Cursed by technology
Born to be a prodigy
Roamed the earth to become well versed in ecology.
Broke the dirt with the farm hand’s anthology

Made a stony hearth from the girth of this broken land’s economy.
Pitched my yurt where the man can’t bother me.

On top of luscious greens,
In the field of dreams,
No more do I pull the weeds of society.

All my proceeds grow seeds
I don’t need deeds just look at these feats
Grab an ear of corn if you haven’t heard of me.

Burn what you don’t need,
An idea of greed, the illusion of necessity.

Brought to you by bold thieves
Who trade lives but don’t sleep
Hold banquets but don’t eat
Grow food but don’t feed.

Ripped from your roots.

Dropped on the streets
in the sweltering heat.
Drying like souls of the ******,
every last one of us lost lambs.

What they want for me, it’s not a part of me

I won’t take place in the injustice that’s been bought for me.
But what I brought for me is a hypothesis,
Tranquility so deep a Buddhist monk couldn’t offer me
More than what my coffers could proffer me.

I’m not crazy but I have started the uncoupling

That’s got me to this mental brink,
Out of this poisonous sink,
No longer do I drink- from this sea of doubt
Where the irradiated mind has its teeth pulled out.

I put my knowledge of “earthology” into this horse and plow
I raise sow in the north for truffles of course
Sell them for hundreds of dollars an ounce to chefs in New York

I make herbal oils richer than kings from thorny things and rosy beings
Contemplating the meaning of life while looking at my fig-leaves

And I will pick the fruit and share it with you
Confuse me not with a more treacherous youth
Whom only seeks to toxify you with some new indoctrinated truth
Give you some of their lead paint proof, glyphosate too.

Their cell phone hooks filling your time with
Facebook looks,
And a MySpace laze
With honeycomb glaze
There in your man-made maze
Where you don’t speak for days.

I have seen the ways good people choose bad things to happen due the deceit
Of the industry they’re tapping’
Where is the Chaplain?
He’s got this book , and his grubby hands are in the pocket of the fat man
Who takes the holy waters and turns them to black sand.

Tossing grains in the air it’s unclear “whether” we can breathe it in
With no name and no face one rigged rat race,

We look for those Rebels M.I.A.

Moist and monochrome, clouds are gathering
On a Sunday afternoon.
Look up idly from my browsing, at the building 'cross the pool
Winds picks up, the monsoon breezes
Lick at the curtains twelve floors up
On the terrace, woman standing
Arms outstretched, grasp the rail

Legs stressed back, footloose in sandal
Lightly muscled, slightly formed
Kimono slips from lighted shoulder, designer ****** strawberry brown
Fabric glides across the hip-line
Revealing all to me below
Wearing nothing on the landing
Hint of shadow, ***** mound.

From the sliding doors behind her
Steps a man not quite unseen
Waist encircled in one movement, undergarment stripped away
Rigid stillness then the thrusting
Tension mounting at the breath
Woman gasps the O shape forming
Through her silent, varnished lips

Mahler moaning on the ITunes
Waves are forming, silent sound
Thrusting, busting, flexing, *******, arching back crescendo reached
Sun comes out, just at that moment
Roads diverging in the wood
Disconnecting, and uncoupling
Might and maybe should and aught

Trembling  fingers, taught in temper
Blink the eye and pop the top
Shaking hands that hold the taper, to the unformed smoking spliff
**** the wreaths in, breathe the thought out
Bottle clinks across the teeth
Unbelieving, unconcealing
Unrelieving, unreleased

'Hopes and Dreams'...explores the limitations of perception in more than three dimensions plus time.


I

Uncoupling hopes from truth sometimes reveals reality
Which is hard to bear
According to Eliot.
The difference between hope and what is real
Is sometimes the basis for laughter
Or tears…..
In equal measure
Depending on the deficit
Between reality, and the reality of hoping.
Two sides of the same coin
The masks of theatre,
Comedy and tragedy.

Yet reality is what we face day to day
Uncoupled from hope
An atheistic vision of what is true
In which dreams expire.

Hopes, dreams and reality
Congregate in theistic minds
As a woven integrity
But is the congress true?

