You’re welcome to share this usually ignored truth with the world.  And for those spiritually oriented people who think I’ve left out ‘soul - even soul has to take a body before it can function. Otherwise, it’s just up there somewhere in the skies.

Arlene

             Body  

Everybody is a body:
Underneath it all, a body total.
Big or small, broad and ample,
Slight, but never trivial,
Arrival on this planet
Nothing short of miracle;

We’re meant to love it, but without
The pride of vanity,
For we know, vanities
Are valueless,
The body, paradoxically,
A  transiency;  
One could just say,
A moment’s instability.

We’re born to care
And not be fooled by armpit hair,
**** and cheek.
Soon or late all parts are weakened.

Tooled to grow, unroll, unfold:
It is a body, after all.
A million, zillion cells
That only ever wish us well.
Dimply, pimply, faintly smelly.
When each jolly quirk is tallied,
Everybody but a body.

Torsos weak and torsos strong
See us through the whole lifelong;
All of you and all of me.
This solely one and only body.

Body 7.22.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

A Reader Commented

“it can get repetitious
When you write about the brain.
The same refrain again, again.”
I answered:
“Variations on a theme, that’s all it is.
Not repetitious, but delicious."

With so many things that need attention.
Variations in an endless fund,
The emphasis on fun and essence…
But just now I am in body mode,
Brain unfolding
Undercurrents sensed and flowing
In a stream of consciousness
That feel almost blessed
Because I don’t know where they're coming from,
Not really.

What I do know is, there is a train:
Ideas starting in the brain
And through the hand,
Their end a piece of paper,
As if life was cutting some sweet caper,
In the art of understanding.

A Reader Commented 7.20.2020 The Processes: Creative,Thinking, Mediative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Detachment

I only wish that I were smarter.
Smarter is a starter
That can help in dealing with a matter;
Bring awareness to the whole.
(be it bowl or foal or jowl or vowel).

Yet I’m smart enough to roll  
Around inside my head
Things read, things said -
And without knowing where I‘m going,
Using synthesis and heart,
Get to some conclusion
I’d no inkling at the start.

With detachment
But not distant or aloof,
It becomes a state where mind dictates
With fairness, and then, ****!
Seeing sides that I’d not guessed were there,
There they are, staring me right in the face,
The space filled with but one desire:
To write an excellent poem!

Using homely word formation,
Something in me tackling issues
From the street talk of my childhood station.
To cues taken the abstruseness.

With the first idea a preconception,
And a gift for self-reflection.
It’s a doubly living counterpart:
One not-really-smart facade  
Echoing the outside bard,
And one that always  looks inside
And finds a chord
That’s fresh and new (or one or two).
A movement of improvement.

Being cool is part
Of being smart.
A clue
To an innate IQ
That doesn’t always show
Until you grow into it.

Detachment 7.19.2020 Definitely Didactic II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Perfect

I thought for years t’was no such thing,
Believing in the ongoing of everything.
I now believe quite differently.
Fast or slow, the mind in Now.
Testing my discovery.

Details count, perhaps the most.
Every detail is its moment.
Thoughtful practice - years, perhaps.
It all becomes a lapse-less care
Combined with skilled improvisation.

Like the movement in a symphony,
The stanza in a poem:
Complete within itself,
Each segment but a leading
To the next and next
Until the text and form
Feel finished, polished: done.

To do it is the privilege,
To carry on the duty
To reach it is the satisfaction.
(perfectio; the Latin for completion.)

Perfect 7.19.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Mediative II; Definitely Didactic II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Old Is Old

One phenomenon weighs me down:
Humans killing humans -
It a thing that never ages,
Being at the top of sinful wages.

Ebb and tide does not die out,
But we too soon glide from this planet
When we ought to all live out our days
Until the very final phase  
Of nature’s meaning
As was meant in Eden.

Oblivion, as Shakespeare says,
Arrives anon.  In any case,
Soon or late, fate has its voice,
The thing we call free choice erased.

Old is old.
We cannot scold the unpreventable,
Determined and unshakeable,
Regimented by laws born
In every momentary bubble.

Old is simply to observe.
Old is simply to accept.
The script all tightly written.

Old Is Old 5.24.2020/7.18.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Helping Attitudes With Platitudes

You do not have to be
Anyone but who you are.
Refining character
To help define your aura
Is the only thing you need acquire.

To experiment,
Pretend you are a foreigner,
A highborn neighbour
Or a stranger.

Be yourself and you will help the globe
As well as every microbe;
Setting off the chain reaction
Near and far
Encapsulating who you are.

Helping Attitudes With Platitudes 7.17.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Simply following the flow of thought.    

            Curiosity

Curiosity!  
So admirable and so worthwhile.
It never ‘killed a cat.’
It’s so much more than that.
in one who has it,
It may seem idiosyncratic.

But a treasure trove potential,
Of the jewelled and ideal,
Experiential and essential,
Meant to be a quality of more than ‘simple’,
Curiosity which makes you strong,
Through broadened knowledge,
Every living thing and not, a college,
It is spirit:  spirit of enquiry -
For none deny
It is a spirit.
Oddity  but spirit always is;
All have, few use,
The masses leaning on old views.

One thinks a thought and wonders why
And where and how and who
And so on till the thought is through.
These days it’s only to pursue
And follow through: so easy
With technology.

A universal literacy is all that’s needed.
Freedom helps.  
Once seeded, curiosity might gain nobility,
Respectability.
Both well deserved
And In the end, serve self
And all humanity.

Curiosity 7.15.2020 The Processes: Creative, thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin