Lower/Higher

Even the eyebrows lower;
It shows in the darned mirror:
Life changes constantly,
A going downward mostly –
At least physically,
For I, the inner I invisible
Am rising high,
Am rising high.
And so to hell with vanity
And negativity.
Life’s outer is a liar,
For I, I rise still higher.  

Lower/Higher 8.20.2016
Circling Round Vanities II; Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles;
Arlene Corwin

Transparent But Limited

Ask me more questions –
I’ll answer them all.
When/if I recoil
It’s not that I’m consciously
Trying to lie;
Deception is not in my bones.  
Guilt and illusions
May live in those hormones
I don’t know I own,
Un-known till the right time is sown.
Transparent but limited;
Blind to some weaknesses,
Thank God, not all.
Week one, a new year,
So hear ye, this typical
New year’s resolve!
Resolved: new persistence,
Stick-to-it, carry-through
Dug into
Processes, habits and thought;
See-through as glass,
Less
Limited.
Not a bad
Camelot!

Transparent But Limited 1.10.2016
Pure Nakedness; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Basic Kindness To Bugs Imprisoned On Window Pane

Planting glass on window pane,
Sliding it to tiring bug -
A creepy-crawly stuck inside.
You slide it forward
Delicately inching toward
The anthropod.
Lifting glass you slip a card
To gather fly or bee or bug
Safe under glass,
Protected from a dire passing.
Lifting whole so carefully
So as to not crush head or wing
While bearing thing
To door and freedom.
It, a test, trial, task - a problem
Of the kind that gets you points in heaven
And, of which you feel well pleased
When finally you do succeed.

Basic Kindness To Bugs Imprisoned 8.11.2016
Circling Round Nature II;
Arlene Corwin

To Remember At all Times

You wake up vague, objectives dormant.
Focused on the now-ment,
In the habit of the moment,
Higher power to relate to,
Husband, friend or wife beside you,
You seek thought, goal, frame to fit in -
Any measure to begin
A day serene
With something like a slogan:
“Everything that happens, happens for my best”
Whether lesson or reward: a grace,
A gift with not a price tag.
Always in the air
In lives particular and singular,
You aim the morning self that was,
And turn it into self that is,
Its comforts and rewards.

To Remember At All Times 7.25.2016
Circling Round Reality; The Processes: Creative, Thinking,  Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

What Happens After Death?

Bathing daily as I do,
Listening to the radio,
Emergencies, catastrophes,
Boats sinking or aflame or both:
What happens after death’s end breath?

‘The poisoned lung… the old, the young…
The fire set on purpose,
One hundred fifty-nine lives lost’
Through living skin I take it in:
Corrupted ethics, trials.  Why?
August weather’s all but frosty.
I, with plethora of food in fridge,
Them there rigid,
Stench of rot.
I, desk full of paper, notes;
Money to buy more.
Stuff stuffed into each shelf and drawer;
The closet door can hardly close for all those clothes,
And I, asking ‘bout death and after.
Am I daft to wonder, wander into guesswork’s trap?
Or have I found a craft to cope,
Yoga’s science and art of hope?
For something must exist - a consciousness
Not here, but in a sphere somewhere.
It isn’t logical
That something can become a nil –
Something that has had a pulse.
What else makes sense?
This senseless chaos I sense is not chaos
But some inner justice
Somewhere, somehow in the universes
                                                              of creation!
In a sudden quickening of thinking
In the probabilities of speculation
Here I sit in bath’s ablution, asking questions
About what happens after death?

What Happens After Death? 8.9.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin
arlenecorwinpoetry.com/duanespoetree.com/Youtube

Charting The Changes      
     (Once Again)

How can I leave them?
I have eyes, the body, brain;
These changes subtle and not so… going on,
And I a part.
The ***: it never leaves.
You watch the nuance - age regardless.
Muscle, limbs, all inners shifting;
Dangers one could ne’er imagine
Years before -
And there they are,
Daily dominators from within
And from without,
Pushing, shoving, tugging
Quiet, noisy, brash and smug.
Dangers one would - if one could -
Convert to chance both sound and likely;
At the center of it all:  you. I and we,
The question being, how to cope with,
Deal with it undisturbed; philosophic, unperturbed,
Optimistic, cool, detached,
Present-living, hatching new ideas
From day to day as if it’s play,
The way presenting self on impulse, off-the-cuff
And you obeying  
Soundlessly in laughter.

