"applin" poems
Tea Talk (or Taking Tea)
Jam comes first
And then the cream
Said the scone from Cornwall
To one ‘n’ all
Taking tea
Milk jug blinked.
The teaspoon gasped,
Who would have linked
The layers of bliss that sweetly kiss
With their order between the halves of a scone
From Cornwall
Where one ‘n’ all
Know that the milk is churned
Until it’s solid
Then we say the cream is clotted.
The teapot looked at the scone from Devon
Who knows that cream and jam is heaven
But only if the cream comes first
And then the jam . . . . .
My thoughts exactly said the ham
From between its sandwich fingers
Where it lingers
Until it’s time for tea.
‘Are you sure?’ the teacup said
To ham within its breaden bed.
Saucer asked the cucumber salad,
‘Should jam come first?’
‘But does it matter?’ said cucumber salad.
‘It’s a ballad
So red and white,
A symphony of taste
Into which to bite.
It is so right
For those who are taking tea,’
‘Jam then cream, is what you do,’
Insisted Cornwall’s scone who
As we know likes cream to be clotted.
But tomato blushed and quickly said,
‘With cream from Devon I am besotted
Because we know it’s clotted. . . . .
Too.
Onion, hearing Cornwall and Devon
Knows that cream and jam are heaven . . . . .
But jam and cream are bliss
Sealed with a kiss that is heaven . . . . .too.
The dilemma of order fuels onion’s frustration
And onion’s tears lead to prostration
For those who are taking tea.
What is to be done
To solve the question of order
Jam first . . . . . or cream?
The issue borders
On the ridiculous
As the layers sweetly intermingle
Like the lovers’ kiss
As those who are taking tea
Bite . . . . .
Ouch! said onion
The scone from Cornwall
And the scone from Devon
‘Either way is heaven.
David Applin
Copyright …David Applin (2015)
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 7:13 AM UTC
Is there anything glorious about August the twelfth?
When people privileged with exceptional wealth
Think it their right, to blast the sky
And the birds that fly, ne'er so high.
Is there dignity to the flurry that follows?
To be first delivering corpses to fellows
And consorts, dining in fair London town
On the shot blasted flesh, fallen down ...
To British soil, the land of the free!
So free, to be trapped in iniquity,
In pursuit of what some think to be glorious
But surely Blake's heaven would be furious.
David Applin
2018
Aug 2, 2018
Aug 2, 2018 at 2:39 PM UTC
Easter Monday (2015)
The silence
It was the silence
As we entered the gates of hell.
Then…
The bird song,
It was the bird song
That chorused our way
To the well
Of tears at the wall
Of many tongues
That speak to the silence still,
Of the voices that cried
For the people who died
The void only time will fill.
The sun
It was the sun
Shining on the wooden cross.
And…
The sky
It was the sky
So blue, and flecked with the floss
Of clouds so white
So pure in light
That the wall of the well of tears
Transfigured the sin
We heap on Him
Whose loss for many
Is the only way
To feel the void time fills.
The woodpecker drummed a beat
On the trunks
Of the trees so parallel still.
A whisper of wind
That rebounds the sound
Of innumerable roll calls
Of the thousands who now
Lie deep in the cradles of mounds
Stone faced, inscribed Toten
With the number interred within
Verboten… now
But why not then?
In that world of men
And women, when humanity’s meaning
Was turned on end.
And a godless creed
That shadowed the world with grief
Which now for many,
Is beyond belief.
The stillness
It was the stillness
That gave silence the space to breathe,
To remember the times, the godless times
That now are so hard to believe.
But silence and stillness envelope the House
A silent place to be
To hear the past that shows the present
The prayers for a future that sees
What could be,
What can be
But will we
Learn, the history from then to now
To forge that future for future’s sake
And answer the question…
How?
David Applin
… late afternoon and evening of Easter Monday 6th April 2015 following a visit to Bergen-Belsen earlier in the day, completed 7th-9th April.
15th April 2015 … 70 years after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen by the British Army.
David Applin (Copyright 2015)
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 5:32 AM UTC
Guarding the Gate
I said to the Old Man by the gate
Please let me pass to the field beyond
Where flowers lift their blooms to sky
That glimmers the flush of hopeful dawn.
The Old Man paused and said to me
Pass, pass please to your destiny
That comes to all but once this way
Beyond the gate where I stay.
To guard the hopes of those who’ve passed
And those to come
Their hopes, your hopes
Will come to be
Through the gate to eternity.
David Applin
February 2012
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 11:10 AM UTC
Rosie’s World
Up, up, up to where?
