Everything An Etude

Your cooking, your yoga,
Your diet, your posture:
Everything a try,
Chance to be brave
Chance to be plucky:
Symphony unfinished;
All’s a laboratory.

Everything an opportunity.
An exercise to make you better.
Never best.
There is no best.
So rest in knowing
Everything is etude.

Everything Is Etude 4.11.2017
The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Definitely Didactic; Vaguely About Music II;
Arlene Corwin

Irrational The Terrorist (a follow-up to After A Terror Deed…)

There’s no such thing as ‘non-believer’:
All believe in something.
Family, sky, the Vedic I,
The name ‘non’ – anything misnomer.
Those who slaughter
In the name of heaven, waiting virgins, angels,
Paradise, God knows what else,
Where lion vegetarians
Meet bird and man as ***** friends…
They do no know life’s real ends.
True, misconceived, a pictured or imagined thing
So strong that it gives murdering
A face,
It makes the law-abiding jaundiced,
And, like me, seeing irrationality
In well meant terror dogma-bent
As pure one hundred one percent
Insanity.

Irrational The Terrorist 4.8.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

After A Terror Deed
       (this time in Stockholm)

When terror deeds occur,
Him/her is wounded, killed,
Stay still.
You are in you and where you are,
Most likely far away
Watching the telly,
Shocked, the nightmare in your eyes.
You’re wise.
You stay collected.
Though connected you dismiss
The hate, the fear,
Your present now
To feel how it is in wholeness
And in peace.
The only answer.

But aware.
(Risk statistic in your favor).
Just remember,
You are always here
Inside your now.

After A Terror Deed (this time in Stockholm) 4.8.2017)
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Being Honest

It’s hard.  
Sounds simple, but it’s hard.
It’s brave. It’s subtle.
And you’re scarred and marred.
It is so many things
That dare I write them sans façade
My friends complain:  
Too ****** demanding,
Hard to deal with; so much
Nuance; synonyms abounding.
They want simpleness: the easy way.

Simple, yes, but challenging.
You’ve got to be considerate,
Your character to deal with.
Why ****? Death comes to all.
An honest **** is still a ******.

Why press ideas?
You know that ideas change,
That phases are the germ of life.
It’s hard to stand against temptation,
Vengeance, easy money, vice;
Hard to be right-minded, truthful
Self-restrained, just being nice.

Funny, but
It’s easier to tell the truth
When you begin to show you’re age.
People show respect, in fact,
They think you’re sage.
They’re happy that they’re getting honesty
Straight from the shoulder:
Benefits of growing older.

Old or young or middle life,
We’ve all had problems, woes and strife.
There is an art to being honest
Without cruelty or exploitation,
Without character’s temptation.
Best we start.

Being Honest 4.5.4027
Definitely Didactic; Circling Round Reality;
.Arlene Corwin

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Scriptural

How to say this briefly:
How to find words for the inexpressible.
They exist.
Here is the gist:
Components - churches, sects, cults,creeds:
The claim of being chosen.
Inner spirit doesn’t need a system woven
Into scripture claiming knowing
What is best for all.
One wherein if you’re good you rise
And if you’re bad you fall.

The faith-based places emphases
On unity of life within the mixture of belief;
Consensus, peace and joy, and getting these;
Transcendent over time and space,
The sense that you are face to face
With truth above reality,
Its indescribability.

Not impossible to voice
With Love that comes, fear that goes!
******, no, more loving kindness big & small,
Universal, if you will.
Permeating, calibrating,
Affixing to an All that’s spirit: all in all.

Practices to help along:
Meditation, psilocybin, prayer and song.
The non- theistic preference
Needs to be demystified,
With road for genius or dunce.
Not piety, religion, magic, paganism, or god-based;
Theological or physical,
But meta-, deeply meaningful,  
Yes mystical:
The core of all.

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Scriptural 4.4.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

The Politician

This to those who vote by rote
Or vote by call -
To those who vote at all:

Has he kept his word?
Kept to promises you heard?
Are you satisfied, let down?
Waiting to see what goes round:
(Several choices
Of the voices
Voting for the offices
Meant to be filled.)

Has he gone back on his vows -
Contradictory or harmful now?
Double thought through double-think?
Does it stink, prepared to sink
A land with aids, advisors, incomes
Sly, and on the side?

How will issues relevant be dealt with?
How will tasks be basked in
By the men
In power,
Typically men of the hour;
At their call, flasks, casks to drink from:
State affairs for one to think from!

The Politician 2.27.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Going To You

I couldn’t sleep. What could I do?
I went to you.
I go as often as I can,
As often as élan emerges:
Like a spy whose operation purges,
Does not tell (well,
                 those detected and elected).
I ought to come to you more often.  
True to form you’re there to soften
In one way or t’other – like a mother.

Is it just interpretation, fancy, brain synaptic,
Watching happenings?
Often ending as I would wish they should,
Seeing failings patched, detached,
Improving slowly once they’re hatched?

If I had been born to preach,
Joined synagogue or church,
Become rabbi, Mormon, Witness, priest,
Going north, south, west and east
At least I’d feel I landed.

But I’m silent and agog,
A secret seeker through the fog of worldly turbulence
And tastes that tempt, participating in the dance
With casualness, no casualty, but taking in causality as One,
It being April one, a day of fun at fooling friends –
Supercool, I face and grace it with my presence.

Going To You 4.1.2017
God Book II; Circling Round Reality; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

God Has A Plan

God has a plan.
A plan?
What does it mean?
And what is God?
Not meaning to be mean,
I want to take in
Them’s that do and them’s that don’t
Believe or doubt.