Charting The Changes (Once Again) 8.7.2016
I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

This one was written in 1996 for the then Olympics when fashions seem to have gotten that bit more exposed.  Embarrassingly brazen. Not always a welcome sight.                                            
Olympic Games Nineteen Ninety ****
  (a reminder for 2016 Olympics too)

Forgive me God, forgive me folk,
I’ve got to make this little joke.
I’m not a girl who’s often ******-
After all, I practice Yoga,
Keeping mind and body pure:
Mostly mind.  But I have eyes,
And one Olympic year the sure-
Fire fashion for the thighs
And ***** were shorts exposing all.
When I say all, I mean the ball,
The bell, the ****-.
God, how they knocked!
And while the race was being clocked
The racers showed what Adam hid;
And while I tried to watch the race
My eyes kept dropping to that place.
I couldn’t help myself.  They slid
To dingling, dangling, banging things –
Some small, some large, and all these kings
Of sport diminished in my eyes.
I didn’t wish to see their size,
For I was there to see the sprinters
And the long jump and the discus,
Knowing that they’d spent long winters
Practicing like titans.  Now the viscous
Summer days, all damp and sweaty,
While the world with its confetti
Waited to exalt its heroes,
It was long, short ***** that hit my eyes.
May athletes, trainers, sponsors wise,
Fashion moguls on the rise
Remember, modesty is also prize.

Olympic Games Nineteen Ninety *** 8.16.1996/ revised 8.6.2003/revised 8.5.2016)
Our Times, Our Culture;

arlenecorwinpoetry.com/duanespoetree.com/youtube

I’ve Forgotten…
(Entitlement to those forgotten)

I’ve forgotten
All the people I’ve been guided by
Whose I had impact.
I would say it was an army -
Some to venerate, to honor
Just for being who they were.

Teachers who reached out –
Or not.
Friend who sat in seat in front:
Third grade, long braid – precisely what
I longed for.
Comic friend, a hundred two this year.
Men who loved me;
Thinkers high above me;
Authors by the hundreds,
Women, men of all professions;
Holy ones…
My goodness, memories gone
And here I sit, result of all
That stands and stood to break the wall
Of ignorance.
They were my chance
And I’ve forgotten more than many.
I would gladly pay a penny to remember mem’ry
Unremembered, out of mind,
Left behind and unobserved,
Consigned to god-knows-where
Out there in limbo.

Tricky this!
I’d like to put a name or give some fame
To those who made me tried and true,
Who said, some way, that “You are you”,
Who gave or formed my values.
Give their due
To those who
Gave me mine.

I’ve Forgetten8.2.2016
Pure Nakedness; Special People, Special Occasions;
Arlene Corwin

To Hell With Meat

To hell with meat!
To men who load the animal
Alive and kicking,
‘Finger licking’.
Down with transport mean and evil,
Cruel, contemptible and vile!
Yes to bean and green and boycott.
Can’t you feel
A  burst and shrinking of the heart,
Smarting from
The crushed, the smothered, starved of drink?
What ARE we thinking?
Down with law’s futility,
To values without empathy!
We, who buy expensive food for bird and cat,
Keep doggie fat -
Where ARE we at?
Can we not do without?
Find other foods to eat and buy,
The price of giving up so high
We cannot sacrifice,
Waive appetite, and by and by
Find other possibilities?
The drumbeat of our lust for meat
Exchanged for keeping all things living
Live with mercy.

To Hell With Meat 8.2.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

The Doped Olympics

Why don’t they simply create a new branch
And call it the Doped Olympics?
By the laws of semantics
It soon would come into  language, legitimized:
Youth forgets past.
Soon the word would have lost its original shame,
While the name of the game
Would be guilt-free and blame-free,
And those who would qualify
Could have drug deliverance, muscles defined, bodies divine.
If they dropped dead at forty
At least they’d have entertained millions,
Fulfilled their ambitions,
Made lots of folk rich
And set records untold.
Let those few or many spend hours in training;
Let chemists develop concoctions so new
That the pole-vaulter flies,
The sprinter’s a jaguar,
The shot put is sent into orbits of space,
The long jumper jumps twenty meters
While men become fierce
And the women grow beards,
Which gives all of the chemists new projects to work on.
A yes to the ***** Doped Games.