To mummy’s shoulder so I can stare
Upon my world below,
On books, on toys and teddy, so
Bought belovedly for me to share
With mummy, daddy and those who care
For a world of love, fit to live in
My world, your world, a place so thrilling
Lest we forget the joy of living.
David Applin …… 21st October 2011
Copyright David Applin 2015
Oct 31, 2015
Oct 31, 2015 at 2:29 PM UTC
The Garden of Gethsemane takes many forms,
All different from our usual norms,
Reflecting was and what will be
As was and are translate to me.
Surrendering self on this sacred ground,
Is perhaps one step that I have found
Hard; to disengage the self that was
From the self that is before the cross.
Understanding helps us know
Humility, so that we can grow
To replace old ambitions
With new ones, in the same traditions.
The Garden allows the Revelations
That help us make these translations
From old to new, so that in repose
We hold true to purpose and resolve.
David Applin
August 2018
Aug 6, 2018
Aug 6, 2018 at 1:43 PM UTC
Night Cries....
Night shadows darken my wall of dreams
Shading my thoughts, or so it seems
TO me, as misty sleep wakens to goblins and elves
Lurking in corners, and on the shelves
Where teddy sits and dolly too
Their shapes all lumpy, as they grew
Grotesque in my mind, started with themes
That only come in night time dreams.
But here is mummy, and daddy as well
To startle the dark which quickly fell
From my mind now clear,
Of the shadows that cause night time fear.
David Applin … 4.30am
August 4th 2012
Copyright David Applin 2015
Oct 31, 2015
Oct 31, 2015 at 2:22 PM UTC
Lily’s first poem
Lily’s eyes are a pool of dreams
Love and laughter are two great themes
To fill her life with wonders to be
Which are the dreams we wish for thee.
Lily’s name is a field of flowers
Weaving the colours of beautiful bowers
Havens of peace made secure
By mummy and daddy who make life so sure.
Sure to know, and sure to do
The future, my future is the clue
To forge the dreams of beautiful flowers
Whose powers
Are the symbol of
Loves great tower.
David Applin 11.00pm November 17th 2014
David Applin (Copyright 2015)
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 7:03 AM UTC
What is Life?
Schrodingers thinking
Lingering still
In the recess of Mitchell’s mind.
Where proton pumping
And electron streams
Released the energy
That powered the dreams
Of Crick and Watson’s thinking.
Exculting the coils
That toss and dance
To the chance of whimsical nature.
The random acts of random doings
Not knowing,
Mr Darwin explained
As better the dance
The better the themes
That evolve from primeval electron streams.
What quantum edge has uncertainty given
To Darwin’s original thinking?
Is the particle here
Or is it there
Where starry light, twinkling
Prompts the notion
That the galactic ocean
………………….to be completed
Copyright David Applin May 2015
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 1:12 AM UTC
What is this selection of love so natural
To drive men insane and women to purgatory
Can Mr Darwin explain?
I doubt not , but is the meaning clear
Why love one to one remains so dear.
Karl denied it, Lenin too
And Uncle Joe dismissed it
As a plot to subvert what was good for the proletariat.
But in that recent time when Hitler’s darkness shadowed
The Earth
Love glowed in the gloom of the despair of nations’ Terezins
Which to-day helps to repair our broken dreams
Of why we love one to one.
Keats loved one ***** Brawne
And Coleridge his Asra
But what is ecstasy’s advantage?
When comes the pain of separation
Mr Darwin, please explain.
Is it lust, is it reproduction?
But then when love is thwarted
We cannot function,
Where is the advantage
Mr D --- what is the aim, can you explain?
How the coiled spiral passing from time to time
Its immortal message which condemns each generation
To the pain of separation
When the reaper calls, or the rival sunders
The coils of love’s message we’ve inherited
Since the beginning of time.
Why? What is the advantage?
Mr D, please tell me your answer.
The whales they sing one to one
Like Eliot’s mermaids singing
Not to Prufrock but perhaps to you and me
The message of communication.
Is this love as one to one
Each supports another wounded
By the enormity of the harpoon?
The dictator’s message in another form
Devoid of love, sundered, never whole
Coming from that Terezin we never solve.
Dysfunctional Mr D, where’s the advantage
For such conflicting feelings to evolve?
David Applin (Copyright 2015)
March 2012
May 9, 2015
May 9, 2015 at 5:08 AM UTC
"Pop's" she said,
And that was Rosie
"You have a patch
That is no posy
Of flowers,
Because no hair
Grows there."
"Pop's" said Rosie
"Is that fair?"
David Applin
August 2018
Aug 8, 2018
Aug 8, 2018 at 4:12 PM UTC