the ego is a balm
for watching herds--
ezra pound is dead..

withought the ***** to make it rue
of wittier witter aphorisms never trilling forceful to undo

singular muse,
where do you come
in head or tip of head?
elusive beauty, disappear
i act in other barefoot dreams


typos bless the will to mean
of finality
of seem seam flawless be
i **** the emperor of ice cream
with concupiscent "words"
that verb the still to be a yogurt burv


single fractal frog
jumps like rhyme of toggle cog,
cutting grandma's mind

empty cup fills want
with other bristle sip+
eclipse Hypatia naked at the shrine
failure of a form
cones another phage
with peaceful loving bawl

freedom fighters flaunt
masturbatory rights of congress whim and taunt
crackle jackal fire sights
sing single missile lights

do i jest
or do i best,
lest simple techne tumble kite of waiting in the dark
of politician's lark
inventive lewd
of plaintiff plea
and rumble drum democracy

venous cud
of bovine mewing in the mud of affuenza's motherhood
strikes painful cords electric suds
that lather in the lackey's trodden figure's utter
venus aphrodite's *****'s foam

hopkins is at home
manley in the rub of constant loathsome comb
that preens a matish apparition's tomb

hello kind traveler
that takes me by the hand
rolling in the grass has never been as such
the band plays off Genghis Khan
like Gandhi spitting soup
in afternoon reprieve of ignoramOus fun

the meaning is ajar
i know i war with Stevens too to
bear the furry calousness of wartime's endless true
a bond of moneylicsious new accounted even in the dew
that sunders sounds to recreate a farflung brew
of history's adieu
which only sPeares you in the gut
(an existential reference here to trope the nom)
elusive Lear that wanders in the Foolish storm caressing cave to find
another mind
that only someone special kKnew of Kent
encapsulating time in brands that offer (a[0I]ether dust for tolling flight
growing down into the mushroom ground
spanning subtentious fraughtful nocturnes in the night
to bide that meaning's plight i wish i
wasn't altogether through
though happy to be here iwth yew

Mr Darwin, please explain

Reading TS Eliot is to be drawn into timeless space where images of past and future combine in a continuous stream of thinking …. perhaps the immortality of ideas. The genetic material of life, DNA, is immortal, an unbroken thread linking life’s origins 4 billion years ago to the present ….. and future.

Sequence upon sequence of symbolic letters encoding countless forms of bodies, built to the same principles inherent in the genetic code, yet morphing in endless variety according to the tenets of natural selection ….. Darwin’s idea that transformed our thinking from a moment of purposeful creation to how life changes through time.

Cosmologists suggest we live in one of many possible universes perhaps in parallel time allowing parallel lives, one not knowing of the other’s existence because of the limitations of our three dimensional view of the world and its existence in the cosmos. We see in three dimensions and no more, but we are aware of more because mathematics tells us so.

Mr Darwin, please explain explores the seamless continuity of Darwinian thinking with the timelessness of Eliot’s poetry…..

I In my beginning is my end …. V In my end is my beginning.
(East Coker, Four Quartets, TS Eliot)


Mr Darwin, please explain

I

What is this selection of love so natural
To drive men insane and women to purgatory
Can Mr Darwin explain?
Some ask the question
But I doubt not, that his meaning is clear
Why love one to one remains so dear,
Though 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 ******’s darkness shadowed The Earth
Love glowed in the gloom of the despair of nations’ Terezíns
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 Terezín we never solve.
Dysfunctional Mr D, where’s the advantage
For such conflicting feelings to evolve?

David Applin
March 2012

II

Genes are the immortal ones
The links between past and future
But ever present
Unintentionally directing the future and fate of humankind.

Silent, unobserved yet Gods of their domain
Which is us and life past and future
Coiled threads of eternity that determine our happenings
Including our loving one to one.

Yet ….

In their entirety and interaction
Do they, in their interaction
Determine our loving one to one?
The bond that binds each to each
Perpetual celebration.

Or ….

Is their selfish blindness which some accord to be
Inconsequential
Like boats tossed helplessly on storm driven seas
Subject to the whims of wind and rain
No more than replicators housed in vehicles
Subject only to the chances of a changing world.


III

Bodies are vehicles, genes the replicators
Bodies and genes indivisible
At least in the present
But separated as bodies die after
Genes have passed to their immortal future.
Perhaps this is what is meant when they say
That the gene is selfish.

Accommodated in the selfless body at a particular time
But then discarded as genes pass its immortality
From past to future
Changes slow, quick depending on stasis or acceleration
According to Darwinian tenets that enfold the changes
In genes and therefore bodies
Through all time.


IV

Cycle upon cycle of genes and bodies
One perpetual, the other discarded each generation
By the unseen hand of an uncaring Nature.

Our nature, all nature, the beauty of sunsets
Driven by the mechanical clocks of cosmic cycles.

Yet Relative to other Dimensions where
What we see, we do not see
Because of the profound limitations
Of three dimensions.
We see only dimly what might be past
And what could be future
As we struggle in the presence of tautological explanation.

Body and gene, gene and body the temporary and perpetual
Bound in the dance of a living presence
The one ensuring the other’s future
For all time.
Circle upon circle, tautological argument
Explaining everything and nothing but all powerful
In its reductionism of humankind
And life kind as whales support the one
Wounded by the enormity of the harpoon
Loosed by the bodies of genes
Storm tossed and directionless
When thinking that others’ bodies
Can be discarded without thought or thinking
Perpetual damnation.

Tautomeric interaction.
We say the same thing in different ways,
Recycled ideas that parody the twenty different plots of novels
That return to the same point,
Come back to the common question

Why do we love one to one?

People ask…. ‘Can Mr Darwin explain?’

Perhaps not through bodies and genes
But instead, understanding the epistasis of genes and where we live.
We live in this world because of our past
As genes dance to the chance of environmental shifts
The whims of wind and rain, sea and wave
That blow and toss the genes
In their bodies, in random patterns,
Some sinking, others floating
Not always by chance
But because they float and fight
Yielding to the pressures of an uncaring nature.
Like soft down yielding to the thud of falling bodies
Softening their impact.

So to yield as well as fight
Is part of the selection of one by another
In the perpetual
Celebration of loving one to one.

We yield to the blandishments of the soft embrace
We fight to attain it

And once attained, what we do is all we do
To keep a hold on what we love
Only to lose it to the grim reaper of all our dreams
In this present world,
But to regain it in worlds to come
The link between past and future
For immortal genes
Of transitory bodies which is how
We think and see our presence
In time without end.



V

General relativity and quantum mechanics
The combination of infinity and the very small
Do not replace the Newtonian meaning of the day to day.
Just, that Newton is displaced to another time and place
Where description is precise but with uncertainty according to
Heisenberg.

To be certain is to fix ideas in time
Like natural selection in the Darwinian mind
To be propitiated without exception, else suffer extinction of self
And of all that matters to self and others
Sacrificed on the alter to propitiate the Gods of our certainty.

That is not to say that an idea cannot be fixed in time
That its central tenet is not true for eternity.
But truth is relative and uncertain
To be strengthened or cast aside
By better truths or developments of the same.

Our understanding expands with time
But often returns to something that was said before
And said again as if it were newly minted
In the mind of its creator
To become dogma
And as all dogmas
The truth unchanged in people’s minds.
Yet the central tenet survives, as survival is the result of natural selection
But with added components as
Understanding expands as to what is meant by surviving and survival.
To inherit the coils of love’s message is to survive.


VI

Can Mr Darwin explain?
Perhaps is not a whole question
In the same sense that answers depend on
The question asked and who is asking.

The truths that questions seek to answer
The truths of love, beauty and heating systems
Arise from answers to questions in different languages,
And languages translate imperfectly from one to one
As genes imperfectly translate proteins and therefore love in the
Darwinian world of our dreams.

Truth comes in different forms
And Darwinian truth is true to the questions it addresses.
But these are not the only questions of why we are,
Who we are, what we are
Who, what, why are we?

Questions past and future asked in the present
For all eternity.


Christmas (25th-28th) 2012
David Applin

Copyright David Applin 2015

He exhaled again, trying to regain stable breathing. They gazed into each other’s eyes, staring with desire and need to get to know each other more. Tension building, sparks flying, and the rising heat within the outside corridor. Eyes wander, looking to see the little movements caused by each other's nervousness. Fingers twitch, eyes blink, and smiles emerge. They are both plagued with each of these significant actions. Imaginations flare as the thought what would happen if just a single touch was to be made? Would all self control break down in an instant? Stalled on the edge and the thought of giving away seemed so appetizing. Risking the consequences would never feel as good as it would now. A small touch would be explosive. It would ignite the passion and spiral out into a raging inferno. It would take countless efforts to put out such a flame. But he knew it was too soon.



m.g.

A constancy of **** lies
Is their ****** disguise

Adamant their shadows to shun
Are blinded by a perfidious sun

Till these tranced beguiled abide
To His self-righteous "suicide"

Though the charges are absurd
Ne'er a word of inquiry heard

Before seditious truths emerge
They corral to sound His dirge

A puppet procession in a stream
Do they of electric sheep dream?

The invisible chains in silence stay
Until ascension sunders them some day

Dark are the times where we lose our embers.
A signal for feast to night dwellers.
Their eyes glow in the darkest of corners.
We live in fear as the shadows turn into hunters.

Seek help of the holy ghost.
That it will help us through the obsidian night.
Times where we are abandoned by light.
Hide until its bright.

Sheets turned into fortress.
Hoping it will hide us from its grasp.
Wet are the pillows and mattress.
Praying that it will **** us last.

It ***** the life out of you
Sunders your soul from thy body.
It is the image we create when we are lonely.
Vampire that feeds on esteem, and it is deadly.

I’m sprawled alone on the floor

Uncomfortably

And I’m a navy object down down below the veneer of the sea

Thinking of all the things I have seen..

And wish I hadn’t

Behind the curtains; In the dark

As the spectators see nothing

because they cannot see beyond the play

because it keeps them from looking farther

But I have, unfortunately

The day we handed you over to God

All alone, in silence

and I’m tormented

There is a song whispering on the stereo

full of so much love and joy

I wish I could rip the benevolent sound from the air

and consume it, and let it fill up every void

that is left in my soul, because I feel it

less and less

day by day

as fate sunders me slowly

like the song is lulling me now to darkness

And although I try to inhale the spirit of the song, Nothing changes

I’m still the color of this empty night

A time that might as well not have happened

I am the deepest ocean as the song plays indifferently

Time does and undoes,
builds and destroys.
Time plays with our lives
with Destiny, its best friend.

We, mortals, are Time's pawns
and are subject to Its decisions.
Hence why sometimes we love,
but that love is not returned.

"The timing isn't right,"
individuals crush our hearts.
And who are we to blame them?
Time cares not, for we are Its toys.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
All Time does is taunt and mock.
The fact that I met you,
is it chance or Destiny's work?

Time consumes like a black hole.
We are mortals so that It can feed,
consuming our bodies
until all that remains is ash.

And Time rejoices and laughs and sings,
as it plays with our psyche and nature:
our instincts say we should not let go,
but Time sunders us however it can.

Death and love. Love and death.
They are Time's renowned pleasure:
Time executes its subjects;
Time murders love.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
The clock never stops.
There is no escape, in a land
where everything is determined by Time.

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 ******’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

Uncomfortably, in the room of my best friend
while he nuzzles with his lover in bed
while I wait in my thoughts like,
a cold glacier below the veneer of the sea.
My back hurts.
I try counting down from one hundred and clearing it out.
But old projectors play from behind my eyelids
playing mirror images of horror films I wish I hadn't seen
I lost someone that I loved to sickness and I couldn't accept it.
It didn't feel like I thought it would.
I feel this numbness crawling me, and it's getting colder
Freezing over

There is a song whispering on the stereo,
that’s on the blank tile a few feet from me
Full of so much joy and life,
that seems to elude me
I wish I could rip the benevolent sound from the air
And consume it, and let it fill up every void
That is left in this soul in which I believe in,
Less and less
Day by day
As fate sunders me slowly
Like the song is lulling me now into darkness
Second by second

Not when clouds turn grey
Nor when the wind ceases to howl

Not when the ground shakes
Nor the earth rumbles

Not even when mountains erupt
Or when the forest sunders

Only when

Souls tear apart
With a sound that makes even the mightiest ones shudder

When your mind breaks
And you give in to despair
Like pillars of cement
Coming down to the abyss

Only When

You seek solace in cigarettes
Or see a better life by the bottle

Does the world end

O Wisdom! What are you? And how can I
Name you? Even the philosopher, who
Calls himself your lover, and who would sigh
To possess you, can he weave a wreath to
Crown you worthily? Will anything do
To offer fitting homage? My poor song
Shall, truly - if you should help it along.