The Doped Olympics12.2. 2004 revised 1.27.2016re-revised 7.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

The Many Words For Miracle

What are the synonyms for miracle?
There must be myriads:
Wonder, mystery and marvel;
Anything above the normal.
Unexplainable, for I was sick: tired, coughing, chesty,
Energy-less,
Had to rest.
That was just yesterday
And three days prior.
Three days later - now                                
There’s power.
By this hour, I’ve
Washed a rug on hands and knees,
De-branched two trees,
Wrote verse
Washed *******,
Socks, a jersey,
Trimmed the roses, bushes pruned,
Going strong, I’m strong - in tune.
Recovery, and I’m a-goggle!
Miracle is what that was!
Silent, gosh darned and mind-boggling
Miracle - and have I mentioned
That I’m grateful
For the days.
Of well-intentioned
Destiny?
So many words for thankful.

The Many Words For Miracle 10.22.2014 revised 7.28.2016
Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

I Would Never Be Impolite On The Internet

I would never be impolite
On the Internet.
(Is that big or little i?)
If one’s the chance to get
In touch with planet earth
And everyone upon it
One should view it as an honor,
Rare, beyond compare.

I would never let myself be rude
(Or ****)
To people I have never met –
The Internet or not.

At times I have opinions, views
About the news, news
Being what it is – not positive.
Yet I’m constructive and well-mannered,
Having no desire to hammer
Anyone or anything to powder.
I have no desire for power.
I can say,
Convey
My thoughts and notions
Without oceans of sarcasm.
There are chasms, schisms
Separating –isms,
But I don’t take part,
My heart not filled with hate.

On that account
I never would be impolite
To anyone on Internet –
Big or little I).

I Would Never Be Impolite On The Internet 7.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Lazy Love

They wake –well, ‘wake’ is not the word.
Lids refusing opening, muscles slack,
Wakefulness alone marking awareness.
Arm reaching left, remote device bedside,
Sliding, a mere automaton
Reaching near, she presses On;
Lo, light, sound and the television.
Still, the eyes are shut,
Yet something’s wakened.
Lying still, an arm embraces;
Bodies in slow motion snake-en.
Unidentifiable, un-nameable, encased
In one another’s arms, things happen -
Young, fresh, hippy Happening
Straight from the ‘Swinging Sixties’.
Here’s a pair way past their 60’s
Rising high above the years,
Skies above their years
Entranced, in love, enlivened,
Eyes blinked open where
The mini-moans of pleasure bear
Some mini-tears of joy.

Lazy Love 7.23.2016
Circling round Eros II; Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

Trying To Stay Woman

I wouldn’t call it vanity,
More nature of proclivity,
Its natural routine:
We’ll call it femininity.
Showing up one day: testosterone, whisker stiff,
Non-specific, un-terrific.  
Something foreign taking over,
Over which you’ve no control;
Identity’s uncertainty,
The struggle to stay womanly
Without looking transves-*****:
Trying to stay woman.

(original version found 7.22.2016)
I wouldn’t call it vanity
(though Augustine might).
More proclivity’s routine: a femininity.
Who can ignore the whiskers stiff,
Testosterone’s attack,
The fact that something foreign’s taken over,
Over which you’re no control – a Janus head,
Identity an ambiguity.
The struggle to stay woman
Without looking like a transvestite.

Trying To Stay Woman 2.16.2014/10.25.2014/revised7.22.2016
Circling Round Woman II; Circling Round Vanities II;
Arlene Corwin

Inner Musts Must Be Obeyed

Not partial to my voice,
Yet sing I must.
Poetry morose or grandiose,
Yet write I must.
No longer questioning,
I simply follow
Roads that hollow out a special path
Tattooed into gene’s DNA.
What can I say,
And what was it I said?
Inner musts must be obeyed.

Inner Musts Must Be Obeyed 7.21.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II, Nature Of  & In Reality; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Qualified Abstinence

I’ve decided - though not wholly -
As of morning’s bath - to put on hold
The daily custom, habit’s viewing -
NCIS, Dr Phil - suspecting as I do
That they are doing me some harm
Engaging, charming
                                 as they are.

Mind as thought and mind as stomach,
Turn to worry, churn with fear
As states of things in world and home,
Play out the clearer,
Signs maturing in their chaos,
Ever growing, ever baiting;
Making brilliant, analytical dear Phil
Ever more mouth-watering.
Well-loved NCIS plays its part,
Portraying nations torn apart
With ever cleverer technologies
And cleverer–type baddies
Getting ‘theirs’ from even smarter good guys.

If then, strong enough to not back off,
The morning TV staying off,
Then maybe, only maybe
This old belly
Can restore its tranquil peristalsis,
Family squabbles turning babble to a kiss.
Phil, dear Phil, continue to be wise and kind!
NCIS’ cast: brave, cuddly and seasoned -
Flag unfurled, continue to engage yourselves
In world salvation!
Stationing my thoughts in action,
I must leave you both
To carry myself into truth
As cellular Arlene conceives, perceives,
Inherently achieves it.
(If, of course, l don’t fall back into the -
(crude, ill-mannered rude word)  ****!

Qualified Abstinence 7.20.2014
Pure Nakedness; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin
arlene corwin poetry.com

Success & Epic Failures

A quote I got from Mr Rampton on
His twirling Tweet account.
I thought, impressed, amazed,  “A catchy phrase,
I think I’ll write it down and later write it up,
It being just my cup
                                     of tea:
‘Success and Epic Failures’,  
You and me:  
Sporadically, frequently,
Scarcely ever, almost never –
Take your pick.

Who hasn’t had them both?
Betrothed to neither,                                            
One should rise above the two -
******* ‘round with mind and ego as they do,
Never lasting, alternating
Life throughout.

I think I’ll write a song -to-be:
Avail myself of phrase as symbol:
‘Failure and Success’ et al,
With appeal universal,
With potential to sell millions,
With success and epic failures,
Which of us has never been derailed
And won
Ten-umpteen times
In life?

Success & Epic Failures 7.17.2016
Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Reality; Out Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin





Success & Epic Failures 7.17.2016
Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Reality; Out Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Watching The Signs With Sighs

No journalist, I –
No Instagramer, Twitterer,
No any out-in-worlder;
Only poet, intellect,
A heart
That tries not to be sentimental,
Hooked upon emotion –
So, and too misleading, to mis-reading,
Impulse and projection
Of our egotistic needs.
Yet,
One cannot
Resist it all:
The evil of it all,
Coming, going, fooling one
Into believing
That a calm will always be.

Last night a ventured coup in Turkey,
Night before, Bastille Day in Nice:
Terror, violence, crushed, the try
At overthrow!
I just don’t know –
I’m speechless, but confess
I must write something, being helpless too.  
To cry and yelp
Is not to help.  

I’m here, on paper writ.
That’s it.

Watching The Signs With Sighs 7.16.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Birth, Death & In Between II; War Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Energy The Treasury

If someone asked me what would be
The perfect present
I would answer in a wink, without a think:
Energy!
And probably
Add
Peace inside
So I can ride out tough spots,
Tragic phases when they come,
For come they do as surely as
My name is You.
But this you have to know also:
They go
And something takes their place.

Just the same, old chummy peace
Craves energy to be released.
When Mr E goes into hibernation
Taking toll on all relations,
I retreat, wait and relax,
Force a hope that it comes back,
Charging up my back-tery.
A temple of potential, energy!

I’ve written poetry,
I’ve called for, chronicled,
Describing, naming, yelling, telling for,
It is the germ of wholeness.

Energy The Treasury 7.13.2016
Circling Round Energy;
Arlene Corwin

Wiping Out A Planet

Will it be called a plan-out
Or continue as a planet?
The question
Mass extinction:
Holocausts that came about
Five times before, long, long ago.
We know when where and how
And still we don’t believe it’s happening now,
Right now.
The cause not asteroid, volcano, no!
The cause ambition, greed and wars;
In other words:
Expansion and the chain that follows:
Degradation moral, ethical most subtle -  
For all causes have effects long term.
I squirm
At the prognosis.

Wiping Out A Planet 7.11.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Nature II;
Arlene Corwin

The Doped Olympics

Why don’t they simply create a new branch
And call it the Doped Olympics?
By the laws of semantics
It soon would come into the language, legitimized:
Youth forgets past.
Soon the word would have lost its original shame,
While the name of the game
Would be guilt-free and blame-free
Free, and those who would qualify
Could have drug freedom, build muscles defined,
And have bodies divine.
If they dropped dead at forty
At least they’d have entertained millions,
Fulfilled their ambitions,
Made lots of folk rich
And set records untold.
Let those few or those many spend hours in training;
Let chemists develop concoctions so new
That the pole-vaulter flies,
And the sprinter’s a jaguar,
The shot put is sent into orbits of space,
The long jumper jumps twenty meters
While men become fierce
And the women grow beards,
Which gives all of the chemists new projects to work on.
A yes to the ***** Doped Games.

The Doped Olympics12.2. 2004 revised 1.27.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Transform A Bad Poem To A Good Poem
        (tinkering & fooling ‘round)

It may take days, months, years:
You tinker.
That’s the key.  
You definitely do not linger,
But go ‘way, come back, go on
To see with psychic opticons
(my own construct-ee-on) a vision
Of’ creative options,
Freedom new,
A fooling ‘round
That’s new for you -
And you are new and changed a little;
Flexible, unbrittle-ized,
(another word vocabul-ized)
A new-sized you
Wherein you see the tool in all,
And all’s a tool.
You’ve fooled around
Just as I’ve done
With word and sound,
And lo, a sound and solid poem transformed
From
Bad to good.

Transform A Bad Poem To A Good Poem 7.6.2016
Definitely Didactic; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative;
Arlene Corwin

Gustav The Cat

Gustav’s had  
To be put down.
The day was lovely, light, pristine.
Gustav Cat, gregarious and household king
Gone wandering -
Disappeared the past few days,
Back sick, no visible, familiar cause.
And then the news:
A chronic and/or fatal illness
Common among felines.

Put down - an awful phrase –
One would prefer
Sent up to ***** paradise: a cat-adise.

Tuesday’s diary:
Part beauty and part tragedy.
Gustav Cat, well taken care of,
Loved,
A gorgeous little red-haired boy-cat
With a destiny unknown,
And, it seems
A destiny he did not own.
Do any of us?
So we mourn,
The mourning will not be postponed!
We mourn.

Gustav The Cat 7.6.2016
Cat Book II; Birth, Death & In Between;
Arlene Corwin

This Strange Thing Happening

What is this strange thing happening?
An opening, acceptance broader than before,
Love as  chaperone.
Sights, ideas, sounds,
A seeing to the core of things –
Gradual, ongoing; every morning fresh.

Things foreign, new and unfamiliar,
Things outside my mental door:
The whole as if I’d had a drug of one or
                                                       other kind,
So new one thinks about one’s state of mind.

Mad?
A chemistry?
Not bonkers, loopy, cuckoo, batty.
No!
Perception changed:
A little bolder, unafraid –
New thoughts sprung from the hubbub of the old;
New sympathy - rich empathy,
And there’s the rub -
Unused to, as it were, to stand up for…so openly,
Articulately, stating what one thinks is true.
One wonders if the people round have noticed too.

One thinks of Huxley*
Will it stay?
Settle down or go away?
Does it have a meaning?
A broadening, one hopes – but frightening -
A bit.
One’s entering an untouched land.
One hopes one lands just right.

The Strange Thing Happening 7.2.2016
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Pure Nakedness; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

*Aldous Huxley (see The Doors Of Perception)

To the Poets of Hello, Hello!

We write, we share.
We hope there’s someone there
To read
Perhaps need
Poetry,
Precisely as we
Say it,
Hoping that they see it
As we do.
(They seldom do, but
It’s the memo
Of the heart,
Our smattering of art
That matters.)

Hello, Hello,
My fellow poets.
Ego-less
I come to you,
Admiring, commenting,
Caring for the things you dare to share.

Over simplified, naïve maybe,
Never diva we,
The weavers of profundity.
Hello, Hello to poets and to poetry,
Its crystal-gifted company
And you who take in what you see
Here.

