You & I Are Meditating

I go into my brain,
Imagining that I and Father my
Are one the same:
One and the same.

Today it’s fun
To think
That You and I are meditating:
Two in one.

Aim always the same:
Restoration of a state of mind
Of kindness,
Peacefulness
And focus.

I’m going now
Back to my TV show,
With minutes spent seconds ago,
Productive.

You & I Are Meditating 9.1.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

The Art of Criticism

The art of criticism
Should consist
Of accurate, rich language-ism;
Gentleness and witticism,
Care and love implicit
In a simple, clear expression.

Love of th’art it’s writing ‘bout,
Love, respect inside and out
For author, auth’ress, sculptor, sculptress,
Painter, paint-ress, instrumentalist and –ess.
Poet, poetess whose full respect he/she/they merit.

When I read clichés inherent  
Such as, “Awesome” “Great” and “Wonderful”,
Thoughtless, glib and under-worked;
When I read “Like”, “Thumbs up, “Thumbs down
I frown.  

This plea from Ms. Poetic Me,
Sincere, considered, justified
Is plain ol’ objectivity,
Objecting to a lazy critic.

A good critique
Is not a trick
Played out in adjectives and verbs.
A worthy critic is superb,
Does not disturb
Because he values art and artist.

The Art of Criticism 6.30.2016
Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

To All The Criminals In The World

What will you do with all the money that you steal?
Such frivolous ambition, such shallow drive!
To feel alive?  A fancy meal?
Believe me there are better things to make life real.
Designer clothes, a fancy house?
Lots of *** to prove that you are more than mouse?
What’s wrong with you?
You’re gonna die.  We all just do.

What in heaven’s name (or hell)?
Greed just makes you small and smell -
The whole ambition yellow.

Gluttony, and hunger, all those drives for more –
Their more is less.  They’re glamor-less!
Not to speak of pain you cause:
The drain of pain,
The chain of pain you deign to cause!
What can I say?
You betray what human beings’s meant to be:
Nice, kind, with generosity
Abounding in all thought and deed,
All energy, all conduct and activity.

To all the thieves and villains,
All the gangsters, burglars, miscreants,
You’re not the fancy pants you think you are - or aim to be.
So I repeat, believe you me,
It’s all so hare-brained.  Wait and see!
You will wake up one day agreeing.

To All The Criminals In The World 5.16.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Nature Of & In Reality; Our Time, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin






You're gonna die.  We all just do.

To Hell With Meat

To hell with meat!
To men who load the animal
Alive and kicking,
‘Finger licking’.
Down with transport mean and evil,
Cruel, contemptible and vile!
Yes to bean and green and boycott.
Can’t you feel
A  burst and shrinking of the heart,
Smarting from
The crushed, the smothered, starved of drink?
What ARE we thinking?
Down with law’s futility,
To values without empathy!
We, who buy expensive food for bird and cat,
Keep doggie fat -
Where ARE we at?
Can we not do without?
Find other foods to eat and buy,
The price of giving up so high
We cannot sacrifice,
Waive appetite, and by and by
Find other possibilities?
The drumbeat of our lust for meat
Exchanged for keeping all things living
Live with mercy.

To Hell With Meat 8.2.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

I never remember what poetry I've put on Facebook, AllPoetry,  or even on my own site, Arlene Corwin Poetry.  And I'm much too lazy to check.  (I suspect that that's the danger when one writes everyday)  If you've read this before well, read it again.

It just is what it is.  The fact that Sweden's smuggled weapon rate has skyrocketed since the Malmö-Denmark bridge was built - as has the crime rate.  A good example of the dark side of the moon.
The dark side of the bright side.

Can’t Keep Up

Overwhelmed, well nigh.
Stuck, in any case.
Habit, certainly;
Dependency, it’s possible.
Too cowardly to hit delete, unsubscribe,
Headline drawing, leading,
Wooing into worlds of guidance -
There I am,
Adding one more site,
Email list so long
I’m sensing danger.