If followed to the end,
All roads lead home to Rome.
Good-natured, good humored,
Dastard, *******,
Substandard, no standard
Which means bad, good and all the world.

The plan, a plan
Is interesting indeed.
To analyze, interpret, give word to,
For we need
A word to read, be heard,
To take into the heart and head.

If you are a keen observer
Of the concrete and empirical,
You see that things have patterns,
(for example, thought and matter).
Post- and pre-  the pattern makes it lyrical.
(That for fun – the main thing is the plan.)

Laws to measure, near and clear,
Self-evident, plain as the nose upon your face.
(Water seeks the lowest space).
Laws unclear, obscure, inferred,
Laws that find no place in science.

Plan, the God adored - is Law;
Door short of adoration.
There’s nothing wrong
With seeing through those eyes,
To please
Those on the border
Of belief and dis-
                           belief.

God Has A Plan 3.30.2017
God Book II; Circling Round Science II; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

A Little Deep Thinking

Some lady wrote as seed of creeds:
“All it needs
                  is a little deep thinking”.
A little deep… cannot be little.
Deep is deep, and little little.
One or t’other.

Deep: profound, complex, discerning;
Weighty downward, inward, sound;
Rapt, absorbed, immersed, committed;
Wise, engaged, perceptive, learnéd;
The opposite of mediocre.
No light joker,
But deep thinker (and non-smoker).

Recommended by this poet.
If you really want to know it,
Do not sleep through life and day.
Go deep into the strife or play,
Wakefulness and nightly rest.
Deep will satisfy each, every quest.
Deep is the best of bests of best.
All you need is dee-eep thinking.

A Little Deep Thinking 3.27.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Alice Is In Wonderland



Alice got sick.

A dulling fur – a cancer here and there.

Don’t know how, don’t know why,

(We never know how, why we’ll die).

Bad and sad for doggies

And for those who hold them dear.



The vet urged she be put to sleep -

It had gone far.

It went in seconds. Not a peep

From Alice, just one beat, a bleep

And she was gone;

A little soul taken in hand

By doggy heaven land, a wondrous land.

Alice is in Wonderland.



Alice Is In Wonderland 3.24.2017

Birth, Death & In Between II; Love Relationships II;

Arlene Corwin

Taking Care of Body Parts

Take care of the body parts.
All the same, remember that
Most of what is going on,
Is going on inside you.

Organs, blood, I don’t-know-what,
Brain, realms therein.
All in-, invisible.
Cause encased:
To be addressed.

Take care of the body parts.
They show.
It’s nice and comfortable to know
                                   they work,
And more than that:
A pointer signal to research
The itch that doesn’t cease,
The lump or bump, the crease
Here, there or anywhere.  

Of course take care,
But find what’s there -
And not.
Fix the flub on neck and throat.
Booboo unattractive,
But beware, take care and ‘suss it out’.

Remember,
No appendage or a member
Is the issue.
It’s what’s going on inside
That describes the living you.

Taking Care Of Body Parts 3.22.2017
Circling Round Yoga; Nature of & in Reality;
Arlene Corwin


Of course!

Making Waffles In The Living Room #2
(a day in the life of an eccentric) improved version

With no one home to say a thing,
She lives out her free spirit.
Not a misfit,
Simply unconventional.

She’s making waffles,
But she wants to watch TV –
A favorite program on on Sunday.
Which will take priority?
Must one take priority?
Why not do them simultaneously?

She grabs a stool
And drags it to the living room.
Step one.
Carrying the still cold iron
Without fear of burn, she sets it
On the stool and plugs it in.
Old appliance, it goes on,
No On Off switch for use therein.
Step two.
Bearing big bowl brim-filled with batter,
Setting it with yogic balance
On said stool and splatter free, where it
Sits snugly on stool step,
Fitting snugly into step,
Spoon in hand, she spoons the batter
Spatter-free onto the iron piping hot;
Shuts the top and starts to wait.
One, two, three and on to plate,
All while watching Sunday’s fav’rite
Sunday program, Sunday film.
What subject for a poem!
Happy that there’s no one home
                                 to say a thing.
Fifteen waffles later,
Piled high and fully sated,
Not in tummy, but in mind -
Iron back in place
No drop or drip to waste,
And no one is the wiser.

from the Greek ekkentros, from ‘ek ‘out of’ + kentron ‘center’.

Making Waffles In The Living Room 3.20.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

Making Waffles In The Living Room
(a day in the life of an eccentric)

With no one home to say a thing,
She lives out her free spirit.
Not a misfit,
Simply unconventional.

She’s making waffles,
But she wants to watch TV –
A favorite program on on Sunday.
Which will take priority?
Must one take priority?
Why not do them simultaneously.

She grabs a stool
And drags it to the living room.
Step one.
Carrying the still cold iron
Without fear of burn, she sets it
On the stool and plugs the iron in.
Old appliance it goes on,
No On Off switch therein.
Step two.
Bearing bowl brim-filled with batter,
Setting it on stool where it
                            fits snugly in and on its step,
Spoon in hand she spoons the batter
Onto iron piping hot;
Shuts the top and starts to wait.
One, two, three and on to plate,
All while watching TV’s favorite!
What subject for a poem!
Happy that there’s no one home
                                 to say a thing.
Fifteen waffles later,
Piled high and fully sated,
Iron back in place
Not a drop or drip to waste
And no one is the wiser.

from the Greek ekkentros, from ‘ek ‘out of’ + kentron ‘center’.

