A Little Quiz

If you could sell a thing for lots,
Finance your yachts;
Would you boycott?
If what you sold
Could finance wars,
Could bring worlds
To their burned-out knees,
Would you do business?

If you could earn a salary
By working in a factory
Producing weapon’s heads,
Guns, poison gas –
All granted by the local laws,
Would you do business?

A little quiz - a little Buddhist -
Prompted by
The sheer potentiality
Of personalities and crime TV
Regarded daily.
Hypothesize:
Your kids are hungry.

A Little Quiz 8.29.2017
War Book II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

A Little Quiz

If you could sell a thing for lots,
Finance your yachts;
Would you boycott?
Boycott, if what you sold
Could finance wars,
Could bring worlds
To their burned-out knees,
Would you do business?

If you could earn a salary
By working in a factory
Producing weapon’s heads,
Guns, poison gas –
All granted by the local laws,
Would you do business?

A little quiz - a little Buddhist -
Prompted by
The sheer potentiality
Of personalities and crime TV
Regarded daily.
Hypothesize:
Your kids are hungry.

A Little Quiz 8.29.2017
War Book II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Seventy And Eight

Seventy and eight:
You’ve set aside some vanity.
What was it but priority?
And some priorities have changed.
Acceptance of some disappearance;
Change of balance, skin that’s run the distance,
Re-arrangement of the substances inherent -
                                                       or you thought..

When you’re nearing birthdays
Each and every twelfth ****** month,
You shun
The cant if you’re observant.
‘Happy Birthday’ not so plain.
This has that… and that’s a pain.
Marriages have come and gone,
You’ve eaten everything on offer.
Gone the need to empty coffer entertaining.

Suffering more neutralized;
So many friends and kin have died.
You’ve channeled drives
That used to thrive on pleasure.

With a birthday coming up
You’re going down each second’s unit
So immeasurably tiny you can’t count it.

Here is where it gets didactic:
Birthdays coming up – don’t hope but have it.
As for vanity, retract it.
That’s it.

Seventy & Eight 10.28.2012/revised 8.27.2017
Birthday Book; Circling Round Vanities II; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

A World Full of Beautiful Songs

There is a world full of beautiful songs
Out there;
Each more sweetly silencing
And bringing forth
More tears than t’other.
Myrrh
Mellifluous as fragrant honey.
Money cannot make or buy it:
Songs so lyrical you cry at
Hearing.

The child, sensitive and innocent
Of harmonies and reading notes
Looks back on songs she learned by rote,
With warmth and ardor.
Learned by heart,
They weren’t hard to memorize.
Their beauty struck a chord
The size of don’t-know-what.

Sweet song or hot,
A taste for this, a taste for that;
It’s music that gave solace,
Reassurance, dancing feet.
World full of song and beat,
Time complete.

There is a world of euphony
And melody
To sing about.

A World Full Of Beautiful Songs 8.25.2017
Vaguely About Music II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin


,

The Meaning Of Life, What?

Peace, love and happiness.
Three words we miss
In every sense.
a) fail to hit it, fail to get it,
Even though it is the tar-get.
b) We miss it as we’d miss a bus,
The muss of ego messing up, missing us.
c) We miss it as in pine for, yearn for:
Miss in every aspect.

Peace.  We don’t e’en know its meaning;  
Shunning, running fast away from…
Yet we want it.

Love.  And that?
The ***?  Caress? Compassion and philanthropy?
Who cares for me and only me?  
Love, what?  All that?
Yes, probably.

Last, happiness.
Contentment without need for rapture;
Focused in the niceness of the now
No matter how
The outer world appears.
No matter what
Emerges as and from your lonely lot.

The meaning? Socrates:
He knew that he knew nothing.
But his nothing had the ring
Of truth.  Though youth
Can’t know it doesn’t know,
The issue stays the same,
Theme worthy of its  noble aim:
Life: What? The meaning of?
Peace, happiness and lovely love.
The meaning of its process,
More, patently not less.

The Meaning Of Life, What? 8.24.2017
Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

When Summer Ends

When summer ends,
The air is strange, the mood estranged,
Winds begin, heat descends,
One wends one’s way
Across a browning lawn
To go back to the city, town.

Winter coming.
Urban living, job or studies,
Plain old washing dishes humming.
Kids in school again.
It could be you relax again.

When summer ends,
Visits, guests and nature over.
Leisure, in so many ways,
But as in everything, the flip side too.

Summer, fall and winter blends
Into one year
Again
As in
Its antecedents.
Life goes on.

When Summer Ends 8.23.2017
Circling Round Nature II:
Arlene Corwin

You Never Know

You never know
What phrase will take you
To a place – what shall we call it:
Your mentality,
The frontal lobe,
The hippocampus,
Heart or soul?
It’s hard to say in words & sentences
Conventionally milked, been said,
And you don’t want to be a part of it:
The hackneyed, trite, cliché, banal -
Repeating news old hat and stale.
You have the need to speak anew,
Speak up in ways that freshen,
And you never know what sparks a notion,
Crumb, soupçon, a healing potion
(oxymoron opportune).

What matters is that it,
It comforts by the letting out,
The routing out
Concealed crypts of knowledge.

You Never Know 8.20.2017
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

Bemoaning Similes & Metaphors

         (the lack thereof )


I cannot think in similes or metaphors.

I can, but it’s

An artifice.

A gift

I’ve not been left with.

Of course,

I’ve got Thesaurus –

My old pal -

To push me

In the simile

Direction.

Those

Whose

Aptitude’s

To see,

Their inner eye

Comparing parallels unconsciously –

A gift of gene and DNA –

Overwhelm me.

While I moan about my lack,

They sit with throne and luck

Expressing with an ease,

Anything they ****** well please

In metaphors and similes

I lie in bed,

This running through my head.

That’s why it’s here.



Bemoaning Smiles & Metaphors 1.13.2010/8.17.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Who Would’a Thunk It?


Who would’a thunk it?

Fifteen books

Sliding piecemeal into six…

Other’s bibliographies

Whose credit lists go on and on

In pages worn

By use unceasing.


Here sit I

Noon sun high,

Ablaze with phrase

That turns into (most likely will)

Ideas instilled

With rhyme and substance,

Probing, pressing cortex’ lobe

Gushing, pushing out the job.


Who would’a thunk, in any case,

That it would form the base of hours

Spent each day as child’s play?

(Except that I’m grown up!)

Who would’a thunk it?


Who Would’a Thunk It? 8.16.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Thunk; informal or humorous past a

Who Wouldn’t Mind Being Remembered?

Who wouldn’t mind being remembered?
It’s not the same as wanting fame -
Naiveté’s vanity its other name.

Who wouldn’t mind some impact?
An itch to reach out
Maybe teach, knowing one knows so little –
Naught at all – We are so small.

But art is there,
And impulse wants from within wants out,
Shouts quietly with word
When you yourself have disappeared.

Who Wouldn’t Mind Being Remembered? 8.16.2017
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

Life Is A Corned Beef Hash
          (A metaphor)

Life is a corned beef hash -
Or chicken, pork or any stash
Of edibles you have at hand.
If you are clever
You will use the cleaver
To make dishes
So delicious
Guests will never understand
With formulaic words
How to make the bouquet of accolades
Big enough.
(Wow!  That was pufferific!)

All you have to do is focus,
Be a tiny bit courageous,
Use a quantity of hocus pocus
So your genius
Can shine,
Your mine of treasure
The impromptu measure
                           of the moment.

Life Is A Corned Beef Hash 8.12.2017
A Sense Of the Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin
puffery – in case you didn’t know: exaggerated  praise; hyperbole.

Do We Own?

Do we own?
Own what?
Parents die;
Friend, enemy;
Ones we have never known
In circumstance we’ll never see
In lands we’ve never been.

What do we own?
Goods heaped up over years,
Stored in a wardrobe or armoire,
Or locker somewhere
Because life has changed-***-rearranged -
Or we’ve lost interest - period.

Do we own?
Appropriated from life’s providence?
For providence means helped/provided for,
Sustained, maintained, endowed, supplied.
It never meant forever.

We alone are what we own.
I too.  And you.
(Though there are some who say we are on loan.
But that’s another story).


Do We Own? 8.10.2017
Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

How Are You: The Unpredictability

They almost always start the conversation
With “How are you?”
You say “Fine”.
It is the norm.
Time-honored, automatic, form expected.
        
Yet, you reach an age
Where you no longer fit the norm accepted,
And you hesitate,
Waiting just a little bit
                            ‘fore voicing back.
Unpredictable tomorrow:
Routine ailments, triumphs, sorrow;
Unpredictable around-the-clock.

Is it wrong to linger?
Wait to answer?
I think not.
To blur convention, slur cliché,  
You spur [real] candor
For the day.

When they ask you how you are,
Think of instability
And take a second to reply.

How Are You: The Unpredictability 8.9.2017
Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

People Smoke A Joint Because…

People smoke a joint because
It calms them down,
It makes them laugh.
The symmetry
Of mediocrity’s conventions flee.
It also makes them hungry.

Answers come,
And often laughter is the payoff.
Nineteen sixty
Groups ingested LSD
To see more beauty,
Dig into the new,
Change patterns that were old in mind,
Find truths that were not there to find,
Break down, build up,
Sip from the cup of everything there is to sip.
So people drink because they are
More able to shift gears,
Take risks, lose fears.

The problem is to lay off, stay off.
That would be a real payoff.  
Get it? Layoff, stay off, payoff?
I liked that.

People Smoke A Joint Because… 5.25.2010 revised 8.8.2010
Circling Round Energy; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

Started 2008

A/The/My Way (redone)

I never knew I had a ‘way’.
And still it shows up day by day
Laws but felt, themes unmeant;
Through sudden fountains of content;
Through many offshoots but one road,
No signposts to direct or goad.
Still it is:
A kiss of fate though non-insistent,
Usually
An accident and serendipitous.

