Ach so!* thou much-praised and lauded Milwaukee,
Thou delightful Wisconsin Stadt of boundless pulchritude,
Verily hath History endowed thy blessed name
With the noisomely beery breath of immortality!

And thank the benign Almighty in highest Heav’n
That thy delectable streets and arboreal squares
Doth remain heretofore untouched by unseemly civic strife,
Despite thy renown as veritable midwife to Sewer Socialism!

Yet, tear-inducing recollections have I of this dwelling-place
And herewith followeth heart-rending remembrances
Of what transpired when I inveigled a plump young Mädchen there
For a brief sojourn of untrammelled concupiscence.

Alas, alack, after gorging her impetuous appetites
On a gargantuan repast of mitteleuropäische delicacies,
Methinks her poor heart gave up survival’s uneven battle
And, warbling a soft piffero-reminiscent sigh, she expired.

‘Twas too tragic thus to depart this happy welkin in mid-prandials,
Emitting a final flatus, sweet adieu, from her rearmost aperture,
Leaving me, her poor forlorn swain, bereft and solitary,
Faced with mine host’s request for instant monetary rendition.

From that naughty place of my bereavement fled I,
Clutching to my ***** the contents of her silken purse,
Determined to partake in untrammelled ***** licence elsewhere,
Ere the chanticleer’s dawn croak wake the inebriated citizens.

The lake is smoothed jade after the rain
and only the commercial flotsam
of a lonely plastic Aqua bottle is adrift
on untrammelled waters.
A butterfly of the kind we usually see pinned and dead
drifts by
like me, enjoying the return of the sun,
“mata hari”, the eye of the sky
shining fiercely like Hanuman
from a leaden countenance.
Boys fool by my verandah view offering
to sell me a girl.
The travellers pass through like capsules,
pausing only to bleed money into outstretched palms.

Stop right now and NUT IT OUT
Which way you wish to go,
Do you want the wealth and stressful strain
Or blithely flick and throw?

Do you preen yourself with smiling pride
Owning shining  chattels new,
Whilst shallow OTHERS OGLE
With those envious eyes on you?
Or do you seek the clean four winds
Untrammelled by concern,
With sleeping bag, a crescent moon
Whilst crackling bonfires burn?

Have you thought to chuck it all
The car, the house, the boat
And cause your superficial  friends
To snigger, leer and gloat?
To simply live in HUMBLE CIRCUMSTANCE
To wake without a plan,
To greet the day with unconcern
And breathe a new, fresh man.


Is the courage there to TAKE THE CHANGE,
Can you make the first big move,
Or does convention stay your hand
To stray from comfort’s groove?
Have you thought about what others think,
Reactions from the crowd,
The clamorous cacophony
Of objection rendered loud?


“Absolutely NOT, my dear”
Pygmalion my ****.
To throw it all away, Silly,
Simply would... betray your Class!
“It’s all so rudimentary
This thing of living rough”
“Reminds me of the great apes,
And other basic stuff!”


There’s loads of reasons why YOU CAN’T,
The mortgage at the bank,
Insurance is essential
And while we’re being frank...
There’s the tennis club subscription
And the afternoons I’d miss
Sipping lattes with the ladies
..though, the gossip’s SO remiss.


Perhaps we’ll put it off for now
Another day perchance,
When devilment and joi le vivre
EFFUSE another prance.
When the dream of having freedom
With the cold wind in my hair,
Will drive me to release
The inner WILDNESS hidden there.



Marshalg
Victoria ParkTunnel
4 March 2011

I

These are hard materials
Sharp edged, inflexible
To a degree
That unfolds the truth,
And one truth
Leads to the next
In linear sequence.


Each from the others, isolated
Yet dependent
On what has gone before,
And what follows for the confirmation of truth’s verity.


Various truths are the data set of probability,
Flexible to a degree
Because of the uncertainty of absolute verity
That only singularity allows.
The statistic of one
That even when wrong
Its absoluteness is unquestionable
Because to question is not to know
What has gone before.



