Consumer Of Existence

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

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

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

Consumer Of Existence 12.14.2016
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

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-

Thinking About …Jealousy

I don’t sense envy in me -
But sense jealousy
Given the right (or always wrong) occasion
Why?
The past disloyalties?
A guilt? The lies?
A deep and hidden narcissism?
Is it them that I surmise?

A sickly need to own –
To call someone my own
When I, in fact have known
That no one, nothing is my own?

Does it begin in fantasy?
One asks the question
Wherefrom, why from
Comes that special gallery
Of idle fancy?

If the simile is ‘green’ with envy,
What then color jealousy?
Red, brown, orange, pink or blue?
Perhaps there is no hue
In color’s range
To chronicle that landscape and its danger!

Thus adding one more deadly sin
To slot into the other seven:
Is it…could they be akin
To chilling, killing, love destroying jealousy?

Thinking About…Jealousy 9.18.2016
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Boredom #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Autobiographical Anomaly✍️

My memory, how is it working?
Reconstructing what I will,
But no matter how I will it,
Using tricks or keeping still,
It goes downhill while lurking.

Mostly, I can’t get the date
Or the event - details I railed at,
Smiled or wailed at.
Where I laid the pen just used;
That is NOT amusing.

Histamine.
I read that histamine boosts memory.
Priority.
What do I prioritise with ear, nose, eye?

My husband tells a story
But his story and the history keep changing.
Joke?
Sheer smoke based on illusion in the first place?
He’s an honest man.
Why change the plan or plane?
How to help boost our brain!
Enigma
And for some a stigma.

Diet, food:
The marvel is the wondrous good
It does in spite
Of all the things we don’t do right.
We’re losing neurons constantly
From ages six- or seventy.
Exercise:  
Training.  Learning.. Instrument.
Being bent on something!  Anything!
For just about all/everything is heaven sent.
That’s what I read
And what I think,
And where my intuition and my instinct lead.

Anyway, this poem is just another way to do it.
Renewing bits with any course available,
And one in which a syllable will stick.
The main thing is to get a kick
Out of the rhythmic lyric of our life.
Yes?

Another Autobiographical Anomaly 2.11.2019 Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Unmotivated Tears

I used to criticize
The eyes
Of those I knew
Who, at
Drops of a hat
Shed tears of ardor: God-knows-what.

Ascribing it
To vitamins and lack thereof,
Past, present and/or too much ‘love’.
Too something/something out of balance;
Nothing but a prevalence
Of yin or yang
Ganging up
On both those ducts.

Uncaring and unfeelingly –  I used to be.
Now, at eighty-three it’s me.
I may need hormone therapy.
Or is it age sagacity  -
Unmotivated tears
Based on a grasp of life’s chimere
That takes in all -
An all which makes one engineered
By tears
One must defer to.

Unmotivated Tears 4.24.2018 I Is Always You Is We; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Aging; Arlene Corwin

Comeback

Perhaps I should be grateful
That I never was recipient
Of great applause,
Years of adorers,
Broadway’s honey,
Years of being stunning,
Grateful that
I never had to kowtow, bow out,
Miss the kudos and the fame,
Never knowing what life was
With and without them, since I never got them.
Never got to play Las Vegas,
Glad there never came a time
Of longing for a non-existent encore,
Cheering I no longer hear.

Hair going grey,
Kilos heading the wrong way,
You are asked to make a comeback,
Or you’ve asked to make a comeback;
Life feels boring,
No alluring pleasure takes the place
Of listener filled with earful grace.

You sweat and strain, extra kilos off again,
Get back routines,  
Move as you did in your teens,
Flexibility, the voice retaining every nuance.
Frank and Cher came back again - and then again.
We followed each rendition, each gradation, limitation;
Cheered until the cheers turned into hesitation.

I am grateful that I never
Had the clamouring for autographs and tresses,
Shredded dresses, theirs and mine.
Never had the glamour and the clamour of masses,
Fervent need to make a comeback,
Coming back to audiences smelling wine:
Hard to define.
And still I play and sing and grow.

Comeback 5.28.2008/revised3.19.2021
Birth, Death & In Between; Time; Vaguely About Music; Arlene Nover Corwin

She Let A Moth Drown In the Lake

She let a moth drown in the lake,
Waves taking stackars* little thing
Further than her oar could reach.
Standing on beach, cupped eye,
Squinting, trying…
Moth was gone.
Death had won.

Just so you know I do no lie,
That ‘she’ was I.
I am the wimp who hesitated.
Fear of depth, of cold, of wet.
Excuses inexcusable.

Death of moth, still flapping moth
Is just as undeserving as our own demise.
Pedestrian, prosaic, commonplace,
Disgusting,
Yet compulsively discussable.

All living things delight in life-ness.
While they move and throb the slightest,
They delight.
Who takes a life by standing by
Will also die.
It is essential, is it not, to cry,
Identify with kin?
Kin hereby meaning ‘life within’.

Left with remorse and shame
She self-condemns,
She takes the blame.
She hopes some force
That knows the individuality of moth
Shows sympathy in rebirth
In some future form that has a breath.

So be it, Om, Amen to Earth!

She Let A Moth Drown In the Lake 6.14.2020 Birth,Death & In Between II;Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II;Pure Nakedness;Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover, Corwin

*stackars; Swedish; ‘poor thing’

I woke up thinking about this.

         A Thought About Loyalty

I’ve been thinking about loyalty:
A many-sided world of nuances,
The subtle differences.
We all know it means faithfulness,
A sticking-to devotedly.
Unfurled it shows its nasty sides,
The negatives that worry me:
Allegiance and adherence -
-Ism’s steel prepared to go to war
Against all criticizers,
-Isms’ others
Carving up the brotherhood
Of man.
Not for nothing
That a missile system drawn
To sense and intercept an enemy:
Is named the Patriot:
A system to annihilate.

I worry ‘bout obedience,
Compliance and submissiveness.
I like reliability, dependability,
Dedication if it’s not perverted
Duty, if it leads to thought,
A moral sense,
An ethic that agrees with life;
Loyalty without the strife.
Loyalty to think about.

A Thought About Loyalty 9.10.2017
Nature In & Of Reality; Out Times, Out Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Today I Was Accused…
    Today I Was Accused…

I Love The Discipline…

I love the discipline of form and meters.
Crummy, yummy twitterings
To turn a base, base/superficial
Into something interstitially aesthetic, helpful.
What it is that gives this gift I’ll never know,
But there it is – a discipline addictive;
A dictation from below;
Not just adding to an increase in IQ,
Nor the storehouse of expressing,
Nor of word when crossword puzzling;
No, a serendipity with aspects heavenly.
A guzzling from an endless well of secret knowledge,
Sacred knowledge for the few.
But earthy too.  

Anyway, as we of poet’s tree like saying,
When you find an impulse that you can’t resist,
Don’t, you hear, anti-resist,
But kissed by It
Continue till the whole caboodle* springs your noodle
And the lights go out.

I Love The Discipline…4.13.2018 The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative III, Arlene Corwin

*caboodle |kəˈboōdl| (also kaboodle)
noun (in phrase the whole caboodle or the whole kit and caboodle) informal
the whole number or quantity of people or things in question.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent. (originally U.S.): perhaps from the phrase kit and boodle, in the same sense (see kit 1 , boodle ).
noodle 2
noun informal
a stupid or silly person.
• a person's head.
New Oxford American Dictionary

Bemoaning Similes & Metaphors

         (the lack thereof )


I cannot think in similes or metaphors.

I can, but it’s

An artifice.

A gift

I’ve not been left with.

Of course,

I’ve got Thesaurus –

My old pal -

To push me

In the simile

Direction.

Those

Whose

Aptitude’s

To see,

Their inner eye

Comparing parallels unconsciously –

A gift of gene and DNA –

Overwhelm me.

While I moan about my lack,

They sit with throne and luck

Expressing with an ease,

Anything they ****** well please

In metaphors and similes

I lie in bed,

This running through my head.

That’s why it’s here.



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

Gardening The Forest:  A Work In Progress


I garden the forest.

Walking everywhere – like Johnny Appleseed –

I keep my excellent Swedish clippers at my side,

And when I eye a roadside tree

With branch too low, so’s I can see,

I make the lower branches go,

Prune and clear selectively,

Clip high as I can reach,

Which,

Being five foot one

And using muscle of the female kind,

Is always kind to undergrowth,

Seduced by ‘further’,

Blazing paths that never were,

So light can filter through.

It wants for sun. It makes for light.

The woods and I are one;

But I can’t tell a soul.

Wandering on until de-celeration

Starts to take me over,

Signs I’ve learned to recognize

When fervor starts to waver

And observer me says “Rest!”


Works in progress never cease.

It is a forest,

After all.

Work In Progress: Gardening The Forest 11.28.2006 revised 1.18.2014/again 4.20.2015

Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Nature II:

It’s simply amazing what phrases pop into one’s head and stick - and as they stay there they develop, and as they develop the inner life takes over and what started out a superficial bit of twaddle turns into poetry of some substance, proving anything can become anything with a little bit of reflection.

      I Am A Housewife

I am a housewife.
Organize and deputize,
Buy and cook,
See that everything’s delicious,
Making dishes at my best,
Matching wish of man and guest.


Preserving and conserving, I economize,
Hunting down the clever buys
So there’s savings at year’s end.  
Mix and blend creatively,
And when I shop
I stop and hesitate; contemplate
And seldom buy on impulse.
That said, I occasionally fall and do.

But mostly, shopping for our food’s
A yoga.  So’s the
Washing, cooking, dusting…more;
The most and best health giving chore:
Hands cleaner in the water,
Waistline smaller, reaching up and for…

No breadwinner,
But a winner baking bread.
Cakes and cookies all included.
For, of course, the friends and husband
Whom I feed,
Try to supply each need
Not because it is ‘the done thing’
But because it is the fun thing.

Then there’s me.  Filled with creativity.
Actually, a private soul
With my own needs to feel whole.
I do not underplay the housewife role
As many in society
Who downplay tractability and duty.
For to me it stands for beauty,
Not for slavery.

I am a being who serves house,
Deserves the house,  My house!  Our house!  
No mouse by any means
But combination heroine
And superstar,
Dishing out the wonder
Of existence
With insistence and persistence
For a comfy coexistence
Dishing out the dishes
And a family’s wishes.

I Am A Housewife 12.23.2018 Circling Around Woman II; Arlene over Woman II; Arlene Nover Corwin

All the years before the Corona pandemic, my Swedish neighbours from across the lake used to celebrate the 4th of July with a party,  having themselves spent 32 years in the United States.  To them I dedicate this poem.

  July 4th, 2020 🇺🇸

It is the fourth of July.
A day we usually
Fill with joy:
Fireworks, parades and games
Its names:
Fourth of July:
Independence Day.

United, free;
No more a colony;
A formal declaration
Made of five brave men
And Thomas Jefferson,
Making history, and
The beginnings of a USA.

So, Americans,
My dear, dear Swedish friends
And any there may be elsewhere,
Let us wear the day
In camaraderie and play.
Most all in harmony.
Happy, Happy 4th July! 🇺🇸

July 4th, 2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

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.

Our Tractor Man

Our tractor man is doing
What he really likes to do:
Clearing snow.                  
He suits my mental man-with-plow.
Trading pig and cow
For gear he likes to sit inside;
The tractor hut;
Tranquil woods to clear and saw,
Chop and cut;
Tractor wheel, forest smell,
Alone deciding what to fell.
Muddy potholes in the spring,
Flood and crud his tractor´s thing.
Nicely chubby,
Slightly tubby;
Sixty odd,
His tractor and the woods his God.

I esteem this earthy man
Dharma bound to seasoned stars
That fix the farmer life and plan
Unchangeable and stable.

Our Tractor Man passed away 2016.
                                                      
Our Tractor Man 3.4.2003 (revised 11.19.2016)
Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Time; Special People, Special Occasions; Birth. Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin


                                                      

our devoted tractor man who plowed our road in the winter.

In light go all the heartrendingly serious problems I've been writing about lately, I decided to write and enter another side of things.

A Lighthearted Poem For All We Scorpios♏️

This is a poem to cover
All we Scorpios alive or not.
In case you didn’t know,
We are a special lot.

‘Cover’ means:
Envelop and enfold, embody and embrace.
We are lovers
And the charming-est of ‘race’..
(of course I’m not impartial).

We are: fixed, we don’t change easily.
We must learn flexibility.
And mixed: Our colors brown and black,
Deep red/maroon;
Our rulers; Pluto, Mars, Uranus, Moon.
We’re born between:
Oct. 23 - Nov. 22
This poem’s for me, this poem’s for you.

We are the highest and the lowest:
So you ‘knowest’, we are:
Forceful and intuitive, passionate, magnetic.
Lovers,
We are great survivors.
BUT, we’re also jealous and possessive,
Wilful, secretive, compulsive and obsessive.

Make sure you choose the best;
Turn secrets to transparency…
Watch out for all the rest.

Believer in the mystic all/ material
One or the other/none of these
You are a sister, brother, father, mother
Therefore, take astrology with ease
And live with love, and how you please.

A Lighthearted Poem For All We Scorpios 10.31.2018
I Is Always We Is You; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sitting in the bath once again, small blue pad in hand, bit of plastic as support, I write this poem.   Albert Cat demands a bit of attention and pad slides into the water.  I grab a bit of toilet paper to blot it.  That makes it worse.  So, blurred and vague, I reconstruct it, using magnifying glasses (2!) while watching the evening news.  Here it is:
             I Like Facebook

I like Facebook. I don’t know exactly why.

I like looking at the pictures,

Friends I’d never meet another way.

I like friendly messages,

Passages of verse I’d never read

If not for Facebook’s lead.

I like Likes and Comments kind,

Find in comments rich expressions.

Possibly I’m one of few - or few new millions.

I’m inspired when tired, fired up.

Even when I’ve written ‘crap’

No one’s there to trap me.

Some reviewer always sees my views,

Understands.

Someone always sends

Me praise; ends with a Like.

I’ve never had a spikey word;

Cordiality is all I’ve ever read or heard.

Commonality forever somewhere, there

Where someone wants to start a group.

Always somebody to whoop de whoop:

Somewhere folk who populate;

A troupe with common passions.

Then there are the monthly Happys:

Happy Birthdays, Christmases and Easters…

Never had one word rescinded.

Reminded gently daily:

Classmates, playmates

I’d forgotten, dovetailed,

Blazoned on the psyche;

Friends and places,

And of course, the faces -

It is Facebook, after all; the key, the glee,

A source of history.

As for weaknesses I’ve read about –

Never think to route them out,

Going ‘bout my business,

Focused on creativeness,

The lofty and the small.

I like Facebook.

Happy Facebook to you all!

I Like Facebook 3.31.2018 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

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

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

One of these sudden thoughts.

The Many Benefits of Facebook Friends

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

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

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

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

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

The Day Trump Tr-i-ump-hed

Trumpeting, he ******* and triumphed…
Did he, has he?
Thumping his way forward,
Jumping through the hoops of word and phrase,
Razing those that blocked his ways,
He dazed the lot.
Crazed, ablaze – or not.  But hot,
He took a stand,
But didn’t seem to understand (and may not still)
That energy attracts a gangland:
Thinking not that crowds could form,
Become a throbbing, clobbering or bombing mob:
A swarming army.

Young we heard,
You can’t take back the caustic word
Once in the air it’s there!
So rather than lie down
Crowds gather,
Drawing to themselves an anger,
War uncivil,
Civil war
                  once more,
And monies that he’s vowed to earn
Will burn in costs for crowd control, police patrol.  

The day that Trump was voted in
May not, in fact become a win -
For reasons manifold and sundry.

The Day Trump Tr-i-ump-hed 11.11.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II: Special People, Special Occasions,
Arlene Corwin

From Popularity…
              (comes danger)

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

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

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

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

Morning Greeting to God

On waking I say (thinking, really)
“You’ve been here all night.
You’ll be here all the day,
Providing time, my needs,
And more abstractly, destiny.  
The trick is to be welcoming,
A trick that makes the play of pain
More comfortable,
For comfort is so comforting.

When I say pain,
I do not mean
A shoulder ache or thereabouts.
It means the pain of all around,
An ‘all around’ that’s all unbound
Which one will never have the skill to grasp,
Or power to reshape.

The day’s blank piece of paper,
Bland or stimulating,
Filled with action or quite still –
Always etude and apprenticeship.

So I ask myself (symbolically)
What can I learn?
With no idea of what’s to come,
Anticipating nothing
I accept each crumb that falls from
Shall we call it ‘heaven’s table’
(just a metaphor.)

Heaven’s table may be fable,
Morning’s greeting, fleeting phrase;
Both are ways to start the days
With positivity, an energy
To improvise with happy creativity.
What could be better?

Morning Greeting To God 9.25.2017
God Book II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Words To Love: Emoji

Pictograph of sadness, cheer…
Every feeling, object, there
To show, enhance, inflate, draw near,
Define, make clear -
Oh, those Japanese - so clever!
E, a picture; Moji, character.

And I, mature, articulate,
Controlled, restrained,
Using it and them more often
When the brain’s refrain
Needs just that little extra bit
To sign and supplement
Whatever’s been expressed already
Boosting, heading
Written chunks of art (or junk)..
Emoji: hidden *****  behind it all -
A detail for the people.

Words To Love: Emoji 9.19.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin.    

whoever wants to add his or her pwn personal emoji is welcome to do so.

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

I'm on a roll.  Same day, two poems:

             There Is No One Method

I Went To A Funeral Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Life Is A Corned Beef Hash
          (A metaphor)

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

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

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

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

Taking Care of Body Parts

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

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

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

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

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

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


Of course!

A Problem And A Blessing

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

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

A Problem And A Blessing 5.12.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin



A cutie.

How Long Is A Dream?

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


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

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

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

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

The Politician

Has he kept his word?

Kept to promises you heard?

Are you satisfied? Let down?

Waiting to see what comes round?

These choices voiced, unvoiced

From voters of the officers new crowned.



To those who vote by rote or call

To those who vote at all:

Has he or she distorted vows

To overpower and devour:

Double thought through double-think?



Misconstruing and misstating,

Skewed with bias filled with hating.

Stinking skills to sell and buy,

To peddle lies which sink a country –

Even if potentially –



Are the aides, incomes denied,

Who stand to profit on the sly,

Men in masks, men in power

Hidden men, men of the hour,

How will tasks now basked in

At whose call flasks, casks are drunk from:

Will affairs of state be slunk from?



This a call to politician;

Call to listen;

He or she just person

In the end.



The Politician 2.28.2017

Our Times, Our Culture II;

Arlene Corwin

After A Terror Deed
       (this time in Stockholm)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No One Person

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Treacherous Illusion

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

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

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

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

A Faster Cleanup

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

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

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



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

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

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

Amputation (the final word)

Who thought…?  Who knew?
Now it’s you
And fingers gone
To amputation.

You’ve seen programs. Said, “How brave!”
Thought about limbs saved and strengthened.  
Training every second hour,
Power growing,
Phantom aches and pains still gnawing:
They’re a marvel!

Now you know!
For that’s the way the cookie crumbles,
And it humbles one, for sure.
There’s no cure for amputation.
Something gone is gone.

The answer is to go on
Taking pleasure, having fun,
Taking sun and making merry ‘fore the sun goes down,
The gone-ness mostly in the brain.

Strong and proud:
Join the crowd!

Amputation 6.6.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Amputate; To cut off (a limb) by surgical operation.
Origin: mid 16th century: from Latin amputat- ‘lopped off’, from amputare, from am- (for amb- ‘about’) + putare ‘to prune’.

Note: “Amputation” was aimed at anyone who is amputated and happens to read it.  It’s not aimed at the world.  I saw this impressive  documentary about a group of men and women sorely handicapped in one other way, taking a group trip to and through Vietnam, and was so moved I just had to write something.
They went through rivers, caves, highways, narrow wooden bridges, taking turns at driving, some never having driven,  trusting one another, exhorting one another...
That’s what inspired this poem.

What Would I Do Without You?
(Or Scribbling in the Car)

What would I do without you, lexicon?
What would I do without you, dear thesaurus?
Rhyming book to rhyme with -saurus: chorus, porous, e’en papyrus if it fits?
Wiki’s storehouse ‘cyclopedia?
Little things that make me big and ‘pigg:
Languages that set agog
The richness of the word?

So much I would  not do without;
And isn’t that what life’s about!

Mind so connected to the word,
I would think
Without a varied herd of word
T’would shrink.
T’would atrophy,
T’would wear away,
Become cliché
As cliché wears away the play
From boredom’s lack of stimulation.

So connected is the action of the word
To all the wisdom, the absurd
in all the minds in all the world
Of minds and hearts unaired, impaired…
Is mind to word.

pigg is Swedish for lively, spirited
What Would I Do Without You…Mind So Connected To The Word 7.19.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Yoga, James Bond & The Bad Guys

Sitting on the floor
Watching James bond overpower foes.
A complicated character with
A subtle ethic, ice-chilled wrath –
Most of all, a yogic path
Of duty and detachment;
Yogic while the villain,
Mega-bombs his own routinely -
Ligaments and muscles blown,
Royal houses overthrown!
And yet we have so much in common.

Villain cool, detached but mean,
Followers his **** machine.
Bond the Lancelot,
Jaw-dropping stunts his lot,
Fencing, boxing, crashing cars;
Fights and scars his calling cards –
And when in need of surgery
He heals quickly.

Evil lurks, Bond never shirks, and still
His life is filled with perks:
Hotel suites, girls en suite,
Dry martinis, Aston Martins (note the plural)
Sure of all
And unequivocal
Bond’s megastar, ideal and idol.

This poet rather fond of Bond,
Both yogis of a different kind:
He the running, driving soldier,
I, the yogi on the floor,
Each connected to a power.
Grinding skills the Bond-dynamic,
Mine the tranquil skill-iambic.

I give in to un-excitement’s
Ordinary daily yoga;
Bond the knight with right to ****
(Nice guy James with license, aimed at
Ordinary evil ogres -
There you see the box of riddles:
Bond the paradox in middle
Fighting off the oh, so evil bad guys!


Yoga, James Bond & The Bad Guys 2.10.2015/revised 8.28.2016
Circling Round Yoga II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin

The Poet

The poet is a thinker:
He has to be.
The poet doesn’t only think:
He is a visionary.
He takes us from the lower to the daily,
To the higher daily quality;
A vision of reality:
The underlying daily.

He makes us see us all
In feelings large and small.
He is important in the sorting out
The whole assortment of our sentiments.

He steeps us in the deep
Without our knowing,
Showing us through images and pretty rhyme,
Rhythms in and out of time.

Showering the reader
In the afterglow of beauty
It is his duty
To be leader to a higher self:
That is the poet in a nutshell.

The Poet 4.2.2018The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Corwin