For all of us
Who write
There is kinship
In the pen
And a pleasing
Camaraderie of spirit.
Yet such
Are the plethora
Of minds
That being this
Is like belonging
To a wide
And diverse continent.
The best
Is when understanding
Traverses time
And space,
And a bond
Of likeness
Joins
In selfness
Expressed:
Like looking in to the mirror
And seeing the real
Familiar
Of a brother
Or a sister,
Newly found.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Are there really
Any wrong turns
Or mistakes
In the journey
Of our living
And in the writing
Of our life?
Perhaps
It is one way
Or the other,
Or another
Entirely different
Something else.
Who knows
And who is right?
Who can know ‘the truth’
Beyond their own
Or pass a judgement
Beyond the perception of the self?
And who is not alone
Upon the earth,
Solitary and singular
In every sense,
Sharing but paradox
And conundrum
Of the personal universe?
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
These days
The lonely words spoken in your head
That seem to shout, condemn
And measure you
Against just about everything else,
Pronouncing you lacking
In all of what you could, would and ought to be,
And thus leaving you
Feeling quite sorry
And down about the mouth,
Can now be named
As
The modern day, 21st century singular self,
So – individual
Yet
So – off the peg,
So – go it alone
Yet,
So – going along with everybody else,
So – I don’t need anybody
Yet,
So – in need of every other one.
Where speaks the other language,
The older self beyond the singular
Where love is prolific
And condemnation
Is past magic
No longer used
In the mind’s
Spacious vessel
Of new beginnings
And things born
To freshness
And the moods
Of kindness
Flushing the body
Energised and clean?
Where speaks the other mind?
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
They speak
As they have always spoken
For in the long lost,
To be man was to listen:
For the ancient’s song
Was to the heart first given.
And in that time
There was no loneliness
For all together
Could hear:
The words brought warmth
To those alone
And feelings
Were gently administered to
By man’s depth
Of understanding.
And fear was diminished
By the mind’s wide aspect
And reach across the heavens
That the free may walk,
Just as self embodied
Walks free upon the earth.
And love was easily found
And so the needs were few
And the people were happy
And the living good
As ever could
The living be
With voices
Always speaking
In kindness decree.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
For Patrick Jennings http://pixtowords.com
I don’t know how to write poems.
I only know the place where they emerge,
As urges clothed in the form of words.
And there in a sacred place
I collect the words like ripe apples
Plucked straight from the tree:
Gifts I have neither planted nor tended,
Just simply received.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
If only I
Could grasp
The ineffable spirit,
Harness in all the times
Of my life.
If only I
Were buoyant bright
In every instant
Of my being.
If only I
Could alight
The serendipitous mood
And be there
With its lucky light,
Never once outside
Its kindly,
Luminescent beam.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
I offer sympathy
To the sorry,
Lonely self
Who burned the bridges
To the wider self,
Severing from his larger entity,
To go solo and hurting
With a wound
Of self reducing,
And isolation
In the mind
Restricted from the universe,
That could be his
If only he could recognise
The wideness of his nature’s truth
And Accept his home
Beyond the reaches of his skin.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
The poet
Can risk exposure
Of the naked heart,
For his voice speaks
In dreams of magic,
And no closer words
Are so thinly clothed
Than in the music
Of his being
And the being of his life.
And so he must
Speak his truth
In the written word
And carve
From feelings felt,
Self portraits
Of metamorphosed art,
And tell
The world
Of his only life,
As only he can tell it.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
So many yearning
For the artists life,
Each and every one of us
Posting our dreams
To the greater dream
In the outer dream of the internet.
But I am roused.
I am roused for I am one in many
As you are one in many.
We speak the same language
And slip stream on the same energy,
Surf the lip of love
That curls endlessly on.
We will not drown in clamour.
There are not too many
For we are the many in the mind
And the mind is one.
And the one
Is wellpool
Of richness, integrity
And Infinity anew:
Anew
As each one of us
Lives closer
To the who
We really are.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
The sum
Of all that you are:
Your loves,
Your hurts,
Your truths, beliefs, perceptions,
All that you have learned.
Your dreams,
Your feelings,
Your heart,
And all the spanned divides.
Remember
There is no argument:
Another’s point of view
Is an equation
Unknowable as a distant star,
With strands of reason and belief
Meshed and matted
As the synapse brain
Is thus complexly wired.
There is no argument
For personal right
Is derived from what arrives
To the matter of the mind,
And in that
We are all paradoxically different
Yet siblings side by side.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
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