It was dead of night, 2:30 a.m. when I awoke with unbidden memories clear as day, and subsequent ideational poetry in my head.  It all became (under bedcovers with flashlight, pad and felt tip pen) this: which may require two readings or more.

            The Hourglass Of Time ⏳
  (an awakening in the dark of night)

Shape, form, hope, dream, name, fame
Sifting through the hourglass of endless time -
Seamless, endless, untamed time.

Reactive in the night a.m.
Drifting in and out of ‘I am’,
Why the lingering of memory,
The self biography
Coming back with age,
Links welding chains of change
So strong and strange?

Why, because it must,
When revelation bites the dust,
The fuss when dust itself is shifting,                                        
Sifting through time’s hourglass,
Time’s powerglass?

Passing (one-can-only guess)
Through structureless unclearness
And a consciousness of moment’s movement which,
Because of pause-less laws, effect and cause,                        
Course charted by some unseen force,
A nameless, undivided source:
What Is the message?

I’ve a hunch it was a master stroke
That woke me up, shook me up -
Ideas that spoke
With images clear and opaque;
Feats feeling fake, mistakes my earthquake,
Baked into aches of un-achievement
Which cemented the reality;
A revelation dark and light, the naked night
Revealed to me  (for all to see eventually.)
The Hourglass Of Time 3.4.2020 Revelations Big&Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sorry and sad that this comes out of my brain again, it does at the moment,  for among the ubiquitous money orientated TV competitions are the ever-present newscasts with their on-the-spot reporting.
     As usual, I’ve worked and reworked this to produce a piece of art.

              Chaos & Teargas II

Chaos and teargas
Now choose and viruses once again,
When
What I want is to pass the years
Without the tears, awful fears
In place on a crying face.
How to, It being an end you want too:
All of, each of you
Out there,
Wherever the chances and choices have placed you.

With nearly the yearly Thanksgiving
For most of us living in peace
(Rewriting in March)
Exposed to the chaos while sitting as such,
In chairs or on couches -
Not crouching or fleeing,
Pursued by policemen or soldiers,
We miss being fodder.
How lucky we are!

Suffused with the anger and violence
While eating our turkey and cranberry sauce,
Exhausted and worried
From scurrying youngsters,
Flurries of gangsters & burying mothers…
Smothering gases of withering fires,
And masses of dawdling, dithering leaders,
Chaos and teargas the emblem for hire
We, worn out and tired,..
And now it’s the virus dear readers,
From all of this chaos that rages and grows,
And nobody knows how to stop it.

Chaos & Teargas 11.17.2019/revised, rewritten 3.1.2020
OurTimes, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I certainly realised when I wrote "There Are Daughters…” that not everyone had children, and I don’t mean to make anyone feel sad.  When I write, (which is everyday), I simply become, shall we say, attached to a phrase or the seed of an idea; even a rhythm or a word or funny rhyme.  These can take me in any direction.  This process has led to 19 books with two more on the way.  
     It’s a kind of yoga, a mental training - and the most unexpected ideas come out - ideas which I work on and refine.  I write on anything at hand.  Just today, I found 4 scraps, one dating back to 2015.  I’ll show you.

Notes found…refined, completed.

       This Brain

This brain invades
The good, the bad:
Everything that’s done, not done.
And so I try
To purify
The brain
And turn
Invasion into
Sympathetic action.
This Brain 2.27.2020 Nature of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
      After Surgery

After surgery
One is like the princess and the pea,
Feeling every crevice
On each surface.
After surgery
One’s sore, and golly, gee,
All parts exposed or not
Are vulnerable,
Incapable
But filled with the potential
Of life ahead,
For one day you’ll get out of bed,
Participate in daily doings:
Cleaning, practicing and s(cr)ewing.
We’ll see
How afterwards can be!
After Surgery 2.27.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
      Dear Friends

Dear friends,
You’ll never know the inspiration
You have been,
And what I’ve learned
Of gratitude and giving,
And what I lacked..

You’ve helped change aims,
And I will never be the same,
Hoping I survive and have the chance
To show the learning’s knowing
Filled with just one speck
Of your munificence, unselfishness
And open-handedness.
Dear Friends 10.10.2019/2.27.2020 Arlene Nover Corwin
      I Have Become

I have become yours
To grow in your power;
Grow and flower
Over self-love’s lowest.
Wow!
How a syllable inspires.
I Have Become 10.25.2019/2.27.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
         It Sneaks Up

It sneaks up: autumn,
And Huston sings “September Song”.
A rainbow arches:
Purple, blue, green, yellow, orange.
One can’t tell because
They blend and fade.
You’re stuck there at the window,
Captivated.
It Sneaks Up 12.15.2015/2.27.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Married, unmarried, with children, without - this reaches out for all in one or other .

      There Are Daughters, Sons

There is a daughter and a son
One or more to almost everyone.
And when we’re gone
We want to leave a sign
That we were here.
A legacy, a benefaction
Some provision
Carried to a future, a hereafter
With a memory or memories
That we were here,
The seed in us that brought them where
They are right now.

Some symbol
In a form tactile;
Visual (a picture, books)
Aural (music)
Journals, diaries or cash.
Reminders in moments of flashback.

We love our progeny,
We think of them as prodigies,
Love so miraculous and strange.
Phenomenon we cannot, would not change
For all the tea in China.

Read this, sons and daughters;
Be respecters, benefactors of your own
To carry on and far beyond
The life on loan.

There Are Daughters, Sons 2.26.2020 Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

To Jonathan & Jennifer

What Is Pleasure?

What is pleasure?
Listening to hubby play a jazz improvisation?
Voicings vested in ten gifted fingers?
Revelling in chords unrivalled?
Food in mouth?
Massage’s touch?

Pleasure, what?
Delight?
Elation?
Gratification?
Simple fun?
Sheer diversion?

To take pleasure is to savour,
As a sample, for example,
Kent’s piano not just pleasure
But a treasure trove of silver;
Coin of worth, worth imitation.

What is pleasure, measure of…?
Anything that makes you smile,
Any force that keeps you mobile.
Any word what ends in -phile.

In opposition to the concept ‘down’,
Such as ‘downheartedness’,
Is feeling blessedness,
A boon your own.

A simple thought in bed last night,
Feeling warm and light,
A bed of roses, height of ease
No pain or seizure.  Not inertia but a closure.
This is pleasure
Also.

What Is Pleasure? 2.25.2020 Circling Round Reality; Vaguely About Music II; Arlene Nover Corwin





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Dear World, There are days (in this case only one one) when, for reasons only known by nature,  one feels peeved, disheartened, discontented, life-weary... A poor set of adjectives  which ought to read 'fed down' or 'unfed' or goodness knows what!  Here's the day I felt "Fed Up":

             Fed Up

When one has been admired,
Fired up and complimented…
There are days when
Cheery, shell self soul
Becomes no longer cheerful in its whole.
‘Exasperated’, ‘aggravated’  -
Compound blend of pique galore,
Paralysis its core, takes over.

‘Annoyed’ and ‘irritated’ are more names
That germinate spores of fed up-ness,
Helplessness,
Frustration there inside, beside.

A micro sense of hopelessness,
A no way out,
A strained acceptance.
In which case, a simple business
Which is what and all it is!

Crushed, pushed,
Squelched, squished,
Dashed, squashed -
Mind disheartened,
(Does the mind have heart, heart mind?)
One fights discouragement;
All the dis- words there that bind
And blind.
But,
Hope will be caught or thwarted,
Hope will not say no lifelong,
The state of fed up-ness being all wrong!
One sees the flaw
And starts to thaw
When one has got some patience back.
But for the moment one’s fed up
And fallen off the hope train track.

Fed Up 2.3.2020 Pure Nakedness; Arlene Nover Corwin

What a coincidence!  Just found this:
                The Particles Of God II

The particles of god are falling on my head.
They’re falling on the living, probably the dead;
On believers, non-believers; equal particles they fall –
They’re always falling on and in and through the body wall.

God is particles of oneness.  There are parallels galore.
When the atom showed its kernel and revealed there was more
To meet the eye, a kind of onion-layered door
Was opened there inside the mind as just the metaphor
For simpletons like me;  
God energy,
With big or little G;
Living, knowing particles that have no personality
But which, if I’d clean up my act,
Would mystically reveal the fact
That they, the particles and I, have one identity.

I’m trying to arrange and rearrange my head instead,
Make it more receptive than a means for daily bread –
A conscious sponge, a large receptor,
Image-making faculty a particle collector.

Each impulse must be pure,
For we’re in areas of justice
And the realm of pure reward -
Particles with qualities inherent in our race:
Areas of mercy, all the virtues, love and grace.
I’d rather not involve them - just assume that they exist.
It’s the God without the person that this poem has gently kissed:
Ever-present particles that are the living’s gist.

The Particles Of God 3.26.1994 /10.4.2018/ 2.20.2020 To The Child Mystic; God Book; To The Child Mystic II Arlene Nover Corwin