And because, and just because it is a whisper
I’ve no choice
But to
Tune into
And obey,
Swaying to its hinted push,
The glint of pressure
Nothing but a pure, faint sureness
And a pleasure.    
            
Minutes past I ate three plastic plates of pasta.
Forgive this frilly, dilly of a joke.
I can be such a silly yokel
With punch/pun-ny lines that hit my funny bone(s).

Now I sit with pen in hand
On my verandah, in the wind,
Thankful for not understanding
Karma’s muted law un-grand,
Inscrutable but suitable
To me alone - one on her own
Within the actions and concerns.

A/The/My Way 8.6.2017
Pure Nakedness; Revelations Big & Small; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin

A/The/My Way

I never knew I had a ‘way’.
And still it shows up da by day
Laws but felt, themes unmeant;
Through sudden fountains of content;
Through many offshoots but one road,
No signposts to direct or goad.
Still it is:
A kiss of fate though non-insistent,
Usually
An accident and serendipitous.

And because, and just because it is a whisper
I’ve no choice
But to
Tune into
And obey,
Swaying to its hinted push,
The glint of pressure
Nothing but a pure, faint sureness
And a pleasure.

                      ----------

Minutes past I ate three plastic plates of pasta.
(a pun-ny lie, but funny)
Now I sit with pen in hand
On my verandah, in the wind,
Thankful for not understanding
Karma’s muted law un-grand,
Inscrutable but suitable
To me alone,
One on her own
Within the schemes and actions of concern.

A/The/My Way 8.6.2017
Pure Nakedness; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

In each moment, each pursuit
Improvise.
It’s nothing more than living Now.
Of course you’ll f---k it up at times:
Mistakes belonging to a human
As does dust upon a mirror.

In each moment, work or pastime
Improvise, extemporize.
You have encyclopedic knowledge
In your little life-so-far;
Gifts and talents, skills, capacities;
Experiential knowledge
You absorbed the moment you took breath.

If you do what I advise
You see patterns that transmogrify,
Patterns that will make you wise;
Patterns when you make each minute your device.

Despite anomalies,
Quirks, and incongruities,
This the key to bring to light
The star you are,
Becoming brighter with each gesture.

Make a pact with you yourself
Put old habits on the shelf of things gone by.

You improvise,
You start to fly.
By and by
You are the sharpest, deepest, most profound and visionary
You alive.

Improvising Your Way Through Life 8.5.2017
Definitely Didactic; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

I Need To Think Of Starts

Everything that starts has sparks of coming into being,
For everything I know through all my senses
Has a life, even the rock.
Tick tock. (its life takes time).
It isn’t hard to think through to a cause primeval; one original,
Pristine: a first!  After all, what hasn’t had a first?
With first comes what will form.
Will form forms from a light.
What doesn’t have a core of light?
Without the light there’d just be night,
Light being first in all the firsts.
Completeness not yet born.
(Oh ****, words are inadequate).

In this entirety it isn’t hard to picture bliss;
But with this bliss unhappiness - qualities with opposites:
Good/bad and something in between.
Light and dark, it’s suffix –ness.
Consciousness.
  
If anything will lead to starts,
It’s knowing that and all its parts -
Or is it one?
Now there’s the fun –
Finding out if it is One,
If you and I and we are one.

It may lie in the memory;
This need may start primarily with me.
I need to think of starts.

I Need To Think Of Starts 8.1.2017
Nature In & Of Reality; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Very, Very & Fantastic

She struggles with each verb and noun,
Adjective, conjunction, article and even
Pronoun.
All to better brain:
Maintain
The art parts, smart parts,
A la carte parts.

There are leaders:
Chairmen of the boards who stay
Long adolescent in some way.
Ambitious, never swaying
From their standpoints, outlooks and perspective.  Oy!
A very, very Oy yoy yoy!

“I am best!  Don’t mess with me,
Don’t carp or bleat.
My words unquestionably
                                         right
And those who choose to disagree…
Are rendered useless usefully.
My deeds, and all I nominate
Are very, very, very great!
I live on very un-elastic,
Very, very and fantastic!

Very, Very & Fantastic 7.29.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

I Cook For My Husband #2 (shaved & scissored)

I cook for my husband
The way I would cook for a king.
And I’d cook for the king
(If ever he’d ring)
The way I cook for my husband.
With skill, choice and taste of the day,
What e’er’s in the cupboard to make a buffet
Fit for a king or my husband.
No problem or trouble,
Food is a bubble
Lasting an hour from mouthful to bowel.
If house guest should scowl or glower or frown,
Finding it uphill to get the food down,
I take it serenely,
Comport myself queenly,
Tell him or her
The next meal will be better,
It’s fine to leave morsels of food on the plate
And leave it at that,
It being one method to never get fat.

