The Absolute & Greatest Mystery

If there is a force that is
A force that has no force behind it;
One that is and only is,
It must be
Absolute and absolutely
The most prized uncertainty
To solve, get close to, pierce and know,
For at this moment being only
Trust and hope.

There have existed, even now
Both women, men, child uncommon
Who, through chain of fate and gene
Have felt first-hand,
The mystic Hand, the magic wand
Of coming face to face with Law.
In other words, who saw
The force dubbed Lord, God, Word;
The lauded way and means Supreme,
Giving rise to loud esteem or wordless awe.

Thus, and but, and hence, and so,  
The question with the loudest clang:
The Bang behind the first Big Bang! ⚡️💥🌟💨

The Absolute & Greatest Mystery 4.3.2020 God Book; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; ToThe Child Mystic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

4:07a.m.  Under the covers.  Flashlight for light.  Handwriting definitely going to look unreadably shaky tomorrow.

           Slowed Motion

Slowed motion
Gives you time to feel,
Time to observe
Instead of reeling round with verve
And upset nervous systems
Setting up a curve
That lead to nemesis.

Slowed motion is a key
To subtle brilliancy and insights
On dark nights
When flights of fancy
Fake and take…

Stomach squeezed, stomach breathed;
Jiggled hips, wriggled toes;
Who knows what?  Perhaps the nose;
Elbows pressed: in, out, back, down,
Leading collarbone to fast become
A flattened beauty, which in turn
Moves shoulders, both, the one
For-, backward, in- external.
Hands supporting or at rest,
Pushing so that biceps harden.
And if you are working best,
Triceps also get their job done.

Nature’s principles in push and pulls.
Burned calories, earned benefits.
Stretches, creases,  pulls, releases
Worked on in their opposites.
Managed slowly, consciously,
The slowed down works to our advantage,
For the language of the mind
Likes one thing undistracted, done,
And that, alone.

Opposites attract
And that’s a fact!

Slowed Motion 3.31.2020 Circling Round Yoga II; Circling Round Experience;  Arlene Nover Corwin

Energy Can Never Be Destroyed

Foremost!  Such a multitude of forms!
Energy can never be destroyed.
It simply, I mean simply
Changes into throngs of power.
Where does fat go when you lose some weight?
First it goes to *** and sweat,    
Some to it to eyes that tear,
For x percent is water.

No energy goes nowhere,
Force never disappearing, but transformed
Moves to another sphere.
  
Existence carries on.

It has, it is a quantity.
Changed in its quality
But not created or destroyed,
Hanging ‘round us near or far.
Perhaps the tummy fat you lost
Has reached a star.
Charming, that!

And so, do things you ought! anNeverBeDestroyed3.302020
Send out the best you have,
Also the worst that’s left
To shift as gift to transformation,
Dissipate and go someplace
To leave what’s left a better you.

Burn up those extra calories,
The energies, which thermal, chemical,
Nuclear, electrical, elastic, plastic,
Even gravitational all have uses:
Uses and abuses (dark and light).

Use the energy of mind.
It is the powered you supreme.
It, the best that you can find to flower will.
Thinking, moving, sitting still,
Use the treasured energy:
Your measure of the whole.
EnergyCanNeverBeDestroyed3.30.2020 Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Nover Corwin

Why Has Everyman Turned To Beards?

It’s weird,
This shift to beard controlled appearance.
A trend it seems, not only spreading,
But which has no end.
Scratching when it kisses,
Missing out on blisses, I assure you.
Shaping face, I must admit,
(but not to everyman’s face-benefit).

If truth be told,
It must be hell to keep a chin/cheek fold all squeaky smooth.
But who in heavens want to hold, take hold
                                                           of bristles,
Or see badly shaped and prickly thistles?
Men have aped since lunar’s start.
Everyone knows that!
Fashion is contagious as the rabies from a bat.

Long, short, food-y flecked, unchecked,
Yet there is self-absorption’s admiration.
Let us hope the puppy generation
Growing up will razor up,
Shave every self-helped hair
Formed there (or anywhere.)
It grows unlimitedly wild.

Undefiled, I plead,
Wield the blade
And beauteously shear with care.
Brave new men, you are not cavemen!
Shave men!
One more time and once again -
Just shave!

Why Has Everyman Turned To Beards? 3.27.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Look what I found in my book Pure Nakedness:written first 1999 (and one more)
      I Was Saying Silly Things

I was saying silly things, so I took a rest.
I took a rest from saying silly things.
I’d lost the knack of cracking codes,
Of penetrating life in odes
Without the accent on the four.
As you can see, the rest I sought I didn’t take,
A restless longing overtaking pause,
And still compelled to put it down,
Write phrase and clause;
However frail,
To infiltrate beyond the pale
Of ordinary vanity  -the other six-
The devil and his vice-y tricks.
There’s much to sigh or cry about,
For as I sit,
My husband’s daughter’s former husband
And his father too, are lying
(One is dying)
In a hospital nearby.
Things can happen overnight.
(As I write or as God will.)
We choose to have our children
But God chooses when they die;
I refuse the lie
That lets me call things mine and my.)

I was saying silly things, bad construction in the line.
Maybe it’s come back: the depth, the poetry,
The right to write it down again,
The pondering and wondering,
The observations of the changes
Showing up and lying under
Pain, enchanted moments, joy.
Last night I saw a five-week boy,
Exquisite from his head to toe.
From day to day I go around observing change.
All I can say is, life is strange;
That underneath one must believe
(There is no way one can perceive)
That pattern’s shawl of ritual
Has truth behind each metaphor custodial,
Each myth and tale,
Each truth behind a Holy Grail:
Life’s quest, life’s life, life’s eye, life’s trail…
And I wind up saying
Rather silly things that matter, after all.

I Was Saying Silly Things 10.30.1999/revised 7.14.2014/revised again/3.26.2020
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; God Book;
Arlene Corwin

Can Meditations Influence A World?
  
Can meditations sway the world?
Dare one respond?
One waits for answers there, unlearned
Through insight’s scene,
The mystical discerned.

A world? To have effect on? Shape through some sorts’ inspiration?
Misery, the suffering, the evil, the corruption
Where we know that all that we can do
Is purify and cure our selves: the flawed and imperfected self
Whose weakening shortcomings are so onerous to shelve.

Can little we, (and little me) alone on cushion, chair or sofa
Offer up this blemished being
To a seeing eye up in the sky
We well nigh can’t be sure of?

