If nothing else
Then coffee’s
Bitter roast warmth
And bite back,
To light
The cold night
And cold morn,
And twang it
To a bit-better
Vibrational resonance.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
writing
On The Road
He might be Californian,
Shaggy
In flared denim suit
And long
Sun blond hair
Agitating his eyes.
He wears a moustache
And breath
Spiced bourbon and cigarette.
The days are a sun blanched
Headache while the nights
Are dizzying breakneck
Of life lived fast
With liquor cubed drink
Chinking glimmer in a glass,
Or bottle neat
From a brown paper bag
Hidden in a back street:
It’s all much of a muchness.
There are girls:
All with faraway look,
Smacked up
And drifting nowhere
On the drug of sex
And fleeting break
From loneliness
Found in strange
Bedfellow’s quiver
And alcoholic unburdening
Of orgasm before sleep.
He says – be cool baby –
To whom ever he meets
On the road,
Salutes them
With joint
Marihuana journey
Or acid trip
To nameless places,
Passing in a flurry of faces,
Hard as cold asphalt,
Futureless and travelling
Without name.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
First Frost
First frost
Withers foliage,
Yet a few hardy flowers
Persevere,
Blooming ragged
And defiant
In time’s cool withdrawal.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Effortless
Under blue-grey clouds
Red kites find
Effortless updrafts
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Glass Cage
The heart
Wrapped
In the glass cage,
Separate
From the body,
Separate from the world,
Isolated
From synapse touch,
From neurone being:
Yet still
The mind watches
From behind the glass,
Seeing everything,
Un-blinkered,
Unblinking.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Winter Welsh Cottage
Not more
Than rockfall,
It dwells hunkered
Beside the spate
And the wizened,
Moss bearded,
Lichen fleece trees,
Bent to authority
Prevailing.
Its stone walls
Sieve the moor wind
Of its cold fingering,
And heather herb scent
Sweet on its fidgeting tips
Ingress on drafts
Under the mischievous door.
The mist is low
And sight is brought close
As weather-fallen
Days and nights
Resemble the gloom
Blurring the edges of the world.
How can this not affect
The mind of the old man
Thoughtless before the stove
Burning low on enclosed
Vistas of wintertime?
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Aggressive Projection
The beast is muzzled
And drooling
And straining at the lead
As if its owner’s
Distrustful eyes
And heavy
Auric clouds
Swirling
In dark stars
Of circumference hatred,
Transfuse
Umbilical
And fill the dog
With lust for blood
And teeth sharp
In every direction.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Sleeping Mountains
He sleeps
Through millennia:
The days and years
Indistinguishable.
His body
Wrapped in a mottle skin coat
Weathers enduring seasons.
Elements
In their raw state,
Abrasive and unforgiving,
Fracture his skin
To cleaved splinters
Sloughed clattering
In scree slips,
Through which
Sparse plants
Eke meagre.
This is how it is
Upon his slumber-back dormancy,
Where heather and bracken
Strewn wirey-wild
Flower purple
And unfurl
In fronded reach,
In nooks
And boggy patches
Between white cataracts
And the slow lichen roses
Tattooed
On every blemished slab and edifice.
Through this
He sleeps,
As time
Flows unnoticed.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Storm
From the prevailing west
Cyclonic lows
Push
Wet faced
Across
The foot scuffed
Rough,
Browning upon
The boundary rock,
Greying the low sky
And darkening every
Thoughtful perspective
To a buffeted corner
Of the wind swept mind.
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
Merry Commercial Christmas
All aboard
Shouts Santa’s
Tannoy’d voice
In scourge of jingled
Agro-vertisment:
The under thought
Merrily singing
– sell, sell, sell –
To the tinsel touched
Whose endorphin mush
Thinks
– buy, consume,
Oh hello hell of
Dis-con-tent-ments
Purchasing.
Halloween is barely
Rid its mask
Yet machinery
Is yanked to start:
The conveyer belt –
With only 41 shopping days
Panic due –
Has the duped
Of wanting wide
And kids enlisted eyes
Firmly in its
Gravitational yaw
And pull.
Oh Jesus
Kill me
With a plastic sword
Or heal me of time’s crucifixion,
For I fear
I will not last
This carol-blasted
Foe-fun benediction
Of warm sentiments
Twinkling and contrived,
Nor has my wallet
Felt so pauper-ly old.
Maybe someone
Will get me a new one
This season’s opportunity
To retail with impunity
And give it me
With a measure
Of layered guilt
Festively applied.
Merry Commercial Christmas everyone!
It’s barely but November time!
© Ben Truesdale and distilledvoice, 2015
distilledvoice 