I Cook For My Husband #2 7.27.2017
Definitely Didactic; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

In A Quandary

In a quandary.  In a pickle.
Temptation and dependency;
Enslaved by self-indulgence;
Keenness that becomes a blend
Of day’s beginning and day’s end.

On the bus, inside the car,
Telephone beside the ear;
Walking, talking to yourself? Oh no,
It’s talking to a god-knows-who
For god-knows-why.

Am I the only person
Riled by this phenomenon?
Addiction to diversion
In the guise of help and benefit?
Yes, even these can dig the pit
Of hell-p-less-ness.
Information, facts mind-blowing, quick.
Fascination and allurement on a stick.

Having learned some new found tricks -
Heartening, supportive pick-me-ups,
One notices, (I notice) that the
‘Pickle’ quickly trickles down
Into those risky parts of vanity,
Its need for company
And other longings.

Frisky sports who gaily own
Desktops, laptops, Ipads, smart phones…
Know what I talk about:
Joy that takes you from yourself
While telling you it is yourself:

Programs, sites and violent games,
Interaction with big names –
Presidents and criminals -
All their problematic schemes:
Everything’s on board for every sort:
The bored, the interested, the scared.
The strong, the undecided: snared.

A sticky, tricky, muddled mess,
A sanctuary become quandary:
Game of chess and source of stress
And one we seldom choose to harness;
Goodness!
Can one win it?
I’m not sure.  I’m in it.

In A Quandary 7.26.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Once I Was Young

A cliché maybe,
For the multitudes have said it,
Yet,
One thinks it now and then,
In one way or another.
Situation, circumstance transport it to
The frontal lobe.
One probes the wardrobe of the brain
Where dreams have lain
And lie there still, so very still and quiet.

But today I chanced to see
A photograph of me
And chanced to say,
“Once I was young”.  
It did not feel like cliché,
But fresh, revivifying
Memories I had not thought about,
Affections that now brought about
Sensations not particularly rosy –
But not jarring either.
More a nosy statement not opposing fact;
In fact, prosaic,
Dry.

I
Once
Was young
Not to
Be that again.  
Do you
Experience that also?

Once I Was Young 7.23.2017
Birth, Death & In Between II; Circling Round Aging;
Arlene Corwin

This Body

Pesky, troublesome, capricious;
Efforts to control a wild-goose chase,
Farcical: a waste.
A strain in vain; hurts when it hurts;
Longings and desires, when and where it will,
Its underskirts.

It goes its way, in the way
And sometimes, thank the Lord, not…
One is forced to say,
“This is my lot.
I’ll do what I can do to help it stay
As long as possible;
Comfortable, perhaps good-looking, but
God knows, that part is least.”
This body is a beast
With some kind of intelligence that lies in destiny.

Goodbye old vanity,
Old friend one used to think so highly of,
Be steered by and obey.
Goodbye old energies one understood so little too.
Goodbye old you -
With arms, legs, trunk,
All of its useful junk inside;
The ride, the slide,
The destination thought its own,
Just bone
If that.

You notice I don’t call it ‘my’,
Belonging as it does to nature.
‘It’ an it and ‘this’ a this; this body a bo-die.

This Body 7.15.2017
Circling Round Vanities II; Birth, Death & In Between II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin


A good look at reality.

It Has Been A Lifetime Of…

It has been a lifetime of, well, meditation:
Meditation/prayer, prayer weaker
(more appeal and supplication
Than an offering without a question).

Not really lifetime, I admit, but,
Years and years of seeking It,
Approaching It, trying to find, bind Arlene
With hope that she’ll become more than a hopeless dope;
Hope and that arcane, otherworldly word
That rhymes with earth and mirth and forth and wraith:

“What can it be?”(said she inscrutably).
Of course, it’s faith!
The hardest of the hard.
(Don’t let them kid you what they say they’ve got it)
Faith both gift and hard, hard practice.
Owning, losing day to day.

It’s been a lifetime – that’s for sure.
But life continues now to now:
Day to day, year to year
And meditation and the prayer
(Each in its place) continue too.
The real me
Still uncompleted
As of our poetic meet
This very heartbeat.

It’s Been A Lifetime Of…7.13.2017
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

The Books I Write & Thoughts At Night

It’s 2am and I awaken.
Thoughts break in
And I begin:

I write the books.
Charming, informative.
They do not sell.

Carefully worked on and out until they gel,
Spontaneous but ne’er pell-mell,
Tight, concise, the format small;
Life’s storms,
Its call to arms,
A bawling at our time’s alarms,
Wailing ‘gainst life’s wailing wall,
Admiring the beauty of it all…

What e’er it is I have to tell:  
They do not sell.
So what the hell!

But what is hell?
The poet’s railing wall?
Perhaps the tiresome need to sell.