To The Poets Of Hello, Hello! 7.4.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Hello Poetry; a site encouraging one and all to submit & share their oeuvre.

No Connection With Numbers

I have no connection with numbers.
Sixty-five or fifty-five, seventy, and suddenly
A person’s dead
And I am swayed
To thinking , “Gee, she was too young to pass,
At least these days”.
Lost track of what should, should not be,
It being all the same to me.
As teen, numbers relevant,
Forty ancient,
Frames of reference clear and few.

Digits now,
Are passcodes, pin codes, bank-cards, passcards.
As for age: eighty’s  the new forty, forty twenty;
Size eighteen is now size fourteen, thirteen now size zero;
Uni- multi- verses more and many; numbers leer,
And so unclear
That only new words suit.

Still unconnected and to boot,
It doesn’t matter – not to me, in any case.
I’m free, unfettered by the race, the chase.
In fact, it is a grace I [almost] note.
Glad I can vote,
De-vote my time to stumbling through
Without connecting numbers to
A thing
(except perhaps those few
I mentioned.)
Poems start out with one intention,
End up, well,
A tolling bell,
Telling all and nothing,
Ring! Ring!

No Connection With Numbers 6.10.2016
Numbers Book; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin

When I’m Gone

When I’m gone
I’d like whomever,
To sit ‘round a table,
Read a poem or two or eight,
Tell a joke, a story,
Concentrate
On me with love the modus operandi.

Meanwhile I endeavor
To make this life a label,
Every movement something –
Health, a lesson, teaching.
Life is peachy if I let it,
Up and out and reaching.

When I’m Gone 7.1.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

The Art of Criticism

The art of criticism
Should consist
Of accurate, rich language-ism;
Gentleness and witticism,
Care and love implicit
In a simple, clear expression.

Love of th’art it’s writing ‘bout,
Love, respect inside and out
For author, auth’ress, sculptor, sculptress,
Painter, paint-ress, instrumentalist and –ess.
Poet, poetess whose full respect he/she/they merit.

When I read clichés inherent  
Such as, “Awesome” “Great” and “Wonderful”,
Thoughtless, glib and under-worked;
When I read “Like”, “Thumbs up, “Thumbs down
I frown.  

This plea from Ms. Poetic Me,
Sincere, considered, justified
Is plain ol’ objectivity,
Objecting to a lazy critic.

A good critique
Is not a trick
Played out in adjectives and verbs.
A worthy critic is superb,
Does not disturb
Because he values art and artist.

The Art of Criticism 6.30.2016
Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Everything Is Autobiography

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

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

Everything Is Autobiography10.26.1991/may be used in 2016 book)
Nature Of & In Reality; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

Limited Vocabulary

With my limited vocabulary,
Back pain, tendency to sloth and other frailties,
I still have much to say
And say it,
It arriving daily
As a post from nowhere, sender
Totally unknown,
No stamp or postmark on it.
Limit:
One can only work within it,
Trust that what’s within
Is valid, potent and convincing.

Limited Vocabulary 6.6.2016
The Processes: Creative, thinking Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Lumps & Bumps

There are wrinkles, lines,
Osteo- this, osteo- that,
And then the bumps -
Perplexing lumps
From nowhere,
Showing up and growing,
Coming and not going.
Bother!
You think cancer, other
Causes and annoyances:
Worry, costs and doctors.
Signs and trends!
Oh, brother,
Will they never end -
These changes downward foul and fetid,
Sour, dour, cowardly?
Unsightly forms
Informing us
Of beauty’s loss, songs unsung,
Boss death and wretched other wrongs?

Lumps & Bumps 5.29.2016
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; 5.29.2016
Arlene Corwin

Semi-Portrait Of A Friend
   (There’s More To Him Than This.)

I have a friend
Who has a perfect memory.
You’d have to sift through thoughts –
The you and I but he,
He pictures everything,
Recalls it all – dates, times, the history.
What could be wrong
With knowing all the lyrics to each song you hear?
Draw near, I’ll tell you:

He remembers all the bad and good;
He’s filtered nothing. Think if you could
Think back on all that wasn’t good in life:
The sad, the mad, the hurts, the wife?