Breathing tricks, mantric techniques,
Sound and focussing and tweaks -
Can each ache **** a world into a working peace?
Endeavours and experimenting reach long-term
Through  reaching in and out the brain?

One hopes!
We see a world that barely copes.
Whose bleak, weak, tweeting leaders
Cheeky-cheat the bleating of the latest.

Science tries, the churches try; social-minded allies too.
But here is little you, a-seat as I am seated now,
Mulling over if and how,
Wondering if our meditations are a mediation
Of conciliatory worth,
And if they reach the big round earth
With leverage from this average me.
We’ll speculate and try, and see!

Can Meditations Influence? 3.24.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II;  To The Child Mystic; II The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;Circling Round Meditation; Arlene Nover Corwin

Everything Has An End

Light waves and bends.
Comes from the sun, reaches its object.
Lo, it ends.
(its start to other aims the subject for another poem).

You know what I’m talking ‘bout.
A teeny, microscopic lout
Which at the moment rules our days -
It will not always,
But die out.
Once it’s found a final project
To project its deadly darts at.

Where things go
When they appear to disappear
We do not know,
Can only guess and speculate,
A date out of the question.

All we know is all things end:
The bending light, day, night,
Humongous, slight;
Even the alphabet, A to Z,
There still a further mystery
And further question:
Which came first, the egg or chicken,
Cause where, when
Or even why?

The keys lie in philosophy,
Material, its -ality.
And so we end with unclear hope
That we can cope until the finish;
That the crash is but a hyperbolic gnashing
Of the teeth that brandishes its blemished face
And ends.

Everything Has An End 3.16.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

She Was A Hippy

She never smoked, never drank,
Never joined a cult or sect.
Her hippiness, her happiness
Found itself in waist length hair,
Patterned tights,
Bra dismissed
And short, short skirts:
Her expression of new freedom.

Fifties beatniks never reached her,
But the sixties found a new awareness
Which addressed her heart,
Unleashed a part she only guessed at;
One which dressed her mind.
Convention could not bind her
As behavior took a shape unstudied,
Natural - hardly touched before.

Maturity without hashish, Rajneesh,
The itch of spirit bringing in a shift in old priorities.
A little bolder, somewhat older;
Hippy of a different sort.
Mother, wife, musician, poet
All and each each supportive
And escorting her some steps to standing,
Understanding and continuance.

She Was A Hippy 3.13.2020 Pure Nakedness II;  Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Everything That Comes To The Surface

Everything that makes its way onto the surface
May be good,
Its matter surplus, or not wanted -
Dead fish notwithstanding.

A surgeon’s stitch forgot, ignored,
(as was my dated fate of late);
The spooned off  fat on top of soup,
Secret thoughts self hidden
Coming up and out unbidden,
Sifting happiness from pain.

Again, again,
Examples endless:
Plants that sprout to charm the bees;
Corks that float,
Pus gravitating towards an ‘out’,
Shoots whose object’s being eaten…
Endless signature secretions
For the use of us
And every creature,
Surface purpose their first feature.

Everything That Comes To The Surface 3.12.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Something Always Tips The Scales

It is, will always be:
Something tips the scales.  You die.
We read, we see that most who pass away, I.e.
The older in society
From virus in modernity, contemporary
(virus C so anti-trendy);
Those with underlying illnesses, sepsis, so on,
Ills potential, known, un-shown.

Life’s end always has a cause,
The time between your birth and death but pause;
It’s no surprise: sunrise to -set,
Scarce discussed but always met.

Death comes at will;
Lying still or sitting, walking,
Making fervent love or talking,
Even taking food and such,
The unavoidable the touch of fate.

Corona’s crown, not crown but ‘downer’
(see corona’s origin: medieval Latin word for crown)

Starvation, war, lopsided Nature,
Technology and fire, water…
And the vices - greed and anger,
Traits unconquered…
Slowly building wind in sails
To some finality
That tips the scales.
Something Always Tips The Scales 3.10.2020 Our Times, Our Culture; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover 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 Autobiography 10.26.1991/revised 3.8.2020
Nature Of & In, In & Of Reality; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

It was dead of night, 2:30 a.m. when I awoke with unbidden memories clear as day, and subsequent ideational poetry in my head.  It all became (under bedcovers with flashlight, pad and felt tip pen) this: which may require two readings or more.

            The Hourglass Of Time ⏳
  (an awakening in the dark of night)

Shape, form, hope, dream, name, fame
Sifting through the hourglass of endless time -
Seamless, endless, untamed time.

Reactive in the night a.m.
Drifting in and out of ‘I am’,
Why the lingering of memory,
The self biography
Coming back with age,
Links welding chains of change
So strong and strange?

Why, because it must,
When revelation bites the dust,
The fuss when dust itself is shifting,                                        
Sifting through time’s hourglass,
Time’s powerglass?

Passing (one-can-only guess)
Through structureless unclearness
And a consciousness of moment’s movement which,
Because of pause-less laws, effect and cause,                        
Course charted by some unseen force,
A nameless, undivided source:
What Is the message?

I’ve a hunch it was a master stroke
That woke me up, shook me up -
Ideas that spoke
With images clear and opaque;
Feats feeling fake, mistakes my earthquake,
Baked into aches of un-achievement
Which cemented the reality;
A revelation dark and light, the naked night
Revealed to me  (for all to see eventually.)
The Hourglass Of Time 3.4.2020 Revelations Big&Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sorry and sad that this comes out of my brain again, it does at the moment,  for among the ubiquitous money orientated TV competitions are the ever-present newscasts with their on-the-spot reporting.
     As usual, I’ve worked and reworked this to produce a piece of art.

              Chaos & Teargas II

Chaos and teargas
Now choose and viruses once again,
When
What I want is to pass the years
Without the tears, awful fears
In place on a crying face.
How to, It being an end you want too:
All of, each of you
Out there,
Wherever the chances and choices have placed you.

With nearly the yearly Thanksgiving
For most of us living in peace
(Rewriting in March)
Exposed to the chaos while sitting as such,
In chairs or on couches -
Not crouching or fleeing,
Pursued by policemen or soldiers,
We miss being fodder.
How lucky we are!

Suffused with the anger and violence
While eating our turkey and cranberry sauce,
Exhausted and worried
From scurrying youngsters,
Flurries of gangsters & burying mothers…
Smothering gases of withering fires,
And masses of dawdling, dithering leaders,
Chaos and teargas the emblem for hire
We, worn out and tired,..
And now it’s the virus dear readers,
From all of this chaos that rages and grows,
And nobody knows how to stop it.

Chaos & Teargas 11.17.2019/revised, rewritten 3.1.2020
OurTimes, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I certainly realised when I wrote "There Are Daughters…” that not everyone had children, and I don’t mean to make anyone feel sad.  When I write, (which is everyday), I simply become, shall we say, attached to a phrase or the seed of an idea; even a rhythm or a word or funny rhyme.  These can take me in any direction.  This process has led to 19 books with two more on the way.  
     It’s a kind of yoga, a mental training - and the most unexpected ideas come out - ideas which I work on and refine.  I write on anything at hand.  Just today, I found 4 scraps, one dating back to 2015.  I’ll show you.

Notes found…refined, completed.

       This Brain

This brain invades
The good, the bad:
Everything that’s done, not done.
And so I try
To purify
The brain
And turn
Invasion into
Sympathetic action.
This Brain 2.27.2020 Nature of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
      After Surgery

After surgery
One is like the princess and the pea,
Feeling every crevice
On each surface.
After surgery
One’s sore, and golly, gee,
All parts exposed or not
Are vulnerable,
Incapable
But filled with the potential
Of life ahead,
For one day you’ll get out of bed,
Participate in daily doings:
Cleaning, practicing and s(cr)ewing.
We’ll see
How afterwards can be!
After Surgery 2.27.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
      Dear Friends

Dear friends,
You’ll never know the inspiration
You have been,
And what I’ve learned
Of gratitude and giving,
And what I lacked..

You’ve helped change aims,
And I will never be the same,
Hoping I survive and have the chance
To show the learning’s knowing
Filled with just one speck
Of your munificence, unselfishness
And open-handedness.
Dear Friends 10.10.2019/2.27.2020 Arlene Nover Corwin
      I Have Become

I have become yours
To grow in your power;
Grow and flower
Over self-love’s lowest.
Wow!
How a syllable inspires.
I Have Become 10.25.2019/2.27.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
         It Sneaks Up

It sneaks up: autumn,
And Huston sings “September Song”.
A rainbow arches:
Purple, blue, green, yellow, orange.
One can’t tell because
They blend and fade.
You’re stuck there at the window,
Captivated.
It Sneaks Up 12.15.2015/2.27.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Married, unmarried, with children, without - this reaches out for all in one or other .

      There Are Daughters, Sons

There is a daughter and a son
One or more to almost everyone.
And when we’re gone
We want to leave a sign
That we were here.
A legacy, a benefaction
Some provision
Carried to a future, a hereafter
With a memory or memories
That we were here,
The seed in us that brought them where
They are right now.

Some symbol
In a form tactile;
Visual (a picture, books)
Aural (music)
Journals, diaries or cash.
Reminders in moments of flashback.

We love our progeny,
We think of them as prodigies,
Love so miraculous and strange.
Phenomenon we cannot, would not change
For all the tea in China.

Read this, sons and daughters;
Be respecters, benefactors of your own
To carry on and far beyond
The life on loan.

There Are Daughters, Sons 2.26.2020 Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

To Jonathan & Jennifer

What Is Pleasure?

What is pleasure?
Listening to hubby play a jazz improvisation?
Voicings vested in ten gifted fingers?
Revelling in chords unrivalled?
Food in mouth?
Massage’s touch?

Pleasure, what?
Delight?
Elation?
Gratification?
Simple fun?
Sheer diversion?

To take pleasure is to savour,
As a sample, for example,
Kent’s piano not just pleasure
But a treasure trove of silver;
Coin of worth, worth imitation.

What is pleasure, measure of…?
Anything that makes you smile,
Any force that keeps you mobile.
Any word what ends in -phile.

In opposition to the concept ‘down’,
Such as ‘downheartedness’,
Is feeling blessedness,
A boon your own.

A simple thought in bed last night,
Feeling warm and light,
A bed of roses, height of ease
No pain or seizure.  Not inertia but a closure.
This is pleasure
Also.

What Is Pleasure? 2.25.2020 Circling Round Reality; Vaguely About Music II; Arlene Nover Corwin





.

Dear World, There are days (in this case only one one) when, for reasons only known by nature,  one feels peeved, disheartened, discontented, life-weary... A poor set of adjectives  which ought to read 'fed down' or 'unfed' or goodness knows what!  Here's the day I felt "Fed Up":

             Fed Up

When one has been admired,
Fired up and complimented…
There are days when
Cheery, shell self soul
Becomes no longer cheerful in its whole.
‘Exasperated’, ‘aggravated’  -
Compound blend of pique galore,
Paralysis its core, takes over.

‘Annoyed’ and ‘irritated’ are more names
That germinate spores of fed up-ness,
Helplessness,
Frustration there inside, beside.

A micro sense of hopelessness,
A no way out,
A strained acceptance.
In which case, a simple business
Which is what and all it is!

Crushed, pushed,
Squelched, squished,
Dashed, squashed -
Mind disheartened,
(Does the mind have heart, heart mind?)
One fights discouragement;
All the dis- words there that bind
And blind.
But,
Hope will be caught or thwarted,
Hope will not say no lifelong,
The state of fed up-ness being all wrong!
One sees the flaw
And starts to thaw
When one has got some patience back.
But for the moment one’s fed up
And fallen off the hope train track.

Fed Up 2.3.2020 Pure Nakedness; Arlene Nover Corwin

What a coincidence!  Just found this:
                The Particles Of God II

The particles of god are falling on my head.
They’re falling on the living, probably the dead;
On believers, non-believers; equal particles they fall –
They’re always falling on and in and through the body wall.

God is particles of oneness.  There are parallels galore.
When the atom showed its kernel and revealed there was more
To meet the eye, a kind of onion-layered door
Was opened there inside the mind as just the metaphor
For simpletons like me;  
God energy,
With big or little G;
Living, knowing particles that have no personality
But which, if I’d clean up my act,
Would mystically reveal the fact
That they, the particles and I, have one identity.

I’m trying to arrange and rearrange my head instead,
Make it more receptive than a means for daily bread –
A conscious sponge, a large receptor,
Image-making faculty a particle collector.

Each impulse must be pure,
For we’re in areas of justice
And the realm of pure reward -
Particles with qualities inherent in our race:
Areas of mercy, all the virtues, love and grace.
I’d rather not involve them - just assume that they exist.
It’s the God without the person that this poem has gently kissed:
Ever-present particles that are the living’s gist.