Yet, and yet,
I’m in the pit of knowledge, help;
Seduced
By eagerness and curiosity,
Induced, I click.
I fall,
A toy so miniscule,
I’m putty in their hands.

Motives suspect, motives pure - it’s in our times.
Motives all - natural.
But how can I create
When time is drained?
Promoting’s pace accelerating,
I’m just me, a Pooh of little brain.
It sounds so negative, but then
It’s all a double-sided coin.

Can’t Keep Up 2.24.2016
Out Times, Our Culture II; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

The Cold

A prophet’s never known
Among her own –
Especially by one she’s wed to.
He’s abed.
He’s got a cold.
She’s got hold of techniques potent:
Pressure on those points oblique,
Baths and steam,
And as I speak,
Gone phlegmy pangs
And reams of snot  
From sinuses and nose and throat.
Alas,
Alack,
He’s stuck
On sofa prone,
He and his cold,
Alone.

Words in the air
Don’t reach his ear
Or mind, and certainly not intellect.
He doesn’t want neglect
But can’t accept
The profit of the prophet.
So he coughs and sputters,
Spews and suffers.
She, not known
Among her own
No matter how ‘spot on’ the common
Sense

The Cold 11.15.2016
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

It Has Been A Lifetime Of…

It has been a lifetime of, well, meditation:
Meditation/prayer, prayer weaker
(more appeal and supplication
Than an offering without a question).

Not really lifetime, I admit, but,
Years and years of seeking It,
Approaching It, trying to find, bind Arlene
With hope that she’ll become more than a hopeless dope;
Hope and that arcane, otherworldly word
That rhymes with earth and mirth and forth and wraith:

“What can it be?”(said she inscrutably).
Of course, it’s faith!
The hardest of the hard.
(Don’t let them kid you what they say they’ve got it)
Faith both gift and hard, hard practice.
Owning, losing day to day.

It’s been a lifetime – that’s for sure.
But life continues now to now:
Day to day, year to year
And meditation and the prayer
(Each in its place) continue too.
The real me
Still uncompleted
As of our poetic meet
This very heartbeat.

It’s Been A Lifetime Of…7.13.2017
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Catch That Thought
  
Catch that thought.  It closes down.
Paul Tillich once said to my friend,
There are those thoughts that never come again.
I don’t agree.  Not wholly, but
Within the moment that flies by,
It vaporizes.  I,
A Pooh of Little Brain,
Not very focused  
Need to trap the moment
Or it’s gone, and I must wait
Until some friendly fate
Brings back the catalyst
That brought
The then-what-felt
World shaking thought
And write it down
Perhaps to get it out
Into a world I think about
Spontaneously.

Catch That Thought 10.12.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

For Those Who Can’t Believe

For those who can’t believe
I leave you with: God is just word
To gird up life and lessen pain;
Intended to encompass unexplainables
That science or psychology can’t clarify:
The ecstasy of insights
Helplessness of death,
Mystery philosophies
Of paths that lead to happiness;
With logic all their own to laud,
Reality reduced to primal cause
That some call God.

Problems of belief lie in
The gene or flair; the character
Or IQ that x factors cannot cover.

There, in entity invisible, in force likewise,
Books, systems aim to clarify
In symbol, parable and story;
Threads for some, nonsense for others
Who prefer to live by ethics; other codes
To take a hold of.

“God” is odd,
And hard;
A word,
A shortcut, like the Sanskrit Om -
To something real, a waterwheel
To rain down onto neuron’s brain.

That’s almost all that I can say
Leaving those who can’t believe
Until some other insight comes its way
Some Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

For Those Who Can’t Believe 11.13.2016
To The Child Mystic II; God Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Bad Thoughts

Bad thoughts in youth:
Energy, gifts given, offered,
Why we suffered…
We knew nothing.
It just was.
‘…wasted on the young’, said Shaw.
This truth endures:
Energies were boundless.
Such a plus and it was us.
But minuses with M, big M,
They were the dross,
The rubbishy behavior of those days
When we paid no mind to the affluence,
All assets.
We were young, un-formed.
But now, formed, social-normed,
What have we for excuse?
Those days diffuse,
We leave those days all honeycombed.
Now we know.
Bad thoughts have nil excuse;
Crave discipline to loosen.
Self-destructive in their essence,
Nuisance to the mind.
Trust this writer: make you blind.
Know thyself, said Socrates.
The phrase that follows - obvious.
Be kind!
You cannot lose.

