“I never doubt the qualities of God.  When I meditate, (which I try to do whenever I’m not speaking) I have these qualities as a kind of mantra each of which I focus on individually, taking them into myself as completely as I can at the time.  After all, they are God’s.  They are: peace, power, purity, knowledge, love and bliss.  Purity was a hard one for me for a long time. But I understand the process better now.  As regards it, I’m aware, for example, how many layered it is, and how so much it led up to my, shall we say, fingerlessness, involving, as it does so many different kinds of choices on the way. Just a small example.  Nowadays I’ve also begun to take into the whole of my brain ‘light’ - not as a concept but as a kind of literal and visual process..  Although a verbal being, I’ve never had much of a visual talent.”

           Ruminating

I never doubt God’s qualities:
Doubt aways there somewhere -
But I suppress it (as one should)
Because it does no good.

A thinking brain invaluable,
It wants the best,
Works while it rests,
Retreats not
When we eat or sleep.
Has multi-synapses of neurons deep;

It, a force, of course,
For every power has a source,
A course,
And cause is force
Of one kind or another.

So I take the bother
To reflect and weigh,
Meditate throughout the day
Ponder, wonder, analyze,
Musing, using inner eyes,
Chat, think, ask,
Use every task
As means to reach
The endgame beach,
Teaching the brain where it should aim.
The qualities I use for that have names:
Power, purity & peace,
Knowledge, love & happiness.
Simply put,
Repress your doubt
And try it out.
It cannot hurt
One little bit.

Ruminating 4.5.2021 Circling Round Reality; To the Child Mystic II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Inner Gifts & Tendencies

We’ve all got ‘em:
Inner gifts and tendencies.
Some are light, some are dark ,
Intelligent and not so smart;
Weaker, stronger,
Showing up or taking longer to appear -
But always there.
What’s the answer?

“Know thyself “, said Sun Zi, Plato, Socrates -
Maxims of philosophers, through history.
Each and every day that goes -
Let it flow.  
It will show what you are made of:
Opposites, like distaste, love…

When asked what he had gained in meditating,
Buddha gave the answer, saying:
“I gained nothing, but I lost the fear of failing, losing, dying…
Fears that keep us shying far away
From knowing who and what we are.
So find your star!
There is no other, better answer.

You’ve got gifts that no one has.
Writing, drawing, farming, selling,
Running, cooking, fortune-telling -
All that jazz and razzmatazz!
Find the ones that ease and please:
Those inner gifts and tendencies.
Inner Gifts & Tendencies 3.10.2021 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Found On Backs of Envelopes ✍️

Talent helps, but at the end
A chain of forces gives intent
Its form whose links
Are luck and karma,
Perseverance as its armour.

Pushing doggedly against the odds:
Time’s cycles, ups and downs,
Fenced in or pushing back or at
Rejection, vanity, the blocks
Of dailyness-es, laziness-es,
Each a hindrance stealing time.
Yet talent is the ground
Fed by the virtues which turn destinies around.

I’ve had this scrap since twenty four: two thousand four,
Which means it’s been
A household tenant fourteen years,
(I date my scribblings),
Its poetic siblings coming after
Several thousand crafted rhymes.

There’s a lesson here somewhere:
Save your bits of paper
Be they toilet, pamphlet, poster, letter…
Keep each ballpoint you collect -
Guidelines you will not regret
But laud, applaud one day
When someone reads the stuff you’ve had to say
And says “Hurray”!
All from not tossing out the scrap
Or throwing crap away!


Found On Backs Of Envelopes 12.17.2018 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creativity, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

A Blank Page

It’s Twenty Hundred Twenty-One!


Well, son-of-a gun, it’s
Twenty hundred twenty-one!
What’s in a name and what is time?
Its only sign: change ongoing!
Ceaseless, endless, unabating,
Unrelieved, perpetual,
Indestructible, immutable;
Part wave, vibration, particle,
In patterns unpredictable;
Each a transient, sneaking by invisibly:
A birth, a death and in-between;
That decal time that we call Time;
Its silent signal, signal siren unavoidably agreed upon.
The end!
Year gone!
Here, hopefully a hearty, helpful, healthful  friend:
Year twenty hundred twenty-one!

It’s Twenty Hundred Twenty-One 1.1.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Time II; Circling Round Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

And so it is...

   July Gone By…Focus August

The Clock Tick-Tocks Your Socks Away⏳
                      (quirky but not funny)

The clock ticks like a wick downsizing in the dying:
Temporary, transient, here today and gone tomorrow.
Pastimes burrowed into passed times past,
One thinks of famous men and women, fired, admired.  
Mind gets tired, for they’re gone,
Their traces ploughed into the fertile, furrowed place beyond.
Cassavetes* and Columbo*; cancer and dementia.
Legacies of wizardry and yet, their own and grievous ends.
Death leaves a black hole - pointless, endless,
Llfe a mole (in every sense):  secret agent, blotch and spy.…
Gulf between ability and what is real:
The real causes in this wheel of cause/effect, effects so spread
It breaks one’s head to think about.
Life and end:
Serene or more than flesh can stand.
What’s left of name, what’s left of fame?
In a wink consigned to limbo.
What is left for one to do?
Desiring nothing, seeing through the great illusion:
Corwin’s view: nothingness of/ in the all.  
So do not cry but live the by and by with joy;
Pain of any sort’s a sore-ful, wearying and taxing bore.
Know yourself, and carry on, not with tons of worried hurry, but with kindly moderation.
Suns and stars - the galaxies are growing out, then easing off.
Continue pleasing you yourself
With coffee, for all coffers are but coffins — truth you cannot slough.
Habits sound, so as to lengthen years with scarce few tears and fears;
Apostle of benevolence to one and all in the small, small spheres of sway;
Continuing in doings that belong to each propensity,
Refining all the while, smile!

When You’re Alone

When you’re alone more than half of each day,
Can you make sure that it doesn’t decay?
I suppose
You could wash out the hosiery,
Dust, vacuum, chat on the phone,
Watch the tube
(Feeling much like a ****) -
I know lots who do that.
You could scrub walls and floors,
Pots and pans…
My own day has its plans
Which it forms from its hub,
Is its nub:
A lie in the tub,
A walk to the post;
Whatever shows up
Ends in verse anyway,
Which lipsticks the day
As it coiffures the gray
Of aloneness.

Original:

When you’re alone more than half of each day,
How can you see that it doesn’t decay?
I guess and suppose
You could wash out the hosiery,
Dust, vacuum, chat
On the phone, watch the tube.
I know others who scrub
Out the pots and the pans.
My day has its plans                                                    
Which it forms from the mail
And whatever shows up.
It all ends in verse ;
Some is good, some is worse.
But it feels jolly good
And it sure lifts the curse
Of aloneness.

    When You’re Alone1.28.2000 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; 1&2 (revisited, re-formed 3.6.2018)Arlene Corwin

Can't help it.  I see what I see!

I think this I beautiful.

I cannot say what was my motive in writing this, believing all the time that I  was through with talk of amputation.  And then I saw and heard a splendid performance on TV and as one does in moments of exuberance, even while sitting in one’s living room, I was moved to euphoric applause.  The result? No sound, just blunt and muffled ache.

   Things I Cannot Do* (see bottom note)

I can no longer play a chord.
Cannot applaud,
Stand on my head,
(Joints stiffening, weak and one-sided).
Unattainable: the open can or zipped up pants
The coffee cup that’s minus handles.

Cannot roll up a left sleeve,
The right hand being less effective…
Buttoned blouses flatten me
Daunting, wearying and taunting me
While I, one-handed, work to fill
A much-too-narrow buttonhole.

Every day the list goes, growing
Markedly, perceptibly, unreasonably.
Turning up when breaching laws
An ordinary man ignores:

Reaching, stretching… temperatures:
The hot, the cold,
The simple, slippery things to hold:
All those courses now on hold
Until some bright, prostheticist
Comes up with some adroit device;
New, useful for this jazz pianist.

With not a soul to sue,
The things I can and cannot do
Continue to run neck and neck,
Tied for first place, stroking,
Karma, nature, God’s good grace,
The ever racing Time
Take trophies back to each their homes.

* August 3, 2020 will be one year since I collapsed with sepsis and had 7 fingers amputated.

Things I Cannot Do 7.30.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Just thinking...    

  Getting Your Affairs In Order

I’m getting my affairs in order.
By affairs I don’t mean love affairs -
They got ‘ordered’ long ago.
You reach an age where you no longer
Think yourself un-deadly;
Getting one’s affairs in order is a ‘getting ready’ -
You who having left your prime,
Traveling through time not only limited to astronauts.
Life support that may have passed,
‘Affairs in order’ is the comfort of a passport,
No more a worrywart divisive,
Indecisive about treasure gathered over years,
Tied and bound by tears nostalgic;
Wondering who’ll want this, where shall this land?
Pondering over hindering or squandering.
You want those apples of your eye,
Your prides and joys,
To go someplace where they’ll be loved;
Want to leave the place you lived
Not just an empty space but gift received.
We weave a life we’d wish to leave,
Woven for those far or near, bereaved or dear,
And that means putting your affairs in order
From consideration of a future -
Not of yours but of the other.

Getting Your Affairs In Order 3.22.2021 Birth, Death& In Between III; 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

Tip of the Day: Become A Meditator
        ( in plain street talk)

A meditator
Can become a better,
Even good creator.
You should try it if you haven’t.
Just a tip,
Not only for the hip;
The brain feels sharper,
Extra bright.
Longterm,
Not just a single night.
Life seems to go your way,
Black turning white,
The hard stuff easy,
At least easier;
Easier to find the self,
Dine alone,
Put those problems on a shelf,
Give self-help.
Like good nutrition or a diet,
It takes time.
So try it!

Give it three good months or so -
Time to feel and time to know.
It’s nothing fancy,
Not a fancy,
Wait and see:
Continuously
Or in fits and jerks
It works,
Accumulating over years.
Start now, this minute’s very second.
You can reckon
                        on success.

Tip Of The Day: Become A Meditator 4.20.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover corwin

.

With all the nice little Likes I receive and possibly give, I must say something (I've said before):

I Like LIKES But Favor COMMENTS.

I like likes but favor comments.

Finding Your Rhythm

Your rhythm can have heat,

It can have speed.

Depending upon what you need

In the moment’s feat,

It’s very heartbeat.



Whatsoever gives you power,

Your bio-clock

May rock

That hour.



Power by the minutes is what counts.

It mounts by seconds as you play.

It plays,

And you should let it play

Since rhythm’s power never stays,

Permutating with each pulse.



Respect it, for it’s no one else -

The simplest sample of the minute’s you,

All you are and all you do,

Adapting, altering, amending,

Reconstructing and evolving

As you solve new pages,

Entering and leaving stages.



When I play or sing

Finding tempo’s rhythmic swing

Is key; door’s opening

To fundamentals: moving, sitting, cooking,  eating…

Finding beat the core and more.



At the bottom your rhythm

Lies a measure of your pleasure,

An intrinsic part of it;

Pleasure in the heart of it.

Finding Your Rhythm 3.28.2018 Vaguely About Music II; Circling Round Energy, Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Corwin

This is for all, any or few who use the computer to give, get or find  some kind of comfort or fulfilment.

     The Penny Dropped

This penny dropped minutes ago:
That those who read the po-
                                      etry I write -
Who take the bite by tapping out
A Like or Heart -
Emoji showing taking part -
That they, or she or he
Is somewhere on this round, round globe
Alone and bound
To isolation’s empty ground -
For some a prism in their prison.

Rewarded with a new respect.
In twenty second’s new reaction;
Realization not to share
For any other reason
Than to know that some are there
Under the most extenuating circumstance:
Pandemic’s viruses,
Computer the main avenue
To reaching him, her,  you
(Which may be all they see
Throughout a lonely day)
Makes motive purified,
The ego minimized.

The Penny Dropped 2.13.2021 Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Nover Corwin
the penny dropped*informal, chiefly British used to indicate that someone has finally realized something: I was about to ask Jack who it was, when the penny suddenly dropped.

Same Old Problems

My Purry, Furry Friend

My purry, furry friend lies at bed’s end.
Dozy, cozily pressed into every bend of owner’s body.
Not tender actually, agenda elementary,
Relationship is cordial and familial,
Amiable, congenial; mostly cheerful
But for times he earns an earful,
Hours unpredictable;
Claws that have peculiar laws -
Mostly in, but sometimes out
Which suddenly can sprout and spout
Unwelcome knives all sharp and venting,
Rending floods of blood and ranting.…  
That aside, they mostly hide,
And Albert Cat (his name is that)
Is quiet, undemanding,
And for Kent and me outstanding
In his feline way;
The finest complement, exemplary
Companion one could wish to have,
Possess, be blessed with.
Albert Cat, our lovely pet!
Not the brightest or the best,
But rusty fur, or dusty fur,
The best for me in all the world.

My Purry, Furry Friend 2.4.2021 Cat Book; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Doing It All

I’m doing it all:
Publishing, editing,
Getting the meter right,
Developing a theme
Which I  may rhyme or not.
Modifying, reappraising,
Going through with laser eyes;

Taking hours, days, weeks…
(Years because I tinker),
After all, I am the thinker and re-thinker,
And there’s no one there to help.
I am the pulp,
The flesh and bones
Who goes it all alone
Out of conviction,
Inner aspiration,
Internal prodding
From a living and supposed God…

I guess I’m not so all alone,
Without assistance
In the instances of writing,
Since I’m citing someone higher as as cicerone.

Doing It All 10.11.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

My Dear Friend: A Response To

My friend wished for his ‘childhood’s nest’
Where he felt best;  
Protected and…not least:
Time which went more slowly than
The feverish haste in which it can
(Or seems to)
Run away each grownup day.

Time goes neither slow nor fast:
It only is!
Always passing; tasted, wasted.
Friend, the aim is
Not at to feel It pass at all.
Which, my friend can never fail
If one has peace in the soul.

Peace-in-action is a mix
To fool the brain in terms of time;
One of tricks to prime techniques;
Premier help rid the self of pining
For a past un-lasting.  
Nostalgia is a painful thirst;
An ache usually illusory;
More unreliable than trustworthy.  

Summing up, dear friend,
Do not worry, do not yearn.
Do not burn for pastimes gone.
They, good/bad, fast/slow
Dull/thrilling as they are right now.
My Dear Friend: A Response To 3.12.2021 Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Time II; Arlene Nover Corwin

late 18th century (in the sense ‘acute homesickness’): modern Latin (translating German Heimweh ‘homesickness’), from Greek nostos ‘return home’ + algos ‘pain’

I Like To Wash The Dishes

A Fragment Of Infinity

Another documentary:
Scarcely elementary, but charged with energy.
Theme: astro-cartography.
Humans working nights and days
To map the stars and galaxies,
Which mapped this moment, are eight thousand.
Multi-universes moving outward
At four hundred thirty thousand miles per second…
Yes, per second!
A small part of the great whole
A  dwarfish fraction of them all.

In any case, I had an image:
Galaxies drawn by the laws
That govern us, that are our own:
Magnetism, gravity, movement, change,
Known, the speculated and unknown.
There I saw into my brain so much in common.
I connected with the ‘there’
Feeling that the laws out there
Paralleled the mechanistic warehouse
I could use for more awareness
Of my personal existence.

All my zillion cells attracting light
By some magnetic force and might.
I drew it to myself in thought,
Imagining the links of insight
Reaching me.
I felt it come immediately;
Some form of it anyway.

I am a fragment of infinity,
Galactic laws defining this
Small lady’s universe
Exactly as they do in endless space.

Fragment Of Infinity 4.11.2021 Circling Round Everything II; Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality;  The Processes: Creative, Thinking Meditative II; Arlene Corwin Corwin

Waking with a fuzzy mind I had to collect myself.  Here's what I did.
          Here & Now: A Mantra✍️

Planet Tellus
(to be continued – always)

With principles and measurements,
Apportioned out by nature’s senses,
Balanced and divided, its intent
To boost and serve,
Its animating force give verve
To planet X we know as Earth
Its birth, its ageing, death and worth.

Planet Tellus, Tellus Mater
Molten iron at its core;
Years in zillions boring
Toward a multi-verse of multi-stars
Solar systems, massive quasars.
All around, exo-planets not yet found,
Members of their own sun’s orbit,
Grasp of numbers too profound
(Which we speculate’s four thousand.
Doubtless, forty-thousand more).
Super telescopes
That probe with mirrored hope,
Piercing the sky-filled stuff:
The gaseous dusts that fluff the ‘skies’ –
(‘sky’ a word to pluralise)

Celestial bodies shoot, reboot
With loyalty to nature’s rules,
Its seen effects, its unseen cause.
Mysterious black & floor-less holes
Imploding and devouring…
Scouring ageing, failing stars for flaws.
Gallant planets Them and Us:
Existence by persistence!
Persistence for existence!
PS:
I’ve a theory:
Black holes open endlessly
To start a new infinity –
(Oxymoron- ic-ally).

Planet TellUs 1.6.2021 Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II;
*Mother Earth

On our minds more each day:
          Have I Come Too Late?

Planet Tellus #2
    (to be continued - always)

With principles and measurements,
Apportioned out by nature’s senses,
Balanced and divided, its intent
To boost and serve,
Its animating force give verve
To planet X we know as Earth
Its birth, its ageing, death and worth.

Planet Tellus, Tellus Mater:
Molten iron at its core;
Years in zillions boring
Toward a multi-verse of multi-stars
Solar systems, massive quasars.
All around, exo-planets not yet found,
Members of their own sun’s orbit,
Grasp of numbers too profound
(Which we speculate’s four thousand.
Doubtless, forty-thousand more).

Super telescopes that probe with hope,
Peering, piercing the sky-stuff:
Gaseous dusts that fluff the ‘skies’ -
(‘sky’ a word to pluralise)
Celestial bodies shoot, reboot
With loyalty to nature’s rules,
Its seen effects, its unseen cause.
Mysterious black, floor-less holes
Imploding and devouring…
Scouring  failing stars for flaws.
Gallant planets Them and Us:
Existence by persistence!
Persistence for existence!
PS:
I’ve a theory:
Black holes open endlessly
To start a new infinity -
(Oxymoron- ic-ally).
Planet Us 1.6.2021/#2 1.13.2021 Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II;
Mother Earth .

Got this idea the other day- but only as a title.  Worked on it the past two days. (That was 2017)  
     See if you appreciate its point of view.  Notice that i place it in the collection called Circling Round Egos.
              Giving In
We fight against…
We feel it’s brave.
No matter what the cause
The will to save is strong.
We go along with crowds
Who think alike and think aloud.

The self may or may not be gone;
We like to think in unison,
Fighting for the right 'gainst wrongs.
We even sing fight songs
In the name of right and wrong.

To yield is a second way.
Is it weakness to give in, give way?
It’s often clever - often never.
War means to attack, fight back,
But even Bonaparte gave up his part,
Threw in the towel; weak move but smart.

Giving in to giving way to bowing down to...
Stepping back to take a breather…
Easier, less time-consuming,
Hours left for ruminating.

Friends gossip sipping something sweet.
They’ve all known loss, they've known defeat.
Yet it’s sweet to criticize.
We are a crazy [human] race.

Summed up: the best stress buster
Giving back to life its luster,
And the plan that musters true,  
Is yes in lieu of no: a giving in
To cover most conditions.

Giving In 4.27.2017revised 6.15.2018 Circling Round Egos; Arlene Corwin

Dear reader,
     This is a long one. Though it was written in 1995,  I’m including it because the inexcusable and inhuman Floyd phenomenon      
demands answers of some kind, human beings seeming to have a need to exclude; itself a discreditable phenomenon.
Have patience and read to the end, please.
Arlene            

             Inclusive/Exclusive
 
I heard them talking.
Back and forth they talked about the universal;
Secular society’s exclusion of the concept evil.
Focusing on genocide, race killing pride.
They harkened back to World War Two,
To Pole, gay, Gypsy, Marxist, Jew –
When one mustachioed-crazed face
Decided to **** off a race that never was a race.

“How does it come about, they asked.
-And how can we prevent it?
There was rabbi, priest from West and East.
“How can we **** the killing beast?
Turn killing to a feast and peace?”
They were erudite all right.  Not right, bur erudite.

One said, “We teach the whelps. Education is what helps.”
One said, “we cannot burn the seed. Punish those that do the deed,
Chase the villains, make them bleed;
Justice must be served and seen.”
The cause was man alone.

But where was God, I heard me groan.
The priest and rabbi, smart but green,
-Oh, God was there, but cause was man.
The cause was man?
How can the cause be man when God is absolut-er than
First cause and seed, the first split second all decreed,
All that stems from filling need.
Plainfully clear, it followed as the night the day
That even murdered masses stay
Within the scope of God’s good meaning.
(from which one ears oneself screaming)
If God is, and still they die,
There’s meaning somewhere in the sky
And meaning must be dying’s seeming,
Any other meaning dreaming.
(Let’s let that specific theory by)

Back to rabbi and to priest:
Back and forth they sought solutions.
I could see a key, a yeast
Which, when expanding, chokes pollutions:
Heres the  final codicil:
                            
Leave the club that says “Exclusive”.
Join the club that says “Inclusive.
It’s not easy not to hate,
Include the ‘yids’,
The blacks, the gays; yourself. the kids.
But it’s a gate.
We are geno-of the-cide.

By taking God on this queer ride - or ethics or morality,
A good way to begin Is make a circle drawing in
Someone whose eye you catch; who happens to fall in your patch;
Who chances near, or seeks your ear;
In short, who forms the batch of living skin.
(Include the wretch you are, as well,)
To make a heaven out of hell,
And feed the world with perfect food,
Tell, yell and ring this perfect bell:
Include, include, incude!!
 
Inclusive/Exclusive 5.23.1995 Definitely Didactic; Our Times, Our Culture; Defiant Doggerel; Arlene Nover Corwin  (revised 6.9.2020)

Today I Was Accused…

Today I was accused
Of using too much rhyme;

Of bruising Keats and Shelley…

Is it that my rhymes are smelly - 

Pressed by some unconscious vanity?

Straightforwardly the way I think,
My rhyme in sync-
With evolution and enlargement of unformed idea,
My rhyme an incubus
In *******
With lover genius?
Nover’s genie?

Taking no offense
I had no other license,
Than to search my mind,
Which is like using wind
To cook a meal.

All that I want’s the real deal.
With rhyme my not-so-secret weapon,
One I lean on,
So be it!
There’’ll be no rhyme cremation
Of this norm and form creation.

Today I Was Accused…11.15.2019/revised 2.24.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Nover Corwin

Function of rhyming words:  I don’t remember where I read this, but I surely read it somewhere and took the thought to heart.

“Rhyme partly seems to be enjoyed simply as a repeating pattern that is pleasant to hear. It also serves as a powerful mnemonic device, facilitating memorization. The regular use of tail rhyme helps to mark off the ends of lines, thus clarifying the metrical structure for the listener. As with other poetic techniques, poets use it to suit their own purposes; for example William Shakespeare often used a rhyming couplet to mark off the end of a scene in a play.”

Non-judgmental, self-explanatory,   I just love it!  Sensing A Divine

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

It’s Snowing Gently, But A Lot

It’s snowing gently
But a lot.
Persistently and softly.
Is that not a metaphor
For …something…
An insistence
Whose importance
I can’t know but sense.

It’s the gentleness that strikes me:
A force that doesn’t force, but is.
An element and facet
And an aspect of behaviour
That could be a saviour
To a person’s happiness
And peace of mind.

The thing or things get done
Looking like fun
But with an impact on all things around.

An almost silent path
With not a sound of wrath,
But just a bath of H20
We’re calling snow,
Knowing that the whole will go in time.

I guess I’ve found my metaphor in rhyme.
It’s snowing,
But while snowing going.  
If that’s not an emblem
Of life’s semblance
And a trope
For spirit’s power and hope,
I don’t know what is.

It’s Snowing Gently, But a Lot 2.17.2021 Circling Round NatureII; Nature In & Of Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Being Remembered

How would you like to be remembered?
Do you leave a name unblemished?
It seems to be today’s decor
That it is fame one’s going for:
Instant fame and more, more, more.

Life affirming while you’re living:
Your ambition:
Do you listen?
Does it have humility as spark?
Candidness, the best of trademarks?
Honesty, transparency?
A structure or a stricture?
Does the structure have self-knowledge
And the willingness to say “I’m wrong”?
A part of songs you wish to sow?

Bona fide fame comes slowly. (Pronounced bona fid-ee)
Doesn’t last if it comes fast.
Real work lurks in its background:
Lack of vanity to say you’re ‘so-so’
And indifference to fiasco.

But the trend is chasing marathons,
Traveling to distant lands,
Building ships on sinking sands
In lands where lava sleeps
And water ever creeps
Onto small isles that tremble.
Be remembered.

Be remembered
As the good go-getter for a better
World, the ground
Of future fertile worth
Whose girth is round.

Being Remembered 10. 9.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

You Are Aware

I was thinking of and out and through
A thing I’d like to send to you:
Meditation, contemplation, rumination;
Is it speculating, worrying, deliberation?
No, not really.  
It is something that gives transformation,
Peace and focus,
Which of course, uses the brain,
Uses mind;
Silence of a certain kind.
Observation there,
You are aware.
Mantra, God, an optic point…other aids;
Tools to have as mental base:
Yes, to any/each of these.
Any indices on which to focus;
Any means to give you peace.

You Are Aware 3.16.2021 The Processes:Creative,Thinking,Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
Note: Do keep a dictionary nearby.  There may be words that are new to you.

Just in the middle of editing my next book Definitely Didactic and thought I'd present this thought here.

           Half-Full Glass

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God

The atheist soldier or sailor who, drowning,
Calling for mama, God or simple help,
Have mind-sets identical yelping for help.
Secular, temporal,
Pious and scriptural,  
Chemistry’s at the mysterious base,
Influenced neither by race or by grace.
The mind/brain’s the same when conditions are right,
The fact is that truth is the same, day or night.
Only the names are dissimilar.

Faith is a standpoint, dependent on hope,
Not on piety, dogma, nor doctrinal dope.
Everyone has wishes in one form or other;
Money or status, -isms or power.
Most neither useful nor lasting: a feather!

Faith is invisible, chemical: personal.
Often irrational but somehow functional.
No one knows how, why it works, but it does.
Therefore, it pays to have something to trust;
Something to go to when all’s a big bust.

Grown and mature, you see through illusions,
Knowing the platitudes, maxims and truisms.
Tired and seeing, you seek what is true:
Principles governing metamorphosis -
You’re seeking its purpose.
Change doesn’t fade.  No thing has ‘stayed’.
Sometimes one needs to believe in a God
That can house all of this.

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God 4.1.2019/re-composed 4.1.2021 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Reality; Circling Rond Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sometimes it’s better to look at a writing years after.

     Holding On To Empty Spaces

This body is a scandal.
Hidden clocks we cannot handle:
Agings, dyings out;
Impossible to rise above.
Easy prey for ego-love;
Body, with its rotting ways,
Craving undue notice.

Power-loving beast of burden
Following illusion’s burgeons,
Chasing visions leading nowhere
But to temporary shelters:
Time’s ordeal the ‘real deal’.

Sweltering in breathing shells
That lose their health and too soon fall
From superficial aim & goal
And shrugging off the inner graces,
Chasing after outer-places:
Holding on to empty spaces.

Holding On To Empty Spaces 10.30.2003Birth, Death & In Between; Circling Round Time;
Re-composed 2.20.2021  Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

“Erosion of spiritual values… the underlying cause of the crises that the world is facing today.”
Sister Jayanti

           What We Need

To think, have faith in the material,
The physical, corporeal
Is to believe in things of constant change,
Change which will forever be
Subjected to the ups and downs,
The sprout and rot of growth and death…
Is that a thing we really want?
The body that?  Wishes too?
You get the wish - it comes, it’s through.

Can it be the time’s extremes,
Are the result of dreams
That lead to climaxes, calamities,
Crises and catastrophes,
Crossroads, zero hours
When the powers of destruction are at zenith point,
The ‘thing-steered’ nose all out of joint?

Is this the underlying cause
That fills each soul with nausea?
We know we’re in a dreadful pickle.
Stuck in muck of the all-tangible.
What we need is permanence, the meaningful;
The something, one-thing that can never change.
Something to reverse the de- and disarrangement.
Don’t you think so?
I do.

What We Need 2.2.2021 To The Child Mystic II; Circling Round Reality; Our Times,Our Culture II; Circling Round Everything II; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Hello world! Though written in 1997, how I love this one (Happen to find it while editing “Swedish Book”).

.          Collapsing In On Itself
  
A week-dead pike on local stone wall,
Placed there or dropped by some passing seagull
And ignored; once fresh and full now meagre and dull,
Is almost the same as the day that it came,
But entrails have started to go.
(Are they ‘entrails’? I don’t really know.)
Of course it has innards; the roe, liver gall,
And I’d guess there’s a stomach.
It think it’s a pike - maybe perch, not a haddock!
The thing that’s essential, its cardinal what-ness
Is something that shows now whenever I to pass it.
Everything rotten or heading that way,
Falls in on itself in its terminal rot-ness.

Collapsing In On Itself 8.16.1997/revised and amended 5.13.2019 Swedish Book; Circling Round Nature; Birth, Death & In Between; Nature Of & In Itself; Arlene Nover Corwin

Today’s Lovely Word: Justice

Such a weighty concept: justice.
Simple Latin meaning ‘right’,
And nice to rhyme with ‘trust’,
No single ‘must’ in sight.

Doing what is right
Is to include what’s fair.
But there’s the snag, and there’s the hinder;
Born with ego as we are,
Temperaments and character,
Leanings that go far too far,
It isn’t fair!  
But nor are we.
There it is, the needed discipline
Oft’ hard to learn, to start, to do,
Continuing the whole life through.

Of seven deadly lust-filled sins, wrath is in.
What is not ‘in’ is prejudice and bias.
(Bible didn’t have those words.)
Of course, the “love your neighbour as yourself”
Is not far off the gist and ******
Of training to become all-just.

Today’s Lovely Word:Justice 4.23.2021 Our Times, OurCulture II; Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

[There Are] Things You Can Never Change

The Illumined Poet

Who is he?
Does he exist?
Is he consistent?
What does he see others don’t?
Does he know what others don’t?
Is he he, or can he also be a she?
In these days you have to ask,
For it is ‘in’ to be defender
Of the genders one and all.

Poets stand, some sit in chairs;
While sitting up in bed some stare
Into an inner or an outer space
While letting, waiting, waiting, letting
Ideas come with no thought as to future comings,
Future poem-ings,

Afterwards he/she is empty.
Emptied of all relevance
To theme that took poetic stance,
Metered dance,
Seemed to be an endless well.

A well, it wells up from below.
What does it do?
Flows upward, outward,
Shooting, spewing, spurting, spouting,
Summer-springs that sprout
Ideas, conceptions, thought.

No one knows where all this comes from;
Poet-sage without intention,
Living on without ambition,
Driven by no aspiration,
Only the illumination
Bringing into birth a poem
That some
Will grasp, appreciate,
Others miss or misinterpret:
Know it!
This rare member of the planet:
The illuminated poet!

The Illumined Poet 9.28.2018 Revelations Big & Small; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

You Have Only Yourself

You have
Only yourself to work with;
Bathe, clothe, soothe;
Live in and save.
A self you cannot leave, for
There’s no other
Over which you have a power.

It’s you who breathe,
Must learn to love, forgive -
For you deserve it.
Your achievement
One that chiefly comes intuitively -
Fief, belief that comes from faith,*
Its roots in something beyond earth,
Bequeathed
From some external source,
Its course also discursive,
Non-intrusive yet conclusive.
You only have yourself
Enwreathed with instinct’s highest drive
To do it with
                    and for.
You Have Only Yourself 12.17.2020 Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

fief;  a person's sphere of operation or control.
discursive; proceeding by argument or reasoning rather than by intuition.

Teaching Yoga

Ooh, I can be  brazen, sometimes...

At least it feels that way.

A New Phase Of Awareness
   (Bared For All To View)

I am conscious;
See and hear and all the rest.
I am aware, newly aware
The I am consciousness.
That’s huge!
Not only senses but
The sense behind the senses,
I am sense-ness.  
Consciousness.

As soon as you add suffix -ness
A noun becomes the all-embracing;
Something in itself.

No longer parts divided and connected
But a unitary abstract quite un-nameable;
Sustainable — an ‘it’.
Not’ only ‘quite’, but It.

Oh, the limits of the word!
It is absurd that what you are
Is in reality an It:
Alive, eternal, undivided.
Some deny it, but it’s true.
Consciousness is you.

A New Phase Of Awareness 4.27.2021 I Is Always You Is We;Circling Round Experience;Arlene Nover Corwin

Words To Love: Burgeoning🐝🌲🌿🍃🍄

It is July, year twenty twenty.
Summer sky has not been great.
One often wants what one can’t get.
There has been thunder, lightening,  storm, wimd, rain -
Even hale!  Yet,
Garden and the forest burgeon:
Rhododendrons broadened,
Sprouting unfamiliarly on roadside margins;
Upward, outward, inward, downward;
Grasses verdant, vari-colored,  
All hail to the weather god!

Fruits and bees, the reckoned with, the seasonal
Thinned out, not come as usual;
Normal berries, for example  -
Disappointing!  Very!
Fewer berries.  N’eer a berry.

Yet,
One must admit
This burgeoning is overwhelming;
Branch, bough, shoot, each flabbergasting.
Burgeoning is such a warming, loving, word.
Nature’s silent, secret growing. going on unheard,
Spectacularly self-effacing.

Words to Love: Burgeoning 7.10.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

A bit schmaltz-illy didactic, but so what! It’s what occurred to me this morning and I worked many an hour on it - believe it or not.

   Corruption Of The Heart

Doing Justice To Poetry✍️