In Your Purest You

When she cycles she enters the dream of her belonging.
Her vintage bicycle with sun-silvered basket, well rung bell
And leather saddle warped to comfort’s fit, conveys her to an Elysium
Of country roads, wildflower verges, hedgerows brimming
And the golden wheat of harvest-time, strummed by a playful wind.

In her basket there are flowers: a pose of fresh picked beauties.
And in her delicately platted hair there are entwined stems.
In her mind there are flowers instead of thoughts. And all
The day is yellow-flowing with myriad light. A realm
In which she finds herself and all the happiness therein.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

In A Parallel Universe

A spell of introversion has settled upon the land and humans are gardeners of the heart. Human needs are met in the home, being small and easily administered to. Happiness is the peoples’ occupation and time is their friend. Space is a fluid and is known to expand. No one really travels much because of the comfort of home: so many are artists and musicians. The world is a village. There are unnumbered country roads, beautiful grottos, silent places, sanctuaries of mind, laughter filled spaces. Nature abounds in colourful denominations of kind.

Each human mind is a node of abundance and creator of wonder. This is the world’s equality. No place is the same or even different. There are just endless wellsprings and outpourings of creativity. Much is manifest and much more is left to the imagination. Wholeness is thought important beyond other principles but no one speaks of such matters of fact, as fun’s subject is more pleasing and much more interesting than that.

Every day is richer than the last. Every day understanding widens. Every day appreciation warms and grows. Everyday the sun rises and allows all the wide open eyes to see the true reality of things.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

In The Foreground And Beyond – A Photograph

An overflowing bin blazoned
with a colourful advert,

an up turned ice cream cone
on a clipped lawn,

slabs of concrete paving,

a cast iron fence with shrubs
overflowing and intertwined,

a vine creeping over and on,

bushes expanding,

a row of mature Scots pine
red against the skyline,

the brooding clouds, plump
and heavy eyed, sullen
with imminent rain,

fleeting blue between, high
and shifting.

A gull rides the buffeting
and for a moment glows white as
gold with the touch of the five o’clock
sun gilding is wing tips

then drops away, plummets to
nothing

leaves only
a cold burnt image
indelible on the retinal sky

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

WordPress And My Mind

Each time I Press
I take a step
And reach out
Far in to the mists

Of the unknown.
For Me it feels
As though the cutting edge
Of art arrives

And happens now
As I reach
In to the mists of mind
And bring back

All that I find there.
And then I Press again,
And wait.
And just like the mind

Beautiful things emerge,
Personalities materialise,
Worlds unfold,
And I realise

The myriad forms
The myriad souls
The myriad stars,
A billion hidden constellations

Out there,
Awaiting discovery.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

The Dream Of Her Self

She finds the dream
On spring days, in old villages,
In gardens and in flowers.
Something happens
As if reacting to the sun
For she shines like yellow petals
And smiles, her face upturned
And her eyes closed.
She absorbs
And then offers back her radiance.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

Words Come (for blog – On The Heath – I Of July)

Words come
Definite in the press of his pen

As if his ball point
Calls the very thing

To its truth
And written absolute

And carves a living thing
Upon the mind’s white page,

Then frees it
From the words’ vehicle

So the image
Stands real and proud

And wordlessly
Three dimensional.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

As If The Brain

As if the brain
Could know the computations
Of the Universe:
The sum of all
Somehow divined.
The infinite equation
Of all things,
All actions,
All time,
And the web upon web of
Interactions between,
Somehow catalogued and counted!

This is control:
The thought of the petty tyrant.
The madness of the expert
Who pretends to know
But waits to to be dethroned.
The modern mind
Floating untethered from the
Grounded nuance
That to be human
Is to float untethered on love:
In the nothing that is everything,
In the space that is filled,
In the unknowing that is trust.

The complicated brain understands nothing.
Yet the simple heart knows it need only understand itself.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

I Have Seen Your Face Before

I have seen your face before,
over plump and pumped in places
with fillers glossy and wishfully
young: meant to forget every mark
and memory of the life preceding,
meant to fight the foe of time.

Worn by so many women, fifty
something and reaching for youth’s
fashionably bland facsimile, whose
disappointing truth is mask as lifeless
as any purchased latex version of the
self: a faces see-through window
made so clumsily
in to a tinted wall.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.

Leaf and Twig (a poem for wordpress blog, Leaf and Twig)

It is good because it offers only the witnessing. It sees something beautiful and sees it. And like the soul, passively observes with no thought beyond to control or complicate. It seeks nothing from you but offers wholly its world.

There is its simple purity. It speaks without words. It does not tell.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.