Besides the perfect recall
He sees it all in black and white.
All is beautiful or quite unpalatable;
If disgusting, I would guess it’s frustrating –
To lash out, then to smothers it with, ”Asch!”
To bring to mind each second and,
To have opinions strong.
He’s never wrong –
(On of his ‘strong’ opinions).
Plus, he takes offense,
Pretends indifference.
We’re friends.
I don’t mean to offend;
I pretend I’m scatterbrained -
And comprehend.

Semi-Portrait Of A Friend 6.28.2016
Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

Inner Conflict

(deep growing inner sadness for society)


If I were ninety

I might think

It’s time to leave this world. And if

I thought I’d incarnate, re-incarnate,

Then I would hesitate

To have this wish

For just the reasons

Swished before,

Since this old world is goin’ to hell

In a ****** wheelbarrow, and                                

Who’d wish to stay here till tomorrow

Or come back to what’s to be?


Inner Conflict 6.27.2016

Our Times, Our Culture II;

Arlene Corwin

How To Communicate Climate Change

Alliteration just won’t do it.
Numbers about record years –
This one worse than last,
The last more awful than before:
More godawful than before.

“Table water, rivers shrinking…”
We can’t take it in.  
Had they words like:
‘Foods stop growing, seeds stop sowing,
Banks have nothing; people starve” -
You know, basic stuff,  
We just
Might ‘get it’.

Hard to feel for, God knows where -
Fires in LA, Oregon,
Igniting all at once;
And they’re not war zones!

Choppers hurling water
Onto states the size of galaxies.
Helpless, you’re de-sensitized.
(your only arms against disaster).

Have the ‘big guys’ seen the chain?
Folk on the move, the extra heat, the lessening rain?
Its flip side, folk closed in, the Arctic drain,
Shops closed down or vandalized?
Life’s fundamentals random-ized?

How get them? Fundamentals.
Goat, pig, cow, tree, flower, how…
Urgent treatment, urgent action;
Urgent sense of the connection.  
It’s a matter of disclosure and, of course,
Compassion.

How To Communicate Climate Change 6.14.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

The Longest Day – Again

Oh, this time business!
Reminded with, by many signs;
Symbols that we celebrate and calibrate;
Every year the summer solstice!
Here in Sweden parties, feasting, dancing, joy,
With a thread of aggravation, kicking off annoyance -
Passing time a sign indeed!

Darkening a little earlier,
Seeds sown both in earth and past
Bloomed and harvested. Some not manifest.
Autumn on its way, and winter.
Wishfully, another spring, but now is now,
One can’t allow a sorrow.
Sun is strongest.  Night is shortest. Day is longest.
And hurrah!

The Longest Day – Again 6.21.2016
Circling Round Nature II; Birth, Death & in Between II; Nature Of & In Reality; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin

Married Love

Let us try to not/not to
Repeat the stories we have told/we tell
Each other,
Which reminds one more of sister/brother
Than it does of would-be lovers
Who just happen to posses a license
Because that’s what law requires.  
    
Let’s be fresh each day
Without cliché or worn out tale
So stale that wedlock’s
Locked into a place
For always.

Married love should be
Un-harried love, unhurried love, unworried love,
And never tired and overworked old-storied love
If it’s to triumph.

Married Love 6.22.2016
Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

The Big Decision

Today in Sweden, parties;
Midsummer solstice has been reached.
In England’s Stor Brittania* (Great Britain)
Union has been breached -
The vote: to leave a Europe’s huge and first attempt
To make a Europe one.
Now it’s done!  
Great Britain is the first to leave,
Reminding one of Union
And Confederate:
The US Civil War.
What more?
We don’t know what will follow.
Will the morrow turn to their advantage?
From the vantage point of Sweden,
Whose dependency is export,
It may be for the worse.
For all the rest, a blessing or a curse
Is yet to see.
Meanwhile, it’s for the likes of me
To write, describe and not project.
The project European Union
Will, in every likelihood,
Go on.
For my part I’m opinion-free.
Now on to my own party.

The Big Decision 6.24.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin
*Swedish for Great Britain

After Brexit
          Circling Round Self-Interest

I watch the news.
Scotland refuses,
Wants to go its way and wants
To stay In EU.  
It’s an issue.
Everyone has something that they want to clinch
Will not give an inch or forfeit .
How to beat what eats the issue,
Makes you blind and binds you?