The Particles Of God 3.26.1994 /10.4.2018/ 2.20.2020 To The Child Mystic; God Book; To The Child Mystic II Arlene Nover Corwin

I expect this will get some strong anti-comments, the very mention of G_d often being a source of contention and vexation for some.  We'll see.  
    Letter To God🧘‍♀️

Dear God,
I asked you to control my day
Take over whatsoever comes my way,
Well aware, for goodness sake
It’s you who have supremacy.
(You or That or It - who cares?)
Energy directive, prime and rare).

It is a bit embarrassing because I know,
At least discern
A well few poets who convey
A God-ie language publicly.
It isn’t ‘in’.

I’m not religious, not fanatic,
But to go inside the attic of the mind and find out more,
Then write it down, I have to take the chance of boring
All the others who have not  
The need to say, pray, meditate or concentrate,
Think, question all the bigger contemplative questions
                                               of existence:
For example how we…who we… where we go:
Birth, breath, life, death:, seeds to sow.

And so the first thing in the day
I meditate or pray
Using words or saying nothing.
It’s a process with authority.
That seems to guide, hold sway
And influence behaviour,
Healing slumps, the ‘dumps’, grumpiness and moping -
Maybe not concealing’s right: a good thing.

I’d no intention of divulging
This inaudible, non-public action.
But there’s nothing wrong with making known
This ‘sort of’ godly telephone
And inmost conversation.

Anyway, I’m in the mood, the neighborhood
And as I said prosaically,
Perhaps it will do someone good.

Letter To God 1.19.2020 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative.Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Great Communicator
             (self confidence, low self-esteem)

He eats the cake, the bread home baked;
He never asks or comments.
Eats in silence.

There are men with little interest,
Curiosity, desire to know;
Silent husbands
With repeated jokes, repeated patterns;
Showing growth, but oh, so slowly.
Holy moly!.
Passive in aggression, but aggression there.
Defensive, self-protective;
Inner stuff that doesn’t dare,
Except in dreams when he is violent.
Mostly silent,
He observes the weather, future seasons.
He can reason, have his reasons
Sometimes faulty, sometimes right.
Doesn’t recognise a compliment - can’t take it in.
Apologize? It doesn’t happen.
And those violent jerks at night!
Reveal a healing that has never taken place:
The chases, villainous and shadowed faces, traces of what nowadays
Is called low self-esteem.
It’s natural one wants to scream, become a fem-
                                                                             inist.
It’s so unnerving!
Serving no one in particular.
Who needs a ‘great communicator’
Like the one who wants no insight.

exclamation US dated or humorous
used to express surprise or dismay: holy moly, this is exciting news!
ORIGIN
late 19th century: alteration of holy Moses, popularized in the 1940s by the character Captain Marvel in DC Comics' comic book of the same name.
The Great Communicator 2.17.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Writing all the time, dreaming about good rhyme, meter, theme, here’s what I scribbled last night in bed, watching TV.

     Everything Comes To An End, Or Does It?

Walking down the avenue,
Masses walking toward me,
Thinking all too suddenly:
“None of you will be here
In a hundred years”

Then again watching the telly
(British English for TV)
Witness to a documentary
(BBC coincidentally)
“Forsaken Structures” (do not quote me)
Buildings, bridges, monumental fixtures,
                                pictures, architectures...
Seeing these phantasmagoria
Fanatical and gory, built for lasting glory
Disappear rot, lost to time,
Corroding or exploding;  stored in history.
So it goes,
As often said, ‘the way the wind blows’.

Now for the gigantic BUT…
Everything comes to an end - or does it?
Does it turn, re-turn transformed, renewed?
Expansion and contraction going on and on and on…
Is the law of cause/effect a law or non-?
Strolling avenue-rs come again, again,
Each soul etern-
                         al?

Everything Comes To An End… 2.16.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

Many Hours, Many Days

So many wonder, many ask
About the writing: task
Or inspiration?
I say perspiration.
(not exactly, for there’s joy and fun
in reading what you’ve ultimately done)
Still yet,
It’s work and effort,
Spadework fundamental, elemental;
Work, but also preparation mental
                                   for what is to follow
All the golden yellow years to come.
First a phrase, a thought, a sight,
A theme the middle of the night.
The paper, pen, computer close;
The start of slogging elbow grease.

First draft, still filled by sweat
May probably be filled with sh_t.
It doesn’t matter, for
The after-write will be to edit.

Changes, flexibility, ability to cross things out,
Delete, expunge, all but destroy…
There is a certain joy in that.
But still, it’s to exert an effort.
To create is always effort.
To excite and rouse yourself an effort always
Work, but worth it.

Here’s the send-off:
In the end and after years
It’s actually easier.
The fears that held you back have disappeared.
Ideas developed, riper.
Technique, range your own:
It’s called a style.  You’ve a rone,*
A drainpipe in your brain
To carry off unwanted stuff
And carry on much wanted t-raining.

Many hours, many days in which to raise your standard.
Many years of joy and tears -
It all adds up up to guarantees and widened spheres
Of self-esteem and understanding.

*a gutter for carrying off rain from a roof:
Many Hours, Many Days 2.12.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I’ve written about doctor care before - two or three poems.  My back is hurting and I don’t know why.  I’ll try once more to find a reason and/or treatment.  

      Just Thinking

Such doubts
About
So many things -
Shadows, bags, those awful rings;
Answers one seems to not get
Concerning age’s yet debated issues,
Thrown around like used up tissues.

Falling hair, backbone hurting -
Here and there uncertainty.
Is it a kidney?  Old or recent?
Every enquiry to be decided
While one feels derailed, derided.

Lots of, loads of telephoning,
Steps before one
                           reaches someone;
No one seems to own or loan a way to ask.
You’re in a casket prematurely,
(which means much too, MUCH TOO soon).

What’s this? Substance and significance?
What, the chances of a cure?
“I’m not sure”, one sometimes hears.
“It’s not my specialty.” The doctor bears
No blame, no shame.
C’est domage!  
The damage does not have a name.

One knows that doctors have great stress.
That they say “Yes, I’ll help”, and try.
Meanwhile one winces, yelps or cries
When pains unknown are thrown up, shown up
To be borne with courage,
Taking age as it will come.
** hum, just thinking.
JustThinking 2.11.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Seeing God In  Everything

Make it a habit to see God in everything.
To go inside the biologic brain
And train.
The practice simple but not easy
Time and effort: key.

Repetition means repeat;
It also means rehearse.
It has the power to reverse
What feels a curse to grace,
A sense that everything is in your favour,
Savouring its flavour
In Itself a nice affair.  
It needs a run-through every day
Or else the feeling gets away.

