Thinking Clearly

I’m simply trying
To think clearly,
Times and destiny against me.

Not alone, it is we all.
A world of digits and addictions,
New temptations:
‘Lead me not into temptation…’.

Tiny hippocampus shrinking even more than ever,
It’s an effort,
I admit.
A part of words, a part of worlds
Inside a frame that gilds the lily,
Curls around reality
Like smoke from chimney.

Headlines chronically bad,
Chronicles of planetary sadness –
World of digits,
World on fire,
World that cultivates desire,
It is all the harder to think clearly
And sincerely:
Ergo, I
Am trying as a consequence,
To change the sequence
And think plainly, deeply,
Patently, indubitably
Clearly.

Thinking Clearly 6.18.2017
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II: Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

It's really about ways to develop.  Or rather, the Way among ways.  Or, ways to The Way.  There's a word I've always been fond of.  It's 'ineffable'.  It means many things, but it really means beyond description.  That's what all this stuff is.  One is always making a stab at it, but that's it.
      
      A ******* Of The Present

A ******* of the present -
It is thought?
Perhaps.
And yet you have to use thought
To divest yourself of thought
(at least to start with).
Riddle; paradox; conundrum:
How to solve it?
Krishnamurti, (clever man)
Used verbs like ‘carve the brain’
‘Scoop out’, ‘uproot’, and ‘empty’, aimed
At silencing a brain that’s interfered with by:
‘Ambitions, greed, stupidities, & vanities’.
All the same,
He never tells you How
He only tells you That.
Corwin (not-so-clever girl) says,
It’s the Now and only Now
That is the What and is the How;
The instrument, the what-to-do
That only you
Can find
Inside that mind
                               of yours.

Focus on a body part,
Your spleen, your heart
A word repeated,
On your breathing in and out.
On God, a saint,
If that’s your bent.

Focus, watch, come back to Now
When sidetracked,
Drift away or stray.                                                            
The only entrance back is Now.

I’m limited, I know –
But it’s a start with which
To scratch that wandering and misleading itch
Of wishing, longing, reminiscing,
Guilt and backward/forward thinking;
Start by which
To squelch & wash away the errors, launch your niche
Your cubbyhole, your branch…

I promise you, you won’t go wrong.

A ******* Of The Present 12.29.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative 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

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

Energy The Treasury

If someone asked me what would be
The perfect present
I would answer in a wink, without a think:
Energy!
And probably
Add
Peace inside
So I can ride out tough spots,
Tragic phases when they come,
For come they do as surely as
My name is You.
But this you have to know also:
They go
And something takes their place.

Just the same, old chummy peace
Craves energy to be released.
When Mr E goes into hibernation
Taking toll on all relations,
I retreat, wait and relax,
Force a hope that it comes back,
Charging up my back-tery.
A temple of potential, energy!

I’ve written poetry,
I’ve called for, chronicled,
Describing, naming, yelling, telling for,
It is the germ of wholeness.

Energy The Treasury 7.13.2016
Circling Round Energy;
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

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

Selfies & The (Selfish) Need

Rembrandt painted hundreds in one medium or t’other.
Thanks to photo’s techno-grams
Selfies of all kinds abound,
Home paintboxes thick on the ground
Which begs the question:
Exploration or self-love?
Motives passive and elusive, definitely inconclusive,
Probably a votive to self-love;
The selfie shows its needs up front.
Pretext for one’s vanity, its insecurity.

Then there’s the blog:
A kind of selfie, yes?
There to impress via modernity’s express
A world you hope
Is waiting for your scoop,
Your dope, your ****.

When you’ve seen a glut of bodies
Photo-shopped and chopped to please,
Is there more you need to see?
Or is it true desire breeds desire
And that fact a warning dire?

Impudently, imprudently
Continuing until we rue the days that bluntly
Lead us nowhere in particular
But to the usual, predictable, familiar wrinkling
And the loss of beauty’s pull.

Selfies & The (Selfish) Need 7.5.2017
Circling Round Vanities II;
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

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Scriptural

How to say this briefly:
How to find words for the inexpressible.
They exist.
Here is the gist:
Components - churches, sects, cults,creeds:
The claim of being chosen.
Inner spirit doesn’t need a system woven
Into scripture claiming knowing
What is best for all.
One wherein if you’re good you rise
And if you’re bad you fall.

The faith-based places emphases
On unity of life within the mixture of belief;
Consensus, peace and joy, and getting these;
Transcendent over time and space,
The sense that you are face to face
With truth above reality,
Its indescribability.

Not impossible to voice
With Love that comes, fear that goes!
******, no, more loving kindness big & small,
Universal, if you will.
Permeating, calibrating,
Affixing to an All that’s spirit: all in all.

Practices to help along:
Meditation, psilocybin, prayer and song.
The non- theistic preference
Needs to be demystified,
With road for genius or dunce.
Not piety, religion, magic, paganism, or god-based;
Theological or physical,
But meta-, deeply meaningful,  
Yes mystical:
The core of all.

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Scriptural 4.4.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

The Simplest Of Poems

Everyone is born
With their own
Destiny.
Don’t mourn,
Forlorn and shorn
Of trust.
Inheritance and circumstance
Does what it must,
There being no coincidence.
Stay on the fence
Of faith;
Youth’s health and breath,
Wealth’s stealth and death
Will have its ways.
There being almost nothing more to say:
Let intuition guide your days –
It is the easiest of ways.

The Simplest Of Poems 9.9.2017
Definitely Didactic; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

What I’d Like?
      (my not-so-secret heart)

You know what I’d like?
To be a part of your day’s reading;
Play a role in all your thinking;
Though it sounds distinctly crazy -
All the households that abound.

How to get to hearts and minds
Like Shakespeare or da Vinci.
Inch my way
To dreams behind each word I say -
A theme, which may take decades to bear fruit,
Take more than decades to bear fruit.

I’d like to open doors, but also keep old gold.
Create a Corwin vogue perhaps
From hunches munched on,
Thoughts thought through with vigor;
Transform half a planet - be a part of it:
A part that lasts.

You Know What I’d Like 6.27.2016
Circling Round Egos; Circling Round Vanities II; Pure Nakedness; Our Times, Our Culture  II;
Arlene Corwin

A/The/My Way (redone)

I never knew I had a ‘way’.
And still it shows up day by day
Laws but felt, themes unmeant;
Through sudden fountains of content;
Through many offshoots but one road,
No signposts to direct or goad.
Still it is:
A kiss of fate though non-insistent,
Usually
An accident and serendipitous.

And because, and just because it is a whisper
I’ve no choice
But to
Tune into
And obey,
Swaying to its hinted push,
The glint of pressure
Nothing but a pure, faint sureness
And a pleasure.    
            
Minutes past I ate three plastic plates of pasta.
Forgive this frilly, dilly of a joke.
I can be such a silly yokel
With punch/pun-ny lines that hit my funny bone(s).

Now I sit with pen in hand
On my verandah, in the wind,
Thankful for not understanding
Karma’s muted law un-grand,
Inscrutable but suitable
To me alone - one on her own
Within the actions and concerns.

A/The/My Way 8.6.2017
Pure Nakedness; Revelations Big & Small; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin

Who Wouldn’t Mind Being Remembered?

Who wouldn’t mind being remembered?
It’s not the same as wanting fame -
Naiveté’s vanity its other name.

Who wouldn’t mind some impact?
An itch to reach out
Maybe teach, knowing one knows so little –
Naught at all – We are so small.

But art is there,
And impulse wants from within wants out,
Shouts quietly with word
When you yourself have disappeared.

Who Wouldn’t Mind Being Remembered? 8.16.2017
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

Lumps & Bumps

There are wrinkles, lines,
Osteo- this, osteo- that,
And then the bumps -
Perplexing lumps
From nowhere,
Showing up and growing,
Coming and not going.
Bother!
You think cancer, other
Causes and annoyances:
Worry, costs and doctors.
Signs and trends!
Oh, brother,
Will they never end -
These changes downward foul and fetid,
Sour, dour, cowardly?
Unsightly forms
Informing us
Of beauty’s loss, songs unsung,
Boss death and wretched other wrongs?

Lumps & Bumps 5.29.2016
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; 5.29.2016
Arlene Corwin

Can It Be?

Can it be that we
No longer have to worry,
Be concerned about IQ and such,
It not much longer meaning much
When something’s to be learned?

Can it be we do not need those centers
To adapt and enter
Higher states,
Taking in non-useful crates
Of knowledge and/or information.

Wouldn’t that be lovely…
Days that don’t demand the shove
Of knowledge from an app
To make you happy?

Synapse, axon, neuron:
Hordes of intricate connections
Just to reach a level new;
Some new standard, some new status
You consider you.

Well, it seems that they’ve discovered
What you probably knew all the time:
You only need a darned few dendrites,
Through the days and nights
Of facts and figures all around;
Surrounding signals chemical/electric
To slow down the darned runaround.

Can it be that life that thrives
Is simpler than our brains surmise
From all the data thrown at us?

Maybe just a little meditation
And the silencing of motion
In the ocean of illusion
And the feeding of a news that’s false -
What we’re really needing,  
The concoction and the potion
Has been right before our noses
All the time.

