He holds the cigarette
With his lip.
As he speaks
It nods its agreement.
In his hand is a beer,
At home
Quite naturally.
An eau de vie lubricant.
In his face is a scowl,
An irritation
As if most things
Were shit
Or, he’s cool
To offer disinterest.
A shrug and a pout
In detachments shout,
Ejected from the self,
Thrown out
And projected
As the very loudest silence.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Every holiday snap
Is a slap
Right across your face,
Dear reader, watcher, liker,
Cos I’m the smug vacation maker
Whose wall you’ve reluctantly
Signed to yours.
And if you were here
I’d bore you to tears
But as you’re not
I’ll just smack you across the chops
With how lovely a time
I’m having
Under the smug sun
Next to the smug water
In the smug dream
That stinks
Of all the self importance
I could manageably conjure.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Surf rises
To the mirror lip sun,
A moment before
White thrall,
Loose of integrity
And slack
Of reer-up and shore call,
Pales the deep blue
To a lighter shade.
Near the rocks
Haze moistens the air
With sticky salt
Greasy on every surface
And root grasping trees
Survey the consistent pulse
From high, squinting promontories
Stark against the prevailing horizons
And the sea changing sky.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
In a parallel world,
Much like our own,
The mark of a man’s success
And achievement is measured
By the number and age
Of mature trees he gladly tends
In his garden.
In this parallel world
All men are servants
And nothing is out of balance.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Beneath the succulent leaves,
In the shadow cast
Where harsh sun
Fragments
To a gentle dappling,
Proboscis flowers
Scent the musty undergrowth
With sweetness derived
From intense concentration.
Like the artist
Who dedicates the hours
To find a pure manifestation,
The flower too
Is single minded
In its delicate craft
And delights in its creation.
copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
Flowers
Like all things
Unwind from their beginnings
Curved by the spin
Of worlds
And helices underlying.
All the earths children
Are so marked
By coriolous force
And inescapable laws
Holding us snug to our place
In time revolving.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & Distilledvoice
O world
Myriad
And so various
How refined
Your ideas
Brought to definition
In the womb of you!
How perfect
The journey of a flower
In generations’ wandering
And expression.
How fitted this now
In which the blossoms
Burgeon at the lip
Of times curvature.
How right the polyps
Of your creation,
Now
And forever
In your name.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & distilledvoice
In contrast:
Utility and the flirtatious
Stand unperturbed
Side by side.
Copyright 2016 Ben Truesdale & Distilledvoice
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
The earth turns
In incremental light.
The day expands
In millimetre shoots,
A green touch
Like lovers’ skin
Mirroring pale light
And new sun contours.
Each bulb nestles
In the mother’s pulse,
Follows exact
Circadian match:
The beautiful dance
Of closest partners.
Like all living things
In sweet, earthy bondage,
Not one strays
Nor splits disobedient
From irrefutable law
And physical fact
Of freedom
To be absolved,
And to shadow
First, ethereal footsteps.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016
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