Atheist and theist in perpetual conflict
One offering only truth,
The other hoping that belief is true
But, to what ….?
In this world caught in three dimensions
But do not forget time that marks when
We are born and when we die
According to Ecclesiastes.

The atheism of truths of a certain kind
Confined by the question asked
And who is asking, and the way of asking,
Atheist and theist talking at each other
But not in conversation
A dialogue of deafness to other points of view
An unbridged chasm for all of human history.

The certainty of truth is one problem,
Because certainty brooks no other view
But remember the constraints of truth’s
discovery and then assertion
In three dimensions, and do not forget time.

Unwittingly Carl Sagan made the point in flatland
A place of two dimensions,
Breadth and width, but no height
Infinitesimally flat, thin
Flat and thin, so that an apple
In its plump three dimensional roundness
Made its visit, announced its presence
But left only an infinitesimally flat, thin
Impression of its visitation,
With its announcement seemingly coming from wherever,
Infinite confusion.
For flatlanders who perceived a visitation
Without explanation
A mystery within which we experience
The determinism of truth
Not qualified by the dimensions
In which it’s made
Or defined
To the confusion of those who question truth,
If truth means the assertion of certainty.

Was it for flatlanders first cause?
Just like Paley’s watchmaker of the watch
found on the heath,
Each trapped in their respective
Two dimensions and three dimensions
Limited by their dimensionality
Of what they could see or imagine.
Not yet liberated by many dimensions
That liberated Tennyson to understand
That more is achieved by dreaming without limits.

Tennyson said…
That more things are achieved by prayer
Than this world dreams of,
But what are dreams?
Visions of hope, or the darkness of damnation?
But can we imagine these visions
In many dimensions?
And find new truths which we cannot perceive
In the day to day.

II

Dreams can be suspension
Between what is real and what we hope for,
Or ……
A plunge into an abyss of horrors
The nightmare’s nightcrusher
That reflects the fears of our experience,
The fears of Fuseli’s nights
Of grotesque creatures that taunt the hopes
Of our tomorrows
By revealing the layers of yesterday’s experience,
A past that haunts the future
In the day to day.

Yet redeemed by intentions
For the good,
And honourable to the nature of humankind,
And lifekind with which we share organic ancestry.

Dreams release the mind to find another place,
Another dimension, where what happens
Can happen and more than we can suppose
According to Haldane.

Limitless possibilities that dreamtimes
Expose what we do not own
But instead we are a part of.
Land, sea and air fused with the spirit
Of peoples that inhabit distant shores
Where they are one with the place
Where they are, were and will be
For all time.
The dreamtime of Australia’s
Original peoples.

And so the plump apple
Becomes a part of the experience
Of those who live in two dimensions,
Carl’s flatlanders experience their
Dreamtime of first causes
Because the missing dimension disallows
Their understanding of what is real.

So conflate the idea to many dimensions
And you can see what I mean.
Imagine the unimaginable
That cannot be seen
Because of the constraints of three dimensions.

And do not forget time
Perhaps the portal for imagining
What cannot be experienced
In spacetime warped and curved
By the embrace of gravity.

We sail in this cosmic sea
Not seeing its possibilities
Because we are not equipped
To see through a glass darkly
Or so Corinthians says
But to half see, dimly see
Love
And the truth of black holes
Where physics is sundered
Perhaps allowing passage to other creations
To us mere visions of what we aspire to be
And understand
Just as Blake saw heaven in a wild flower.

III

To perceive the possibility of many dimensions
Is to free the mind
From superstition
From the prejudices
That blight the landscape of our thinking,
And the landscape of dreams
When we perceive self
As if disembodied
Floating on the ceiling looking down
Detachedly on what we do
And what others do in the day to day.

Doings driven by the limited framework
Of width, breadth and height.
Width and breadth and height
And do not forget the passage of time
In which our doings take place.

One is singular in mind and body
Meaning self in the day to day.
To be beside oneself is joy and anger
The Janus faced self
Somewhat like the masks of comedy and tragedy
But of emotion and not theatrical circumstance.

How many multiples of
Space and time
Are needed to be beside oneself
In a quantum universe?
Or universes where to touch would be
Annihilation of self
Tracked as energy pure, and as simple
As the dreams of our disembodied self
Looking down from the ceiling.