Can It Be? 3.29.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II;  Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Corwin

In each moment, each pursuit
Improvise.
It’s nothing more than living Now.
Of course you’ll f---k it up at times:
Mistakes belonging to a human
As does dust upon a mirror.

In each moment, work or pastime
Improvise, extemporize.
You have encyclopedic knowledge
In your little life-so-far;
Gifts and talents, skills, capacities;
Experiential knowledge
You absorbed the moment you took breath.

If you do what I advise
You see patterns that transmogrify,
Patterns that will make you wise;
Patterns when you make each minute your device.

Despite anomalies,
Quirks, and incongruities,
This the key to bring to light
The star you are,
Becoming brighter with each gesture.

Make a pact with you yourself
Put old habits on the shelf of things gone by.

You improvise,
You start to fly.
By and by
You are the sharpest, deepest, most profound and visionary
You alive.

Improvising Your Way Through Life 8.5.2017
Definitely Didactic; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

What Happens After Death?

Bathing daily as I do,
Listening to the radio,
Emergencies, catastrophes,
Boats sinking or aflame or both:
What happens after death’s end breath?

‘The poisoned lung… the old, the young…
The fire set on purpose,
One hundred fifty-nine lives lost’
Through living skin I take it in:
Corrupted ethics, trials.  Why?
August weather’s all but frosty.
I, with plethora of food in fridge,
Them there rigid,
Stench of rot.
I, desk full of paper, notes;
Money to buy more.
Stuff stuffed into each shelf and drawer;
The closet door can hardly close for all those clothes,
And I, asking ‘bout death and after.
Am I daft to wonder, wander into guesswork’s trap?
Or have I found a craft to cope,
Yoga’s science and art of hope?
For something must exist - a consciousness
Not here, but in a sphere somewhere.
It isn’t logical
That something can become a nil –
Something that has had a pulse.
What else makes sense?
This senseless chaos I sense is not chaos
But some inner justice
Somewhere, somehow in the universes
                                                              of creation!
In a sudden quickening of thinking
In the probabilities of speculation
Here I sit in bath’s ablution, asking questions
About what happens after death?

What Happens After Death? 8.9.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin
arlenecorwinpoetry.com/duanespoetree.com/Youtube

Incredible!
    
Incredible!
A wrinkle
Unfamiliar, new!
Wake up to ***,
Pass by the mirror, view
A me
That spies an eye -
A wrinkle,
And I die of incredulity.
Error?  Nature?
Nature makes not one mistake.
God’s perplexing statement
Echoing the undebated:
Meshing networks predetermined,
Making one think twice,
Acclimatize
To fateful fact and fact-ful fate
That body dies
Sooner or later.
Hard to swallow,
Say a yes to.
Who
Can choose?
Not me, now you.
Inevitable and incredible!

Incredible! 12.10.2016
Circling Round Wrinkles; Circling Round Aging; Nature In & Of Reality; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

This one was written in 1996 for the then Olympics when fashions seem to have gotten that bit more exposed.  Embarrassingly brazen. Not always a welcome sight.                                            
Olympic Games Nineteen Ninety ****
  (a reminder for 2016 Olympics too)

Forgive me God, forgive me folk,
I’ve got to make this little joke.
I’m not a girl who’s often ******-
After all, I practice Yoga,
Keeping mind and body pure:
Mostly mind.  But I have eyes,
And one Olympic year the sure-
Fire fashion for the thighs
And ***** were shorts exposing all.
When I say all, I mean the ball,
The bell, the ****-.
God, how they knocked!
And while the race was being clocked
The racers showed what Adam hid;
And while I tried to watch the race
My eyes kept dropping to that place.
I couldn’t help myself.  They slid
To dingling, dangling, banging things –
Some small, some large, and all these kings
Of sport diminished in my eyes.
I didn’t wish to see their size,
For I was there to see the sprinters
And the long jump and the discus,
Knowing that they’d spent long winters
Practicing like titans.  Now the viscous
Summer days, all damp and sweaty,
While the world with its confetti
Waited to exalt its heroes,
It was long, short ***** that hit my eyes.
May athletes, trainers, sponsors wise,
Fashion moguls on the rise
Remember, modesty is also prize.

Olympic Games Nineteen Ninety *** 8.16.1996/ revised 8.6.2003/revised 8.5.2016)
Our Times, Our Culture;

arlenecorwinpoetry.com/duanespoetree.com/youtube

Still 9/11

Still 9/11
With not seven minutes more to go
Before it turns to twelve
When I cease staring at my conscience,
And stop being conscious
Of the shameful tragedy,
The change of policy and policies
That had the tendency
To police our activities
And make, have made, are making us suspicious
Of a world become malicious
As we go from trust to mistrust
‘Cause we think we must.
You must agree,
THAT is the tragedy!


