poet

Who Is The Leaf?

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

Leaves drawn of their vigour

Yellow in the chill light

And flutter down

With each stroke of the breeze.

–

Dying is a beautiful thing

When life’s sap is safe,

Eternal

In the trunk and the root,

–

Withdrawn from the world

Like an in-breath

Or tide, or season’s

Planetary oscillation.

–

Who grieves the leaf

Its turning or its loosening

On the branch,

Or its earthward mulch

–

Settling into new form?

No one grieves,

For the life in the leaf

Is not gone

–

But hides behind bark,

Gathers against the darkness

Of the shrinking wintery days,

And awaits the pull of the sun

–

And the soil’s warming

And the osmotic urge

To express itself again,

And again, and yet again.

Happiness

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

The heart that is no heart,

Broken yet whole,

Fluid in the nothing,

Being in the free,

Disintegrated beyond particle

And solitude,

Blended and indistinct,

Dying and alive,

Timelessly destroyed,

Obliterated,

Overwhelmed

And pounded from existence

Into existence’s open arms,

Until nameless,

Until faceless,

Until placeless.

Stumble Of Words

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

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 Writer’s Heart

~ distilledvoice ~ 3 Comments

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

PerKelt

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

A poem inspired and written for the band Perkelt http://www.perkelt.com

Come away,
Come away with us
On wings of the whistle
And the haunting voice.
Come away,
Come away with us
On the guitar strummed
And those notes plucked.
Come away,
Come away with us
On myth’s fast gust
By drums so touched.
Come away,
Come away with us
On heart beats past
And magic not yet imagined.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Penfriend

~ distilledvoice ~ 1 Comment

Through the window of your pen
Come words flitting
On the breath of memory,
Their heart beat
Rich on wings of poetry
And love’s prospecting reach
In to the unknown.

I watch the corner of your world
From the corner of mine,
And find there, similarity
In the mind’s agile tool:
Your eye open
As mine too is seeing.

There remains now
Only the conveyance
Via electrons and emanating light,
As I touch individual finger prints
To the keypads of a screen
And hear your soft keying
Responding in kind tapping
From another far continent.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

 

The Celebrity Face

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

The fear of movement
Steers the knife
And stills the flesh
In to a mask,
Free of wrinkles
And evidence
Of time past
And existence happening.

As if the demanding child
Were given
Its every shouted wish,
To go against
Life’s natural ageing path
And join
The Yes-Men horde
Branding the tampered
And augmented look
As the ‘must be’
– New beautiful –
For every old
Who holds too tight
To that which
Has long since departed.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016