The Books I Write & Thoughts At Night 7.12.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Selfies & The (Selfish) Need

Rembrandt painted hundreds in one medium or t’other.
Thanks to photo’s techno-grams
Selfies of all kinds abound,
Home paintboxes thick on the ground
Which begs the question:
Exploration or self-love?
Motives passive and elusive, definitely inconclusive,
Probably a votive to self-love;
The selfie shows its needs up front.
Pretext for one’s vanity, its insecurity.

Then there’s the blog:
A kind of selfie, yes?
There to impress via modernity’s express
A world you hope
Is waiting for your scoop,
Your dope, your ****.

When you’ve seen a glut of bodies
Photo-shopped and chopped to please,
Is there more you need to see?
Or is it true desire breeds desire
And that fact a warning dire?

Impudently, imprudently
Continuing until we rue the days that bluntly
Lead us nowhere in particular
But to the usual, predictable, familiar wrinkling
And the loss of beauty’s pull.

Selfies & The (Selfish) Need 7.5.2017
Circling Round Vanities II;
Arlene Corwin

You Need Someone Who Believes In You

It sounds romantic; a cosmetic;
I would say,
It’s more a cosmic
Underlay:
A kind of agent
Sent
To shout your name world over.
Someone to communicate
The rare fresh flower that you are;
Star-becoming-bigger star;
Someone booming out your gifts,
Strumming, humming wide and far
About your lifting gifted star;
Friday’s date, friend or mate,
Adorable, adoring pet,
Someone there to vindicate and validate
Your expertise,
The artistries
Accrued;
Who’d
Build a statue
Honoring your values
And of course, your value:
Someone who believes in you.

You Need Someone Who Believes In You 7.2.2017
Defiant Doggerel;
Arlene Corwin


Isn't it obvious?

Tipsy

I was tipsy last night,
Quite enjoyed it.
Drinking just a thimbleful one time a year,
And there was I, a stumblebum, but clear
In head,
Dutifully fulfilling all that needed
To be done.  
A charming, wonderful sensation – fun.
And yet, I thought about my liver.
Will I ever, no, I’ll never
Be a drinker,
I’m too much a thinker
And a Jew.
And if you didn’t know
We Jews are not great drinkers,
Just great thinkers,
Contrite sinners on Yom Kippur
Nobel winners,
Alcohol not in our tribe.
And so, it is not likely I’ll imbibe
Too many jiggers wine or *****;
Too many calories
And I don’t want to lose
My liver’s life too soon –
Or looks, or senses or the boon
Of brain and knowing
Who I am
And who I’m born
To be.

Tipsy 7.1.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Illusion

What isn’t an illusion?
That’s the question.
You aim for fame. Well, forget it – it gets boring
When the door to happiness subsides.
How long before the ride of charm
Turns into gasp; one last-ing gasp.
What circumstance, experience, ambition
Doesn’t turn to opposition
Some time in its life?
One thing turned into two
And diametrically opposed:
Up/down, down/up, then seeing through –a last, last sup.
Illusionary, but that’s not to say it doesn’t matter.
Everything a smattering of truth
For you to act through,
Watching diligently as you do it.
Not to say you must be stiff –
Just act as if
The whole thing’s real.
Don’t let it steal the real you,
That’s all.
There is a real you –
Let’s call it soul
Or essence; outer/inner
Unity of you-nity (that’s funny).
Ok, so it isn’t money,
Gathering (of many things
Such as position, power,
Family and all the things I can’t remember).
Passing, unpredictable, unstable,
Every syllable of all you want
Attainable – but then what?

Illusion 7.1.2017
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Illusion - what isnt?

The Sun, Birds, Cozy Cats & Light

There is the sunny side:
The bursting green of tree and bush,
The light, delight, the precious ****,
Processes key to happiness.
A breakthrough, negatives decried,
And you
Awaking,
Taking in,
All full of beans.
Within your day, the friendly means
Of sun, the birds, the cozy cat,
The light within,
The light without.
You, the end result content.

The Sun, Birds, Cozy Cats & Light 6.29.2017
Circling Round Nature II; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Some Kind Of Sadness

I seem to have a mark of sadness
I don’t see when writing.
But when read again,
Plain as the nose upon my face
I see it and I say:
Am I that doleful soul
Whose miles of smiles
Make each day,
An inner and an inner, inner
Spurned when I’m awake?
A Janus or an understand-er of existence,
Real both?  Real or both?
I know-eth not
And do not care.
I’m where I ought to be:
Here always.

Some Kind Of Sadness 6.25.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

To Those Who Say…

Those who say, “And then I said….”
Are short of something in the head;
Hidden pride in there instead.

Those who say, And then I told her…”
Dearest reader, here’s an answer:
“Then I said’s,”
A subtle, passive, ego-centered taking lead;
A mixture of denial, fugue,
(If ever there was such a thing).
It’s not a joke,
And I’m not kidding.

To Those Who Say…6.25.2017
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Thinking Clearly

I’m simply trying
To think clearly,
Times and destiny against me.

Not alone, it is we all.
A world of digits and addictions,
New temptations:
‘Lead me not into temptation…’.