To know is singular in its effect,
Its purpose sustained by the uncertainty of data sets
From which truth derives.
The metaphysics of it all
Betrays the conceit of knowledge
And those that claim knowledge
Such that they impose their understanding
On others do not know
And care even less,
Except when their ignorance
Results in what is cared for….
All suppressed by the singularity of knowing
By those who acknowledge a statistic of one.
Preferring the comfort of its certainty
Rather than the uncertainty
That arises form the truth of data sets.


II

Data sets determine league tables
Positions of football clubs
And universities
Where those learning to know
Know what they are learning
And rate it accordingly.
Because as customers
It is said that
They are entitled to know
Even if they are learning
The data sets that allow them to understand
What they are attempting to know
Perhaps without conscious thought of
The void of ignorance that learning attempts to fill.


Yet in their unknowing, the certainty of the learning
Determines the positions of institutions in league tables
In turn compiled from the data sets
Of incomplete knowledge
Asserted with conviction
Establishing what is said to be true
In ignorance of sure foundations.


I wish that I had the conviction of others
To be certain of what I know
Without doubt
Without hesitation
Untrammelled by thoughts of the uncertainty of data sets
Compiled by the compilation of singularities.


Which itself compels another thought
That we all derive from a single small point,
Infinitesimally small but infinitely massive
Exploding once or perhaps in series
Like the popping of a two-stroke petrol engine
That propelled motorbikes and lawn mowers
In yesteryear.


And yet we are saying the same thing
In different ways
Unrelenting in the stream of thought
And consciousness
But ….
Please allow the words’ meanings to breath.
Where is the pause
To allow the assimilation of meaning?

The punctuation of time and space
The meaning of words
Arises from their spacing
And timing.


David Applin August 23rd 8:00am-ish 2014


III

Yet the certainty of data sets
Give us comfort
Those who await the miracle of birth
Calculate the probability of certainty
From statistics derived from the accumulation
Of data
To give the certainty of a happy outcome
A statistic of one…. or at most two or three
To which we all cling and which data
Accumulated in sets allows to be certain…
Or at least to hope to be certain
That the outcome will be happy
And reinforce our faith in belief
Itself knowledge in the absence of evidence
Truth uncurled by those hard materials
Derived from numbers
Each in itself a number
And therefore a singularity
Which hard materials cannot uncurl
Only their interpretation
Can reveal the truth of data sets
Each consisting of the singular truths
That interpretation cannot uncurl,
Because to do so would give us a statistic of one
Which cannot be questioned
Because it stands alone
Inflexible, somewhat obtuse without the context
Of the other singularities that make up the data set.


Befriended of one another, the collective now represents a version of truth
Because each singularity gives context to its companions
So that collectively their truth is revealed
As a statistic.


One as a statistic cannot be
Because it lacks the context of its companions,


QED

David Applin
Queen Victoria
North Sea
Lying off Ostend
25th October (evening) 2014

Copyright David Applin 2015

Oh the years have paved the way
Across my leathered, weary hide
And wracked their worst, un-countenanced,
Before a mind that can’t abide…

Intolerance of racial plague
Or sanctimonious pedants, vague.

Serenely I have watched it play
Across the tapestry of time,
Watched the rise and fall of man
From point of view of one sublime
Who sits in sun, who sits in shade
Untouched by all the great charade…

Of those who claw a comrade’s face
To gain esteem in power’s grace.

With toothless maw I masticate
The softness of this pure white grain
Untrammelled by the lure of sin,
Untroubled by the drag of strain….

See troubled waters pass me by
From torrent flow to pebble dry.

Through clouded eyes I see it all
The strong, the weak, the proud, the vain,
And those who seek eternity
But seldom pause to sense refrain…

From softly spoken words of love
Where teardrops fall to pools of blood.

Verily I say to you,
Take heed my friend or feel the pain,
From one who knows the way of things,
From one who sorts the chaff from grain…

Take heed or suffer loss from chance
For chance controls this merry dance.

Across the years I’ve sat in sun
Breathed the dust and watch it run
Amok… as sane men have their way,
To rule and wreck another day….

They die alone in cold remorse
Whilst most ignore without recourse.


Marshalg
On the bank of the river Ganges
21 July 2012

© 2012 Marshal Gebbie

Word called this file
Document18
and it’s funny to think
I have that many windows
open.

Funny to think how
that many thoughts have
leapt from the tank
dripping in revelation and
so sure of themselves
they demand a pristine
white canvas
untrammelled by lesser words
where they (think they) shine
like white hot stars
but are only so much
cheap gaudy neon.

It fell like a leaf from a tree at year’s end,
faded and crisp, a photo drifting to the floor.
She was there, thirty years before, wheat jeans,
chambray shirt, straw colored hair spun to gold.
Who sees me now? Invisible to the eyes of the glorious young,
a nimbus of white wreathing an old man's face, desire
untrammelled by age. She threaded my heart, embroidered me,
sewed patchwork into a life. Cradling children snuggled between,
we rocked ourselves to sleep each night, dreaming a wish
to throttle time.

When the chaos
that is confusion
in a mind drugged
by illusion
becomes the sanity
of a society
that is comfortable
in its reptile skin
and
the spin put on the word
outweighs a
centrifugal force
it will be time to tie a rope
around the baggage I call life
and take that leap that's
called so laughingly into
a fate,
what could be worse than this?

There are miles in this asylum
left untrammelled by the careworn
who have torn out pages from the book
where holograms were shreds of space
into which their eyes could look upon an
unruffled sane society,
but we gave them LSD and shocked
their systems
systematically.

I have loved those minutes and more the
seconds that lasted for an eternity when
she
that possessed the X-ray eyes could draw
the colours of my aura all around her.

Chaos and
creatures with
distorted features
comic book heroes
dreams of flying,
why in
a minute
when the second is
long?

when there's nothing wrong
there is nothing to right
but we fight against it
and we're right against it
always.

Liberty to itself exposes
Limitation’s weakness
Upon the face of liberty
Staring back in beauty
At the ugliness of chains

Freedom is what happens
To untrammelled thought
Left to its own delight
It is the natural consequence
Of  beautiful significance

Liberty dwells delightfully
Where repression fails
To threaten human frailty
Laying down poetic law
Writing up our freedom

Freedom is soul expression
Engraved in beautiful thought
So natural to a poet
Remoter still to politics
Yet closer to our heart

Liberty is what liberty does
Increasing the joy of love
Sharing our soul’s humanity
Extending our compassion
To others bereft of beauty.

An ocean of pink and white
Waves are her petal bed
A sprinkle of beauty
A gossamer spread

Untrammelled they fall
Down to kiss the ground
Refinery"s best in show
Flutterdown everglow

Not by fluke was fondness captured
Lying luckily , eyes raptured
Twas here not by chance
Basking in her Flamboyance

thank you

So far,
the voices rally
from the vortice
of an underpass.
Endorsed by cavilled
penury, more yesterday
than newspaper.

but nothing here, can
change the course
of rivers.

Bent-double
in their algorithm
fixed within their fiction,
though, a sheathing of
their tar-skimmed blade
played life in minds
of old unplenty..

Winter-kin
they were,
come carapaced,
lenticular

Sat where
the startled couple char
that narcoleptic zinfandel,

untrammelled, in their
moon-trashed subterranea.

IN FREEDOM OF GREATER HEIGHTS
(YOU inspire, I write)
O Clouds of the sky!
Heaven's miraculous magnificent Mirth,
You are pure, pristine and sacrosanct.
Unsullied by the human mind and
Its petty desires of the Earth.

O Journey of the recondite Vast!
Towards Infinity's Bliss forever to last,
The Lone Voyager is alone, all alone
The stretch of Eternity is lost out of my human grasp,
Still lives in Rhapsody's resplendence
At the mortal physique's transcendence.

O Dream of the Distant Dreamland above!
To reach your dreamless state I do always rove,
The Ecstasy afar though forbidden but the Mystery profound,
Alas! I don't fall asleep
I am in your sweet soft clasp.

O Beauty of the soaring heights of the Immortal Sublime!
Your innumerable hues sing the never-ending rhyme -
Of the timeless Symphony that goes on untold in the Supreme Playact.

O Love's Elysian outpour!
Keep your door azar,
Do wing my forlorn moments of vain despair
With unforgettable mirth,
And moon my sleepless hours
With your gleaming Delight living-worth;
Your star-spangled rapture plays hide and seek in the azure Blue,
How I wish I could reach your deathless abode and the summitless
summit forever new!