Making Waffles In The Living Room 3.19.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

Even And All The Time

God is giving out
Evenly and all the time.

Evenly and all the time
Through Law and laws,
A clout, a shout, no hanging about;
Efficient, effective and quick.

A seeming quirk that never quits:
The nature of God,
Nature of God,
An Absolute absolutely.

Even And All The Time 3.18.2017
God Book II;
Arlene Corwin
Continuation…
      For Those Who Can’t Or Won’t

For those who can’t or won’t believe…
Refusal, aptitudinal deficiency;
A lack of interest or an inability
To think it through
And come to That conclusion.
I look up to all,
Roads leading in the end to Rome,
The roaming in us all.

For Those Who Can’t Or Won’t 3.18.2017
God Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Teflon Trump?

The news today: Donald Trump
Has skipped some taxes.
We’re not talking hundreds, thousands.
(speculate for poem’s sake)
We are talking millions – money millions.

Now we know that each of us
Wants money we can christen ours,
Most of us not prone to share
Or give away.  But let’s be clear –
These millions can help many poor:
Many, many, many poor!
There he sits with nothing more
Than sites aimed at more, more and more:
Expand! Collect! – focus lost;
A blindered horse on blindered course,
Priorities askew and wrong.
(observation and opinion)
Yet he seems to skip away, slip away, a Teflon Trump
That no one seem to strip away
Whose gotten far - so far…
One’s hope is that with aims made pure,
And as he storms, norms queer, unclear –
His love for folk (which he declares)
Will force – at least induce – reform.
And if I find that this is so,
I’ll change my mind and just might go
In his direction.

Teflon Trump 3.15.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Sitting Outside A Day In May  
      
I find myself not only wondering [but]
Thirsting, needing to know when and how they died, [but]
Thoughts or suffering or not: in short,
The state before and during…

I observe a skin that’s wrinkling,
Drying out and shrinking,
Hear and spy a bird in tree,
See the freshness, spring’s new growth,
The only thing I really see is death, a passing.

I allow myself my breaths,
The moods, desires -
All that goes along,
Forgetting for the most part.

Deep down I see the buds of parting
And an emptiness because
I have no answers.
All that I can do is wait and act and meditate
As if life equaled all time-in-the-world.

Every year in spring
I find I’m writing,
Charting age unconsciously,
Literally marking time.

Not sad, not glad but emptier
Than years before,
(or maybe more).
Noticing, acknowledging a substance;
The substantial underlying all the grandeur.

Sitting Outside A Day In May 5.21.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

Nature Takes Its Toll
               (A Wisdom In The Nuances)

The funniest – not ‘ha’ - of all is toll.
A charge, a payment, tax, a levy.
Then it’s said,
“The toll of injured and the dead”…
Toll, for number, count, list, tally,
Finally,
“The toll on the environment… was high”
Toll: harm, or damage, loss, cost, penalty.

Toll résumé of all life’s businesses,
The processes of is-ing;
Summary encapsulating
The inevitable, unavoidable,  
Fixed, fated, destined
And uncertain.
          
Nature Takes Its Toll 3.6.2017
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

My Yoga Girls

My yoga girls are over fifty;
Nifty, flexible and strong.
They’ll live a long, long life, I’m sure,
All striving to discover who they are,
Where, what their star,
Their own par-
                      ticular
And special star.

They’re wonderful, their aim my aim.
My yoga girls are reaching
And a reason for my teaching,
It so satisfying and exciting,
Dare I say delighting
And delightful.

We don’t bother with the Sanskrit names,
A game I used to be involved in.
It is yoga in the everyday,
With tools around to play around with
Everywhere, even while watching Wednesday’s matinee.

Table, chair, each surface in the house:
Tub, floor, door, bed -
No jot can stop the focus
For a body use:
All excuses to expand the head,  
Find mind in muscle, skin and bone,
Synapse, neuron, hormone.
All alive and full of jive.

When I speak of yoga,
My technique and yoga,
And my little clique of yoga girls
Nothing makes me happier.

My Yoga Girls 3.4.2017
Circling Round Baths II; Circling Round Yoga II; Circling Round Woman II;
Arlene Corwin

The Politician

Has he kept his word?

Kept to promises you heard?

Are you satisfied? Let down?

Waiting to see what comes round?

These choices voiced, unvoiced

From voters of the officers new crowned.



To those who vote by rote or call

To those who vote at all:

Has he or she distorted vows

To overpower and devour:

Double thought through double-think?



Misconstruing and misstating,

Skewed with bias filled with hating.

Stinking skills to sell and buy,

To peddle lies which sink a country –

Even if potentially –



Are the aides, incomes denied,

Who stand to profit on the sly,

Men in masks, men in power

Hidden men, men of the hour,

How will tasks now basked in

At whose call flasks, casks are drunk from:

Will affairs of state be slunk from?



This a call to politician;

Call to listen;

He or she just person

In the end.



The Politician 2.28.2017

Our Times, Our Culture II;

Arlene Corwin

Today as I read about the vandalizing and the bomb threats I feel, no realize that may be as important as ever.

       I Am Jewish

I read about

An upgrade of the Jewish hate

To say nothing of the Jewish state:

Renewal and revival

That makes the Jew a rival

Present and eternal.


Pressed anew

To say “I am a Jew”

Interned in worlds of other faiths,

Each based

On love

But peopled by

A fractured many

Filled with fractured understanding,

Wear my Star of David,

Feel the coming holidays

With childhood love of coming days,

As always,

Living with those few-ish

Who know also that they’re Jewish,

Forced by some upbringing me,

Living, as I always have in lands where I, minority

Forget, neglect, omit so easily

My true identity:

I am become the Jew I’m born to be.