It’s hard to not take note of pain
Which comes again, again, again…
A something you can’t comprehend.
The man I live with renders
                                       thanks
Each morning when the body wakes,
Though there is pain he cannot shake.
Perhaps that is the way to solve
A problem unresolvable:
Wait, translate, try to love an obscure It above.

Faith: a puzzle all its own.
A koan. A hurdle.  Complication.
Yet we take on faith coin’s worth;
A sun, moon, star
Which always have been always are…
We trust the unseen power source:
Atoms, protons just because
We know they’re laws.
                    
If one can take a a blind belief
Finding that it gives relief-  
A circumstance wished for
Has been dished up suddenly.
Why not start to practice seeing
God and good in the entirety
                       of your existence,
Giving in without resistance
What comes fleetingly each moment
And what comes fittingly to be!

Seeing God In Everything 2.10.2020  God Book II; Circling Round Reality; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;  Circling Round Meditation; Arlene Nover Corwin

Tomorrow is my beloved Swedish Kent's birthday - a day he completely rejects.  I do not, writing this birthday poem which I will present to him in spite of all protestations. I'll bet he loves it!
         An Icke* Birthday

“I have no birthday” you insist.
Bemused, a bit confused
Reflecting, un-rejecting, I conclude,
“Good for you!
You never need add numbers to
Your written age.
You’ll grow more sage
Without a wrinkle.
Passing years will never sink you,
You who have no birthday,
Never born,
Never gone.”

At any rate,
I celebrate
This date
And will continue every eight,
For February is your birthday.
Enjoy the numberless-ness in your way.

So if I may,
I’d like to take you out to lunch
To munch on something to your taste.
Why waste an eight?
Why wait?
We’ll go to lunch sometime this week,
Take
       our big car somewhere
To crunch on something nice to eat.
Peaceful, sweet,
We’ll have a great
                            non-birthday dear!
Your icke- birthday’s growing near.

An Icke- Birthday 2.8.2020 Birthday Book; Arlene Nover Book
*icke; Swedish for non-

Things Come & Go

Things come and go:
Lightening bright and sudden
Over in a nano-second.
Dew, its job completed,
Lost in air, evaporated.

Forms diverse;
A shared non-substance: emptiness.
A single thing the ring of truth
Is that we are illusory.
Still paradoxically,
But for a shape, look, name
We are,  we have the permanently
                                            same inside,
The rest a mutable: ephemeral
And seldom in the know
Things come and go
As quickly as they do.

Things Come & Go 2.4.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

Influence

You have much more an influence than
You have an idea you have.
So much weight and leverage on thing and man;
So much impact by simply being.
So beware,
Become aware
That you control and are
A role,
An inspiration and example
On behaviour.

You, your goodness and your faults
Shape norms and shapes,
For mankind apes -
And that’s a fact.

So, do remember that it’s you, through choices
Who make trends,
Starts, ends…your voices
Ringing loud without a sound.
For what comes round one can’t predict,
Outcomes more complex than that.

Do not forget
You have an impact.
Don’t ignore your inner store
Of power
Which goes out by minute
And by hour.

Be an ever growing you.
You sow the seeds by what you do.
And what you do is what you think,
So sink your life in wisdom-ed virtue.

Influence 1.28.2020 Pure Nakedness II;  Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin

To quote my dear Swedish Kent “A less abstract”... poem.  I like that, because I suppose I have two aims when writing: one is to write a poem the reader can identify with - something both concrete and universal and two, to write a poem of quality.  As an example, this simple, some might say simplistic "From Wakeful Night To Active Day" took roughly a day and a half or 6 hours to write from idea to end.  And you never know, it may not be the finished product yet.

       From Wakeful Night To Active Day

I lay awake.
I no longer take
                      for granted
Night long sleep.
That’s quite alright.  
I wind, unwind my yogic limbs,
Find things to do
While torso twists & screws,
The mind at ease,
Positions so brand new,
No book has yet to catch or photo.
There I lie with things to do.

There is a ‘me’ that does not choose;
A something that already knows;
Some inner cleverness that goes
From limb to limb, joint to joint,
Anointing every cartilage, each ligament
With blessed flexibility,
Accessibility,
Facile ability:
Yoga session moving forward
To a most advanced degree.

It isn’t fun to lay awake,
But when it’s done,
One falls asleep.
Perhaps not Rem or deep,
But it’s enough.
A cup of coffee
                       does the trick.
Awake and quickened,
Competent to not delay
But go the whole way
In a stream from recent dream
To active day.

Mysterious this nighttime cycle;
Structural, visceral, mental, spinal,
Hormonal, remindful?
Grateful and humble,
Glad to report that it was not final.
From Wakeful Night To Active Day 1.26.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin



ARLENE CORWIN
ArleneCorwinPoetry.com
Facebook/hellopoetry.com/jerryjazzmusician/
Cyberwit.net/Amazon.com/Barnes6Noble.com/allpoetry.com

Sitting bored in front of the TV, open computer on the coffee table in front of me, this came out.   A poetic babble perhaps.        

     Brain Change

It happens all day long.
Inside the head, its gorgeous throng of targets sits
The brain; synaptic nerve cells.
Tiny gaps across which impulse tells
One or another thrilling and exhilarating news
                                                                    to use,
Communicating and collecting,
Stimulating and connecting,
Electrical or chemical;
Pre-, post-, now,  past,
It hosts the most.
With a tiny blast of current,
It emits, transmits life long,
From head to body-solid.

(With its) mind-boggling effects,
The synapse’ clean neuron-ic jets
Affect each thing we think and know,
How and what we know and do.
How the brain arranges you!

Place targeted,
Remembered never to forget,
Some venue in that gorgeous head,
Its gorgeous throng of secrets
Sits a brain of infinite and wondrous range,
Perpetually changing.

Brain Change 1.23.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Word Is So Inspiring #2

The word is so inspiring ‘cause
The world is so…inspiring, yes!
So connected word and world, that
Whether reading, hearing, speaking,
One cannot hold out against,
So hard resisted -
World/word every inch insistent.

Adjectives are what it needs:
All kinds of namings and descriptions.
Verbs to give the state an action,
One’s reaction heightened, strengthened.

What would mortal being be,
Idea too - without a word
To give a world to;
Love or hate, brake, dominate…
The catalyst to cause a chain
Without sustaining change itself; yet mate
We cannot do without.

World and word.  Add or drop the letter L
And you make a hell of heaven, heaven hell:
Reach the soul of being’s kernel.