Tiny hippocampus shrinking even more than ever,
It’s an effort,
I admit.
A part of words, a part of worlds
Inside a frame that gilds the lily,
Curls around reality
Like smoke from chimney.

Headlines chronically bad,
Chronicles of planetary sadness –
World of digits,
World on fire,
World that cultivates desire,
It is all the harder to think clearly
And sincerely:
Ergo, I
Am trying as a consequence,
To change the sequence
And think plainly, deeply,
Patently, indubitably
Clearly.

Thinking Clearly 6.18.2017
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II: Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Saying Political Things

I suddenly find myself
Saying political things.
A president who has a name
That pumps out rhymes that rhyme with stump and thump and clump
So numerous, so humorous you try in vain
To stifle sniggering, giggling, trying to abstain
That is, when you are not afraid of what comes next,
(What, whose head will come undone on any pretext.)
I, who never had opinions of significance inside my head,
Find that I am sitting up in bed
Watching the news,
The countless views,
And find I’ve got some too!
The boohoo, ***** you kind, and views about:
Is North Korea bad or mad?
Why is the crime rate rising?
Is it rising?
Not the least surprised
If it goes either way.
And so I say,
It’s unexpected to discover
Arlene Corwin (former Nover)
Faltering and altering, but taking stance,
Dancing around matters of importance,
Though they may be comical to you,
Positing her new-found thoughts political.

Saying Political Things 5.29.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

A Faster Cleanup

I’ve watched the documentaries,
Read the news and watched TV.
I wish I weren’t ordinary,
More pedestrian than I would wish to be,
Surrendering to traps of
Entertainment for diversion -
All those mediocre pastimes I accuse the herd
Of needing, and I shan’t excuse my nerdy being
Leaning on that chestnut ‘will is strong but flesh is weak’.
So before you puke I’ll speak
And say, we need a faster cleanup.

Plastic on the ocean bottoms,
Record heats and floods and rain.
Deserts spreading, Arctic’s melting: symptoms
Of the odium of inhumane
Expansions everywhere you look:
The Book of Crooked Modern-day,
Modernity’s last supper.
So, we need a faster cleanup
Mr. Trump  
                      and all the others.

A Faster Cleanup 5.27.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin



I'm sure you get the message.  It's a pregnant one!

Building Walls

To build a wall beside your neighbor,
(though he be not dearest neighbor) -
Build a wall to hide your neighbor
And to hide yourself,
Is wrong as wrong can be.
Don’t you agree?

What neighbor has no overflow?
Is not magnifico?
Has not a folk to which we owe
Our history:  our languages, our citizenry, heroes and mythology;
Poverty an un-destroy-able
“The poor are always with us” still, will always be.

What neighbor doesn’t ebb and flow,
Fail then grow?
He next store or ‘cross the border.
Not our job to build a fort  
Against a fancied enemy.

Building Walls 5.22.2017
War Book II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin;

No One Person

No one dancer moves like another,
No one singer like another –
So unique are we.
Movement, voice, technique and timbre
All unique and at their best lyric
(pronounced lyreek).
How I adore
To see the store
Of talent and capacity,
Technique and flair,
Dexterity and artistry
In all from dress designer
To the finer forms from
Sculptor, painter,
To the lesser forms – whatever
They may have as name,
The  nomenclature all the same to me.
Movement, sound,
The world goes round
In every creature’s singularity.
That’s all.  Take care.

No One Person 5.20.2017
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

To All The Criminals In The World

What will you do with all the money that you steal?
Such frivolous ambition, such shallow drive!
To feel alive?  A fancy meal?
Believe me there are better things to make life real.
Designer clothes, a fancy house?
Lots of *** to prove that you are more than mouse?
What’s wrong with you?
You’re gonna die.  We all just do.

What in heaven’s name (or hell)?
Greed just makes you small and smell -
The whole ambition yellow.

Gluttony, and hunger, all those drives for more –
Their more is less.  They’re glamor-less!
Not to speak of pain you cause:
The drain of pain,
The chain of pain you deign to cause!
What can I say?
You betray what human beings’s meant to be:
Nice, kind, with generosity
Abounding in all thought and deed,
All energy, all conduct and activity.

To all the thieves and villains,
All the gangsters, burglars, miscreants,
You’re not the fancy pants you think you are - or aim to be.
So I repeat, believe you me,
It’s all so hare-brained.  Wait and see!
You will wake up one day agreeing.

To All The Criminals In The World 5.16.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Nature Of & In Reality; Our Time, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin






You're gonna die.  We all just do.

Everyone Has Faith

Everyone has faith.
The only question is the choice we make.
Everybody worships (kind of)
What we worship is our choice –
From leaning, and from combination
Of that leaning and condition.

Choose, we choose what we were born to choose.
The gene, the fate, position, lot,
Perhaps to win or lose:
Strange as it sounds, our knot.

The crux
Is that life *****
But faith brings trust, conviction,
Optimism, hope and courage -
All positive and negative, yin and yang
As well you know.
For what is not?