I Am Jewish 10.17.2016

To The Child Mystic II; Pure Nakedness;

Arlene Corwin

We’ll Call It Global Warníng

Global warming
Is alarming
'cept when hot
when it should not.
It's always thrilling
With a spring that comes in March.
Of course,
One may be wrong, but
What's a robins' song
Doing in garden mine
When everyone in Sweden
Knows it's win-
                           ter?

We’ll Call It Global Warning 2.26.2017
Circling Round Nature II; Out Times, Our Culture II; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin

Rescued Cat
(To Veronica, his rescuer)

This very eve
A cat retrieved
From execution -
(Known as ‘putting it to sleep’
In worlds polite.)

I am relieved.
Others too -
Others who were grieved
At contemplating Mickey’s plight.
(We’ve named him Mickey.
It seems right.)

Every living thing loves life.
Who’d take the life of such a creature?
Harmless, causing not one other creature
Strife?  Well, mice of course:
A course he takes out in the wood,
Hunting out there as he should.

Saved by the bell.
Saved from the hell of being killed
By skilled hands, skilled injections:
“Put to sleep” a healthy, pretty cat rejected.  

Time to cheer.
A darling, eager friend
Consulting friends,
And friends of friends
Until she reached the blessèd end
Of finding little **** a home.

Cat Rescued 2.15.2017
Cat Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Boredom #2

I’ve never seen so many synonyms for one small noun,
Blocking maturation and enjoy-dom:
Boredom.
“Weariness, ennui: frustration;
Restlessness, dissatisfaction, unconcern: frustration;
Lethargy, lassitude, flatness and frustration;
Dreariness, repetitiveness, apathy: frustration;
Tedium, monotony, dullness. yes, frustration.”

Can it be overcome, this boredom?
No more war - the boredom won,
Exchanged for something more like fun?
It can.

A friend who, when we speak, says,
“It’s a part of nature…has no answer...”
Reasoning fallacious,
She is wrong as wrong can be
And her reasoning a fallacy.

Awake at night: hormones, full moons;
The glut of light: electric gadgets and devices,
Radios that play a song too strong, too long..

A trick I’ve learned that’s brought results;
A knack, a shortcut worth consulting
Is to train the brain to focus on/in/with the brain;
Travel round in, sense and feel…
Make it real – as if you really feel
The part you aim at, frame then tame.

In seconds you’ve an object that’s becomes a subject.
Boredom fled, you freed,
You and your mood well pleased, released
And taken places least expected,
Un-objected to by you,
The burden boredom’s through.
And doomed!

Boredom 11.24.2016/ #2 revised 2..16.2017
Revelations Big & Small; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Happy Birthday, Dear Departed Brother

We weren’t awfully close,
You far away in Hollywood,
I, far, far up north in Sweden.
But our soft sibling emotion
Never dwindled, for
We loved each other dearly,
Maybe more than siblings dwelling near,
And so, each wrinkling year,
When February fifteen comes around
(one day post-Valentine)
It’s effortless to love-propound
Through past and present anodyne
What’s lived no more, consigned
To storied history,
A morning, mourning benediction:

Happy Birthday, brother true.
I’ll always miss you
Just a bit,
Whenever I can think of it –
Like at this moment.

Happy Birthday Dear Departed Brother 2.15.2017
Birthday Book;
Arlene Corwin

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious ( revised, revised, revised)

How to say this briefly:
Firstly,
Words that help convey the hidden.
They exist.
Here is the gist:
Churches, sects, cults, creeds, the claim
Of being chosen.
Tenets frozen,
Woven into scripture
Which professes knowing
What is best for all,
Where if you’re good you rise
And if you’re bad you fall.

Spirit's -ality puts stress on union,
The approach to life
Emphases
On oneness under all beliefs;
On peace and joy and getting these;
Transcendence over time and space
A sense of being face to face
With truths about reality, its indescribability -
Yet not impossible to give a voice to.

Fear that goes,
Love that grows.
Agape’s universal call,
Connecting to an All in all.

Practices to help along:
Meditation, psilocybin, prayer and song,
Means to fit all shapes and sizes,
Geniuses as well as dunces,
Non-, theistic preferences
Which need to be demystified.

Not magic, pagan, or god-based,
Theo-physical, but meta-: deeply meaningful,
And mystical, the core of all.

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious 2.9.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious

How to say this briefly:
Firstly, find words for the inexpressible.
They do exist.
Here is the gist:
Each has components -
Churches, sects and cults, their creeds:
The claim of being chosen.
Pure spirit's -ality doesn’t seem to need
A system woven
Into scripture which professes knowing
What is best for all,
Where if you’re good you rise
And if you’re bad you fall.

The spiritual as an approach to life,
Seems to place the emphases
On unity within the mixture of beliefs;
On peace and joy, and getting these;
Transcendent over time and space
And, most of all,
A sense that you are face to face
With truth about reality,
Its indescribability.
Yet not impossible to give a voice to;
Love that comes, fear that goes!
******, no.   A loving kindness big & small,
Universal, – if you will,
That permeates, recalibrates,
Connecting to an All that’s spirit: All in all.
Practices to help along:
Meditation, psilocybin, prayer and song:
The mystical both caused or opened.
That said, non- theistic preference
Needs to be demystified, a road for genius, dunce.
Not piety, religion, magic, paganism, or god-based,
Not theological nor physical,
But meta-, deeply meaningful,  
Yes mystical!
The core of all.