O Splendid Splendour of the formless Eve,
Mystic, marvel-rapt with the bachhic felicity,
My mind untrammelled tries to fathom the fathomless Epiphany vast,
You sit sovereign enjoying my frolicking past.

O Freedom's frontierless Elegance!
Eternity's celestial everlasting Romance,
The firmament's elevating exuberance,
You sit formless, shapeless in an all-pervading Illimitable Existence. Your Love's lisping lullaby
For the toil-torn fatigued Earth -
May enliven and enlighten her
In your magnanimity's magnificence,
To breathe anew and blossom forth
into the New Angelic Birth.
(Bijoylakshmi Das, Anand Utsav Ashram, Haridwar. 2nd October 2019)

You are non-existent,
Never there,
just like your hair
that has come off strand by strand
by every decision you make,
even if that just be
deciding the icing for your cake.
You are untrammelled.
But that's you,
living for yourself,
And no one else.

Still I see no better uncle,
than one that won't yell
if you mumble;
won't arrange for your hearse
if you curse.
Free spirited,
That's what you are,
And I wouldn't change a thing,
even your breath that smells of tar.

A compass in my thumbs deposits me variously reincarnated on the doorstep of our conversation,
yet each time an infant wrapped in a different blanket.

Long have I pored over the spectrum of untrammelled human emotion,
spanning cover to cover in this self-forbidden grimoire prefaced with bearer risk warnings.

Now my tongue plays host to an intermittent rebellion of intangibles,
each laconic usurper alacritously poised to halt a never-ending coronation.

Hope-marbled milky shadows beckon softly with a sleepy seduction,
searing the remaining threads of her stitched through my fibres: a cyborg-like tingling.

I wonder if we have all along been welding another contradiction onto our feet,
birthing the latest excuse for returning to our destiny under the yoke of newly-minted gods.

AN ODE TO BLISSFUL MEMOIRES
(Bijoylakshmi Das)
Deep I merge into memories past -
To excavate from Mind's fathomless Vast,
To make it afresh and sylvan-rapt
That wraps me around like mnemonics of the chapter last.

In dalliance of a fairyland delight
The lone moments paved way to an untrammelled Bliss,
The Sweetheart Sovereign's seraphic sojourn
And His all-transcending Heaven-fraught kiss.

The Bacchic mirth once made life worth,
The mundane mire turned to heavenly hue,
Air stirred with Elysean resplendence
The prodigious parable opened its pages anew.

The Soul sported with splendid might
In unending ecstasy of solitude recondite,
The Empyrean Damsel alighted upon Earth -
With soft unceasing sobs from the Infinite.

The Night gleamed with a vesper brilliance
The ****** Moon played Her alluring dance,
The Day's diadem dazzled with Sun-clad rays
Life enlivened in an euphoric Trance.

The blissful marvel carved out of arcane depths
To herald the Dawn of a Surrealist realm,
The star-spangled firmament in its twinkling tuning
Played Eternal Love's divine game.

How magnificent, bright and calm
Were the majestic momentous moments sublime!
The Distant brooklets murmered muse to Silence
In their unspoken never-ending rhyme.

The unsung Music, the unheard Symphony
Soon opened their golden doors for You,
The Unknown Traveller of the Mystic Kingdom -
Dawned upon Earth to dwell in midst of morn-moist dew.

Now the mind gathers souvenir from the forgotten Archive past,
The unexplored Empire seeks new release  -
In Light and Love and an unending Certitude :
The Glory that would never cease.

I bow down to the Supreme Above,
In Gratitude and Solemnity to His boundless Love.
(Bijoylakshmi Das, Haridwar. 26th July 2019)

Socialism is not a word
understood by many and
thus introducing it as a
solution to the impending
world financial crisis prior
to the current situation of
the (supposed pandemic)
would have resulted in a
universal magnitude revolt.

So, the think tank at the IMF
decided that the only way
of introducing an opposition
to untrammelled workings
of the economic market was
by changing the definition
and re packaging it in such a
way that the unquestioning
gullible masses could be
lulled into accepting a new
norm and not even notice
the evolutionary transition.