Bathe in the warm sea
Of universal light,
For it is near,
As near as your body.
You can reach for it,
Ask for it to warm your heart,
For it is as close to you
As your famished thoughts.
You can have it.
It is yours and always was,
You just turned away
For the briefest everlasting moment.
I wish plenty on my enemy.
I wish him the whole world.
I wish him strength
And vitality,
Happy times,
Fulfilment of his desires
And speed in their unfold
So he does not wait or want
Or hunger or thirst.
I wish plenty on my enemy
And that he finds love in his heart
For friends and family,
For his beautiful children,
And all the folk
In his immediate familiarity.
I wish him warmth
So he might sit comfortable
Within his body,
His mind dipping
In the infinite flow of love,
His cells infused
With wealth
And wonder at it all;
His mind wishing plenty upon his enemy.
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Daubed on skin
And words alike:
All the shades
So coloured.
Hued by burning finger
And anger’s pointed flame:
Projection hurled
As flying wounds inflicted.
The stain: not on pure black skin
Or brown, or pink, or lily white
But on the eye
And on the mind,
On the filter
Through which we look
At the world
In its richness.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Some peer for heaven’s star-load,
Grappling with infinite mathematics
And paradox strewn colourful
Beyond the impossible reach of the mind.
And yet others peer close as home
And find the universe layered
In unending planes, thick with reality
In which life forms inhabit.
To look is to exclude the rest,
Understanding found in the narrowing
Of the pin point eye, alive on the observed
But unconscious of other and else.
What dwells where we cannot see,
Where our minds have yet to examine,
Where are backs are turned
And worlds are yet to be seen?
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
Around the white lilac bloom
Two white butterflies flirt
In spiral mirror images,
As if they were once
The petals on which
They now alight,
Revisiting for but the briefest instant
Of memory past
Before once again
Gambolling on updrafts
And the gentlest touches
Of wingtip flutterings
In the dance of butterfly love.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
For Mima
She drifts on a dream
That is a river,
One hand playfully trailing
In her wake,
Fingers idly
Tracing the ripples
At her fingertips.
She hums in sweet mellow moods:
Time unravelling
Like the gentle welling
Of the slow current.
She thinks:
Some live their lives
Adrift the river,
Holding nothing
Of the passing life
But the feeling
Flowing on meander’s
Subtle pondering.
She thinks:
I should like that life
And the peace
Found in the waltzing leaf,
In its slow and submerged tumbling
And ever rolling motion forward,
Drawn on always by the river’s irresistible pull.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In millennial silence
beings conceived at the very beginnings
unfold as they have timeless
known revolutions diurnal
and the cyclic swing of earth
in its year long voyage
in praise of wisdom
gifted by the star sol.
To know a billion years unaltered
and be in generation’s span
of always true to sun –
receiving the endless flow
of time’s nourishment
and the gracious matter
felt by every quivering leaf
as heat’s warm bosom
and light’s so gentle hand
– is first and only truth
within the kingdom
of father in heavens certainty.
To flourish is birthright
upon the world’s good earth;
and moss, guiltless in the whole,
takes its rightful place
among the children,
and thoughtless absorbs elation
as it was so lovingly sent.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
In the miraculous fish
That come again and again
Like tide to the table
Forever sustained
And always providing
A predictable nourishment,
We encounter
The earthbound principle
Of abundance
Found in habitat
The world over.
If only we could open our eyes
To the reality of the fish
And discard
All those meagre imposters
Who swim the dark waters
Of our fearful minds,
Whispering demise
Instead of flourishing
On currents
Of forever replenishing
And upwellings of bringing
That swell in offering
Despite our reluctance to see.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoive
Still the dogged pioneer spirit
Owning protocol and government.
Still the époque of first footsteps
On the shore of the new world.
Still strident explorers
Followed by makeshift populous.
Still the gold-rush
For buried commodity.
Still value of money
Above the the richness of place.
Still the dampening
Of primitive voice.
Still the damaging hand
Assassinating loveliness.
*
These are the end times
Of carelessness,
The deep tectonic shift
In the solitary man,
In the mind
Of every man,
From rootless
To gia-joined:
The umbilicus revealed
In waking of earth
In the feeling body
And connection
To all that was disembodied
And heartless pushed out.
These are the end times
And times of new beginning.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
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