What Takes Time
(when fingers have been amputated)

Buttoning and chopping onions.
(you don’t button onions, natch!)
Throwing ***** and playing catch;
Diverse actions needing oneness:
Three note chord, arpeggio
(If, of course you’ve played piano)
Wiping *** with just a thumb,
Zipping up,
Applying make-up.
Writing with a pen or pencil,
Lifting any large utensil;
Twists of wrists, techniques and muscles
While you’re rustling something up -
Things take time. You learn to cope,
And so,
You learn to take things slowly,
Much more slowly than you used to
When you ab- and mis-used time
By buzzing, cruising ‘round
Quite inexcusably.

Now focussed and enthused,
A strange new way infused,
The will to live renewed,
Things viewed as ordinary now extraordinary.
What takes time with digit gone
May have more than one compensation.
We shall see in years to come.

What Takes Time 11.24..2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The World’s Best Lovers

Musing on a thing I know,
A thing I know a thing about,
The trick is not to mention names.
Think: name unknown - the names anon.
The traits are what illuminate;
When it becomes an education:
Theory to academic and didactic;
Not the least bit pornographic
(even graphic, for that matter.)

Mr X climbs into bed with Ms XY.
No sly ardor but good will,
They lie quite still.
A good beginning and an intro.
No big ego runs the show.
Start is slow, no expectations.
With no goal, the ***’ awakens.
One is passive, one is not.

Cool and hot, yin and yang,
One receiver, one with spring.
This can vary in the doing,
Cupid’s arrows, sightless, blind,
Innocence and eros blend.
The tactile governs.
Thigh to thigh, hand on hand,
Eye to eye, and, and, and…and

A motion, whispered groan;
Skin on skin, the moans begin.
Step by step and far from finished,
Visual, olfactory, the beating heart,
The swelling heat, the two best lovers taking part,
A start, an end, two friends united in
Spontaneous combustion
(which they say cannot be found,
but silent causes can resound.)
In any case, all ceased and feasted,
Lovers rise. A second breakfast.
Lovers who have had the most -
Juice and oatmeal, buttered toast…

The World’s Best Lovers 11.21.2020 Circling Round Eros; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

I woke this morning, watched my morning TV, ate breakfast, and outcame this: having been worked on 3-4- hours; refined, more clearly defined, even as I write for sending.

     A New Awakening

For me, each day’s become
A new awakening.
I don’t remember yesterday,
(that, almost literally).
Each day I feel a newly born
Who hasn’t had a day before;
For him or her,
Each day’s events, the weekly sequence that lacks reference:
Wholly fresh and unprocessed.
No programmed habits in the way,

The learned unnecessary.
Every breakfast, lunch and dinner
Informing and a finding
With the force of creativity
Touched by serotonin, dopamine
And filled with oxytocin, which means
Happiness, and with that -ness invention.

Ageing has its benefits.
The days untied, untried,
Duties less a press;
To the better in the dwindling senses, subtle changes;
Fun in what was obligation:
Cooking, laundry, scrubbing, dusting -
All the ordinary musts amusing,
Yesteryear’s mad fusses fusing!
An awakening!  
A new sense-action and a prize
Of unadulterated size!

A New Awakening 11.17.2020 Circling Round Ageing; Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Things We Take For Granted

The tastes and that we taste,
The smell and that we smell.
The sight and sights themselves;
The fact of silence, how it feels.
And touch?
Is velvet like our bristly toothbrush?
How asleep we are
Though eyes are open.
Who is it, that real person
Inside you?
And who is you?

The Things We Take for Granted 11.15.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Note: I could have called this “Some Things We Take For Granted”, for I well understand the limitless extent of what we do not think about or notice. But as one who has lost the sense of taste and smell, who has had fingers amputated due to sepsis, I know and am beginning to deeply understand the before and after of what it means to 'take for granted'.

The Things We Take For Granted

The tastes and that we taste,
The smell and that we smell.
The sight and sights themselves;
The fact of silence, how it feels.
And touch?
Is velvet like our bristly toothbrush?
How asleep we are
Though eyes are open.
Who is it, that real person
Inside you?
And who is you?

The Things We Take for Granted 11.15.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

An End To Everything

Driving in the car looking at the trees;
November colors, sparser leaves.
Their stunning, sunning profiles clear;
Tree trunks far or close together;
Defined the birch and pine, the heather,
The whole divine to me.
And yet one sees finality.
Winter sends a different sense.

Seasons brief;
Some bloom, some gloom, flame, flume -
All short.
But lying in my world of thought
I see the tree. the bird, the bee
As formed of start and end - and then,
A start again.

An End To Everything 11.14.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Ego

I am ego.
You cannot survive without me;
I can help you give, by helping give you
Your identity.
I help you know yourself
So, do not **** me off
But know when I am there
Giving orders
When I ought to be sub-ordinate.
I am ego - not I AM.

Ego 11.12.2020 I Is always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin