My Barometers Are…

That no matter how it looks,
Everything expands till it contracts:
Beings, universes, forms, e’en ‘facts’;
That everything that lives loves life
Through one or other framed belief;
That human beings love themselves,
Have egos, inborn tendencies
Inherited from endless chains
Of genes that either hinder,
Getting in the way
Or manifesting advantageously
In the mind and body;
That energy, regardless of - the good, the bad,
The sane, the mad, the shown, un-shown
Contains within
The opposite and equal influence.
Untold measures to describe the treasure islands
Which reflect the ways to judge existence,
Put to use in everyday experience.

My Barometers Are 3.13.2021 Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

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

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

Happy Easter

There is no master holy day
That beats the Easter holiday.
No fiesta with its vista of eternal life:
The basis of an Easter.

Sister to Passover,
Depth more than a four leaf clover
Where no fluff can dwarf its notion
And no proof but a convention
Grown from Biblical tradition
It is history worth telling;
Worth the celebrating,
Pondering;
Astonishing, confounding:
Jesus’ fall and rise
The most bewildering surprise.

So let us spend a day
To think about eternity
And then be happy
At the possibility
Of love that lives immortally
Happy Easter!

Happy Easter 4.2.2021 Our Times, Our Culture Ii; Arlene Never Corwin

The 'I' Form

Some like it, some do not.
Some avoid it, voiding it
Into the well of meekness, weakness;
Too confessional to speak.
I was one of them,
Sometimes still am.
The ego’s always there with shame.

If the theme is terribly self-biographic,
Graphic, ******…
Then ‘’i’ becomes ’one’, ‘he’ or ‘she’.
Usually, I don’t need privacy
But like to share a message
Writ as poetry,
Assumption being ‘we’
Is always you and me -
Same experiences,
Feelings, senses…
All that differs is the tongue.
Behind it all, one song that’s sung,
Pearls of life strung on one string,
The common gong of simply being.
Let us share the ‘I’ form bravely!
I is always you is we.

The ‘I’ Form 4.4.2021 I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

I Like To Wash The Dishes

Writing From The Place You’re At

If you’re living in the Now,
Defining and refining
With a sense of movement-in-the-present,
Then your writing will become
A mirror of that present,
You a better writing woman/man - yes, person.
That’s a a gift!  A real present!

Moment’s thought may feel too trifling
To put out into the world, but listen!
No thought is so meaningless
As not to hurl into the swirl of word
Poetic brainwaves others have not also shared.

That is why the “I is always you is we.”
The marvel being ‘you’ is always you,
Your writing yours and no one else’s:
You, the content, style, form.
Catch the moment: carpe diem!
As the hundred zillion galaxies do this second,
You’ll expand,
A guarantee long earned, confirmed!

Writing From the Place You’re At 4.13.2021 Definitely Didactic II; I Is Always You Is Me; The Processes: Creative, thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

“I Is Always You Is We.” the title of a one of my collections and coming book.

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

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’

Always writing, these two followed one another in sequence, mind working from places that surprised and tickled.

   Finding Goodness In The Most Unlikely Places

“Finding goodness in the most unlikely places”
Read this phrase and had to face
The fact that friends whose characters I took for granted
Showed and have bestowed the unexpected
Love, respect and qualities unknown and unsuspected
In the most unlikely situations,
Causing my relations with the whole darned world
To tears unfurled
                            the first time in my life.

Changed forever, never to return to sheer
Indifference, judgement or ill will,
Never more to stand aloof,
Just tears of gratitude to verify its proof.

Finding Goodness… 11.29.2019
Love Relationships II; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin


      I Stopped Being Envious

I killed my envy-filled green eye
When I beheld the day to day
Recasting of both face and a_s.
That each one changes not just
Year by future year but now and here.
So, on that day, that very minute
Envy went away to stay.

Smallest waistline, glowing skin,
Intelligence so high it whitens out the sky,
The stars and universe:
Blessings all and also curse:
Best to worse the sadly likeliest.

Round twenty-ish
I was no longer jealous -
Drew each atom to a close.
IQ middling, talents too,
Each one pondered, I felt rosy,
Grati-satsfied and well-to-do.

Lost all envy when I'd learned
That all things change.
I had discerned
Release from chain.
That’s what freedom’s meant to be
For you, for me, for everybody.

There is no competition,
Only similarity and contrast.
No one else is you, and you
Will never be a someone else.
Soothed by sharing, (mostly caring),
Shutting out the envious,
It’s obvious, that you are matchless, unsurpassed -
A one and only without need to be another cast.

I Stopped Being Envious 11.30.2019
Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin

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

Vanities Again, Again

I watched a well known TV show.
The guest was nobody I know.
A young girl whose main aim was fame:
Through daily photoed Instagram.
Spending thousands on the shifting sand
Of makeup, bags, clothes, shoes
For “Followers” from each or any land;
Misguided and delusory!
Pathetic and illusory!.
Poor unskilled child!
Convinced that getting ‘Like’ and ‘Followed’
Have some hallowed worth.
As if a button had inherent love.
Self-starved, she struggled with her girth
Yet drank on weekends for her mirth.
Felt gratified when people called her ‘hot’.
Had not a jot of self insight,
Of who she was, should be, should do
To make a contribution to…
She read no books;
Her prime concern brand names and looks.

For happiness of real success,
She must unlearn those false ideas,
Gain insight into fruitlessness
Self-admiration, haughtiness,
For vanity is profitless,
Its origin the Latin vanus/vanitas:
Pointless, useless
                            ‘emptiness’.  

Vanities Again, Again 9.24.2020 Circling Round Vanities II; Circling Round Experience; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Putting on my lipstick and feeling silly.

As I appreciate the small inner utterances that make for poetry, some may (I hope) appreciate this amusing little poetic speculation.
Fondly, on the second day of 2021
Arlene
PS
If there are words you don’t know the meaning of, just write me.  I know there are many out there for whom English is not a first language.  It’s always good to keep a dictionary handy.
         The ****** Self
Is it in
The eyes, the skin,
The hormones, mind, the veiled nerves,
The attitude or aptitude’s genetic drives?
What is it most that serves
To makes it good, bad;
Person super duper glad?
Do dreams reveal what days congeal,
Conceal with facets still in store
To show you clearly what you are?
Without a doubt
Freud’s ‘outing’ of his insight,
Onslaught on an uptight world,
Was right.  
Perhaps not wholly, but more than a bit.
Postscript:
These small verses,
But a dabbler’s analyses,
Came this caffeinated morning  
Without warning
Like the magic elf that is our ***’s self.
The mornings lift not deft
But even so,
Its gift.

The ****** Self 1.2.2021 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Exerience; Arlene Nover

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

Examine, Chronicle, Explore, Reflect: Your New Mantra

Four words, my mantra new:
Examine, chronicle, reflect, explore!
To do in no particular or special order.
Exercise of which I am a new supporter.
Imprinted somewhere in the brain,
A symbiotic, soft refrain
Which like all songs you sing and love,
Affect behaviour down, above.

Reflect, explore, examine, chronicle!
Manacle the mind, front and behind
To spaces that you cannot feel,
You cannot measure or reveal.
Seal the words, the concentrated curds
Of new and deeper ways of thinking;
Symbiotic interactions living in such close relation,
Benefiting world and nation,
Each sensation in the psyche,
That they strengthen self’s identity.

Make a mantra of the four.
Or find some more that feel right.
Repetition is the requisite
To reaching what’s been painted as
The Highest Insight.

Examine, Chronicle, Explore, Reflect: Your New Mantra ;1.20.2021 Definitely Didactic; Vaguely About Music II; I Is Always You Is We; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Although it may look as if I’m carrying on a one-woman campaign, writing poetry about amputation as I occasionally do, I just want to say that as a recent amputee, having gotten a mysterious sepsis (blood poisoning) and going from a ten fingered person to a three whole, three half fingered person, certain situations that I find myself in set off quirky observations which, as a poet I simply cannot resist setting to meter and rhyme.  

            Shampooing

To those of you who’ve never known
An amputee of any sort -
A few bones short,
Shampooing is, well, interesting,
Challenging, to say the least!
The warming bath with bended knees
The bottle squeezed, the soaping in,
The tender skin on scalp and crown,
Just sitting down!
Each step to get those darned hairs clean.

It takes awhile to go that mile,
But afterwards it’s worth it;
A warming and uplifting gift,
The escapade engaging brain:
A training on a very basic yogic plane.  

Shampooing 11.20.2020 A Sense Of the Ridiculous II;

The phrase came through at a sleepless 3am.  Couldn’t resist, of course.

There is part of a system of thought that says every time you dwell on the thought of people or things you lose sight of your self.  It makes sense because thought, its being an ephemeral, comes in and goes on to another at the speed of lightening. Where is the you in that moment? A you that is essential, the you you want to find out about, go into at will and stay for longer than that lightening.  

     The habit of thinking about people and things disallows that, discourages that, waters down the ability.  Result?   One is spending hours of the day reaching out to an illusion, a passing evaluation, an ever changing object.  Time wasted.

A Swedish Midsummer 2020

Geography the usual;
The place on planet just the same;
The night light full till after midnight,
Daylight’s dawn at one or two
With so few hours in between.

This year then,
A little different.
Last year when
A crowd would meet
To dance and sing and drink and eat
On park or lawn or balconies,
Families and friends to hoopla til a dark
Which almost never comes
Makes the ending for them.

This a deviating year;
Debating and departing from
The customary dancing, prancing,
History may chronicle as Distancing,
Fiascos, blunders, six-feet-unders.
Romance from six feet of space

This midsummer in the North
Coming forth with likenesses
Has, by the laws of nature
Put the  emphasis on differences
Which we, survivors aa a race
Will surely neutralise and chase away
One future day.

A Swedish Midsummer 2020 6.16.2020 Nature 0f & Nature In Reality; Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

How Much We take For Granted

There’s more I can’t do than I can.
With seven fingers amputated,
The only thing I find that’s bettered
Is creative mind, un-fettered
And un-shattered by the principle: mind over matter.
For it’s matter/mind
Refining, re-aligning
By  some all-surpassing intellect.
It’s odd that forces we call God
Set courses new;
Courses brewing in the quiet
While the body riots
In complaint.

So many things to learn to handle:
Twisting, turning, grabbing, holding,
Pushing, pulling, squeezing, folding,
Lifting, mixing, gluing, fixing…
What a list! And what I missed
When there were ten.
How much we take for granted!

How Much We Take For Granted 3.24.2021 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

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

           Half-Full Glass

Don’t Copy Or, Have I Said This One Before?

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


           A Poet’s Rationalisation

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Word Is So Inspiring #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Entire Slowing Down

I re-discovered this a day or two ago and, I must unashamedly admit was altogether and immodestly charmed by it.  So here it is - again.      

            Tipsy

Lumps & Bumps

Wrinkles, lines, ache this, pain that;
And then the lumps, perplexing bumps
From nowhere, showing, growing,
Coming and not going.
Bother!
You think cancer, other
Causes: worry, costs and doctors,
Signs and trends!
Brother!
Will they never end?
These changes downward,
Foul, sour, dour, cowardly?
Unsightly forms informing us
Of beauty’s loss, of songs unsung,
Boss death and wretched other wrongs?
Lumps  and bumps which must mean something;
Nature's drowsing rousing.

Lumps & Bumps 5.29.2016/revised 5.11.2020
Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between 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

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

       From Wakeful Night To Active Day

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

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

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

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



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

I was surprised when this poem showed up this morning, chosen as 'front page picks' on AllPoetry.com, (most popular poetry site in the world? the universe? - I don't know, but who cares). I'd even forgotten I'd written it. But reading it over, it's good! Good and even informative. Have a read. ✍️

"Who ever thought of it as the peninsula it is. Inhabited by native Americans and called Narrioch, a ” land without shadows”, “always in the light”, its beaches facing south and ‘always in the light; a “point” or “corner of the land”. Come 1600’s and it’s Dutch bought for a gun, a blanket and a kettle. Also called Coninen Island, then Coney Hook, then maybe Conyn Eylandt. Maybe even Konah, even Colman after John Coleman, slain by the natives 1609."
Wikipedia
CONEY ISLAND

Coping

The lord of boredom is the mind.
If you can’t find
This bond with mind,
You’ll always seek external aid:
Stimulation from outside.
And with no inner guide
One cannot help but slide
Into displeasure which
No pleasure can assuage.

To cope is not to mope
But increase in one’s scope;
Enduring to the -enth degree.
Enthusiastically adapting the whole time
Through silk or slime,
Change bringing hope
If you can only cope.

What type are you?
The basically dissatisfied,
Always looking for a lot, lot more?
Unhappy, filled with pain, aggrieved?
Reaching, searching for the truth,
Your youth again?
Passive, extrovert, submissive?
Angry maybe, and aggressive?
Do you think it’s all a lie, conspiracy and bluff?
The easy explanation not an ‘if’ but ‘is’  - and stiff;

Qualities of character inept,
Or ones to fix or plain accept;
If knowing who you are’s the aim,
Then play the game.
The start:
To know components of the heart.

Coping 3.28.2021 Circling round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Note: “to know is also to know that you don’t know” - Kent Anderson

We Who Keep Writing

I listen, read and look,
The world around a book.
This simple observation
Stimulation.
To one linguistically inclined,
As Swedes say,
“It lies ‘in the spine” *
Another way of saying,
In the gene or DNA.

This Facebook thing,
The many, many sites that ring,
Communicating, reaching out
To those of us who think and write
In words
Are worlds of benefit and benediction.
So-so intellect and talent
Notwithstanding.

We who carry on,
Persist, keep on
By virtue of some motivation
Indivisible, invisible,
Yet Siamese twin
Are blessed without, blessed from within.
This tiny verse took 15 minutes.

We who Keep Writing 3.28.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
* (for I live in Sweden)

Handicaps

Handicaps: we have them, each and every one of us.
Too busy with the busy-ness to notice,
Till one day life catches up;
Former choices do no longer;
Slurping, supping, sipping wine and caviar.
What you’ve been, no longer are.
Leg, finger, hand-icap:  
Pand-epi-demi-cap.
Imprisoned and aware
In new surprising ways, forced to adapt:  
Perhaps pace slowed, head bowed,
The lapse of time interpreted anew.

Doings take on an insistence you
Ignored all through the years before;
A not-so-secret cue to more-than-woo a state
Wherein resistance is effete,
Clues lord, you servant.

Yes, we have them in the karma.
They may harm.  They have no charm.
They are the permanent new feature,
You, prisoner and creature
Left to farm this new terrain,
Use its fertility to seed again
A life of happiness;
Fruitfulness no less than it was once:
A handicap turned Ponce de Leon.

Handicaps 4.26.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes it’s great fun to write nothing.    

  The Great Debate: Shower Vs Bath
(or 15 minutes with the, worth the pen & paper)

She:
Nothing can compare with
Bathtub filled with
Water’s warmth of H20
A-top an un-warapped body
Draped moistened luxury.
He:
Ah, the freshness of the ******!
It’s too, too much!
Standing under such a pressure pleasure:
So difficult to measure the enjoyment!
She:
But employment of an arm or both
Seems such a waste, the taste of water in the mouth
Unnecessary and uncouth,
You either have to swallow or you spit.
What is the sense of it?
He:
Ah, but freshness has its own
And special feeling and sensation.
Hard to put your finger on.

So it goes…
The great debate is never closed.
No conclusion, no one swayed
Each walks away, their water spray
The one and only means to get self clean -
And that’s okay.

The Great Debate: Shower Vs Bath 4.18.2021 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Deciphering Meanings

Seeing all the photos that we put on Facebook. I found myself wondering why we do it.  Yes, why we do it!  I suppose the primary motive is good old vanity with all its implications.  But more.

     Updated To The Updates

The updates on the you-man race
Are not on Facebook
But on everyday’s experience.
I suspect the stuff we put on Facebook
Is the fluff of vanity,
The stuffing of an ego’s voice,
An ego’s voice which shouts
“Remember me!  I’m here for all to see,
So look!. It’s me on Facebook!

One way or the other,
Here to brook the only-ness of loneliness;
Give solace too,
To other you’s whose anonymity,
Like yours, is reaching out,

Updating, (which I do as well)
Is microscopic in the walls
Of our existence, when
Resistance low,
It needs to show the sides it needs to show,
Albeit photo and/or poetry.

That’s it!  So, know
That it’s attention
To ease solitude and tension,
Reveal the art of us, in us, for us.
The part of us that sits at home;
Updating not just fact but artifact,
A partial of the parcel
That is you.

Updated To The Updates 8.8.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Doing Justice To Poetry✍️

Self-Doubt II

I try to picture you-know-who
Sitting on the ‘john’ or ‘loo’
For really, he is one of us:
Doing what we humans do.
Wondering if he’s ever insecure,
Unsure about what comes to mind,
Understanding that the mind can find
The craziest of thoughts to think.
Myself, I waver,
Do not savour every blink.
And here we watch men of the hour,
Those with power
Giving out their unsound signals,
Posturing from face to fingers;
Accusations, condemnations…
Is there never doubt of thought,
When I, the lowly writing poet
Try to deepen virtues absent, missing parts
While always staying kind at heart,
Well-inclined, well-defined;
Self-understanding melts self-doubt.
To know the two Is good for you,
Of value to the time to come;
By definition, everyone’s.

loo, john; English slang for toilet.
Self-Doubt 10.2.2020/re-composed 1.27.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Ooh, I can be  brazen, sometimes...

The title was a phrase I was attracted to and thought to write a song to.  My poetic self took over and ‘conceived in Paris’ became this instead. A poem dedicated to the person who first used the phrase, Marc Myers, creator of the site Jazz Wax, who was conceived in Paris but born in New York.

Teaching Yoga

Anything can inspire, for example, sitting in bed this morning.

Once again, sitting in the bathtub cogitating

Only As Old As You Feel, True, Untrue?

Platitudinous and overused,
Imposing truths on types
Receptive to the cliche myths
Of age and youth.

I look inside myself,
That self intrinsic to the child I was
Since my first  powers of recall.
The same as when i was a child:
Tendencies, reactions,
Sensitivities and inclinations.

Though I’ve learned,
Values waxed and deepened,
Body aged unhurriedly, steeped  
Continually in time.
This is sage:
Do not think in age,
Absorbing adages!
It is not sage.
Life’s stage consists of phases.

You are quantity
Exposed to change
You are quality:
A gene unvarying, enduring;
Altogether darling.

You are you life through.
Not young, not old,
But gold which stays as is
Forever.

Only As Old As You Feel, True, Untrue? 9.21.2020 Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between III; Circling Round Wrnkes; Arlene Nover Corwin

Passing On Experience

Passing through as in a cloud;
Passing on to all the crowd
By passing out free tickets
Transferred, shared;
Life intention, sentience,
And the Law of - well, Experience.

Passing On Experience 4.6.2021 Life, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

I’m taking the liberty of sending you something just finished,  Motivated first by the thought of Co-vid people (stuck down or not) living in small apartments, forced by necessity to be alone and perhaps going bonkers.  Then, of course, I knew I was speaking to any- everyone - period.
Hot off the press:
     How To Tackle Loneliness

Tackle: such a funny word,
A lovely word, an active word.
Loneliness: a sad, inactive, ‘only’ word
Which smells of isolation,
Friendlessness, abandonment, rejection.
Unalloyed projection
Of a mind not seeing rightly.

All it needs is rectifying;
Taking thoughts from out the air
Or in the head where thoughts are spread.
Rejecting systematically the whirling round,
And casting out their ugly sound;
Lifting hand or leg or ‘***’
To something new albeit ‘dumb’.
It does not matter what you do.
It’s just to shift the thought somehow;
Shake the body, use the eye, eyebrow;
Limbs too are there to help you stay
New focussed, endlessly creative.

You’re not alone when you’re alone.
Make your thoughts a telephone.
Ideas are constant.
Change the coin
With which to launch the motivation -
And the whole becomes a boon
To get your ‘happy’ hormones working.
Happiness is always lurking -
There to make you comfortable.

Loneliness, the thief of solace,
A grief giver, full of malice
Leaves when you create in mind,
Find and form and shape some kind
Of Anything.

Use your senses - all of them:
Eyes, nose, ears, tongue, touch: each limb.
You’ve got a toolbox built within.
You have and are your best companion.
There!  A sound and practical solution
Lies at hand.
How To Tackle Loneliness 6.22.2020 The Processes:Creative,Thinking, Meditative; Definitely Didactic II;Arlene Nover Corwin

The Absolute & Greatest Mystery

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

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

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

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