O Wisdom! I shall praise you! You, like light
Which scythes through crowding darkness, are a blade
Which sunders the veil, driving into sight
What ignorance hides; and, having been made
Manifest, your glory shall never fade.
You slip past the warden’s dark, foolish walls
And cause dawn to break in black prison halls.

O Wisdom! Hear me, as I thee invoke,
With haste fly to me from thy golden throne,
For I would take upon myself thy yoke,
I would thy precepts, all sweet, gladly own,
For without thee I should be quite alone,
E’en with friends abounding (and golden must
Her throne be, I know, for gold does not rust).

To dream of you, my nose bleeds
I smell metal as I wake
another feather pillow wrecked
another day to ache.

I should sleep on only earth
give my essence to the ground
another link uncouples
as you the couple found.

She doesn’t seem so much to me
as a photo can but tell
gritty-featured, highlighted -
send me straight to hell.

How comely of you, darling,
to pick an Essex girl
it’s where I left my guts for you
mixed in with cockle shells.

I see you don’t yet trust enough
to picture your accord
trust that I shan’t murmur
the bile I can’t afford.

I shan’t waste time to wonder
at the steel of your affair
curse my spiteful stomach!
I cannot help to care.

It twists me to oblivion
and sunders me to tears
my lower lip is bloodied
as my pillow, so I fear.

Cast the feathers upwards
into the fatal blue
caught on gentle thermals
perhaps they’ll find their way to you.

Birds sing "I love you, love" the whole day through,
And not another song can they sing right;
But, singing done with, loving's done with quite,
The autumn sunders every twittering two.
And I'd not have love make too much ado
With sweet parades of fondness and delight,
Lest iterant wont should make caresses trite,
Love-names mere cuckoo ousters of the true.

Oh heart can hear heart's sense in senseless nought,
And heart that's sure of heart has little speech.
What shall it tell? The other knows its thought.
What shall one doubt or question or beseech
Who is assured and knows and, unbesought,
Possesses the dear trust that each gives each.

Feels like the prolongation of a familiar fantasy
You could only see in movies and daydreams
The night sweeps everything in its way and
I am bequeathed with the sight of your stature
I cavort within my walls, allowing to set themselves free
They say that looking down from the heights is frightening
But you dispel all my fears as you look up at me

All my stars absolve into the dark azure, somehow
it's giving me faith, for once I was sure
Rest upon His steps, reassure me with Your certainty and
Out my windowpane, you perch and I hear your voice from afar
that perfectly weaves itself with the near crashing shores
That sweet crescendo as you come as you are

Real. I come to think. How is this real?
It seems that to find out if this isn't another fabrication
Is only if I come down to you and frisk onto the asphalt pave ways
onto you-- but what would we do? What are we even doing?
I have no answers but for now, you are my perception
Is it too much? Have I said too much?
Where is the line that sunders playful banter
and things we long to say to each other?

'So long,' you wave goodbye, the evening comes to a close,
I scorn but I tell you good night and watch you drift away
You disappear just like daylight and its warmth
So long, farewell, I could say so much more
So long, but to be true, it was less and more than enough
'So long.' Goodbye, but that's how long I wished you stayed

Heaven and its horizon place their smiles upon me
You're long gone but I am still awake
with the thought of you calling out my name
I stare at heaven's smile but that's merely an excuse
to gaze at who was once there in between His pillars
A moment ever so clandestine, it's not mine but forever ours to keep
I wonder how you are and if you feel the same

Amidst that night's enthralling mirth,
I contemplate on whether I should admit
that before the marveling episode,
when you told me you would appear past midnight,
It resembled foolishness but still, I believed you
It was never a coincidence that I wasn't asleep past eleven,
Would it change everything if I told you I was waiting for you?

Does it? I just thought you should know.
Know that I am grateful I trusted my instincts to stay awake,
and when you're near, I freeze like the distinct cold of dusk,
I could never sleep before midnight because of this,
I don't know why but I should also tell you,
that when the sea remains stagnant and stops crashing,
and when His place of worship commences the prayers,
and when the day bleeds into the sky, conceiving light,
I am drawn to my windowpane with what once was
and with visions of you.
You should know,
because it's you.
All because of you.
Midnight Boy.