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

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious

How to say this briefly:
Firstly, find words for the inexpressible.
They do exist.
Here is the gist:
Each has components -
Churches, sects and cults, their creeds:
The claim of being chosen.
Pure spirit's -ality doesn’t seem to need
A system woven
Into scripture which professes knowing
What is best for all,
Where if you’re good you rise
And if you’re bad you fall.

The spiritual as an approach to life,
Seems to place the emphases
On unity within the mixture of beliefs;
On peace and joy, and getting these;
Transcendent over time and space
And, most of all,
A sense that you are face to face
With truth about reality,
Its indescribability.
Yet not impossible to give a voice to;
Love that comes, fear that goes!
******, no.   A loving kindness big & small,
Universal, – if you will,
That permeates, recalibrates,
Connecting to an All that’s spirit: All in all.
Practices to help along:
Meditation, psilocybin, prayer and song:
The mystical both caused or opened.
That said, non- theistic preference
Needs to be demystified, a road for genius, dunce.
Not piety, religion, magic, paganism, or god-based,
Not theological nor physical,
But meta-, deeply meaningful,  
Yes mystical!
The core of all.

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

Ambitious People


The author:

Unfulfilled,

Reaching,

Stretching,

Ninety-thousand words the goal.



The singer:

Memorize,

Expand the range,

Prepare and train,

An entertaining, pleasant presence

Liking for the audience.



The painter and photographer:

Eyes that see,

Composition, color shades,

Nuances of every grade.



Who is important -

What and who’s

Significant to only you.



The lawyer, doctor, engineer,

The lab technician, cook, and waiter,

Business man, entrepreneur:



And all:

What’s honest, ethical,

What’s brave and bold,

What’s true for you

And what you think will hold

Forever.

Even when you know it won’t.



Ambitious People 6.4.2016

Our Times, Our Culture II;

Arlene Corwin

Cosmic Coordination

The moment of now can never come again,
Never to be repeated:
A double-sided coin -
Now and not.

To be used, it must be used for what it is –
An irreplaceable
To use up to the hilt;
An instant problem to be solved –
Just then.
A life improvisation.

As for influences,
You don’t need to take them,
You can give from what you are
For you are synchronized with universes -
Yes you are.

And so it is.

Cosmic Coordination 10.30.2016
Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

A Little Deep Thinking

Some lady wrote as seed of creeds:
“All it needs
                  is a little deep thinking”.
A little deep… cannot be little.
Deep is deep, and little little.
One or t’other.

Deep: profound, complex, discerning;
Weighty downward, inward, sound;
Rapt, absorbed, immersed, committed;
Wise, engaged, perceptive, learnéd;
The opposite of mediocre.
No light joker,
But deep thinker (and non-smoker).

Recommended by this poet.
If you really want to know it,
Do not sleep through life and day.
Go deep into the strife or play,
Wakefulness and nightly rest.
Deep will satisfy each, every quest.
Deep is the best of bests of best.
All you need is dee-eep thinking.

A Little Deep Thinking 3.27.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Amputation (the final word)

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

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

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

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

Strong and proud:
Join the crowd!

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

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

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

It Could Happen To You And Probably Has

Step one:
You meet or met;
The Internet.
Not  long ago.
You from somewhere in Kokomo, (that’s Indiana),
Or in Goa, India.
Or goodness knows - it happened anyhow.
Warmth turned to passion,
Fashioned from that crossing passage
Into one another’s lives.
Pair-tners waxing like the moon.

Step two:
The snoring, interruptions,
Mannerisms, quirks, needs, those discussions,
Frame of mind.
You find
Its whole attire tiring.
Time scale of no import,
Both or one
Work out, discover, come to grips :
Passion gone,
And too, the pair-tnership.

Step three:
You fire him or her,
Or he or she fires you
From love that turned into a job.
Although you sob you’ve not been robbed.
It’s fair to say
And not deride
The faults, blemishes on either side,
For condemnation’s not the way.
The plot and play’s scenario
Are all too
Recognizable.

It Could Happen To You And Probably Has 9.26.2016
Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

The Many Words For Miracle

What are the synonyms for miracle?
There must be myriads:
Wonder, mystery and marvel;
Anything above the normal.
Unexplainable, for I was sick: tired, coughing, chesty,
Energy-less,
Had to rest.
That was just yesterday
And three days prior.
Three days later - now                                
There’s power.
By this hour, I’ve
Washed a rug on hands and knees,
De-branched two trees,
Wrote verse
Washed *******,
Socks, a jersey,
Trimmed the roses, bushes pruned,
Going strong, I’m strong - in tune.
Recovery, and I’m a-goggle!
Miracle is what that was!
Silent, gosh darned and mind-boggling
Miracle - and have I mentioned
That I’m grateful
For the days.
Of well-intentioned
Destiny?
So many words for thankful.

The Many Words For Miracle 10.22.2014 revised 7.28.2016
Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

The Disappearance Of The Flora & The Fauna

As usual I watch TV.
Not news but documentary.
“Care and Sustenance of Nature” theme, wherein I learn
The world’s downfall is not the climate, wars or other,
But the disappearance of the fauna, disappearance of the flora.
Population out of hand, we continue in our building,
Take the forests and its bounty.
Must we mutiny?

In the forests are the flora and the fauna:
Insects, mosses, mushrooms, herbs;
All dependent on the flora, all reliant on the fauna.

Population out of hand; swelling daily,
How to build for it more wisely?
Species dying out of hand,
We, the ostriches in sand,
Where lies duty, where lies blame?
Where lies power and restraint?
Who shall act with calm and tact?
I, you, we who lacked the facts?