Still 9/11 9.11.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

When Summer Ends

When summer ends,
The air is strange, the mood estranged,
Winds begin, heat descends,
One wends one’s way
Across a browning lawn
To go back to the city, town.

Winter coming.
Urban living, job or studies,
Plain old washing dishes humming.
Kids in school again.
It could be you relax again.

When summer ends,
Visits, guests and nature over.
Leisure, in so many ways,
But as in everything, the flip side too.

Summer, fall and winter blends
Into one year
Again
As in
Its antecedents.
Life goes on.

When Summer Ends 8.23.2017
Circling Round Nature II:
Arlene Corwin

A Little Quiz

If you could sell a thing for lots,
Finance your yachts;
Would you boycott?
Boycott, if what you sold
Could finance wars,
Could bring worlds
To their burned-out knees,
Would you do business?

If you could earn a salary
By working in a factory
Producing weapon’s heads,
Guns, poison gas –
All granted by the local laws,
Would you do business?

A little quiz - a little Buddhist -
Prompted by
The sheer potentiality
Of personalities and crime TV
Regarded daily.
Hypothesize:
Your kids are hungry.

A Little Quiz 8.29.2017
War Book II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Given the popularity of tattoos, beards, shaven heads, holes in the body...et al,  I'm enclosing this highly relevant observation written first in 2002, revised in 2004 and now again in 2018.  
            People Get Tattoos

People get tattoos because

They think that there’s no change,

Because they’re vain, in love:

They think they choose, because

They’ve no idea at all

The rain in Spain lies mainly

In the plain,

That muscle turns

And what was breast or chest and firm,

De-firms, deforms

With budding bicep rose

Becoming wrinkled, wilted posy of-the-elbows.



I suppose it’s all to do

With time and how we throw

Away our energies, with time

Outgrowing side- and peepshow

We all worshipped once with gusto.



Oh, tattoo, you are a symbol

Of myopia and youth,

A cockeyed view of truth

That lets us down.



Still, people will demand tattoos,

Refusing all discussion

Until gusto gets to be disgust.

Nothing one can do

Except boo-hoo

This triste refrain to all who’ll listen;

Self abstain , and be a witness.

People Get Tattoos 1.18.2004 revised from 6.17.2002  re-revised 5.22.2018 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;; Definitely Didactic; Arlene  Nover Corwin

A Poem For All The Publishers Who Say “No Poetry”

I’ve looked it up a million times –
(a little bit of overstatement never hurts)
I think in meter, think in rhyme.
It suits my temperament.  Reverts
To chimes of nursery rhymes
Instinctive in us all –
This call to childhood’s guiltlessness.
Yet publishers of good repute
Refute this claim
And to their shame,
Their snobbish, profiteering shame,
Say No to poetry.

We should attack!
Abundant in attractiveness are we.
Ever clever, disciplined;
Deep, reflecting all reality:
And yet they say, “NO POETRY,
DO NOT SEND POETRY”.
Refused, rejected
Are we bards dejected?
Never!
We go on forever,
Eager in our hunger.

While you publishers go under,
We are there, bad, corny, muted,
Understated and astut-ed;
Couplets, meters, forms abstract,
Highbrow, lowbrow, autodidact:
Rumbling on like thunder.

A Poem For All You Publishers Who Say “No Poetry” 12.21.2016
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

You Need Someone Who Believes In You

It sounds romantic; a cosmetic;
I would say,
It’s more a cosmic
Underlay:
A kind of agent
Sent
To shout your name world over.
Someone to communicate
The rare fresh flower that you are;
Star-becoming-bigger star;
Someone booming out your gifts,
Strumming, humming wide and far
About your lifting gifted star;
Friday’s date, friend or mate,
Adorable, adoring pet,
Someone there to vindicate and validate
Your expertise,
The artistries
Accrued;
Who’d
Build a statue
Honoring your values
And of course, your value:
Someone who believes in you.

You Need Someone Who Believes In You 7.2.2017
Defiant Doggerel;
Arlene Corwin


Isn't it obvious?

After Brexit
          Circling Round Self-Interest

I watch the news.
Scotland refuses,
Wants to go its way and wants
To stay In EU.  
It’s an issue.
Everyone has something that they want to clinch
Will not give an inch or forfeit .
How to beat what eats the issue,
Makes you blind and binds you?

To defeat self-interest is the issue.
Take the long gone League of Nations,
Its creation to end war –post World War One.
Did some good, but still it failed.
World War II was on its tail.
Came the UN - still extant.  
Now the EU, is it canting?  

Things start out with good intentions.
Nature’s thing is to evolve:
Grow, contract, break down, dissolve.
Replaced by new forms and conditions;
The self-interest’s hidden skeleton.

Political by unintention,
Few convictions, few opinions,
I see pure idea and the spirit,
Reason true and what’s behind it,
What is missing and what is.
In this case what is, is always
Circling ‘round, you guessed,
Self-interest.

It’s Always About Self-Interest 6.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Saying Political Things

I suddenly find myself
Saying political things.
A president who has a name
That pumps out rhymes that rhyme with stump and thump and clump
So numerous, so humorous you try in vain
To stifle sniggering, giggling, trying to abstain
That is, when you are not afraid of what comes next,
(What, whose head will come undone on any pretext.)
I, who never had opinions of significance inside my head,
Find that I am sitting up in bed
Watching the news,
The countless views,
And find I’ve got some too!
The boohoo, ***** you kind, and views about:
Is North Korea bad or mad?
Why is the crime rate rising?
Is it rising?
Not the least surprised
If it goes either way.
And so I say,
It’s unexpected to discover
Arlene Corwin (former Nover)
Faltering and altering, but taking stance,
Dancing around matters of importance,
Though they may be comical to you,
Positing her new-found thoughts political.

Saying Political Things 5.29.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Each On His Level

They say it all –
Each on his level
To his level.
Coming out each second -
Truths
To ears and eyes
Meant for/attracted to…

Exactly right
For the occasion,
Creatures ready find themselves
There listening, hearing, doing
At their level
Drawn to taste
By not one wasted atom.

Laws in action
Never ceasing,
Always acting,
Causing acting,
Causing end without a single motor.

It on every level
Reaching those who listen out of needs
Wholly intangible.

Prophets must be the most boring
In the world,
Pushing forward,
Never knowing when to stop.

Then, according to the law
We’re prophets all – to someone.

Each On His Level 5.19.2007
Nature of & In Reality; Definitely Didactic; To The Child Mystic;
Arlene Corwin

Sifting Through The Dross

Fire, flood,
War and blood -
It is no wonder I can’t stand
The papers and TV,
Those apps aimed right at me,
The dearth of quality,
The deprivation, loss of lives,
The angst it gives.

Preferring comedy,
Cartoons by Disney…
Am I cowardly?  
Maybe.

Fixated on the negative but well aware
Of heroes all around each day, each year,
Deeds of goodness and devotion,
Yet, there is this bleak emotion, yucky fear.

Another factor is the greed:
The pressured need for growth and profit.
Prophets sow salvation’s seeds.
Many listening, few that heed.
With much to win and much to lose,
One mostly feels the costly loss.
But sifting through the dross with trust,
Stably doing what one must,
One gets a glimpse of tunnel’s light,
Decides it’s worth a willing fight
And pushes on through restive night.

Sifting Through The Dross 11.15.2019
Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Synapses

A scien’terrific, spiri’tool
To fool around with; a reality
The best of microscopes can see
And measure.
Pure arithme-ticking over,
Showering the brain with light;
Sparks queueing up in scans,
A cue to IQ variations, and
The more the better.
Riches of all human wishes lying there
Waiting to be bared then shared:
Nature in infinitude.

One good turn deserves another;
One good synapse serves another.
“Wakey, wakey” here comes knowledge!
Insights new, fresh out of college!
Insights causing you to grow;
Daring you to dare to go;
Blowing horns you dared not blow.
Synapse and invention new;
By definition a new you.

I’m signing off with love (or luff),
This synapse stuff the glove
That warms,
Synapses’ arms
The magic charm.

Synapses 12.9.2017 Circling Round Science II; To The Child Mystic II; Arlene Corwin

Living in Sweden, as I do, I’ve often noticed that some idioms seem to capture an essence, are more powerful in Swedish than in my own tongue English and vice versa. Therefore, I’ve begun to take the liberty of borrowing the occasional Swedish idiom for use in my poetry.

I  Grund Och Botten (är vi lika)*
A Swedish idiom meaning At The Bottom Of Things (we are alike)

At the bottom of things: basically,
First and foremost and primarily
We are alike.
Our temperament, our gifts, our faults
May differ, and they do.
But you,
You are the same as me.
I is always you is we!
We are a race: a human race.
But should we race, erase the commonality
That binds us all? Of course not!
We are one in essence, which we got
At birth, perhaps before;
Sympathy, empathy, the virtues, vices;
All the aims a blend of spices
From self-sacrifice to merchandise;
Imprecise, but there at bottom
From the ******* to the sputum.
All your systems are but symptoms.
At their end a blend of like-ness and uniqueness,
And one race.

