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Arlene Corwin Mar 2020
Look what I found in my book Pure Nakedness:written first 1999 (and one more)
      I Was Saying Silly Things

I was saying silly things, so I took a rest.
I took a rest from saying silly things.
I’d lost the knack of cracking codes,
Of penetrating life in odes
Without the accent on the four.
As you can see, the rest I sought I didn’t take,
A restless longing overtaking pause,
And still compelled to put it down,
Write phrase and clause;
However frail,
To infiltrate beyond the pale
Of ordinary vanity  -the other six-
The devil and his vice-y tricks.
There’s much to sigh or cry about,
For as I sit,
My husband’s daughter’s former husband
And his father too, are lying
(One is dying)
In a hospital nearby.
Things can happen overnight.
(As I write or as God will.)
We choose to have our children
But God chooses when they die;
I refuse the lie
That lets me call things mine and my.)

I was saying silly things, bad construction in the line.
Maybe it’s come back: the depth, the poetry,
The right to write it down again,
The pondering and wondering,
The observations of the changes
Showing up and lying under
Pain, enchanted moments, joy.
Last night I saw a five-week boy,
Exquisite from his head to toe.
From day to day I go around observing change.
All I can say is, life is strange;
That underneath one must believe
(There is no way one can perceive)
That pattern’s shawl of ritual
Has truth behind each metaphor custodial,
Each myth and tale,
Each truth behind a Holy Grail:
Life’s quest, life’s life, life’s eye, life’s trail…
And I wind up saying
Rather silly things that matter, after all.

I Was Saying Silly Things 10.30.1999/revised 7.14.2014/revised again/3.26.2020
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; God Book;
Arlene Corwin
Arlene Corwin Mar 2020
Can Meditations Influence A World?
  
Can meditations sway the world?
Dare one respond?
One waits for answers there, unlearned
Through insight’s scene,
The mystical discerned.

A world? To have effect on? Shape through some sorts’ inspiration?
Misery, the suffering, the evil, the corruption
Where we know that all that we can do
Is purify and cure our selves: the flawed and imperfected self
Whose weakening shortcomings are so onerous to shelve.

Can little we, (and little me) alone on cushion, chair or sofa
Offer up this blemished being
To a seeing eye up in the sky
We well nigh can’t be sure of?

Breathing tricks, mantric techniques,
Sound and focussing and tweaks -
Can each ache **** a world into a working peace?
Endeavours and experimenting reach long-term
Through  reaching in and out the brain?

One hopes!
We see a world that barely copes.
Whose bleak, weak, tweeting leaders
Cheeky-cheat the bleating of the latest.

Science tries, the churches try; social-minded allies too.
But here is little you, a-seat as I am seated now,
Mulling over if and how,
Wondering if our meditations are a mediation
Of conciliatory worth,
And if they reach the big round earth
With leverage from this average me.
We’ll speculate and try, and see!

Can Meditations Influence? 3.24.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II;  To The Child Mystic; II The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;Circling Round Meditation; Arlene Nover Corwin
Arlene Corwin Mar 2020
Everything Has An End

Light waves and bends.
Comes from the sun, reaches its object.
Lo, it ends.
(its start to other aims the subject for another poem).

You know what I’m talking ‘bout.
A teeny, microscopic lout
Which at the moment rules our days -
It will not always,
But die out.
Once it’s found a final project
To project its deadly darts at.

Where things go
When they appear to disappear
We do not know,
Can only guess and speculate,
A date out of the question.

All we know is all things end:
The bending light, day, night,
Humongous, slight;
Even the alphabet, A to Z,
There still a further mystery
And further question:
Which came first, the egg or chicken,
Cause where, when
Or even why?

The keys lie in philosophy,
Material, its -ality.
And so we end with unclear hope
That we can cope until the finish;
That the crash is but a hyperbolic gnashing
Of the teeth that brandishes its blemished face
And ends.

Everything Has An End 3.16.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin
Arlene Corwin Mar 2020
She Was A Hippy

She never smoked, never drank,
Never joined a cult or sect.
Her hippiness, her happiness
Found itself in waist length hair,
Patterned tights,
Bra dismissed
And short, short skirts:
Her expression of new freedom.

Fifties beatniks never reached her,
But the sixties found a new awareness
Which addressed her heart,
Unleashed a part she only guessed at;
One which dressed her mind.
Convention could not bind her
As behavior took a shape unstudied,
Natural - hardly touched before.

Maturity without hashish, Rajneesh,
The itch of spirit bringing in a shift in old priorities.
A little bolder, somewhat older;
Hippy of a different sort.
Mother, wife, musician, poet
All and each each supportive
And escorting her some steps to standing,
Understanding and continuance.

She Was A Hippy 3.13.2020 Pure Nakedness II;  Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
Arlene Corwin Mar 2020
Everything That Comes To The Surface

Everything that makes its way onto the surface
May be good,
Its matter surplus, or not wanted -
Dead fish notwithstanding.

A surgeon’s stitch forgot, ignored,
(as was my dated fate of late);
The spooned off  fat on top of soup,
Secret thoughts self hidden
Coming up and out unbidden,
Sifting happiness from pain.

Again, again,
Examples endless:
Plants that sprout to charm the bees;
Corks that float,
Pus gravitating towards an ‘out’,
Shoots whose object’s being eaten…
Endless signature secretions
For the use of us
And every creature,
Surface purpose their first feature.

Everything That Comes To The Surface 3.12.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin
Arlene Corwin Mar 2020
Something Always Tips The Scales

It is, will always be:
Something tips the scales.  You die.
We read, we see that most who pass away, I.e.
The older in society
From virus in modernity, contemporary
(virus C so anti-trendy);
Those with underlying illnesses, sepsis, so on,
Ills potential, known, un-shown.

Life’s end always has a cause,
The time between your birth and death but pause;
It’s no surprise: sunrise to -set,
Scarce discussed but always met.

Death comes at will;
Lying still or sitting, walking,
Making fervent love or talking,
Even taking food and such,
The unavoidable the touch of fate.

Corona’s crown, not crown but ‘downer’
(see corona’s origin: medieval Latin word for crown)

Starvation, war, lopsided Nature,
Technology and fire, water…
And the vices - greed and anger,
Traits unconquered…
Slowly building wind in sails
To some finality
That tips the scales.
Something Always Tips The Scales 3.10.2020 Our Times, Our Culture; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin
Arlene Corwin Mar 2020
Everything Is Autobiography

Everything is autobiography.
And why not?
Ourselves inside
Is all we’ve got:
Ourselves, our lives,
Our unique lot –
Why let it rot?

Everything that heals is good.
Every healing means is food.
The only means that comes for free,
The has universality,
That’s there, for those with eyes, to see,
That’s there on call effortlessly
Is my peculiar history
And your autobiography.

Everything Is Autobiography 10.26.1991/revised 3.8.2020
Nature Of & In, In & Of Reality; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin
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