writing

Solvent Self

~ distilledvoice ~ 4 Comments

In a vat of solvent self
Dissolve
The misodgynists,
The sexists,
The feminists,
The chauvinists,
The racists
And the belief in race.

Come clean
Of factions
And clothes born
Of woven ideas.

Come clean
Of rightness certainty
When wrongness dwells ugly
In the world,
Despised in the eyes despising.

Dissolve all but the body
So every baggaged word
And every loaded thought
Washes clean
Of the child skin
And perception uncluttered.

Now, arise O beautiful
Painted epidermal rainbow:
Matter not your fine colour
Or your sex
Or the changing whims
Of thoughts
On their long journey
Through conundrum unraveling.

Anchor in the free form
Of love instead
And hold each tight conviction
As if it were loose
In the hand,
Without limpet fear protection
Bandaged to its health.

Arise O beautiful life,
Undecided in thought
Like the open eyed babe
Who once entered
This world,
But forgot –
With each brick wall decision,
Layered in the constructed self
– that he was free,
Without encumbrance
And the useful/useless adherence
To the painful past.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

Poem Photographer

~ distilledvoice ~ 6 Comments

 

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Sometimes
She searches for poems,
Roves over
Innumerable things
With a hope
Her eye might catch
A suchness
And florescence
Glowing real
In the edges
Of interest.

And so to the woods
For knot, bird and lichen
Hosted in the crenellations
Of ecosystems’ burgeoning.
And to the city streets,
Angular in architectural
Masterpieces and rhombus
Network’s crystalline form.
And to the face of child,
Old man and worn woman
Storytelling in wrinkles
And light shining eyes.

But sometimes,
Caught unawares,
She finds the thing
In the corner of her eye,
Like an insistent child
Demanding attention,
A nugget gleaming treasureful
In the open hand
Of the high carat sand
And the riverbed of imagery.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2016

For Melinda https://thepoetryofphotography.wordpress.com

And all the other talented photographers I follow.

 

Synapse

~ distilledvoice ~ 4 Comments

For Donna https://webleedwords.wordpress.com

At the critical
Point
Where paper
Meets pen,
You spend
The magnifying force
Of mind
And the heart’s voice
In concert,
And flourish
At the synapse
Where universe expands
To understanding
Newly defined.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

For Whom This Poem?

~ distilledvoice ~ 2 Comments

Words wrought
Only for the images
Caused in the self
Called you,
Where writer
Cradles reader
As mother tends her child
And selfless watches
Reader grow.

Or

For pure self indulgence
Of words formed
In the pleasure
Of the pen,
Where writer
Carves the meaning
As close to likeness
As their inner kin,
No matter what the shape of it.

Or

In earthly paradox
Where self bridges
Selfishness to selfless gene,
And floats indifferent
Mid way between,
Unswayed by argument,
Just joyful
In creativity’s
Spontaneous emergence.

A Year In The Chalk Stone Village

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

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In the chalk stone village
Flint glints metamorphic
In shards of black sunlight
Mortared in the strata
Of a time when much
Was constructed from spare
Thoughts left lying around.

In the spring
Fledgling wisteria,
Delicate on the woody vine,
Take to the sky on pale green wings,
And garlands dangle voluptuous
Above each cottage door
And homely window frame.

And in the summer
Swallows spit and daub
Their dwellings under eaves
And flit the pink sky
Scoring invisible patterns
Of impermanence etched
With high swooping cries.

And in the autumn
The plants give up
The flush of summer’s
Vital light, let go the link
For approaching torpid night
And release their fruits
To future’s fertile cornucopia.

And in the winter,
The shabby season’s end,
Expectant bulbs await the sign
To push their green nibs
Beyond the hugging ground
And light the new year
Just as the last was so conjured.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Political Correctness

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

Somewhere in it
There is a buried truth
But we
Who blunder through
Find our free words
Banned and restricted,
A gag
Stuffed in the mouth
As if the messenger words
Were the evil
Rather than sentiment
Expressed
Or held in prohibition’s worse
And inward secrecy.

There is much merit
In an ideal
But not one forced,
And not one
Policed by strong arm law
Of uncertain thought
In stance
And put upon the voice,
That makes us speak
With a stuttery tongue,
Unsure of what can
And can’t be said.

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015

Slack Faced Thought

~ distilledvoice ~ Leave a comment

I’m on the London Underground. It’s a bit stuffy. The air is friction electricity, rush and surge. The carriage is about half full, I’d say, not more. An assortment of commuters sway with the movement of the train. Screeches and clattering echo in the dark tunnels but the passengers don’t hear. Or if they do, their faces give nothing away.

Strange faces: slack and free of expression. I wonder: who are these people? I look at each one and classify them with a form of mental taxonomy but my only tools are what my mind has used before. I put my memories to their faces, paint personalities, jobs, dreams on to the canvas of their skin but find the pictures to be mine, not theirs.

I have to admit, I have nothing but the thoughts I’ve thought before. I’ve killed these slack faced people even before they’ve uttered a word or made a movement or facial expression. I’ve fitted them up, put them in boxes, labelled them with stereotypes: colours, creeds, sexes, the way they wear their clothes, their hair. Every single stranger judged. The decision as to their identity, conceived and irrevocably made so they become fabricants wearing the fictions I have projected on to the facade of my contrived world.

I wonder if they killed the slack faced me they saw? Or perhaps they did something entirely different?

© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015