mind

Solvent Self

~ distilledvoice ~ 4 Comments

In a vat of solvent self
Dissolve
The misodgynists,
The sexists,
The feminists,
The chauvinists,
The racists
And the belief in race.

Come clean
Of factions
And clothes born
Of woven ideas.

Come clean
Of rightness certainty
When wrongness dwells ugly
In the world,
Despised in the eyes despising.

Dissolve all but the body
So every baggaged word
And every loaded thought
Washes clean
Of the child skin
And perception uncluttered.

Now, arise O beautiful
Painted epidermal rainbow:
Matter not your fine colour
Or your sex
Or the changing whims
Of thoughts
On their long journey
Through conundrum unraveling.

Anchor in the free form
Of love instead
And hold each tight conviction
As if it were loose
In the hand,
Without limpet fear protection
Bandaged to its health.

Arise O beautiful life,
Undecided in thought
Like the open eyed babe
Who once entered
This world,
But forgot –
With each brick wall decision,
Layered in the constructed self
– that he was free,
Without encumbrance
And the useful/useless adherence
To the painful past.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Synapse

~ distilledvoice ~ 4 Comments

For Donna https://webleedwords.wordpress.com

At the critical
Point
Where paper
Meets pen,
You spend
The magnifying force
Of mind
And the heart’s voice
In concert,
And flourish
At the synapse
Where universe expands
To understanding
Newly defined.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

For Whom This Poem?

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

Words wrought
Only for the images
Caused in the self
Called you,
Where writer
Cradles reader
As mother tends her child
And selfless watches
Reader grow.

Or

For pure self indulgence
Of words formed
In the pleasure
Of the pen,
Where writer
Carves the meaning
As close to likeness
As their inner kin,
No matter what the shape of it.

Or

In earthly paradox
Where self bridges
Selfishness to selfless gene,
And floats indifferent
Mid way between,
Unswayed by argument,
Just joyful
In creativity’s
Spontaneous emergence.

Political Correctness

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Somewhere in it
There is a buried truth
But we
Who blunder through
Find our free words
Banned and restricted,
A gag
Stuffed in the mouth
As if the messenger words
Were the evil
Rather than sentiment
Expressed
Or held in prohibition’s worse
And inward secrecy.

There is much merit
In an ideal
But not one forced,
And not one
Policed by strong arm law
Of uncertain thought
In stance
And put upon the voice,
That makes us speak
With a stuttery tongue,
Unsure of what can
And can’t be said.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Slack Faced Thought

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I’m on the London Underground. It’s a bit stuffy. The air is friction electricity, rush and surge. The carriage is about half full, I’d say, not more. An assortment of commuters sway with the movement of the train. Screeches and clattering echo in the dark tunnels but the passengers don’t hear. Or if they do, their faces give nothing away.

Strange faces: slack and free of expression. I wonder: who are these people? I look at each one and classify them with a form of mental taxonomy but my only tools are what my mind has used before. I put my memories to their faces, paint personalities, jobs, dreams on to the canvas of their skin but find the pictures to be mine, not theirs.

I have to admit, I have nothing but the thoughts I’ve thought before. I’ve killed these slack faced people even before they’ve uttered a word or made a movement or facial expression. I’ve fitted them up, put them in boxes, labelled them with stereotypes: colours, creeds, sexes, the way they wear their clothes, their hair. Every single stranger judged. The decision as to their identity, conceived and irrevocably made so they become fabricants wearing the fictions I have projected on to the facade of my contrived world.

I wonder if they killed the slack faced me they saw? Or perhaps they did something entirely different?

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Mistake

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The mind
Tantalised by terror’s
Excitement,
Rubber stamps
Every violence,
Every incident,
And brands
Every normal madness
As terrorism
Born to our physical place.

And to the runaway dream
We add our angers,
And we rage
To do something against
The foe
Clothed
And created,
The anti image
Of our own
Disassociated face:
A glad enemy
Summoned
For us to fight.

And so we go
Hot headed,
The blood
Of foes
Desperate
To be let,
Our minds coalesced
In agreement’s
Blind conditioning
To go
Triumphant
And enthusiastic
To the next
Terrible war
Of mistakes.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Religion Of War

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If religion were expunged
Our ripe blood hearts
And fanatical brains
Would conjure
The sword wet
Dichotomy
Of feuding
Once more
And once again,
And we’d war
For sake of differing
And march
Beneath some other
Banner, flag
Or hot thought
Incendiary
In its desire
To strike out
And baptise
New recruits
In the endless
Cycle of violence.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice

Muse

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I do not know you
Though
For your eyes
And your mind
I pen
What thought and beauty
I can find
Right here.

And I wish it
Sent upon the wind
Or voyaged on promises kept
And letters sent,
A union conveyed
Upon a word,
Upon the thought,
Upon a sentiment,

One
That we might share
In mind
Of distant togetherness.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

The News

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To the screen we look,
Consuming the fast food
Of news and media’s
Rumour fat fact.

We’re obese on it.
It’s thick in our blood,
Congealed arterial,
Congealed – congested.

If you asked us to change,
Try a different diet
– Thoughts healthy and positive –
We’d agree to affirmation

Then tiptoe in the secret night
To feast on 24 hour rolling junk.
We’d munch like we’re addicted
And smile the innocent lie

Each light day, remaining unchanged
As we had intended. Our need to live
In fear, the foodstuff from which our lives
Spread out in concentric rings.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Both

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In your opponents face,
In the coin toss –
You won
He lost,
He won
You lost

– You wear each others masks,
Feel the flip side feeling,
Touch
The sharing self,

Feel one side –
North
Or connected south –

Reservoir of sameness
Joined and spinning fast,

Bullyvictim psychology
Yoked like binary stars
In gravity entrapment,

Not two distinct,
But one swirling
Entity of both,

Like the coin flickering
Through its duplicity,
Showing
Its alternate pulsar sides.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015