The lonely heart
Is beyond tired:
It is absent.
Acknowledge the absence,
The dept
The insatiable wanting.
See it,
See the absolute truth
Of the hungry heart
And the deepest moment
Where two possibilities balance
Side by side,
Where one thing
Becomes its opposite,
And slides
From dept to fullness,
From hunger to wholeness
From wanting to satisfied,
For the heart is alive
And brimming
With warmth,
Not lonely
Or tired,
Just present.
I have drunk
From the standpipe
Of sour belief,
Constricted and miserly,
Gripping every drop
In an effort to control preciousness,
Becoming a gaunt shadow
Because of it,
For I am a man of this world.
Oh but the world urges to flow outward,
And the standpipe,
Rusty and dripping poverty,
Is but the mind’s eagerness
To hold love down.
For there are some
Whose eyes see beyond the standpipe
To the infinite source,
A waterfall
In which all need
Is foiled in an everlasting deluge.
And for others there is no standpipe
Denying the flow,
Only the mind
Constructing a fictional valve,
Dispensing injustice
And such a limited view.
For energy is free for all,
And you may drink your fill
Until you are full and wholesome
And ready to share
All the light in the world,
Knowing there is no end to it.
Like a tide
Or the first sun-rays spilling
On the turning earth
At morning’s leading edge,
Warmth comes upon the famished
The starved,
The bankrupt
And the deprieved,
Changing them wholly,
Altering them irrevocably,
Illuminating
As they are witnessed.
The air in me
Is not mine.
The bone and the flesh,
And deeper defined –
The vessels, the nerves, the cells,
And deeper still – the molecules bound,
Are not me or mine,
But companions
In a movement of time.
Am I the river, a stream?
Am I the wind,
Am I the rain?
Together we are something
And nothing.
But alive is
This dance of form expressing,
Unfolding, degrading, re-expressing,
For this world is but a wondrous garment,
Worn and tore down
Worn and torn down
Worn and torn down,
Endlessly refreshing.
When you see it,
It is there,
For your seeing is like the hand of God
Reaching out,
Touching the emptiness
And turning it golden and solid.
Hold the image in your mind’s eye
And it is done:
A thought
Realised in an instant,
Made in the moment,
In the very moment it was conceived.
The drunkard on the street
Begging with dirty fingers
Is no less worthy.
The banker mired in wealth,
Fiddling his taxes
Has access to everlasting love.
The warlord
Entrenched in violence
Could touch the eternal flame.
The everyman
Just getting on
Is a request away from energy.
The robber, the thief, the swindler,
And the police
Are equally entitled.
All are welcomed
Into the heart of love,
The sun inside, shining infinitely.
Bathe in the warm sea
Of universal light,
For it is near,
As near as your body.
You can reach for it,
Ask for it to warm your heart,
For it is as close to you
As your famished thoughts.
You can have it.
It is yours and always was,
You just turned away
For the briefest everlasting moment.
Where is the boy lost
In the journey to the man?
Where is the balance point
In which he slips in metamorphosis
Through youth toward old age,
In transit of time’s
Morphing body become?
Perhaps he is not lost
But changed in skin
And greying hair
And stiffness in the bones,
The boy alive
But draped in memory’s
Encrustations
That sway the free thoughts
Of boyish dreams
From all their boyish freedoms.
Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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.
Beyond the crowding thoughts
And all that shadows
Freedom’s choice
Glows blue sky
Width and dimension.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015.
distilledvoice 