I Grund Och Botten 5.31.2018 Swedish Book; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

Every 4 years I post this, hoping that the message, although lighthearted, will come forth.

             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,
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

The Politician

This to those who vote by rote
Or vote by call -
To those who vote at all:

Has he kept his word?
Kept to promises you heard?
Are you satisfied, let down?
Waiting to see what goes round:
(Several choices
Of the voices
Voting for the offices
Meant to be filled.)

Has he gone back on his vows -
Contradictory or harmful now?
Double thought through double-think?
Does it stink, prepared to sink
A land with aids, advisors, incomes
Sly, and on the side?

How will issues relevant be dealt with?
How will tasks be basked in
By the men
In power,
Typically men of the hour;
At their call, flasks, casks to drink from:
State affairs for one to think from!

The Politician 2.27.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

A momentary observation:
               Hot, Hot, Hot

Whenever I have naught to say
I write about the weather.
It’s a good old English way
To say whatever’s
Easiest to pass the time,
The personal not being prime.

Yet here I sit, sunny comfy
Admiring the blue of sky,
The marvel of a lake whose look
Can take the breath away:
White, yellow water lily scattered *****-nilly
By some law of nature I will never fathom.
Row- and motorboats parked here and there
Far and near, on shores and little docks ad hoc.

Cirrus clouds are forming
Storming many hundred meters high.
And yet the sky, still blue
Looks still, yes, tranquil.  But I’ve moved from chair
To capture all in nature so enrapturing these eyes:
The butterflies, the dragonflies, the bees and flies,
Gnats, ants and ticks.
But I digress, for there are ducks to watch, nothing to fix -
(except, perhaps those nasty ticks).
This life as perfect as God made it,
Sun and cloud and shade quite perfect
Though the day is hot as hell.
I welcome every bit of it.

Hot, Hot, Hot 6.9.2018 Circling Round Nature II; Our Times, Our Culture II;  Swedish Book;; Arlene Nover Corwin

I Would Never Be Impolite On The Internet

I would never be impolite
On the Internet.
(Is that big or little i?)
If one’s the chance to get
In touch with planet earth
And everyone upon it
One should view it as an honor,
Rare, beyond compare.

I would never let myself be rude
(Or ****)
To people I have never met –
The Internet or not.

At times I have opinions, views
About the news, news
Being what it is – not positive.
Yet I’m constructive and well-mannered,
Having no desire to hammer
Anyone or anything to powder.
I have no desire for power.
I can say,
Convey
My thoughts and notions
Without oceans of sarcasm.
There are chasms, schisms
Separating –isms,
But I don’t take part,
My heart not filled with hate.

On that account
I never would be impolite
To anyone on Internet –
Big or little I).

I Would Never Be Impolite On The Internet 7.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

First came the title, then came reasoning, then summing up - the rhyme and meter genetically built in.  I loved justifying the concept.


  Homage To All Things That Happen

All according to some plan -
New, alien - to keep things going, rescue man;
The right, the wrong: it all belonging
To some one humongous system
Far beyond our comprehension.

I have read
There are a hundred million neurons in our head,
These having millions of their own:
One giant telephone;
Small galaxies
To please the laws
Of effect’s Cause..

Hard to take in,
Come to the conclusion
That all things that happen
Are for something larger than
You, me, the galaxy
And on and on…
One cannot help but gape in wonder.
Homage To All things That Happen 5.27.2021 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Never Finished – Always On The Way

How can anything
Be ever finished?
In its way nonsensical
That nothing’s final;
Always subject to revision, change.
You-name-it:
Habit concrete, thought abstract -
Changed and changing;
Going on, evolving, processed.
Discontented and/or vexed:
A sign that’s fixed:
You’re moving on, non-judge-
                                 or sentiment-al.
Flexibly,
You willingly
Go with it.
(As they say, ‘the flow’).
Your poems your art, your language too.

Throughout your days,
Through all your years -
And losing fears you stay refreshed
Because you know you ne’er diminish,
Always sure you will replenish, be replenished.
Squeamish never,
Deeds and exploits never finished,
Still you end this life light-hearted,
Satisfied and fully furnished,
That too, no doubt, never finished.

Never Finished – Always On The Way 8.28.2016
Definitely Didactic; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

The Tendency In All Of Us

There is a tendency in all of us
To be extreme: inherent and in situ;
Likely to appear when time is ripe.
The husband had a kidney stone.
He cut out spinach.
Not one leaf, one atom – that, despite its iron
Reached his lips, his tongue, his throat.
Because of its remote connection to a stone.

One can imagine what becomes of one
Whose tendency is greater than
The kidney man
Who soon or later,
Prone to act on notions
Which have conquered reason
Does.

The Tendency In All Of Us 10.25.2016
Nature Of & In Reality; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

****** Hairs Mystify

****** hairs mystify,
Growing how and where they will,
Which partly sheds light on reason why
They call it, *****-nilly.

White, black, silky, coarse,
All on the selfsame surface –
Growing inward, shooting up and outward!
It’s ridiculous!
At times I curse the space
They call the face.
It shows no logic.
It’s not magic, not strategic,
But some feeble plan of nature,
Some chaotic plan inscrutable
Whose structure is a stricture
On a want of one thing or another.
  
Keeping tweezer handy
Without ever understanding,
I surrender
To a power
Higher than…
And I give in,
Say a prayer for some unwitting sin
I must be paying for.
Follicles win
Hands down, I mean,
Face down.

****** Hairs Mystify 10.15.2016
Circling Round Nature II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Vanities II, Circling Round Woman II;
Arlene Corwin

.

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

So I write about my Coney, phony, and for me my lonely island.
Land of rides and fun’s placations,
First such park for work vacations.
Frankfurters with ***** and mustard,
Frozen custard, chocolate syrup on the top.
Brooklyniters, Jackson Heighters…New York City’s pop…ulation
Come by subway all that way.
(Who had a car?  Everything and place was far,
Every stranger from a land they landed from –
At least their dads or moms or grand or great-grand dads and moms:
Generation and the nation of the 20’s 30’s, 40’s).
Cotton candy, candied apples sweet outside, sour within.
Who thought of sugar then?  
Who thought of staying thin?
Miles and miles of sand - all gray.
Cold Atlantic blocks away.
Parachute ride, new and daring.
Arlene Nover, longing, raring.
Merry-go-round wan and childish,
She, wildishly shy, tongue-tied,
Watched by grownups there not sharing any wooden horse beside
Which could have turned the ride
To fun
No parent un-derstood.
Clear and queer these memories.
Showing up spontaneously.
Sequences squeezed out of fate
Some seventy years later – late.


Coney Island 5.1.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

How To Communicate Climate Change

Alliteration just won’t do it.
Numbers about record years –
This one worse than last,
The last more awful than before:
More godawful than before.

“Table water, rivers shrinking…”
We can’t take it in.  
Had they words like:
‘Foods stop growing, seeds stop sowing,
Banks have nothing; people starve” -
You know, basic stuff,  
We just
Might ‘get it’.

Hard to feel for, God knows where -
Fires in LA, Oregon,
Igniting all at once;
And they’re not war zones!

Choppers hurling water
Onto states the size of galaxies.
Helpless, you’re de-sensitized.
(your only arms against disaster).

Have the ‘big guys’ seen the chain?
Folk on the move, the extra heat, the lessening rain?
Its flip side, folk closed in, the Arctic drain,
Shops closed down or vandalized?
Life’s fundamentals random-ized?

How get them? Fundamentals.
Goat, pig, cow, tree, flower, how…
Urgent treatment, urgent action;
Urgent sense of the connection.  
It’s a matter of disclosure and, of course,
Compassion.

How To Communicate Climate Change 6.14.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

We’ll Call It Global Warníng

Global warming
Is alarming
'cept when hot
when it should not.
It's always thrilling
With a spring that comes in March.
Of course,
One may be wrong, but
What's a robins' song
Doing in garden mine
When everyone in Sweden
Knows it's win-
                           ter?

We’ll Call It Global Warning 2.26.2017
Circling Round Nature II; Out Times, Our Culture II; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin

One More Wrinkle On The Upper Lip

Yup,
One more wrinkle on the upper lip!
I quip you not.
It came this morning
Like a ship on the horizon, showing up
A shapeless form from out the blue.
What shall I do?
I’m much too old and used to lines
To be the type that whines;
Too old and worldly wise
To be one who modifies a truth.
“You have no longer youth - the truth.
You can’t expect a skin youth-smooth.
Be glad that you can see reflections
Looking back at you
                                 at all.”
I left the mirror on the wall
And went to yoga.

Be thankful that you can see it, said my friend".

One More Wrinkle On The Upper Lip 9.1.2017
Circling Round Wrinkles; Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Woman II;
Arlene Corwin

Words To Love: Interconnection

Crisis after crisis: interconnected.
Deeds apparent or invisible: connected.
Phases, patterns unalike, yet linked and ‘synched’*
With Laws pertaining.
Do not question, and be certain:
Every force contains its obverse.
Things expand and then contract -
Bodies, flowers - all its contacts…

Interacting constantly, the powers of reality;
Related somehow, here and now.
And so, we reconstruct, re-form;
Nature forming forms forever.