IV

Is hope the delusion of optimism,
Dreams its manifestation of unreality?
Who can say because analysis
Is limited within the context of our perception.
Perception influenced by prejudice and misunderstanding
Because we are limited by what
Can be understood
In three dimensions,
And do not forget time
And gravity
And the failure of its resolution with dimension
and time
Limiting understanding.



But……
If we acknowledge the limitations
Even if not understanding the quantum context
Then, given we are prepared to accept the
uncertainty
Described by Heisenberg,
Then we are mentally equipped
To understand that truth is provisional
But with verity according to experience
Accumulated through the continuity of history.

We try to resolve contradictions
Because resolution anchors us into
the certainty of
Our present experience,
And certainty is comfort, allowing us to live
Day to day.

David Applin, May 2013

Copyright David Applin 2015

Moist and monochrome, clouds are gathering
On a Sunday afternoon.
Look up idly from my browsing, at the building 'cross the pool
Winds picks up, the monsoon breezes
Lick at the curtains twelve floors up
On the terrace, woman standing
Arms outstretched, grasp the rail

Legs stressed back, footloose in sandal
Lightly muscled, slightly formed
Kimono slips from lighted shoulder, designer ****** strawberry brown
Fabric glides across the hip-line
Revealing all to me below
Wearing nothing on the landing
Hint of shadow, ***** mound.

From the sliding doors behind her
Steps a man not quite unseen
Waist encircled in one movement, undergarment stripped away
Rigid stillness then the thrusting
Tension mounting at the breath
Woman gasps the O shape forming
Through her silent, varnished lips

Mahler moaning on the ITunes
Waves are forming, silent sound
Thrusting, busting, flexing, *******, arching back crescendo reached
Sun comes out, just at that moment
Roads diverging in the wood
Disconnecting, and uncoupling
Might and maybe, aught and should

Trembling  fingers, taught in temper
Blink the eye and pop the top
Shaking hands that hold the taper, to the unformed smoking spliff
**** the wreaths in, breathe the thought out
Bottle clinks across the teeth
Unbelieving, unconcealing
Unrelieving, unreleased

This thing—unsanctified, uncertified
(Reminiscent of an old, familiar sweater
Comfortable, perhaps a bit threadworm here and there,
Yet wholly functional)
Has become unwound,
Not in some spectacular supernova
Replete with shouting and finger-shaking,
But slowly, almost imperceptibly becoming patchy and care-worn
Until such point it no longer provides much
In terms of comfort or warmth,
A failure of evolution more than an excess of passion,
A matter of recalculation as opposed to recrimination.

Let us proceed onward, then, with as much decorum as we can muster.
Parse the checking statements, divvy up love seats and ottomans
With an emphasis on equity rather than enmity,
Leaving the plates and cups intact
Passing them on (a bit dewy-eyed, perhaps)
To begin anew in some niece’s college apartment
Or with other friends who shall gallantly attempt
To complete and compute what we could not,
Divining some math which leads not to our own aftermath
Of reasoned rumination in search of some cold consolation.

Telephone rings
Announcing your name
Caller ID pings
This is so insane
Selfish acts of subterfuge
Leaving us both confused
Despite the tightening noose
Calling you is what I choose-
I can’t let go

“Hi, how was your day?
What’s that you say?
Have I learned by now
How to play well with others?
What? No? I don't have to bother?”
(Your words stabbing like a shiv)
“You have your own life to live
You have your own love to give-
Just not to me?”

Somber thoughts of divorce
******* all my vital force
This will be such a blow
To the people we know
As mute as a mime
Losing track of real time
Zombifying my day
Hunting for quick getaway-
But no such luck

What shall I do thus
                    ~Telephone rings

If we fail to repair us?
                    ~Announcing your name

Lament inevitable loss?
                    ~Caller ID pings

Calculate incalculable cost?
                    ~This is so insane

I’m a solid secular success
                    ~Selfish acts of subterfuge

I’m a massive mental mess
                    ~Leaving us both confused

At least the former pays the bills
                    ~Despite the tightening noose

No use in crying when milk spills-
                    ~Calling you is what I choose

What’s done is done
                    ~I can’t let go