Everyone Has Faith 5.14.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

A Problem And A Blessing

It’s a problem and a blessing;
I never do the same thing twice.
My omelets, cookies, ice cream –
Never twinned and absolutely never thrice.
My husband says, “That dish was consummate,
The best I ever ate…you must, must imitate it!
Why not write it down”.
And there’s my limit.
Always acting in the moment,
Home ingredients at hand,
Forced to recreate a dish
That will not taste of sand,
That may or may not turn out grand;
A failure or success – there’s no predicting,
But who cares!
My brain enjoys the dare,
For dare it is,
And there it is,
The blessing.

The problem?
Codes of norm, jazz (my profession), daily dressing;
Not recalled, created by improvisational necessity
Anew;
New strains, all things thought through
As if they’d never been.
What do you do?
And how?

A Problem And A Blessing 5.12.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin



A cutie.

The Making Of Perfect Love

The *** is simple.
Though there’s pattern, never boring.
Feeling new, e’en better every time.
How can that be?
The years have passed the ‘sell by’ date,
And one knows couples who
Are either bored to death or hate
The touch, approach,
Who ******
Just to escape the loathing
(even some who wear their clothing
into bed).

But with us, we focus.
Simple, the affection real,
Start so gradual
It’s hardly recognizable as such.
As for the finish,
Since there never was a start,
It sometimes has no end,
Just petering from aged tiredness
With never a dissatisfaction,
Life and day continuing
In the most natural of ways.

The Making of Perfect Love 5.9.2017
Circling Round Eros II; Pure Nakedness, Circling Round Aging; Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

Guilt & Shame, Exhaustion, Doubts & Failure

I’m capable of grief, regret and feeling sad.
But is that guilt? And is guilt bad?
Knowledge that the one responsible is you,
However caused:
From innocence or ignorance,
Naiveté, unworldliness,
The mess created to put other(s) in a stew.
Perhaps it is.

In the stillness of decision,
From a willingness and will,
Rejecting guilt, dismissing shame,
Taking culpability in name of karma,
(though I’d never harm a
                                     fly on purpose),
If I’ve done a something to a someone,
I will have to pay back someone sometime,
Try to form and glue a future, integrated, sutured me,
New belonging and identity;
Acquiring a philosophy to lean on:
A new frame, new name, rules of the game
Ameliorating guilt and shame.

They write about this all the time
Have done it since the start of
Any kind of written art -
In prose, in picture and in rhyme
In life, in death, with every breath,
Mistakes corrected to reach truth
Uncovered and un-smothered,
Reaching out that truth to other.

Through the spittle,
Perhaps victual
Of the title
I reach out to you.

Guilt & Shame, Exhaustion, Doubts & Failure 5.7.2017
Circling Round Egos; Nature Of & In Reality; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Who ever thought of it as the peninsula it is. Inhabited by native Americans and called Narrioch, a ” land without shadows”, “always in the light”, its beaches facing south and ‘always in the light; a “point” or “corner of the land”. Come 1600’s and it’s Dutch bought for a gun, a blanket and a kettle. Also called Coninen Island, then Coney Hook, then maybe Conyn Eylandt, maybe even Konah, even Colman after John Coleman, slain by the natives 1609.
Wikipedia

So I write about my Coney, phony, and for me my lonely island.
Land of rides and fun’s placations,
First such park for work vacations.
Frankfurters with ***** and mustard,
Frozen custard, chocolate syrup on the top.
Brooklyniters, Jackson Heighters…New York City’s pop…ulation
Come by subway all that way.
(Who had a car?  Everything and place was far,
Every stranger from a land they landed from –
At least their dads or moms or grand or great-grand dads and moms:
Generation and the nation of the 20’s 30’s, 40’s).
Cotton candy, candied apples sweet outside, sour within.
Who thought of sugar then?  
Who thought of staying thin?
Miles and miles of sand - all gray.
Cold Atlantic blocks away.
Parachute ride, new and daring.
Arlene Nover, longing, raring.
Merry-go-round wan and childish,
She, wildishly shy, tongue-tied,
Watched by grownups there not sharing any wooden horse beside
Which could have turned the ride
To fun
No parent un-derstood.
Clear and queer these memories.
Showing up spontaneously.
Sequences squeezed out of fate
Some seventy years later – late.


Coney Island 5.1.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

You Never Know The Clout You Have

You never know the clout you have,
Clout being a blow or target -
Most of all effect or power
You exert by being you.

Take care! Be careful, scared! Be wary!
Everything you say, you do -
Each word, each vow, an influence.
In circumstance you radiate an ambience
You pray will be benevolent.

You, you
In all you do;
And you have impact.
Make a pact with mental you
To be a kind and, gentle you,
Giving out rewarding vibes,
Enriching, beneficial, fruitful.
You, yourself a scribe imbibing
Influences from abroad,
From world untoward – in discord!

