravated toil
but flight, free upon the wing.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
My father used to recount
The story of a green flash
Seen at sea when the
Sun slipped below the horizon.
As I watch the sun set
I find his story on my lips,
As though the flash were imprinted
As surely as if I’d seen it myself.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
He holds the cigarette
With his lip.
As he speaks
It nods its agreement.
In his hand is a beer,
At home
Quite naturally.
An eau de vie lubricant.
In his face is a scowl,
An irritation
As if most things
Were shit
Or, he’s cool
To offer disinterest.
A shrug and a pout
In detachments shout,
Ejected from the self,
Thrown out
And projected
As the very loudest silence.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Every holiday snap
Is a slap
Right across your face,
Dear reader, watcher, liker,
Cos I’m the smug vacation maker
Whose wall you’ve reluctantly
Signed to yours.
And if you were here
I’d bore you to tears
But as you’re not
I’ll just smack you across the chops
With how lovely a time
I’m having
Under the smug sun
Next to the smug water
In the smug dream
That stinks
Of all the self importance
I could manageably conjure.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
distilledvoice 