T has plans to dig the Arctic.
There can be no Noah’s Ark. Bit bores and drills.
Do we need oil?
Fated to be hanging there somewhere in space,
Green, over-green, impure for sure?
Seen from up above, sun-blocked from war?
Submerged in water. What could be:
‘Hell on earth’ no more cliché but nature’s blithe reality.
The Disappearance Of The Flora & The Fauna

12.1.2017 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Nature II; Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Corwin

So Have A Happy Birthday

It is a challenge these days to find ways
To praise and honor birthdays of a man
Who’s lived for seventy and nine decades,
Seen much, done much.  Time’s memory fades,
Almost like dreams you can’t remember.
So the number
Doesn’t really count.
It’s the amount of joyfulness that does.

One more year and you’ll be eighty.
What will I say then when I
Can hardly think of what to say
Now that you’re reaching  seventy and nine?                      
I reason from the handsome man I see before me
That you’re fine.
And though sleep doesn’t stay
The way it did some years ago,
You work (and walk) and play,
And all in all, you and I know
That life is good.  
So put yourself into first gear
To have a pianistic year,
Good intonation and good ear.
Eat your food
With appetite;
Continue making love at night  -
And morn
While thanking God you don’t need ****
To stimulate.  
Actually your life is great,
So have a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

So Have A Happy Birthday 2.8.2017
Birthday Book;
Arlene Corwin

Always In Preparation #2
          (a rather long simplification)

Always in preparation for an interview:
What will I answer? Never know.
- What do I like? do things I do, the way I do?
- Write poetry, play jazz, do yoga?
Body/mind my mental window in my mental interview:
And I must justify it all.
Some germ, some theme begins the whole:
The technical; word hurdles
When I write or sing;
All challenging,
Performing, writing or just doing.

T’ween two covers it’s official;
Everything grist-for-the-mill,
I’ll likely publish ‘til I’m still.
No special motive winks or flirts,
No motive hides behind my skirts -

My ears hear musically,
It all comes naturally, substance counting most;
Not tricks, not formulae, cliché -
If there’s a Corwin idiom
It’s in the DNA.
I work out tunes, -out poetry, -out ******.
The mind works out spontaneously,
I (wherever I is to be found) give in, give form,
Substance from-and-in the frame.

In short, I paint myself into a box
And creep around  
Until some [final] satisfaction binds.
A futile paradox:
To clarify and satisfy
The interview,
But there am I,
Always in preparation.

Always In Preparation 7.6.2014
Pure Nakedness; The Processes: Creative, Thinking,Meditative II; revised 11.21.2017
Arlene Corwin

Today as I read about the vandalizing and the bomb threats I feel, no realize that may be as important as ever.

       I Am Jewish

I read about

An upgrade of the Jewish hate

To say nothing of the Jewish state:

Renewal and revival

That makes the Jew a rival

Present and eternal.


Pressed anew

To say “I am a Jew”

Interned in worlds of other faiths,

Each based

On love

But peopled by

A fractured many

Filled with fractured understanding,

Wear my Star of David,

Feel the coming holidays

With childhood love of coming days,

As always,

Living with those few-ish

Who know also that they’re Jewish,

Forced by some upbringing me,

Living, as I always have in lands where I, minority

Forget, neglect, omit so easily

My true identity:

I am become the Jew I’m born to be.


I Am Jewish 10.17.2016

To The Child Mystic II; Pure Nakedness;

Arlene Corwin

Being Honest

It’s hard.  
Sounds simple, but it’s hard.
It’s brave. It’s subtle.
And you’re scarred and marred.
It is so many things
That dare I write them sans façade
My friends complain:  
Too ****** demanding,
Hard to deal with; so much
Nuance; synonyms abounding.
They want simpleness: the easy way.

Simple, yes, but challenging.
You’ve got to be considerate,
Your character to deal with.
Why ****? Death comes to all.
An honest **** is still a ******.

Why press ideas?
You know that ideas change,
That phases are the germ of life.
It’s hard to stand against temptation,
Vengeance, easy money, vice;
Hard to be right-minded, truthful
Self-restrained, just being nice.

Funny, but
It’s easier to tell the truth
When you begin to show you’re age.
People show respect, in fact,
They think you’re sage.
They’re happy that they’re getting honesty
Straight from the shoulder:
Benefits of growing older.

Old or young or middle life,
We’ve all had problems, woes and strife.
There is an art to being honest
Without cruelty or exploitation,
Without character’s temptation.
Best we start.

Being Honest 4.5.4027
Definitely Didactic; Circling Round Reality;
.Arlene Corwin

You Never Know The Clout You Have

You never know the clout you have,
Clout being a blow or target -
Most of all effect or power
You exert by being you.

Take care! Be careful, scared! Be wary!
Everything you say, you do -
Each word, each vow, an influence.
In circumstance you radiate an ambience
You pray will be benevolent.

You, you
In all you do;
And you have impact.
Make a pact with mental you
To be a kind and, gentle you,
Giving out rewarding vibes,
Enriching, beneficial, fruitful.
You, yourself a scribe imbibing
Influences from abroad,
From world untoward – in discord!

Take some in and turn them ‘round.
You abound in power.
You can be man* of the hour
Just by being who you are.
You can be the lucky star
Of every person you encounter.
So remember!
You ne’er know the clout you have
To save what ever may occur.

* of course woman too!

You Never Know The Clout You Have 4.29.2017
Definitely Didactic; Coffee Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Alice Is In Wonderland



Alice got sick.

A dulling fur – a cancer here and there.

Don’t know how, don’t know why,

(We never know how, why we’ll die).

Bad and sad for doggies

And for those who hold them dear.



The vet urged she be put to sleep -

It had gone far.

It went in seconds. Not a peep

From Alice, just one beat, a bleep

And she was gone;

A little soul taken in hand

By doggy heaven land, a wondrous land.

Alice is in Wonderland.



Alice Is In Wonderland 3.24.2017

Birth, Death & In Between II; Love Relationships II;

Arlene Corwin

Some Kind Of Sadness

I seem to have a mark of sadness
I don’t see when writing.
But when read again,
Plain as the nose upon my face
I see it and I say:
Am I that doleful soul
Whose miles of smiles
Make each day,
An inner and an inner, inner
Spurned when I’m awake?
A Janus or an understand-er of existence,
Real both?  Real or both?
I know-eth not
And do not care.
I’m where I ought to be:
Here always.

Some Kind Of Sadness 6.25.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

I Am Guilty Of All My Failures

I take the blame for all I’ve done;
Own up to all those failures mine;
Failures from:
Naivetể and laziness,
Unworldliness
An focus-less

Yet I’ve managed to fulfill
Some crude achievements,
Accomplishing on intuition:
Not a bad guide, nor a good one.
All sits in the readiness;
Instinct in the readiness,
Prowess in the readiness.

Even if there’d been instruction
I’d have had to wait it out
Until my twenties – eight or seven
When the background synthesized
Into a foreground wise.

Inborn, unshorn weaknesses
That held one back,
In untold ways,

I could say, “***** it!”
Or complete the work
To fight off other frailties;
Develop and maintain
A lively strain
Of concentrative energies,
So that my foibles will be few-er.
Mea culpa!  Mea culpa!
I say, “Do it!”

I Am Guilty Of All My Failures 3.27.2018 Circling Round Egos; Circling Round Energies; I Is Always You Is We;

The Doped Olympics

Why don’t they simply create a new branch
And call it the Doped Olympics?
By the laws of semantics
It soon would come into  language, legitimized:
Youth forgets past.
Soon the word would have lost its original shame,
While the name of the game
Would be guilt-free and blame-free,
And those who would qualify
Could have drug deliverance, muscles defined, bodies divine.
If they dropped dead at forty
At least they’d have entertained millions,
Fulfilled their ambitions,
Made lots of folk rich
And set records untold.
Let those few or many spend hours in training;
Let chemists develop concoctions so new
That the pole-vaulter flies,
The sprinter’s a jaguar,
The shot put is sent into orbits of space,
The long jumper jumps twenty meters
While men become fierce
And the women grow beards,
Which gives all of the chemists new projects to work on.
A yes to the ***** Doped Games.

The Doped Olympics12.2. 2004 revised 1.27.2016re-revised 7.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Happy Birthday, Dear Departed Brother

We weren’t awfully close,
You far away in Hollywood,
I, far, far up north in Sweden.
But our soft sibling emotion
Never dwindled, for
We loved each other dearly,
Maybe more than siblings dwelling near,
And so, each wrinkling year,
When February fifteen comes around
(one day post-Valentine)
It’s effortless to love-propound
Through past and present anodyne
What’s lived no more, consigned
To storied history,
A morning, mourning benediction:

Happy Birthday, brother true.
I’ll always miss you
Just a bit,
Whenever I can think of it –
Like at this moment.

Happy Birthday Dear Departed Brother 2.15.2017
Birthday Book;
Arlene Corwin

The Most Subtle of All: Intention

The start of neurological connection
And the start of action is: intention.  
To add a word and subtle too, is motivation.

Brain knows all.
Its protocol, a transfer at the speed of light,
A puzzle, riddle chased by all, and oh, a miracle
We take for granted all the while
We’re living: doing, with no thought as to intention,
How it comes about as action,
Never thinking that
We ought to, need to meditate -
Not change, but meditate,
Ask, state, repeat and watch.
Not speculate,
But be.  And do.  
And find out who
You are, may be,
And hopefully,
What your intentions are.

The Most Subtle Of All: Intention 11.2.2016
Circling Round Reality;’ Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

This is long, but go through it.  It’s worth it.      it was originally called "Words That Changed Our Lives", being inspired by the  connection between pandemonium and pandemic.  

           Pandemonium

Words that show lives but a tribe:
There to scribe, describe our lives.
Words that come from health or sickness: mind and body:
Prowess, fearless, speechless, endless;
Dangerousness, selfishness, childishness - nothing escapes;
Sowing seeds of mental shapes
That come from mind-to-mouth.

Now’s come the time to learn some new:
Epidemic and Pandemic,
Plus another word to view: Endemic.
Just a few, but whew!
Hoping that it’s not titanic - the Titanic!
Let me help you.

First came epidemics:
Measles, smallpox, influenzas…
How to conquer, name and aim,
How could and could we control the sum?  
Sometimes.  Some.
Coming back to hit us all the same,
But vanquished?  Germs and viruses not dumb -
Survive  anti-biotically (the foe of symbiotically).

Year twenty-twenty,
Epidemic now pandemic,
Plentiful and more than plenty;
Too, too many - far too many.

Struck by the invisible;
Questionable, susceptible,
Humans daring not to touch,
Wondering, asking when will it become too much?
And thus we come to the last word:
Endemic: background sound
Though underground many a year
Alive and well and waiting for…
Pandemonium 5. 14. 2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

pandemonium | ˌpandɪˈməʊnɪəm |
wild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar: there was complete pandemonium—everyone just panicked.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: modern Latin (denoting the place of all demons, in Milton's Paradise Lost), from pan- ‘all’ + Greek daimōn ‘demon’.
pandemic
(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.
an outbreak of a pandemic disease: the results may have been skewed by an influenza pandemic.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Greek pandēmos (from pan ‘all’ + dēmos ‘people’) + -ic
endemic
1 (of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area: complacency is endemic in industry today.
[attributive] (of an area) in which a particular disease is regularly found: the persistence of infection on pastures in endemic areas.
epidemic
1 an epidemic of typhoid: outbreak, plague, scourge, infestation; widespread illness/disease; Medicine pandemic, epizootic; formal recrudescence, boutade.
2 he's a victim of the county's joyriding epidemic: spate, rash, wave, explosion, eruption, outbreak, outburst, flare-up, craze; flood, torrent, burst, blaze, flurry; upsurge, upswing, upturn, increase, growth, rise, mushrooming; rare ebullition, boutade.
adjective
a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time: a flu epidemic.
• a sudden, widespread occurrence of an undesirable phenomenon: an epidemic of violent crime.

Recurring Themes, Recurring Dreams

It’s all projection.

Have you noticed that
From art, to food, to clothing, all
Are cloaked in style
You’ve carried with you for a mile;
A thread in common,
Background shared.

Through life, if you’re aware,
You see the common motif there.
Some dark, dark matter
Smattering the whole of you
And all you do
To permeate each, every hair.

Holding to the non-dogmatic,
Real, empirical, pragmatic
Of each day’s encounter,
Nameless through the daily banter,
What can it be called?
Can one explain an undercurrent so obscured
Without a mind to find it?

Then you see the undetectable:
Theme, variations
That define the line you’ve drawn throughout.  
Back again, again, anew.
In art, in food, in points of view
Recurring themes, recurring dreams
The title running through.

Recurring Themes, Recurring Dreams 11.26.2016
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Tipsy

I was tipsy last night,
Quite enjoyed it.
Drinking just a thimbleful one time a year,
And there was I, a stumblebum, but clear
In head,
Dutifully fulfilling all that needed
To be done.  
A charming, wonderful sensation – fun.
And yet, I thought about my liver.
Will I ever, no, I’ll never
Be a drinker,
I’m too much a thinker
And a Jew.
And if you didn’t know
We Jews are not great drinkers,
Just great thinkers,
Contrite sinners on Yom Kippur
Nobel winners,
Alcohol not in our tribe.
And so, it is not likely I’ll imbibe
Too many jiggers wine or *****;
Too many calories
And I don’t want to lose
My liver’s life too soon –
Or looks, or senses or the boon
Of brain and knowing
Who I am
And who I’m born
To be.

Tipsy 7.1.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Cosmic Coordination #3
(one day further, meter righted, verbs re-chosen ,rhymes clearer, form tightened, economized; made easier to read;
even message and its nuance altered)

Moment now can never come again,
Not poetry, not inspiration;
Angle, viewing - changing. never to be re- a thing,
Moments have a nano-difference,
Must have nano-variation;
Individual, a coin
Two-sided, joined
By now and not…

Moments have no measure,
No more import in the one than t’other –
Value too. Does sitting on the loo
Have more significance than any other thing you do?
Same dance, same chance - with difference.

The instant used for what it is –
An irreplaceable – shall we say, space?
(Let’s call it ‘space) to use with all its use                                      
As product, project, problem solved:
A life improvisation.

Influences, guides that sway -
You need to take them,
(soaking up many ways unawares).  And unaware,
You also guide and shape and sway
From where you are, for you have power,
Synchronized with galaxy and star
And all the spheres that ever were.

Not to sound too know-it-all, sententious, preachy:
That’s the way it is!

Cosmic Coordination #3 12.18.2016
Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

On my way to teaching my lovely yoga class this paradoxical poem:✍️
       We Die When We’re Supposed To

We die when we’re supposed to,
Karma chained in cause/effect.
One eve I lay there,
Sorry, sad and full of fear
When of a sudden, shocked, aware,
The snare of truth, as clear as day,
Told me that we pass away
From causes self-created
From our characters, our choices,
Gene pushed, situation fated…

You know, when you get these flashes,
(call them insights, revelations, mind disclosures)
You can sense veracity’s exposures crashing in
And you’ve no choice
But to believe
What mind and thought receive,
In this case this:
Death comes when it will,
And it is up
To us to give this hidden ‘reasoning’ a whirl
And take the pill
However bad the taste.

We Die When We’re Supposed To 9.18.2012/8.16.2018 Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The CPS or Cordial Praise  Society

We who write, responding kindly,
Are the humble members of
The Cordial Praise Society’s
Appreciation of what others say,
Each in his way, (and naturally, her way as well.)
We do not try to sell ourselves,
And if we’re liked or even loved,
Get or give approval,
We are strengthened to the depths,
Feeling whole.

With no razzmatazz,
Let’s call ourselves the CPS
The Cordial Praise Society
Who push each other to the sky.
Not asking why,
We know it is the best and only thing to do.

The CPS or Cordial Praise Society 10.21.2020 the Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

A Few Short Years Of Grace

Looking at my sagging face,
And thinking about what I saw –
The cheeks, eyelids and sagging jaw,
And postulating what would be
If I had plastic surgery
With what I’ve seen of movie stars,
The tight, creamed skin,
The scars without, the scars within
The thousands spent during and after,
Smoothed out skin deprived of laughter;

Then I see my sagging face,
Know that I’d have some years of grace
Before the sagging showed again.

Folk who know would shrug and say,
“She looks okay!”
Folk who do not know me:
When they meet me would accept me as I am
‘Cause frankly, they don’t give a ****!

What does some years of smooth-skinned grace
Mean to an aging face
That’s changing every second of each minute every day?
I cannot get away from that.  
I’ve tried to hide, slide, glide from aging, lesions, prides illusions.
In conclusion, and for reasons written;
Leaving out the surgery and thoughts of temporary beauty
This old jaw will have to be
Left as it is (a little disappointingly)
And as it is becoming.

A Few Short Years Of Grace 10.13.2016
Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles; Circling Round Vanities II;
Arlene Corwin

Irrational The Terrorist (a follow-up to After A Terror Deed…)

There’s no such thing as ‘non-believer’:
All believe in something.
Family, sky, the Vedic I,
The name ‘non’ – anything misnomer.
Those who slaughter
In the name of heaven, waiting virgins, angels,
Paradise, God knows what else,
Where lion vegetarians
Meet bird and man as ***** friends…
They do no know life’s real ends.
True, misconceived, a pictured or imagined thing
So strong that it gives murdering
A face,
It makes the law-abiding jaundiced,
And, like me, seeing irrationality
In well meant terror dogma-bent
As pure one hundred one percent
Insanity.

Irrational The Terrorist 4.8.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

The Doped Olympics

Why don’t they simply create a new branch
And call it the Doped Olympics?
By the laws of semantics
It soon would come into the language, legitimized:
Youth forgets past.
Soon the word would have lost its original shame,
While the name of the game
Would be guilt-free and blame-free
Free, and those who would qualify
Could have drug freedom, build muscles defined,
And have bodies divine.
If they dropped dead at forty
At least they’d have entertained millions,
Fulfilled their ambitions,
Made lots of folk rich
And set records untold.
Let those few or those many spend hours in training;
Let chemists develop concoctions so new
That the pole-vaulter flies,
And the sprinter’s a jaguar,
The shot put is sent into orbits of space,
The long jumper jumps twenty meters
While men become fierce
And the women grow beards,
Which gives all of the chemists new projects to work on.
A yes to the ***** Doped Games.

The Doped Olympics12.2. 2004 revised 1.27.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Watching The Signs With Sighs

No journalist, I –
No Instagramer, Twitterer,
No any out-in-worlder;
Only poet, intellect,
A heart
That tries not to be sentimental,
Hooked upon emotion –
So, and too misleading, to mis-reading,
Impulse and projection
Of our egotistic needs.
Yet,
One cannot
Resist it all:
The evil of it all,
Coming, going, fooling one
Into believing
That a calm will always be.

Last night a ventured coup in Turkey,
Night before, Bastille Day in Nice:
Terror, violence, crushed, the try
At overthrow!
I just don’t know –
I’m speechless, but confess
I must write something, being helpless too.  
To cry and yelp
Is not to help.  

I’m here, on paper writ.
That’s it.

Watching The Signs With Sighs 7.16.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Birth, Death & In Between II; War Book II;
Arlene Corwin

God Has A Plan

God has a plan.
A plan?
What does it mean?
And what is God?
Not meaning to be mean,
I want to take in
Them’s that do and them’s that don’t
Believe or doubt.

If followed to the end,
All roads lead home to Rome.
Good-natured, good humored,
Dastard, *******,
Substandard, no standard
Which means bad, good and all the world.

The plan, a plan
Is interesting indeed.
To analyze, interpret, give word to,
For we need
A word to read, be heard,
To take into the heart and head.

If you are a keen observer
Of the concrete and empirical,
You see that things have patterns,
(for example, thought and matter).
Post- and pre-  the pattern makes it lyrical.
(That for fun – the main thing is the plan.)

Laws to measure, near and clear,
Self-evident, plain as the nose upon your face.
(Water seeks the lowest space).
Laws unclear, obscure, inferred,
Laws that find no place in science.

Plan, the God adored - is Law;
Door short of adoration.
There’s nothing wrong
With seeing through those eyes,
To please
Those on the border
Of belief and dis-
                           belief.

God Has A Plan 3.30.2017
God Book II; Circling Round Science II; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Pleasures Of A Low *** Drive

Low *** drive,
No *** drive,
Enjoying it,
The yearning, pining, longing gone,
Not missing it a bit.
Distracting thoughts,
One-sided thoughts,
Dissipated into thin, thin air,
Scattered and dispelled God-knows-where.
Who in heaven or hell cares?
Like losing fetters
That bound up mind, heart
(and other parts) for years.
What a delight
To have hormonal chains
Evaporate
All by themselves, fording
Oceans, seas and rivers
Of their own accord
To come to rest
Inside a calm and loving breast
That doesn’t give a hoot
About
A *****.

Pleasures of A Low *** Drive 1.21.2017
Circling Round Eros II; Circling Round Aging;
Arlene Corwin

My Yoga Girls

My yoga girls are over fifty;
Nifty, flexible and strong.
They’ll live a long, long life, I’m sure,
All striving to discover who they are,
Where, what their star,
Their own par-
                      ticular
And special star.

They’re wonderful, their aim my aim.
My yoga girls are reaching
And a reason for my teaching,
It so satisfying and exciting,
Dare I say delighting
And delightful.

We don’t bother with the Sanskrit names,
A game I used to be involved in.
It is yoga in the everyday,
With tools around to play around with
Everywhere, even while watching Wednesday’s matinee.

Table, chair, each surface in the house:
Tub, floor, door, bed -
No jot can stop the focus
For a body use:
All excuses to expand the head,  
Find mind in muscle, skin and bone,
Synapse, neuron, hormone.
All alive and full of jive.

When I speak of yoga,
My technique and yoga,
And my little clique of yoga girls
Nothing makes me happier.

My Yoga Girls 3.4.2017
Circling Round Baths II; Circling Round Yoga II; Circling Round Woman II;
Arlene Corwin

It Never Lasts

TV ad:
A girl with gorgeous legs
Steps from a gorgeous car,
The gorgeous car the star.

The gorgeous car will rust one day;
The gorgeous leg change, decay,
The shifting muscles waste away.
It never lasts.
The leg, the car.
The gorgeous things we long for.

But bad things too -
They go also, so
Don’t despair.
The hair that falls from top of head
Will start to sprout from parts instead.
The rusty car - the modern-est
Will sadly or indifferently turn into rust,
Crushed, turned into plate,
To use, become a roller-skate.
Jaguar, Rolls, Mercedes Benz,
Converted, crushed, a concentrate
Become the answer to a cancer.

Nothing lasts.  It simply changes
As each atoms strangely dances  
To a different tune.
Loony as it sounds,
To quote a song I’ve often sung,
“It all goes round and round.”

It Never Lasts 2.19.2021A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Seymour Phillip Hoffman: The World Is Crying For You

If he’d known
The world would mourn his passing,
Would he have overdosed on ******?
How much self-love does it take
To break the habit?
Would you grab it, if you could?
I think I would.
Even kids and wife
Can’t make that change in life:
The skid, the slide,
The gliding down and down
And even more…
Until you’re on the floor,
A needle in your arm,
Unconscious of your heart’s alarm
Whispering “Stop
– or else your time is up!”

SPH, you never knew
They’d mourn your passing
As they’re doing.  
That it would cry: the bylines, headlines
Sounding, bounding, ‘round the world in living print.
If you’d been more intuitive, more self in-touch, less self-indulgent,
Drugs might have been out-of
Thought and need, thought and greed, but…
Habit feeds on thought
And you were caught.  
And so,
We throw
No stones at windows,
Even if and though
We know the world will not cry at our passing.
We’ll mourn
And learn.

Seymour Phillip Hoffman: The World Is Crying For You 2.3.2014
Special People, Special Occasions; Small Stories Book; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin
  



https://arlenecorwinpoetry.com/2017/02/03/seymour-phillip-hoffman-the-world-is-crying-for-you/

I Like Looking Like A Boy

I like looking like a boy.
Those massive locks
That locked in looks
From boys and men –
Well, that was then
And now is now.

I’ve thrown out needs
And taken in
Convenience, suitability
Which looks as nice - e’en twice as nice
To those bystanders’ gawking shoulders
(Appeal’s molder in the eyes
Of the beholder),

Now it’s time for short and neat,
Just as cute
When coexisting with a sweet,
Kind, loving nature;
Character,
Persona’s self charisma
Which as hypnotic, gives off honey’s own melisma,
Charm’s attraction which,
If used correctly
Does more good
Than all the ringlets ever could.
a group of notes sung to one syllable of text.

I Like Looking Like A Boy 11.24.2016
Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles; Circling Round Vanities II;Circling Round Woman II;
Arlene Corwin

Making Waffles In The Living Room #2
(a day in the life of an eccentric) improved version

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

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

She grabs a stool
And drags it to the living room.
Step one.
Carrying the still cold iron
Without fear of burn, she sets it
On the stool and plugs it in.
Old appliance, it goes on,
No On Off switch for use therein.
Step two.
Bearing big bowl brim-filled with batter,
Setting it with yogic balance
On said stool and splatter free, where it
Sits snugly on stool step,
Fitting snugly into step,
Spoon in hand, she spoons the batter
Spatter-free onto the iron piping hot;
Shuts the top and starts to wait.
One, two, three and on to plate,
All while watching Sunday’s fav’rite
Sunday program, Sunday film.
What subject for a poem!
Happy that there’s no one home
                                 to say a thing.
Fifteen waffles later,
Piled high and fully sated,
Not in tummy, but in mind -
Iron back in place
No drop or drip to waste,
And no one is the wiser.

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

Making Waffles In The Living Room 3.20.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

Trying To Stay Woman

I wouldn’t call it vanity,
More nature of proclivity,
Its natural routine:
We’ll call it femininity.
Showing up one day: testosterone, whisker stiff,
Non-specific, un-terrific.  
Something foreign taking over,
Over which you’ve no control;
Identity’s uncertainty,
The struggle to stay womanly
Without looking transves-*****:
Trying to stay woman.

(original version found 7.22.2016)
I wouldn’t call it vanity
(though Augustine might).
More proclivity’s routine: a femininity.
Who can ignore the whiskers stiff,
Testosterone’s attack,
The fact that something foreign’s taken over,
Over which you’re no control – a Janus head,
Identity an ambiguity.
The struggle to stay woman
Without looking like a transvestite.

Trying To Stay Woman 2.16.2014/10.25.2014/revised7.22.2016
Circling Round Woman II; Circling Round Vanities II;
Arlene Corwin

Last Of The Season

So trifling –
Going out and berry-picking.
Then at once your eyes pick out
What mind does not.
Fruits few, and you’ve
A doubled effort,
Legs now filled with lactic acid
For the berries are so separate, so far apart
And so far spread that you’ve a stretch
To pick one cluster
And an equal mental strength
To muster.

Berries big but water-filled,
You fill your pail with ease and skill
Glad that you own much ground
And have such land to walk around.
You know that you have filed your last
Holes, hills and hindrances regardless.

Stumbling – but it’s spongy,
Falling – but it’s mossy,
You’ve succeeded,
Your success half-litered and not needed;
You’ve already liters lidded.

Temperature about to drop
Already showing signs of dipping,
Wind is up
And there is no conclusive feeling;
Berries that are season’s last!

You hope you’ll be alive and kicking
Next year when it’s time for picking,
Now that picking time seems past.

Last Of The Season 9.2.2016
Circling Round Nature II; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

The Land Of Make Believe

The land of make believe
Is all around and we’re ****** in.
TV, films, vampire and villain –
We are sold and they’ve got hold;
Female and male, young and old.

Our dreams are mares of night and fright
And flight we cannot take.
The make believe tears at our inners,
Thoughts and feelings not expressed
Confirming our worst fears.

No rhyme or meter,
Beat or pulse can make it better.
Make believe cannot relieve
The state of jitters fettered by
Illusion.

The Land Of Make Believe 9.1.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Guilt & Shame, Exhaustion, Doubts & Failure

I’m capable of grief, regret and feeling sad.
But is that guilt? And is guilt bad?
Knowledge that the one responsible is you,
However caused:
From innocence or ignorance,
Naiveté, unworldliness,
The mess created to put other(s) in a stew.
Perhaps it is.

In the stillness of decision,
From a willingness and will,
Rejecting guilt, dismissing shame,
Taking culpability in name of karma,
(though I’d never harm a
                                     fly on purpose),
If I’ve done a something to a someone,
I will have to pay back someone sometime,
Try to form and glue a future, integrated, sutured me,
New belonging and identity;
Acquiring a philosophy to lean on:
A new frame, new name, rules of the game
Ameliorating guilt and shame.

They write about this all the time
Have done it since the start of
Any kind of written art -
In prose, in picture and in rhyme
In life, in death, with every breath,
Mistakes corrected to reach truth
Uncovered and un-smothered,
Reaching out that truth to other.

Through the spittle,
Perhaps victual
Of the title
I reach out to you.

Guilt & Shame, Exhaustion, Doubts & Failure 5.7.2017
Circling Round Egos; Nature Of & In Reality; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Sitting Outside A Day In May  
      
I find myself not only wondering [but]
Thirsting, needing to know when and how they died, [but]
Thoughts or suffering or not: in short,
The state before and during…

I observe a skin that’s wrinkling,
Drying out and shrinking,
Hear and spy a bird in tree,
See the freshness, spring’s new growth,
The only thing I really see is death, a passing.

I allow myself my breaths,
The moods, desires -
All that goes along,
Forgetting for the most part.

Deep down I see the buds of parting
And an emptiness because
I have no answers.
All that I can do is wait and act and meditate
As if life equaled all time-in-the-world.

Every year in spring
I find I’m writing,
Charting age unconsciously,
Literally marking time.

Not sad, not glad but emptier
Than years before,
(or maybe more).
Noticing, acknowledging a substance;
The substantial underlying all the grandeur.

Sitting Outside A Day In May 5.21.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

Watching The Signs Of Aging

Watching the signs of aging;
Ultimately,
Finally
An end.
Notice, I don’t say THE end.

Not a film, a flimsy bit of flimflam,
A clouded artificiality, life imitated, intimated.
As stated:
A downgrading: witless and insensate,
Thinning at the temples,
Eyebrow hairs a crazy zigzag;
Tummy more rotund and round;
Fingers, which, however trained
No longer want to grasp or grip.
Compression of the whole foundation
Underscore the downward trip.

Aging signals watched with care –
Obviously there!  Involuntary!
Glasses that you never needed;
Tender spots you never heeded.
Fragile scenes that make you weep.
Couplets which you once thought cheap
Resorted to, which you now keep.

Compensations: pensions, patience;
Many words that end in –pence
Because, and just because
All signs become a Santa Claus:
Signs of good –
That is, when you are in the mood.
Stiff fingers finding newer ways to play piano, open jars,
The mental auto-search a galaxy of syndrome-stars
Bursting unused.

No longer worrying ‘bout standards,
You’ve your own.  
No need to join
The middling crowd,
The mediocre: in reality, the herd.
Small ambitions,
Minimized conditions
All good and fine, but still
Signs of aging ultimately will
Win out.

Watching The Signs Of Aging 12.5.2016
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; Bath Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Eccentricity Isn’t Craziness, It’s Daring

Eccentricity isn ‘t craziness, it’s daring
To the -enth degree:
A caring not what they decree,
Not caring what they think of me.
The unconventional disarming,
Often charming -
What is normal?
Living life like all the rest,
I guess accepting colorlessness.

Planets are eccentric
And the sun’s just doing fine.
It shines on planetary quirks,              
Sustains the quirk so that it works.  
So,
We too can be a sun;
No planet going round,
No moon, but one
Unusual, bright son-of-a gun                            
Who does his ‘thing’ because it is
The only thing that makes things run,
The only thing that makes life fun

The misfit may not be a genius,
May be middling or bizarre.
Having said that, I give honor
To the one who does his thing
Since he sees through
The illusion, the delusion, the chimère .            
Eccentricity Isn’t Craziness…9.3.2015 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; revised/ 9.30.2018 Arlene Nover Corwin

I’ll Never Be A Virtuoso
(Notes from a Piano Playing/Singer/Poet)

I’ll never be a virtuoso.
Sure as I’m an expert on
My name, my palm – I know it.
So I ponder as I listen to
Michel Petrucciani on piano,
Joe Pass on guitar,
Wayne Shorter on the tenor -
Am I any less an artist sans finesse
If runs, uneven, coarse run out into the sand?
Of course not.
Never to become a virtuoso is my lot.

But I’ve a lot that’s going for me:
Tempos, energy,
Out-coming spontaneity,
Ongoing creativity, ingoing spirit,
And an awfully cheerful personality;
Gifts and graces I don’t even know about,
Waiting to come out – or out.

Noel Coward wrote: ‘the talent to amuse’....
Perhaps I use that talent,
And there’s nothing wrong with that.

My notes are high while not the highest,
Vocabulary not extensive,
Not the most imaginative;
IQ slightly more superior than Pooh’s:
Who cares?
(That’s not a question but an exclamation).
Never virtuoso, I shall be the one
Who wears her brain upon her sleeve,
Her heart her slave.

Somewhat below, above so-so,
I know I’ll never be a virtuoso.
I can live with that.

I’ll Never Be A Virtuoso 5.21.2014 Vaguely About Music II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

Do You Feel Loved?

It may be the essential – feeling loved:
The need that breeds endeavor.
Genes count, nature/nurture too,
Of course they do.  
But you?
How are you shaped on other fronts?
On every inner front that counts?

Upward-striving, brave, risk-taking?
Anti- any thought of faking?
Thin-skinned, concrete or faith based?
Seeing all as interfaced?

There is no shield to life or love,
Each quality a chance, an option;
Course of action,
Possibility if let.

Meeting, greeting all you get,
And every action a solution;
Taking love, rebuff – it all,
Direction never faltering.

In each action there exists
A universe of rules to choose from.
You suffused with
Feelings of
Concern and tenderness and feeling love(d).

Do You Feel Loved?  9.3.2016
I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

Irma

I wish I were a sorceress.
I’m surely not a scientist.
Just a reader
Of the leaders in the news.
North Korea, Harvey, rockets
Boston Red Sox in the dockets
Charged with using Apple watches to steal signs.
Violence, hurricanes,
Cheating: Why?
This is too, too crazy.
Are these phases
Showing us,
Going towards
A monster breakdown?
Skirmishes
To Irma!

Flesh will go.  
Insect, bird, yes, every minnow.
Families child-less, widowed;
Dis-endowed the moneyed crowd,
Castle, mansion, slum will go.
Marshes all will overflow.
(and we thought Bangladesh was low)
The planet’s being bashed,
Yet there are people who cash in on it.

Prayer will never be the answer.
Cancer from our own behavior.
Karma’s germ:
Now it’s Irma.

Irma 9.6.2017
Our Times, Out Culture II; Circling Round Nature II;
Arlene Corwin

Coming Down To Earth

If you’re famous,
There will always be a someone
Who has never heard or seen a picture
Of the likes of you;
Not seen your picture,
Doesn’t have the least idea
Who, what you are
Or what you stand for.

Doesn’t that scoot little you right down
To terra firma?
Started this in two fourteen.
Found it on a teeny hidden-somewhere-scrap.
It’s two eighteen: I feel the same as.
(rhymes with famous – see line 1)
Poet’s freedom once again,’’’
I can’t resist.
Might have been comedienne,
But then,
It’s not my calling.)

Anyway,
It does become one
(rhymes with someone -see line 2)
To come down to planet earth
And stick to anonymity.

Do your job,
Stick to your your day.
Things are working out your way
Without you knowing
What they’re doing.
Let the winds of fate and karma
Make the lack of show your army.

Coming Down To Earth 3.1.2018 Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic: Arlene Corwin

Even And All The Time

God is giving out
Evenly and all the time.

Evenly and all the time
Through Law and laws,
A clout, a shout, no hanging about;
Efficient, effective and quick.

A seeming quirk that never quits:
The nature of God,
Nature of God,
An Absolute absolutely.

Even And All The Time 3.18.2017
God Book II;
Arlene Corwin
Continuation…
      For Those Who Can’t Or Won’t

For those who can’t or won’t believe…
Refusal, aptitudinal deficiency;
A lack of interest or an inability
To think it through
And come to That conclusion.
I look up to all,
Roads leading in the end to Rome,
The roaming in us all.

For Those Who Can’t Or Won’t 3.18.2017
God Book II;
Arlene Corwin

I Can Write But I Can’t Speak

I can write but I can’t speak.
It’s as if God says,
“You have a message.  Write the words.
I’ll give written words a glaze,
But eloquence that can be heard’s
Off limits, for I slow you down
For honesty, integrity:
To **** the vanity you’ve sown.
I’ll make you stumble, clumsy, dumb,
Slow-thinking, witless,
Sounding somewhat girlish.
I’ve obscured your verbal self
So that you can’t impress.
I keep you in the house
So you must guess
What is and what is not success.

Left there to stammer,
Lose my language;
Syntax, grammar
In a sandwich
Of aphasic doublethink,
The phrases weak,
Technique oblique,
My karma manifestly leaking,
Left to do my dharmic seeking,
(Swim or sink)
Through scribbled, scratched and silent ink.

I Can Write But I Can’t Speak 2.11.2003