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious 2.9.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

So Have A Happy Birthday

It is a challenge these days to find ways
To praise and honor birthdays of a man
Who’s lived for seventy and nine decades,
Seen much, done much.  Time’s memory fades,
Almost like dreams you can’t remember.
So the number
Doesn’t really count.
It’s the amount of joyfulness that does.

One more year and you’ll be eighty.
What will I say then when I
Can hardly think of what to say
Now that you’re reaching  seventy and nine?                      
I reason from the handsome man I see before me
That you’re fine.
And though sleep doesn’t stay
The way it did some years ago,
You work (and walk) and play,
And all in all, you and I know
That life is good.  
So put yourself into first gear
To have a pianistic year,
Good intonation and good ear.
Eat your food
With appetite;
Continue making love at night  -
And morn
While thanking God you don’t need ****
To stimulate.  
Actually your life is great,
So have a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

So Have A Happy Birthday 2.8.2017
Birthday Book;
Arlene Corwin

Seymour Phillip Hoffman: The World Is Crying For You

If he’d known
The world would mourn his passing,
Would he have overdosed on ******?
How much self-love does it take
To break the habit?
Would you grab it, if you could?
I think I would.
Even kids and wife
Can’t make that change in life:
The skid, the slide,
The gliding down and down
And even more…
Until you’re on the floor,
A needle in your arm,
Unconscious of your heart’s alarm
Whispering “Stop
– or else your time is up!”

SPH, you never knew
They’d mourn your passing
As they’re doing.  
That it would cry: the bylines, headlines
Sounding, bounding, ‘round the world in living print.
If you’d been more intuitive, more self in-touch, less self-indulgent,
Drugs might have been out-of
Thought and need, thought and greed, but…
Habit feeds on thought
And you were caught.  
And so,
We throw
No stones at windows,
Even if and though
We know the world will not cry at our passing.
We’ll mourn
And learn.

Seymour Phillip Hoffman: The World Is Crying For You 2.3.2014
Special People, Special Occasions; Small Stories Book; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin
  



https://arlenecorwinpoetry.com/2017/02/03/seymour-phillip-hoffman-the-world-is-crying-for-you/

Earth Fights Back

Mercury, methane – it’s not retaliation.
Earth neutral, holds not a grudge;
It follows laws, the sludge of ***** oil
And the sea that whitens coral
No revenge just law,
No matter how ****** awful it may seem.
As I react so it reacts,
Our pact with nature and its every star.

Perhaps the verb to fight is faulty.
Not a fight, just a response.
Not a response, just a reply.
Earth answering, perhaps with love
Obeying laws within, above.

I propose a theme in prose, transposing theme
To poem for those
Who also think in meter
Satisfying, clarifying thoughts,
Allowing them to peter out in symmetry,
Some understanding, amity and harmony,
Satisfied if poem when through
Gets through to you,
In which case
Phrase fights back
Has had impact.

Earth Fights Back 1.28.2017
Circling Round Nature II; Our Times Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

The Treacherous Illusion

Progress, growth, expansion:
Cycles, only that.
They never last, just grow and die,
Their concepts unreliable,
Their goals so pliable
They ‘rat you out,’
Attack you back
Unless you are prepared,
Scared underneath it all,
Aware of what a pattern leads to.

Take heed of trends –
They end.
Did someone say once long ago
To keep your lantern lit?  It’s so.

The treacherous illusion
May say all is fine.
See each headline, every fact as sign -
Then go forth bravely.

The Treacherous Illusion 1.27.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

How Long Is A Dream?

How long is a dream,
Stream of consciousness
Mirroring –unconsciousness,
And speed of thought
Reckoned
In seconds,
Pinned into entities
Clear as a bell.


The pain or the joy of
Of a day gone away,
How long is the theme
Crammed into a dream,
The bad and the good
Reflecting the childhood dance
Of experience,
Mire of desire explicit as film.

How long is a dream
Is the same as to ask about time
And the time that it’s taken
To organize, star in, produce and direct -
(You do/are all four)
Constructions so tricky and dotty and flighty
It might take one years
To write out all those fears, hopes and wishes
Compressed into minutes
From snippet to whole.

How long is a dream,
In its limits or boundlessness
Fluff as reality stuffed into seconds.
Puzzling, perplexing,
It keeps a man guessing,
The question as madd’ning
As how long is string?

How Long Is A Dream? 1.25.2017
Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

What Characterizes Life?

Bodies born & change & die.
They live and pass.
But what is life?
What marks it out?
In my assessment it is consciousness -
Just being conscious.
If so, leaf must be…
Virus must be…
On one or many levels
All that ‘be’ must ‘have’ it, ‘be’ it
Till those bodies go.

I can’t think that there are exceptions to the rule;
That is, if life is consequent, consistent;
Essence, distillate,
Underneath all things that do a something by themselves.

I don’t know yet.
Can’t find words, a name, an adjective, a verb,
A sound that does it justice.
I know now – and only that.
And when I go inside myself
That’s all I meet

What Characterizes Life? 1.22.2017
Nature In & Of Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Pleasures Of A Low *** Drive

Low *** drive,
No *** drive,
Enjoying it,
The yearning, pining, longing gone,
Not missing it a bit.
Distracting thoughts,
One-sided thoughts,
Dissipated into thin, thin air,
Scattered and dispelled God-knows-where.
Who in heaven or hell cares?
Like losing fetters
That bound up mind, heart
(and other parts) for years.
What a delight
To have hormonal chains
Evaporate
All by themselves, fording
Oceans, seas and rivers
Of their own accord
To come to rest
Inside a calm and loving breast
That doesn’t give a hoot
About
A *****.

Pleasures of A Low *** Drive 1.21.2017
Circling Round Eros II; Circling Round Aging;
Arlene Corwin

Coming home, turning on the Mac, tuning in the radio, expecting to see, hear the installation of the President-elect, I read instead “Miguel Ferrer Is Dead”.  Priority is clear.  Dear Mr Ferrer takes precedence.

        
          God Bless You Mr. Ferrer

God bless you Mr. Ferrer
Where’er you are.
‘My Father’s house – many a mansion’:
That you’re somewhere I am certain.
One remembers José, powerful as Cyrano.
Now we shall remember you;
Compelling, formidable in all your roles,
You unintentionally stole the roles
Becoming one with each.
And one is sad!   Nigh inconsolable!
Sixty-one!  So young these days!
No phrase of admiration, value and esteem can reach you,
Few can match you, rate you high enough.
And I, engulfed in loss,
No grading high enough
Shall miss you.


Coming home, turning on the Mac, tuning in the radio, expecting to see, hear the installation of the President-elect, I read instead “Miguel Ferrer is dead”.  Priority is clear.  Dear Mr Ferrer takes precedence.

God Bless You Mr. Ferrer 1.20.2017
Special People, Special Occasions; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

It's really about ways to develop.  Or rather, the Way among ways.  Or, ways to The Way.  There's a word I've always been fond of.  It's 'ineffable'.  It means many things, but it really means beyond description.  That's what all this stuff is.  One is always making a stab at it, but that's it.
      
      A ******* Of The Present

A ******* of the present -
It is thought?
Perhaps.
And yet you have to use thought
To divest yourself of thought
(at least to start with).
Riddle; paradox; conundrum:
How to solve it?
Krishnamurti, (clever man)
Used verbs like ‘carve the brain’
‘Scoop out’, ‘uproot’, and ‘empty’, aimed
At silencing a brain that’s interfered with by:
‘Ambitions, greed, stupidities, & vanities’.
All the same,
He never tells you How
He only tells you That.
Corwin (not-so-clever girl) says,
It’s the Now and only Now
That is the What and is the How;
The instrument, the what-to-do
That only you
Can find
Inside that mind
                               of yours.

Focus on a body part,
Your spleen, your heart
A word repeated,
On your breathing in and out.
On God, a saint,
If that’s your bent.

Focus, watch, come back to Now
When sidetracked,
Drift away or stray.                                                            
The only entrance back is Now.

I’m limited, I know –
But it’s a start with which
To scratch that wandering and misleading itch
Of wishing, longing, reminiscing,
Guilt and backward/forward thinking;
Start by which
To squelch & wash away the errors, launch your niche
Your cubbyhole, your branch…

I promise you, you won’t go wrong.

A ******* Of The Present 12.29.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

To Write For Whom

You reach an age when friends, your generation
Dying off like flies.
And you, full of ideas
Alive and kicking,  
Finger licking fresh in mind
Trying to find
One out there,
To read your wares.
Your teeming thoughts,
Aware and deep with meaning
Warranting a reader,
Radar to its most intense.
Looking, writing, hoping for an audience,
Shakespeare felt the selfsame yearning -
Handel, Beethoven, each earning by conducting,
Not to mention poor Van Gogh
Who went the way of painters who sell nothing go.

To write, paint, sculpt, dance, sing, compose:
Any noise that oozes art.  
For whom?
That is the theme, the problem
And the question.

To Write For Whom12 27.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

A Poem For All The Publishers Who Say “No Poetry”

I’ve looked it up a million times –
(a little bit of overstatement never hurts)
I think in meter, think in rhyme.
It suits my temperament.  Reverts
To chimes of nursery rhymes
Instinctive in us all –
This call to childhood’s guiltlessness.
Yet publishers of good repute
Refute this claim
And to their shame,
Their snobbish, profiteering shame,
Say No to poetry.

We should attack!
Abundant in attractiveness are we.
Ever clever, disciplined;
Deep, reflecting all reality:
And yet they say, “NO POETRY,
DO NOT SEND POETRY”.
Refused, rejected
Are we bards dejected?
Never!
We go on forever,
Eager in our hunger.

While you publishers go under,
We are there, bad, corny, muted,
Understated and astut-ed;
Couplets, meters, forms abstract,
Highbrow, lowbrow, autodidact:
Rumbling on like thunder.

A Poem For All You Publishers Who Say “No Poetry” 12.21.2016
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Who The Hell Is Reading Me?
        (a first draft, pre-sleep whimsy)

Who the hell is reading me?
Occasionally, I see one, two, three -
It’s rough,
And certainly is not enough!

I usually do not complain,
But fellow poets, you know
It’s the ****-dest pain
To work for hours,  - sometimes days
Refining, re- re- re-ing phrase
And syntax,
Checking idioms and facts
To get across idea and spirit.
Are you with it,
                         reader friend?
No trend, no agent/publicist to wave a wand,
No publisher to send you huge advances
Because he’s of the sole conviction of your chances.

[Do you], get my drift?
Shifting in your seats,
Because you recognize the whiney bleats
That you would like to scream out too?
Well, *****
                   the reading force,
That leading farce that forces us
To sit it out in silent grumble,
Mortifyingly discomfited and humble.

But know what mate?
I love it!
Never sated, secretly, I love it!
As my confidante, I tell you this.
I wouldn’t miss this silliness
For all the tea in China!

I don’t have to be a winner
Eating Nobel Prizes for my dinner,
Nah, I’m happy just to do
What you do - writing for the one or two,
(there used to be three – one has split)
Get the isolated compliment
From someone honored
– or not.
(everyone’s got
                         their own way of seeing things).
Not trying in the least, to be convincing,
Cheerio, to you who may be just my opposite;
And good, good, good, good, good goodnight!

Who The Hell Is Reading Me12.19.2016
A Sense of The Ridiculous; Defiant Doggerel;
Arlene Corwin

The Many Benefits of Facebook Friends

A Facebook friend wrote meaningfully:
“Give me,
Five ways to give aid to people
Of Aleppo”
(You know where Aleppo is;
It’s on the lip(s)
                          of all the world).
A reader sent back this small clip,
A tiny snippet:
“Meditate!
Get rid of violent thoughts,
Of evil judgments that you sow
And sown,
And temper outbreaks that you’ve known.
Don’t only sit, feel sad and moan!
That is the thing this scribe can do,
Does do and plans to do.
You do it too!”

All done and said,
That was the ‘five good things’ contributed.

When he who wrote it
Noted
This.
I wrote right back and sent a kiss.
There are ten thousand like me.

The Many Benefits Of Facebook Friends 12.19.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; War Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Cosmic Coordination #3
(one day further, meter righted, verbs re-chosen ,rhymes clearer, form tightened, economized; made easier to read;
even message and its nuance altered)

Moment now can never come again,
Not poetry, not inspiration;
Angle, viewing - changing. never to be re- a thing,
Moments have a nano-difference,
Must have nano-variation;
Individual, a coin
Two-sided, joined
By now and not…

Moments have no measure,
No more import in the one than t’other –
Value too. Does sitting on the loo
Have more significance than any other thing you do?
Same dance, same chance - with difference.

The instant used for what it is –
An irreplaceable – shall we say, space?
(Let’s call it ‘space) to use with all its use                                      
As product, project, problem solved:
A life improvisation.

Influences, guides that sway -
You need to take them,
(soaking up many ways unawares).  And unaware,
You also guide and shape and sway
From where you are, for you have power,
Synchronized with galaxy and star
And all the spheres that ever were.

Not to sound too know-it-all, sententious, preachy:
That’s the way it is!

Cosmic Coordination #3 12.18.2016
Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Consumer Of Existence

Even if it’s all predestined
It’s you who choose.
So go, so do.
It does what it does
Despite your choices;
So many factors out and in you.

Even if it’s all predestined
You don’t know a thing,
So go, so do,
And carry on as usual.
You win, you lose,
You pay your dues,
Thinking that you have control
Though you have none at all.

A panorama of existence,
You consumer and disarmed.
They call it karma.

Consumer Of Existence 12.14.2016
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

He Never Did Believe

He never did believe in God –
Just couldn’t.
He went yesterday.
I hope he faded, simply faded,
Fell asleep pain free, thought free
And no anxiety.

I never preach.
I cannot teach,
But feel some It does reach us all
According to capacities,
The faculty through faculties,
Our capabilities.

Belief or not –
Life’s crux takes care,
Taking generations through -
To rid the self of doubt,
Of frailty and flaw.

There’s force out there
Before the stars,
Before the universes
And our cares.

He never did believe
Or even contemplate the reasons why.
It’s all okay.
It has its reasons reasoning
Beyond the sky and comprehension.

He Never Did Believe 12.11.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; God Book II;
Arlene Corwin
(to Å)

Incredible!
    
Incredible!
A wrinkle
Unfamiliar, new!
Wake up to ***,
Pass by the mirror, view
A me
That spies an eye -
A wrinkle,
And I die of incredulity.
Error?  Nature?
Nature makes not one mistake.
God’s perplexing statement
Echoing the undebated:
Meshing networks predetermined,
Making one think twice,
Acclimatize
To fateful fact and fact-ful fate
That body dies
Sooner or later.
Hard to swallow,
Say a yes to.
Who
Can choose?
Not me, now you.
Inevitable and incredible!

Incredible! 12.10.2016
Circling Round Wrinkles; Circling Round Aging; Nature In & Of Reality; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

Watching The Signs Of Aging

Watching the signs of aging;
Ultimately,
Finally
An end.
Notice, I don’t say THE end.

Not a film, a flimsy bit of flimflam,
A clouded artificiality, life imitated, intimated.
As stated:
A downgrading: witless and insensate,
Thinning at the temples,
Eyebrow hairs a crazy zigzag;
Tummy more rotund and round;
Fingers, which, however trained
No longer want to grasp or grip.
Compression of the whole foundation
Underscore the downward trip.

Aging signals watched with care –
Obviously there!  Involuntary!
Glasses that you never needed;
Tender spots you never heeded.
Fragile scenes that make you weep.
Couplets which you once thought cheap
Resorted to, which you now keep.

Compensations: pensions, patience;
Many words that end in –pence
Because, and just because
All signs become a Santa Claus:
Signs of good –
That is, when you are in the mood.
Stiff fingers finding newer ways to play piano, open jars,
The mental auto-search a galaxy of syndrome-stars
Bursting unused.

No longer worrying ‘bout standards,
You’ve your own.  
No need to join
The middling crowd,
The mediocre: in reality, the herd.
Small ambitions,
Minimized conditions
All good and fine, but still
Signs of aging ultimately will
Win out.

Watching The Signs Of Aging 12.5.2016
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; Bath Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Funny Autobiographic Thoughts

In 1966 I burned my bra –
Haven’t worn one since,
Content with what God gave me once;
No plastic *****, no silly-cone nonsense
Standing up when l lie down -
A thought I find amusing
To be added to when musing;
Funny mem’ries such as these
Will carry on as they occur –
Which they will I’m sure.
Bubbling up unceasingly.
(to be continued in the future).

Funny Autobiographic Thoughts 12.4.2016
Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Woman II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin

It’s so important to record these things.  For whom?  God knows.  As art, as etude, as a meditation?  As a way to think through and clarify for one’s own benefit daily eventualities.  God knows – all of those.

          I Went To A Funeral Today

Simplistic in its way to say, but
I went to a funeral today.
Our ‘tractor man’ laid in the ground;
I wrote about him year two thousand.

Taking care of all he owned,
Scraping stony muddy snow;
Driving round his tracts of land;
Doing turns that only tractors can
And which, our tractor man was bound to.

Not to milk a tale said once,
Finance, romance, weakness, strength
But tale of more significance
Than in those years when I gave him, his circumstance
No jot,
Well, not a lot of thought,
To make up for it, for I now too am démodé,
And it’s important that I say:

Surreal-ly dreamlike is this life
With time’s phenomenon in strife
With peace we aim for,
Always on the move, at war, divisive;
With no inside proof, it’s tough.  Life’s rough.

Death, funerals banal,
My skull a barrel of confusion,
Is it all a grand illusion?
Peer groups going,
I here, with no chance of knowing
What’s in store, no more
Except to hope that time and fate will favor
Generations, generating
As all beauty queens declare,
“World peace with no death anywhere.”

All this from the lain to rest
Of neighbor passed occasionally -
Known to me but casually.
Respectfully I went to honor
Just to find myself a more intent participator.

I Went To A Funeral Today 11.30.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

I Went To A Funeral Today

Simplistic in its way to say, but
I went to a funeral today.
Our ‘tractor man’ laid in the ground;
I wrote about him year two thousand.

Taking care of all he owned,
Scraping stony muddy snow;
Driving round his tracts of land;
Doing turns that only tractors can
And which, our tractor man was bound to, born to.

Not to milk a tale said once,
Finance, romance, weakness, strength
But tale of more significance
Than in those years when I gave him, his circumstance
No jot,
Well, not a lot of thought,
To make up for it, for I too am démodé,
It’s all-important that I say:

Surreal-ly dreamlike is this life
With time’s phenomenon in strife
With peace we aim for,
Always on the move, at war, divisive.
With no inside proof.  It’s tough.  Life’s rough.

Death, funerals banal,
My skull a barrel of confusion,
Is it all a grand illusion?
Peer groups going,
I here, with no chance of knowing
What’s in store, no more,
Except to hope that time and fate will favor
Generations, generating
As all beauty queens declare,
“World peace with no death anywhere.”

All this from the lain to rest
Of neighbor passed occasionally,
Known to me but casually.
Respectfully I went to honor
Just to find myself a more intent participator.

I Went To A Funeral Today 11.30.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Don’t Look Now, But Poetry Is In

If you’re reading this you know it:
Poetry is in.
Read and written
By those one or two aware or metaphysical,
Those more than few in love, depressed,
Oppressed, repressed;
Just pressed to write.

It’s right to write a stanza,
A romance -a, spectacular extravaganza
For whatever and wherever
There’s
A public where
There wasn’t.

Rhyme, no rhyme,
Minus meter,
Syntax less or more,
Ignored.
It matters or…
It doesn’t.
The objective is to say it,
Think it
In no special order,
Murdering the word
Or helping word to smolder
On a reader’s shoulder.

Poetry is definitely
Back in
Fashion.

Don’t Look Now, But Poetry Is In 11.29.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Recurring Themes, Recurring Dreams

It’s all projection.

Have you noticed that
From art, to food, to clothing, all
Are cloaked in style
You’ve carried with you for a mile;
A thread in common,
Background shared.

Through life, if you’re aware,
You see the common motif there.
Some dark, dark matter
Smattering the whole of you
And all you do
To permeate each, every hair.

Holding to the non-dogmatic,
Real, empirical, pragmatic
Of each day’s encounter,
Nameless through the daily banter,
What can it be called?
Can one explain an undercurrent so obscured
Without a mind to find it?

Then you see the undetectable:
Theme, variations
That define the line you’ve drawn throughout.  
Back again, again, anew.
In art, in food, in points of view
Recurring themes, recurring dreams
The title running through.

Recurring Themes, Recurring Dreams 11.26.2016
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

****** Hairs Mystify

****** hairs mystify,
Growing how and where they will,
Which partly sheds light on reason why
They call it, *****-nilly.

White, black, silky, coarse,
All on the selfsame surface –
Growing inward, shooting up and outward!
It’s ridiculous!
At times I curse the space
They call the face.
It shows no logic.
It’s not magic, not strategic,
But some feeble plan of nature,
Some chaotic plan inscrutable
Whose structure is a stricture
On a want of one thing or another.
  
Keeping tweezer handy
Without ever understanding,
I surrender
To a power
Higher than…
And I give in,
Say a prayer for some unwitting sin
I must be paying for.
Follicles win
Hands down, I mean,
Face down.

****** Hairs Mystify 10.15.2016
Circling Round Nature II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Vanities II, Circling Round Woman II;
Arlene Corwin

.