Take some in and turn them ‘round.
You abound in power.
You can be man* of the hour
Just by being who you are.
You can be the lucky star
Of every person you encounter.
So remember!
You ne’er know the clout you have
To save what ever may occur.

* of course woman too!

You Never Know The Clout You Have 4.29.2017
Definitely Didactic; Coffee Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Got this idea the other day- but only as a title.  Worked on it the past two days.  See if you appreciate its point of view.  Notice that I place it in the collection called Circling Round Egos.
            

We fight against…

We feel it’s brave.

No matter what the cause

The will to save is strong.

We go along with crowds

Who think alike and think aloud.



The self may or may not be gone;

We like to think in unison,

Fighting for right against the wrongs.

We even sing fight songs

In name of right and wrong.



To yield is a second way.

Is it weakness to give in, give way?

It’s often clever - often never.

War means to attack, fight back,

But even Bonaparte gave up his part,

Threw in the towel; weak move but smart manoeuvre.



Giving in to giving way to bowing down to

Stepping back to take a breather…

Easier, less time-consuming,

Hours left for ruminating.



Friends gossip as they sip their sauvignon.

They’ve all known loss, they've known defeat.

Yet it’s sweet to criticize.

We are a crazy [human] race.



Summed up, the best stress buster

Giving back to life its luster,

And the plan that musters true,  

Is yes in lieu of no: a giving in

To cover most conditions.



Giving In 4.27.2017

Circling Round Egos;

Arlene Corwin

Hypocrisy Confessed

There are those times
When I enjoy
A murdered leg
Or rib
Or thigh.
I
Call it steak
To make
Myself
Feel comfortable,
The rumblings of the mind assuaged.
Most of the time,
Prime hungry, up to eating like a horse,
I don’t eat cow (of course not horse),
But making food
Not rude or ******,
I, non-fake and non-pretender
Eat my beans, my reds and greens
With appetite.
No bright, slight, sprite
I eat my peas,
My eggs and cheese,
My pasta à la Genovese
Well pleased as punch,
Needing no med. rare meat for lunch.
But then those times…
Oy, oy those times!
Ashamed,
Soul feeling maimed,
Smell of sweet, soy, garlic-y meat
I fall
To ribs [deceitful] call.

Hypocrisy Confessed 4.25.2017
A Sense Of Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin




What can I say - You caught me out!

From Popularity…
              (comes danger)

From popularity comes hazard,
Risk of peril,
Boy or girl at danger’s call.
From anonymity comes shelter:
No one knowing you at all.

Every country loves its tourists -
Bridges, tunnels… easy access;
Weapons, drugs,
Lawbreakers, thugs:
In short, new foes;
New secret foes that no one knows.
From popularity come woes.

Self-imposed expansion low.
Moderation is the answer,
Modesty the balancer
Of friendliness
And isolation.

From Popularity 4.17.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

My Jazz Has Changed

My jazz has changed.
Warts and all,
Jazz is my call
Reflecting life’s endeavors.
I could never leave it.
I mature and it matures.
Meaning: freedom and invention.
Freedom of invention,
The sensation near ecstatic.
Who cares if I use elbows to create a chord?
No one!
Who cares if I make ***** up,
Am not a nerd – part of the herd?
No one!
Everything is up to me, in me, from me –
Each note, each beat, each melody.
Coming each year, parting fear
That was and used to be there.
A ready leaving of control,
Letting an other whole come through.
The point is: no one knows or cares but you.
The freedom and invention where it should be
At the very point in history.

My Jazz Has Changed 4.16.2017
Vaguely About Music II;
Arlene Corwin

Happy Birthday, Daddy Dear

Happy birthday once again,
Daddy dear.  April fifteen,
And you’re not here to share it
For you died so many years ago.
(the year before we reached two thousand).
But the fifteenth rolls around
And somehow sounds a chord inside me.
This year happens to be
                                      Pesach, Easter;
Easy to remind myself.
You would have been one hundred nine –
Not unattainable          
As age today.
But still you went celestially.
I hope you’re happy
As I wish you happy birthday anyway.
So with a happy memory,
I’ll say happy goodbye
And start
A hopeful, happy day.

Happy Birthday, Daddy Dear 4.15.2017
Birthday Book; Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

I’m Lucky

I’m lucky.
I don’t have to earn my living as a poet.
But I have to write it.

No reward to energize,
No prize,
No monetary chance for status,
Fame the same;
A nano-chance to spread my name.
And yet, and yet,
Out of the air
Ideas occur.
And while I sit or lie or stand
Wholly unplanned,
Forced, driven
Structure, meter as yet hidden -  
To seek pad and pen
With no predicting what and when
Will come to mind,
Inside the thing,
Inside the process of the writing.

It is as if some muse takes over
Former Arlene Faith Nover,
Improvising from said air
Ideas she never knew were there.
What could be luckier?
Silly couplets sometimes deep,
Forms arriving from the beep of spontaneity.
How lucky can one be!

I’m Lucky 4.12.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II; Revelations Big&Small; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin