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

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

Everything Is Yin & Yang
(another ode to Facebook)


Another ode in anthem mode:
Each using EffBee for his aim;
A simple sharing of a poem;
A needy soul who aims at fame;
A person specialised in something rare
Who seeks to share his passion for
The oldest car well, everywhere.

The negative and positive;
FB draws the best and worst,
The selfish and the selfless those
Who thirst for what is best
And those who may be *******.
(Just a use, perhaps abuse
Of Poet’s license; please excuse
The rather brutal use of word)
Going on: FB invites a bit of fun;
Emoji’s  icon. Quelle invention!  
Quell design!

As for me and mine,
This facebook is divine.
So I’ll be signing off.
I’ve said enough
Even without one cup coffee.
Signing off with love and warmth.
Signing off.  Goodbye.

Everything Is Yin & Yang 1.24.2021 a Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Doing Justice To Poetry✍️

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’

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

Benda Starr reporting in with the latest news!

        Finally, A Black Hole Captured

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

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

Putting on my lipstick and feeling silly.

Can't stop thinking, can't stop writing. A good sign, I would think. Everything inspires. (It's called creativity)✍️

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.

An Entire Slowing Down

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

I watch and read and, and and...shocked and horrified and helpless.
             World On Fire

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

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

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

Deciphering Meanings

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

Thoughts On A Sunday Morning After Coffee

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

When I’ve nothing to write about, I look at nature and I’m there!  Somewhere the mind binds to this observation which then turns into a meditation or a contemplation.  Below is one such occasion which turned into an opportunity.

       Picking Lingon In The Sun

Sitting on a heather-filled and rugged hill.
Ground abounding in a million lingonberries,
(Simply called in Sweden, lingon)
Weather still, some breeze and sun,
If pleasure is a word for fun,
This is a perfect definition.
Who could want more?
This is Nature in its glory.

Oak standing near
With tiny birches there like weeds.
And I, on knees squeeze in between
To separate the fruit from green
To find  the bitter/sour berry
Growing most prodigiously
Five and six per stem.

Mindful and relaxed,
A wee bit taxing,
Climbing in, out, up
Focussed on each future cup
Of jam-to-be
I cheerily fill up my oblong plastic cup
Short of the top
For fear of dropping my collection.

Once at home
This sweet reflection
Will end up a poem.

Picking Lingon In The Sun 8.24.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

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.

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

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

Sometimes I write a poem and fully satisfied I print it, send it out to Facebook friends and then, a week later catch a glimpse and see weaknesses I'd never have thought of or recognised as being poetic deficiencies.  This being the case, I offer you my just-now revised version of Euphoria.✍️

          Euphoria

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

The Ability To Cope✍️

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

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

One of those not-so-often reflections.
    
When joy leaves, what steps in?
Nature doesn’t love a vacuum -
Almost never leaves a vacuum.
When joy leaves
Rampant listlessness of mind takes over
And a person by the name of Nover is observer.
Paucity so strange and foreign
Doesn’t doesn’t really want that thing - that joyless thing
To put the mind, spine, neck to swing
(As in the concept ‘noose’’).
When shorn or torn from mind-set,
Sleeplessness replacing it,
The active peace hard to get back
Unless one has provided self
With some kind of a silent frame
With any kind of name, (though lame) for comfort -
Times when happiness has left its home inside your heart,
It’s but to wait it out,
To find again the peaceful state
With gentle and unsentimental will
To stillness.

When Joy Leaves 4.9.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
rempant listlessness; an oxymoron

Serious stuff.

Newly re-discovered and re-written with the eye and mind of an 86 year old.

             Gone

It isn’t that I was a beauty -
Ravishing or stunning,
But the young have assets winning
In the limber and the nimble,
In the willowy and flexible;
Ligament and cartilage,
New formed partnerships.
Skipping grace, the ageing seeps into the
Shortened, lengthened, thickened heaps.
Creamy, glossy, high cheekbone
Erased and gone,
Replaced by pressing lines that frown.

Not loss but changes [to the]
Self, our peers, - our generation disappearing.
Knowledge which, though understanding
Is no restful, cheering peace
But fear that meets us with a tear,
With answers which may ne’er come near
But carry on their jeering.
        
It isn’t that I was a beauty.
Looking-glass and date remind me
How much beauty’s in the supple,
“You’re the apple of my eye”, says nature.
Ageing’s wit and not an answer!
Muscle mass, the well-formed ***,
Ratio of nose/lips, waist/hips;,
Elasticity an aching stiffness;
Movement showing signs of stress.
Hostile drooping chin through to neck…
Heck, hopefully, the wick of beauty really comes
When youthful beauty shrinks and runs.

Gone 10.23.2008/110.29.2008/re-written 3.39.2021 Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

Do I sound too radical?  too old fashioned?  Too silly to make the case for abstinence?

Mysteries That Never Cease

There are mysteries that never cease,
Will always be:
Because of, not in spite of.
Look at progress:
Despite progress, we are more at risk than ever.
I fear, not ‘in spite of’, but ‘because of’, progress never
What it seems,
All the reams of information,
New advances, dancing in our eyes and ears
Dependant on who sees or hears,
Every positive a dormant negativeDependent on whose hands it’s in.

Then the secrets of infinity:
What, where, how, why and when;
A mystery most definitely.
And music, art
The part that improvises and creates
Out of a place inscrutable,
Wondrous, wonderful.

To never understand?
Dependant on whose hand it’s in,
Whose talent, aptitude, inborn mind
Is interested at all to find
The answers.

Mysteries That Never Cease 11.21.2019
Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round 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

Once again, sitting in the bathtub cogitating

Once More I Watch

You Need Someone Who Believes In You✍️

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

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