Don’t we all adore the word,
Forming terms to upgrade, downgrade, add to, shade;
inescapable, a tool
To make us stronger, nicer, if you will
For we are partly in control.

In other words, don’t hesitate
To spread the word, but waste no words
And keep your word;
Express yourself in ways untiring,
Heart and head both unified
In spoken or the written word inspired
And inspiring.

The Word Is So Inspiring #2 1.19.2020  Definitely Didactic #2;  Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Word Is So Inspiring #2

The word is so inspiring ‘cause
The world is so…inspiring, yes!
So connected word and world, that
Whether reading, hearing, speaking,
One cannot hold out against,
So hard resisted -
World/word every inch insistent.

Adjectives are what it needs:
All kinds of namings and descriptions.
Verbs to give the state an action,
One’s reaction heightened, strengthened.

What would mortal being be,
Idea too - without a word
To give a world to;
Love or hate, brake, dominate…
The catalyst to cause a chain
Without sustaining change itself; yet mate
We cannot do without.

World and word.  Add or drop the letter L
And you make a hell of heaven, heaven hell:
Reach the soul of being’s kernel.

Don’t we all adore the word,
Forming terms to upgrade, downgrade, add to, shade;
inescapable, a tool
To make us stronger, nicer, if you will
For we are partly in control.

In other words, don’t hesitate
To spread the word, but waste no words
And keep your word;
Express yourself in ways untiring,
Heart and head both unified
In spoken or the written word inspired
And inspiring.

The Word Is So Inspiring #2 1.19.2020  Definitely Didactic #2;  Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Plan: A Mantra

There is a Plan:
Inherent since the start of man,
Cause and effect, effect and cause;
Always was, works through laws,
And never, ever stops to pause.

And so I bind the whole of me,
To knowing That before I die.
If death means ‘bye’,
I want to learn, absorb the why.
If it does not,
I’ve got to understand the rest,
Scan and perceive first hand
What’s best,
Or life seems all but meaningless.

Instinct longs for happiness.
An ignoramus longs for this.
So in pursuit of bliss’ nearest,
My pursuit is Daddy Dearest,
Universes far from me,
Known to the soul implicitly.

I must believe before I leave
In plans and laws and forces good,
Something which makes all it should
And something which controls it all.

The Plan: A Mantra 1.17.2020
Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

*mantra; a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation: a mantra is given to a trainee meditator when his teacher initiates him.

Clearing up and out I came upon this, “The Personal Joys Og Ageing from 2016.  Now totally rewritten.

              The Personal Joys Of Ageing

I enjoy not being steered by ardour’s ***** drive,
The appetite for lots of food and varied such:
I enjoy not wanting much of much
Which qualities all counteract, exacerbate
The facts of fate.

It’s late.
I cannot sleep
But revel in the hours I keep.
Awake at night,
It is a most creative time to write.

In younger days there was so much I’d have denied,
Tried to get out of, lied about,
Taboos and mores* certifying,
Classifying wrong and right.

Sleep, food, *** vacate the drives,
Each space replaced by something fitter.
Without daily nose dives
Life is definitely better.
                                                      
Say, dear reader
What you’re free from.
I would love to hear from
Any reader sitting there.

The Personal Joys Of Ageing 12.6.2016/rewritten 1.16.2020
Circling Round Eros II; Nature Of Reality; Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

*mores (pronounced morays) customs, conventions, ways, way of life, way of doing things, traditions, practices, custom and practice, procedures, habits, usages; formal praxis.

Earth, Dust, Atoms, Particles… Earth, Dust, Atoms, Particles… The Spanish painter Tapies was, in one of his artistic stages taken with Buddhistic philosophy: When I Googled him, I was reminded of a poem I first wrote in 1994, revised in 2018 and again today in 2020.   You may recognise the Vedanta philosophy in me, a philosophy that grabbed me in the early 50’s and has never really let go.  Both earthy and spiritual, it has always suited my person and personality.
Arlene

            The Particles Of God

The particles of God are falling on my head.
They’re falling on the living, probably the dead;
On believers, non-believers; equal particles they fall –
They’re always falling on and in and through the body wall.

God is particles of oneness.  There are parallels galore.
When the atom showed its kernel and revealed there was more
To meet the eye, a kind of onion-layered door
Was opened there inside the mind as just the metaphor
For simpletons like me.  God energy,

With big or little G;
Living, knowing particles that have no personality
But which, if I’d clean up my act,
Would mystically reveal the fact
That they, the particles and I, have one identity.

I’m trying to arrange and rearrange my head instead,
Make it more receptive than a means for daily bread –
A conscious sponge, a large receptor,
Image-making faculty a particle collector.

Each impulse must be pure, for
We’re in areas of justice and reward;
And particles with qualities inherent in our race:
Areas of mercy, all the virtues, love and grace -
I’d rather not involve them - just assume that they exist.
It’s the God without the person that this poem has gently kissed:
Ever-present particles that are the living’s gist.

The Particles Of God 3.26.1994 /10.4.2018/1.14.2020To The Child Mystic; God Book; Arlene Corwin

The Case For Upper Case

I am traditional.
Each line I write
Starts with a capital.

I’ve gotten slurs,
Have had to plead my case
Give reasons for…
Well, can’t say more:
It looks right, feels right, lights my fire.
Capitals inspire!

Upper case to start a line
Seems to define a poem
As does a rhyme and meter.
And it seems to me, a writer/reader
That the message is delivered stronger,
More aesthetically and stylishly
Than when composed and written out
In form that’s free
Of commas, brackets, sentences,
Spelling, colons (and the semi-…)
All the marks that clarify,  
Unifying all and any…

Upper case in verse
Is not a race or contest
To see who is best.
Upper case is, in this case
A quest for knowledge,
Autobiographic collage:
Search and synthesising:
To  two eyes that just may realise
A Self and what’s behind:
The mind and whatsoever else I find.
(Or should I say whoever else…).
But never mind,
I face the upper case dissent
With quiet acquiescence,
And perpetuate, to celebrate
Tradition.

The Case For Upper Case 1.12.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

As much as one hates to use the pronoun “I”, writing or speaking, there are times when ‘I’ is the middle point and of the essence.
Sincerely,
Arlene (see footnote).        

  Now & Then, How I Miss…

I practice living the Now.
But now and then
I miss the old Arlene
Who had ten
                    fingers;
Who could play arpeggios
With ease:
Adagios, capriccios,
Effortlessly
Trouble-free.