Adapting and accommodating,
Interacting and connecting,
Thus, collecting and correcting
Continent by continent.
Intra-, inter- without end.

short for synchronised

Words to Love: Interconnection 4.18.2021 Circling Round Reality;Circling Round Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Does He Still Deny A Climate Change?
    (asked by the least political of observers)

Is he denying still,
Or is he stalling, stone(y)walling
Wailing about other things,
Like Mexicans and walls while slinging
Maddening, outrageous barbs
About the so-called loss of jobs
To South Korea while a North Korean
TV lady sobs with joy
About a bomb to be employed
(You all know which I mean)
That starts a chain
That takes out half a planet.

Does he still encourage fossil fuel production
Leading in the wrong direction?
Does he not see rising seas
And floods and famines and disease
Around and as potential?
Heats and droughts and quakes to come?
Or does he see the states as humming?
Self-deception quintessential:
Lies.
Who can call it otherwise?

What is a lie?
And how does one get by with lying
And denying, falsifying, flying
In the face of truth
As often as he tries – no, does.
With head, mind, pen, hand buzzing
I shall stop! But you, my friend
May make a noise, examine cause, while empathizing
Till an end.
This being written off the cuff,
Now it is time to send this off
Into the world of cyber.  

Does He Still Deny A Climate Change 9.3.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

“ After decades of measurements and debate, we are now confident that the overwhelming majority of our universe’s matter – about 84 percent – is not made up of atoms, or of any other known substance. Although we can feel the gravitational pull of this other matter, and clearly tell that it’s there, we simply do not know what it is. This mysterious stuff is invisible, or at least nearly so. For lack of a better name, we call it “dark matter.” But naming something is very different from understanding it.  Over the past 15 years, for example, experiments designed to detect individual particles of dark matter have become a million times more sensitive, and yet no signs of these elusive particles have appeared. And although the Large Hadron Collider has by all technical standards performed beautifully, with the exception of the Higgs boson, no new particles or other phenomena have been discovered.”
Dan Hooper, Associate Scientist in Theoretical Astrophysics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago.
I am indebted to EarthSkyNews and its writers and editor Deborah Byrd for their inspirational articles that set an imagination afire.

                           Looking For God
                  (a personal interpretation)

Oh, my goodness, Halloween.
Secular as we’ve become we search between
The stars for something we can’t find -
Something way, way, way behind
(or maybe not), for calculations more than hint
At something there.  Something here
And all around,
Something we can measure,
Possibly a ground of being -
Universe the metaphor -
Or should one say ‘universes’?

Utterly enchanting this research,
For ‘re’- means ‘one more time’, afresh, again;
We’re looking all the time and then some.
‘Search’, its origin in Latin’s ‘circle’
We are going ‘round in circles
To complete a circle, time and time again.
Looking for design and pattern
Palpable, its charm disarming
And perhaps alarming,
If we ever find it.

Looking For God 10.31.2017
Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; God Book II;
Arlene Corwin
I am indebted to EarthSkyNews and its writers and editor Deborah Byrd for their inspirational articles that set an imagination afire.

Can It Be?

Can it be
That when you die
Your atoms go into eternity,
Come back collectively,
Attracted by
A law of magnetism and attraction -
A cycle and a miracle;
After all,
They’ve always been
A You since time began.

Can It Be? 2.24.2021Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

Another April poem.  Am I obsessed, or is it April that is the catalyst?

And The World Gets Through Its Day

And the world goes on without me.
And the world gets through its day.
And you never start a sentence with an‘and’.
As I contemplate the boil on my gum,
The germ that could remove me in a night,
I take offense, collected sum
Of steam a dissipating stream
Which no one would so much as modify
One nano-second’s schedule for.
Earth without an Arlene in it
Without one self-adjusted minute.
Ants don’t change their habit-dance
Corroborating colleague ants
Who pass away, heads bitten off.
Gigantic are the forces
Pushing onward, forward,
Only nodding towards mortality.
This very day
My childhood friend rings up to say
His chemo- has been discontinued – insufficient.
Chemicals were not enough.
Stupid crab has gotten tougher,
Shifting upwards towards the head.
And the world gets through its day.
And the world goes on without one.
And you never start a sentence with an ‘and’.

And The World Gets Through Its Day 10.20.2006 (a little addition line 11 8.30.2016)
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Birth, Death & In Between; Nature In & Of Reality;
Arlene Corwin