To defeat self-interest is the issue.
Take the long gone League of Nations,
Its creation to end war –post World War One.
Did some good, but still it failed.
World War II was on its tail.
Came the UN - still extant.  
Now the EU, is it canting?  

Things start out with good intentions.
Nature’s thing is to evolve:
Grow, contract, break down, dissolve.
Replaced by new forms and conditions;
The self-interest’s hidden skeleton.

Political by unintention,
Few convictions, few opinions,
I see pure idea and the spirit,
Reason true and what’s behind it,
What is missing and what is.
In this case what is, is always
Circling ‘round, you guessed,
Self-interest.

It’s Always About Self-Interest 6.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Why I Use Punctuation

I use punctuation
To help people read my verse onto
A resonating air;
Verses you can hear, i.e.
Aloud.
I’m proud to say that it has
Meter, rhyme,
Capitals that start the line
So the intention is fulfilled
And joined up with tradition.

A dot has meaning, comma too.
The semi-colon’s there to help you
Understand my thought processes.
When I want emphasis
Or that you accent,
Or I make a special statement,
I take care with punctuation,
For communication is the key
That underlies all poetry.

I might use exclamation points,
But never when it’s not important!
I use hyphens quite a lot
Because my lot lies in creating words,
The standard dictionary not enough.
And I do so want you to ‘get it’.  Get it?

Ah, dear punctuation!  
We could go through all the signs for pauses.
Unimportant technically,
They’re there to help you verbally.
A poem is to be said - not read.  
It’s all for you!

Why I Use Punctuation 6.27.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Three Pages A Day

Like Leonardo I am mad for everything.
Like Leonardo, I like clothes.
Word, not art, the heart of me, my character.
I am a little Leonardo.

Not born in Vinci but in Brooklyn.
Interested in anything I see, touch, smell and taste.
Knowledge, love, and nature;
Cause that leads to happening
That leads to cause again…
And so on.

Curious from the mundane to the profound,
From the concrete to the abstract,
And of course from abstract back to concrete.
That, the sweetness of my thought.
Forms, patterns –all fantastic!
Looking always for the underlying.
Not content with the apparent, the ostensible.
Expanding then contracting;
All a Maya – an illusion.

Institutions do not know this.
Rightists, leftists,
Churches, unions.
Countless eons of reshaping -
To accept this is the art.

So I write, rewrite and edit.
See a science in the holy,
Holy in the scientific.
Aim for fame but not for ego,
But for what is left for Them, the future.

I, no genius; I, but Pooh of little brain
Dare compare myself to Leonardo.
Only,
Quintessentially
More plain.

Three Pages A Day 6.27.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

What I’d Like?
      (my not-so-secret heart)

You know what I’d like?
To be a part of your day’s reading;
Play a role in all your thinking;
Though it sounds distinctly crazy -
All the households that abound.

How to get to hearts and minds
Like Shakespeare or da Vinci.
Inch my way
To dreams behind each word I say -
A theme, which may take decades to bear fruit,
Take more than decades to bear fruit.

I’d like to open doors, but also keep old gold.
Create a Corwin vogue perhaps
From hunches munched on,
Thoughts thought through with vigor;
Transform half a planet - be a part of it:
A part that lasts.

You Know What I’d Like 6.27.2016
Circling Round Egos; Circling Round Vanities II; Pure Nakedness; Our Times, Our Culture  II;
Arlene Corwin

A Big, Big Moment

It was a big, big moment
When I noticed
God and I were one.
I think they call it revelation;
Like an insight only better.

He or It was in my brain,
And that was mind
And it was mine,
And all I had to do
Was not to go somewhere,
Some real place,
But face the thinker in my mind
And it was done.

A down-to-earth
But heavenly
Acquaintanceship:
A quiet pleasure,
Followed by a change in days,
A change in ways,
The ways no longer aiming ‘up’
As if an ‘upwards’ was the target.

I’m not claiming it was angels;
But it wasn’t’ babble either.
It was cool.
There was no rule to follow.
Cool and yet
A big, big moment.

A Big, Big Moment 6.27.2016
Revelations Big & Small; God Book II;  to The Child Mystic II;
Arlene Corwin