Un-nostalgic, chanced to see
And old Youtube of Arlene-me
Singing, playing“All God’s Chillun” speedily,
Gleeful, musical and jazzy.
Wound up teary-eyed.

With just three left to play with:
Thumb and index on the left, only lonely thumb the right,
Filled with weakness
I can play a swinging bass
With Monk-like dissonance between,
The right thumb not at all a small dumb finger.

The trick will be to sow creativeness anew.,
Augment, stretch, grow and not go into
Any other place than Now
(if Now at all can be referred to
                                        as a ‘place’.
I rather think of it as space).

In any case,
I was a little sad today;
The old Arlene who cannot play
The way she used to,
Caused by nature’s vagary.

Dear reader, please forget  
This sentimental, reminiscent “…How I Miss…”
A useless business at the very least.
Now &Then, How I Miss…1.6.2020 Vaguely About Music; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Nover Corwin

Arlene Corwin collapsed on August 3rd, 2019.  In a coma for a month, when she awoke, there were 4 fingers missing on the right hand, 3 half fingers on the left,  and two catheters in one kidney   The cause: Blood poisoning or sepsis (from the Greek ‘sepin’ make rotten).  After two months she was home.  Muscles shrunken, walking with help she began a regime of sit-ups, pushups, yoga…and using every object inI the house as tool now is fully flexible and growing stronger with each day.
But the hands, those hands…We’ll see what happens.

As much as one hates to use the pronoun “I”, writing or speaking, there are times when ‘I’ is the middle point and of the essence.
Sincerely,
Arlene (see footnote).        

  Now & Then, How I Miss…

I practice living the Now.
But now and then
I miss the old Arlene
Who had ten
                    fingers;
Who could play arpeggios
With ease:
Adagios, capriccios,
Effortlessly
Trouble-free.

Un-nostalgic, chanced to see
And old Youtube of Arlene-me
Singing, playing“All God’s Chillun” speedily,
Gleeful, musical and jazzy.
Wound up teary-eyed.

With just three left to play with:
Thumb and index on the left, only lonely thumb the right,
Filled with weakness
I can play a swinging bass
With Monk-like dissonance between,
The right thumb not at all a small dumb finger.

The trick will be to sow creativeness anew.,
Augment, stretch, grow and not go into
Any other place than Now
(if Now at all can be referred to
                                        as a ‘place’.
I rather think of it as space).

In any case,
I was a little sad today;
The old Arlene who cannot play
The way she used to,
Caused by nature’s vagary.

Dear reader, please forget  
This sentimental, reminiscent “…How I Miss…”
A useless business at the very least.
Now &Then, How I Miss…1.6.2020 Vaguely About Music; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Nover Corwin

Arlene Corwin collapsed on August 3rd, 2019.  In a coma for a month, when she awoke, there were 4 fingers missing on the right hand, 3 half fingers on the left,  and two catheters in one kidney   The cause: Blood poisoning or sepsis (from the Greek ‘sepin’ make rotten).  After two months she was home.  Muscles shrunken, walking with help she began a regime of sit-ups, pushups, yoga…and using every object inI the house as tool now is fully flexible and growing stronger with each day.
But the hands, those hands…We’ll see what happens.

When I write poetry - anything really, I try to express essences of the fiercest kind in a respectful way.  Online is an especially ‘exposed’ medium.  It’s about being honest and detached at the same time.  A hard thing in the easiest of times. When it’s about someone you especially dislike, hate and ferocity have to be handled artistically up front without the hate or ‘ferocity’ standing out.  I assume my readership is an informed one who can draw their own conclusions.  I’m neither adding to nor taking away feelings that are already there.  Just reinforcing...
     Still awake at 5am last night, (coffee too late in the day, I suspect) this  odd idea came spookily into my head.  Scribbled it down in the dark and worked on it, refining and completing it this evening.

                    Mr Trump

Will you die having denied your whole term through
That climate change is factual?
The floods, heat waves, intensive fires,
Melting Arctic, water higher?
Will you keep detaining children behind wires
Never calling, naming it for what it is:
All in the name of business?

Misogynistic haters of the female role,
What kind of deadly symbol is a Mexican?
A woman doing all she can
To have a life as rich as yours,
Who works for peanuts scrubbing floors?
Mr Trump, she cannot hurt a single soul
Except to help the whole.
Instead, you mine for, mine more coal,
Employment a most unsound goal.
We’re all in danger
And you seem to see yourself as guardian angel
Or some kind of Texas ranger.

Mr Trump, you’re on the throne, you’ve got the crown,
A folk has put your name down.
Have you made the world a safer place?
Stopped the race for rule by force?

You’re tough,
But you’ll pass through this bad world soon enough.
What will you leave that’s not been thieved?
I must say, in some way you are a strange one.
One whose legacy, I pray will be a good one.
When we add it up and deed is done
I see you golfing in the sun,
Monetary interests first.
Do you quite understand this thirst?

Mr Trump, I wish you well.
With hope my native USA is not for sale
Or on its way to concrete hell;
That some transcendent hand has planned
To help this land
To interests that will help us all
Before a global fall’s
Upon us.
Mr Trump 1.3.2020  Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Performance Mantra

Sorry to bother you on New Year’s Day, but yesterday being about love, this reaction burned itself into my brain today.
Happy New Year!

           New Year’s Day 2020

While Nintendo tends to games that train,
Australia burns.
Koala bears and kangaroos, the populace
Lose loves and lives:  Apocalypse.

We sit and watch the TV news,
Last night’s champagne obscurely active,
We alive, not losing home and life, the fact is,
There can never be
                               equality,
Wins and loss an unmoved boss.

While year becomes a twenty-twenty,
Eyesight lags behind and we see worse than ever,
We, the cognoscenti severed from reality.

I, one of the ‘cognoscenti’ weak in kindness,
Strong in ignorance, probably a hubris too.  Goodness me,
To see the goodness and receive, retrieve it,
That’s the trick.

A slick and sick society,
We cheat and lie
To satisfy self-serving need,
Feed vanity’s rapacious greed;
A lie which grieves the planet as we watch it die
While I write futile poetry and pry
This New Year twenty twenty.

New Year’s Day 2020 1.1.2020
Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Asking For Monies

This is actually a spontaneously inspired message of love and appreciation to new found Facebook friends from all over this varied globe.    

             Cryptic Time

Posts from all the world!
Who would have thought that flags unfurled
For little me from many you,
And many you from little me.
I’m filled and swell!

Time passes and with glasses raised up high
I sigh a gladdened sigh
That sitting here on chair in Sweden
More than one admiring eye
Is reading this, this very minute
Taking in the things I have to say
On chairs a million miles away.  

Quell mystery! For we  
Will all be history a hundred years from now,
Perhaps no documentary fragment left
To inventory our best efforts.
Yet, we’re here, to write and wrestle with
A universe, and universal questions all have faced
Since time began.  
And we, each other’s fan
Give love through likes and hearts and upraised thumbs.
Fumbling, tumbling round, zooming in on every crumb
That life can offer
Never coming to an ultimate.
Offering love to every Facebook friend
Not succumbing to the humdrum of an end
But encouraging each other.  
Is that not grand!

Cryptic Time 6.14.2019 Circling Round Time !!; Circling Round Reality; Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

Just looking through some old stuff and found this lovely one inspired when sitting in the living room with an extaordinarily bright full moon coming straight through my window.

      Mister Moon Looking Through The Window

This is a poem that’s meant to stop worry.
Arlene
    Nobody Cares But You
(a poem about detachment)

It was a gig.*
Fancy hotel, piano/song.
Song was “Yesterday” by Kern -
A song I’d learned; five decades worn.
What could go wrong?
I knew the song from back to front,
Each bar, each note Jerome Kern wrote.
And then it happened in the bridge:
Mind went blank! Memory rigid!
No matter how I searched and banged
I could not find the changes (chords),
Which key or what.  Carrying on,
Not caring what the crowd
Was thinking, I remained the fool
On a piano stool until, at last,
The bumbling, stumbling passed
And I was back on track.

Key found, my vocal sound as good as ever,
I’d discovered never be stopped by obstacle or handicap;
Never let it sap nerve, verve or energies,
For I’m not there to serve or please;
I’m there to carry through a form of choice,
Give my jazz to some Corwin voice,
Let the moment be my norm
Never wishing for perfection
Or to make a good impression,
The interpretation mine, just mine,
Anything I manage fine, just fine.

There’s no such thing as flawlessness.
The folk out there more focussed
On its own concerns and interests,
Concentrative powers, capability and prowess
Lasting no more than a minute,
Public recall all but ‘perfect’.

Do your thing
Not just for God and king
But for the joy of self and self-fulfilling.
Dare, share, always there.
No one really cares but you.

Nobody Cares But You 12.26.2019
Pure Nakedness; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Vaguely About Music; Arlene Nover Corwin
*gig; musician’s jargon for job or engagement.
bridge; the middle of a song, often called release.

Do you believe in signs?⏳

What Shall I Call This?

Remember this always:
Love,
Arlene

What You Think & What You Do Is You

To know, to really know by intuition what is true,
Rather than by intellect’s analysis,
Which going so far by the book
Will never brook reality, big R:
The star.

There in us seed of divinity,
But also personality and ignorance and folly
Which clog the way so constantly
As to obstruct each single day.

In theologic terms: Christian, Hindu, Taoist, Sufi
Shake hands on one thing categorically:
A unitive, intuitive discovery
Which sculpts life’s aim;
Truth, big T, its contemplation as an end,
Activity its means.

Belief in humans doesn’t work.
You only have to look.
We fight, we ****, we’re angry as we lurk in corners
Passing laws to dig for more
Deep oil, coal… searching from a parched ambition,
Marketing on boundless scales the superficial and addictive
While vindictive leaders staunchly march,
Their Janus faces smiling, starched.

Philosophic, scientific principles at odds -
Where, what, if there is a god.
To know, to really know the double-sides
Of all observed would serve the good.

If you (or Man) will spend the time,
Insides reaching for the prime,
The look inside its total aim,
Some good must come of it;
Not total good, but it’s a start.
The brain connected then to heart,
The body horse, synapses cart.

Abnegation (not negation) of the ego,
Trying out the test of virtue
Probably, no, certainly will help
Speed up this royal trip.
You bet there will be blips galore,
So try some more to reach the core
Of Truth within, for
What you think and what you do is you.

What You Think & What You Do Is You 12.7.2019
Circling Round Reality; Circling Around Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Extract from a letter answering a friend about my productivity:
     “I have neither habit nor stamina - at least not consciously.  It’s more from laziness - the writing, that is.  I see, hear or read a phrase or reportage and I’m off!  That’s it!  And  because repetition creates habit, be it smoking, biting your nails, or quilting - then if you have a particular talent, well, there it is - the automatic stamina and habit..”


           A Poet’s Rationalisation

She writes daytime and night.
She’s neither stamina nor habit.
It’s because she’s lazy.
When she’s complimented (as she’s been at times)
The only word that has occurred’s tenacity.

Reading, seeing reportage, message hitting the right the spot,
And lo, she’s hot!
Computer open, blank page there
And she is where she ought to be,
Comfy, lazy, some ability
Wakened for the sake of…
Nothing!

Prolific - she’s aware of it.
Gazillion ideas make her sit.
And when she sits and pushed to write,
She writes because it’s what
She’s pushed to from within, without,
Stimulation like a clout from heaven -
Happy as sandboy,
Seventh heaven’s brand new toy,

Theory, philosophy, hypothesis,
This, her only explanation
For the many extant stanzas
Published and unpublished
With no purpose whatsoever.

Thank you to whomever
Pays a tribute or has praised
Or lauded and applauded reveries,
The fantasies that intellect can cover.
What more can one ask for?

A Poet’s Rationalisation 12.6.2019
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Improvising Yoga

I improvise my yoga as I improvise my jazz.
Good, bad or mediocre,
What comes out is not a razzamatazz
For glow or show
But enterprise for health and beauty;
Creativity that builds the body
And the mind.

At the moment yoga is the craze - a phase.
But movement never ceases,
And the creases never stop.
So take your body seriously;
Use each object as a prop
And make each move a yoga.

Improvising Yoga 12.2.2019
Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin

I started out to write a song.  Instead this came out.  Anybody out there wanna have a go?

     There Are So Many Xmas Songs

“You better watch out,
You better not shout;
You better not cry -
I’m telling you why.
Santa Claus is coming to town.”
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
There are so many Xmas songs
To sing along to.
Messages of cheer and legend:
Santa land and fairy land
Bonded by a band of reindeer
Flying low to clear each household,
Santa chuckling all the way,
Rounding globe the mystery.

Package giving,
Living in the coming light -
Santa driving all the night
Never disappearing or appearing.

Every year and filled with fervour
We still sing
About his coming.
Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas -
Another a term for Father Christmas.

There Are So Many Xmas Songs 11.30-2019
Our Times, Our Culture II Arlene Nover Corwin