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

I'm not a nostalgic person. but occasionally I run across an old poem that feels worth putting out there for its universality and perhaps poetic value.  Here is one such:⌚️

I’ve Forgotten…
(Entitlement to those forgotten)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whenever I have nothing To write about, but feel that I’m playing hooky if I write nothing - skulking, as it were, I often write about nature.  In my bed, surrounded by forest, birds who have established their lives in the  insulation under the rooftop and above all windows, I lay there and watched the thick, fine snow floating mindlessly, windlessly  down.  Voila, a title!  Now to find content:

      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

An End To Everything #1

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

I think this I beautiful.

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.”

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 .

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’

This will be a part of my soon to come book Swedish Book.  It's called "Vad Som Helst" or "Anything".

Benda Starr reporting in with the latest news!

        Finally, A Black Hole Captured

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

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.

I like Likes But Favor Comments
(an online reaction dedicated to all writers and all readers)✍,️

Sometimes I write the most serious thought whimsically.  This is one:

    A Terribly Prosaic Poem

Just wrote this:  You know how these little revelation-***-thought-***-wish-hope...come.
    Let Me See [Y]our Plans Completed

I used to pray each morning,
God, please plan my day.”
Now, it’s morn,
And I’ve matured (it seems) since then.
What occurred to me as root,
Not You, non-absolute,
An Ignorance of what comes next,
But - as I do - surmising that it all began,
Was planned at the beginning, and
That all occurs in Law determining
A chain of cause/effect the thing -
Then cause original must bring,
Determined from the very start,
An end, an end to each event,
To each and every incident.

There is no fluke, no bit of luck,
No happenstance, no accidents;
All provide-nce.
Therefore I pray, to start the day
And just to get my head on straight.
(Already planned and known beforehand).

So I say, for my head’s sake,
“Let me see our plans completed”
Though I know it’s all been planned,
One might say programmed
From the start:
The very start,
Of which I am a nano- part.

Let Me See Your Plans Completed 3.3.2018 God Book II; To The Child Mystic II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene 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

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

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.

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

Watching The Advertising World

And so it is...

   July Gone By…Focus August

“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

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

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 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.

You Never Can Tell What Stage You’re At

You cannot tell what stage you’re at.
You simply cannot see it.
Oh, you can compare,
Sometimes aware of highs and lows,
The glows in others and yourself,
But deep inside, where knowledge grows
In secret, by accumulation – there
Where flaws are balanced out,
Leaps are made and hurdles cleared
Through secret routes, unknown
To even he who owns the lot -
There, where they’re first set and graded,
Met then faded out -
It’s there to which there’s no access
And it’s of little use to guess          
What’s going on, while what is going on goes on.  Oh yes,
You think you know yourself;
You see results and where you’ve failed or sailed through:
That’s you alright:  partial you;
A hidden, most potential you.
You never know your stage.
But if you’re very good and kind – a little sage,
You get a glimpse of things to come;
Hints that you’ve removed the ****;
A tiny slice no longer slum,
And just enough to keep you crowing,
The best is to keep on going,
Concentrating on a something
You don’t even know is there;
So elusive that you’d swear
It never was, except for books: saints,
Men and women: claimants –
Just like you – who won.

You Never Can Tell What Stage You’re At 3.23.1995/reworked 4.11.2018 Definitely Didactic;  Arlene Corwin


.

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

Can't help it.  I see what I see!

Inspired by the story of Petra Kormos.

   One Of Forty Thousand

It’s Sweden, 2020.
Population:
A shade over ten million,
Ranking country’s population
By percent of Europe’s calculation
Sweden ranks as ninety-one.

Not many people one might think,
And they’d be right,
                              and yet,
Forty thousand humans yearly,
Life corrupted by a sepsis,
Interrupted  by a virus,
Death an outcome or a nearly…
Limbs that blackened;
Life force slackened:
Source unknown;
And amputation!

I, one of the forty-thousand.
Coma housed, un-rouseable,
Hand  defaced,
Erased forever, their profession.
No appeal or cry for pity.  No confession
Only fact; a plain statistic:
Unemotional, un-egoistic,
‘Forty thousand’ makes it prime;
Time to make the virus traceable,
Follow up the un-erasable,
Taking sepsis off the table.

A task that’s not too much to ask,
As one sits fingerless
At the piano.

One Of Forty Thousand 9.3.2020 Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin
*sepsis| noun [mass noun] Medicine
the presence in tissues of harmful bacteria and their toxins, typically through infection of a wound.

Things One Loves About Facebook

Addictive, non-restrictive;
One can use the pronoun I
In prose or poetry,
Signify love lost, tossed, forced;
Love aflame;
Politics, not use a name,
Just saying  ‘you-know-who’…
A site whose frame is liberal
Without exhorting fibs tall, small.
And most of all,
One gains new friends
From planet’s corners. nation’s ends.  
An always open screen somewhere
Where receptivity awaits to make one cleverer,
Help build the character.
To  FB’s singular transforming site,
A special accolade, salute:
A red pre-Valentines Day heart and tribute!

Things One Loves About Facebook 1.5..2021 The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover 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

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

I Like Beauty
(or beauty for its own sake)  

Is it beauty or a vanity?
To paint the bare face everyday
Almost on wakening.
It feels self-serving in a way,
Yet right and satisfying.
Color, colors, shaping forms,
Mild creations, self-corrections
With no thought of operations.

Would one die without it?
Not a bit!
Months have gone,
The physiognomy anonymous,
No thought to how it looks.
Then one awakes one day
Takes out the brushes, pencils, gloss
Stencils in a brow too thin,
Highlighting skin.
It’s just plain fun - and trains one.

One knows or feels how Rembrandt felt
When melting shadows into forms
For sheer effect,
The end result:
The kind of beauty, drama, potency
To give a clout not caught
Apart from that.
An act of mastery.

So, to proclaim without an ego being blamed:
It’s beauty that one aims at -
Neither  praise nor adoration.
Like the icing on the cake,
Beauty’s pleasure for the sake
Of living, loving  exploration.

I Like Beauty 4.21.2021 Circling Round Vanities II; 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

I Like To Wash The Dishes

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

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

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

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

Same Old Problems

The God Question

Why the papers scientific:
Guidelines; ordering the havoc;
Logic looking yet for more:
What can and is the unexplored.

Take affection’s definition:I see that you have responded and reacted positively to 3 of my poems.  It means we're on the same page.  onderful!
Not an easy one to home in on;
Take theologies:
Fusions of the theories
Of thinkers, mystics, visionaries -
They who've always been - oft’ hidden,
Metaphor their only language.

Multi-universes:
It is said; “My Father’s house has many mansions"
Fine-tuned  functions unlike ours;
Or, is it that they are also tuned to mortal powers?

Devotees of Christian thought
Have rarely sought another’s vision.
God can’t care, He’s always been,
Knows the ropes. Made the ropes!
Not always in accord  with hopes.
That we consider of importance
For what we conciser of importance
Is an insolence, an ignorance Of God’s dispassion -
Absolute’s indifferent nonchalance and essence.

When you seek the ‘infinite’ and ‘ultimate’
Consider what is Absolute:
First Creator, laws of nature;
Forces that don’t disappear.

Always two: the smooth, the friction;
Yin and Yang of every action -
All with heads and tails of coin:
The God debate can never end.
For every foe is also friend.

The God Question 1.12.2015/re-written 2.8.2016/re-written 4.15.2021 God Book II; Circling Round Everything 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

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.

It’s 4:40am wakened, wide awake .  Therein, lie cycles  all thei own - neither nocturnal nor diurnal but somewhere in the middle.  And working on a level of acuteness, phrases, insights, images, I catch hold of one or the other and begin to write…


    To Be Read & Spread

One wants one’s output
To be read & spread: remembered,
Often wondering why the need.
Reflection shows renown to be
Illusory.
It’s quality one wants to share,
The DNA determining
The factor in this factory.

It isn’t air, nor intellected-mind of self,
The body or the pelf.
You’ve learned to know
It’s neither ego
Nor seeds sprouted by conditions,
But a passion to pass on to generations
What was high inside the low, the mediocre.

At long last you’ve found an answer.
One more sensibility
That makes most sense In some abstract and senseless way.
Unexplainable, you’ve tried,
Not knowing why,
This gift of instinct pushing daily.

We copulate to procreate.
The writer's urge is surge enough:
A procreating in creating.
Whew, one’s coughed it up at last.
Laughed because
One’s found an answer in-the-rough.
Hah!

To Be Read & Spread 4.28.2020 the Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

pelf; money