In contrast:
Utility and the flirtatious
Stand unperturbed
Side by side.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & Distilledvoice
poem
Artist Flower
From the medium
In which the leaf reclines
And absorbs
Warm solar muse,
Pure art
Forms as the perfect
Opening flower
And blessed
Replication of the sun:
A depiction
Of the source
From which
All lives spawn
And irrevocably come.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & Distilledvoice
Solvent Self
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
Poem Photographer
Sometimes
She searches for poems,
Roves over
Innumerable things
With a hope
Her eye might catch
A suchness
And florescence
Glowing real
In the edges
Of interest.
And so to the woods
For knot, bird and lichen
Hosted in the crenellations
Of ecosystems’ burgeoning.
And to the city streets,
Angular in architectural
Masterpieces and rhombus
Network’s crystalline form.
And to the face of child,
Old man and worn woman
Storytelling in wrinkles
And light shining eyes.
But sometimes,
Caught unawares,
She finds the thing
In the corner of her eye,
Like an insistent child
Demanding attention,
A nugget gleaming treasureful
In the open hand
Of the high carat sand
And the riverbed of imagery.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
For Melinda https://thepoetryofphotography.wordpress.com
And all the other talented photographers I follow.
Synapse
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
A Year In The Chalk Stone Village
In the chalk stone village
Flint glints metamorphic
In shards of black sunlight
Mortared in the strata
Of a time when much
Was constructed from spare
Thoughts left lying around.
In the spring
Fledgling wisteria,
Delicate on the woody vine,
Take to the sky on pale green wings,
And garlands dangle voluptuous
Above each cottage door
And homely window frame.
And in the summer
Swallows spit and daub
Their dwellings under eaves
And flit the pink sky
Scoring invisible patterns
Of impermanence etched
With high swooping cries.
And in the autumn
The plants give up
The flush of summer’s
Vital light, let go the link
For approaching torpid night
And release their fruits
To future’s fertile cornucopia.
And in the winter,
The shabby season’s end,
Expectant bulbs await the sign
To push their green nibs
Beyond the hugging ground
And light the new year
Just as the last was so conjured.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Winter Fall
All loose
From the sap flow
Nourishment.
All ground dwelling
And russet blush:
Egg speckled,
Wrinkle-rind
And pith withered.
All in sepia age
And near translucency,
The fading fruit
Engorged
By the swallowing ground.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
In Your Smile
As you drove away
You looked over your shoulder
And smiled
And though there were ten steps
Of tarmac and the screen
Between us
I felt loved
And took your warm gift
As if you’d put it securely
In the palm of my hand.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Religion Of War
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
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