Bad Thoughts 3.20.2018 I Is Always You Is We, Circling Round Egos; Circling Round Energy; Arlene Corwin

When I’m Gone

When I’m gone
I’d like whomever,
To sit ‘round a table,
Read a poem or two or eight,
Tell a joke, a story,
Concentrate
On me with love the modus operandi.

Meanwhile I endeavor
To make this life a label,
Every movement something –
Health, a lesson, teaching.
Life is peachy if I let it,
Up and out and reaching.

When I’m Gone 7.1.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

True confessions: When I’m High

You all know how one just loves one's morning cup of coffee!  

When I’m high,
And morning cuppa’s done the trick,
Slow-ish thyroid smart and quickened,
Then I start;
Choices clear, mind too,
Arms, legs, body knowing
What to do
And even how to do it.
‘High’ sounds utterly,
So totally, so wholly, awfully
So negative.
(Forgive the ‘so’ dear reader, dear.
Its hyperbolic overkill so clearly
The result of coffee).

Back to diplomatic understatement:
When I’m high and un-befuddled,
Elevated in an un-bemuddled way,
In optimal condition where
I share in
Energies that pick and choose
So’s not to lose a time so prime.

And yet, the wonder is,
The mind, which picks and clicks,
Multi-tasking, seeding shortcuts,
Riotous new recipes,
Old elements, new mergers.
Even quiet-less, no-fuss ideas
From made-up phrases that proliferate.
Remembering,  selecting, nominating:
High’s amazing!
And it only takes a cup of coffee to a-raise it.
Thus I praise it!

In conclusion:
If there’s been collusion between you and me,
And on some level you agree
I’ve reached the goal of vers-itry,
And these one hundred ninety
Really odd, God given words were worth it,
Then it’s worth, been worth the birth pains and the plod.

True Confessions: When I’m High 3.12.2018 A Sense of The Ridiculous II; Coffee Book II; Arlene Corwin

A Body Winds Down

A body winding down -
Its signs a preparation:
Loss of appetite, sound sleep at night;
Strength in arm and grip,
Youthful movement in the hip;
Fifty small, small things of note -
To note, denote, remote
As they may be.

Beginning early, barely showing:
Gone or worn, the bite uneven,
Pearly whites no longer pearly;
Vocal cords and tongue or throat
Cracked, coated…
Body borne from infancy,
Winding down.

There it is, the fact of it.
Can you take
The tact of it?
(Or tactlessness -
The zero chance to make
It over?)
Living’s always closing in on kith and kin -
On all and every who can’t win,
The numbers passing by
Each day receding into destiny.
                        
A Body Winds Down 9.14.2017
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; Circling Round Wrinkles;
Arlene Corwin

Your Calling

I was talking with my husband about
What a blessing and how pivotal
It is to hit upon or feel the urge
Toward some profession,
Way of life or some vocation;
Trade or craft that calls you:
Which is why they call it calling.

Some pull which you can’t resist,
Insisting, splurging all it has,
That spurs you on,
A something giving you a kiss,
Summoning and intervening
(But which doesn’t always happen,
There not being any app
To lead the way).

Some just ‘have it’,
Never entering their heads to
Chase or fall into another path.
Lucky they who craft or hath
The gift or talent and good luck
To never buck the system,
Or its converse, follow hollowly
Right into mediocrity,
Stuck on levels never-growing,
Always burrowing and furrowing
The earth, the brow
Never to get somewhere no how.

Say a prayer if you’re not there yet.
Find your groove and move to bare it.
Sleepily or creepingly, but ardently in heart and mind
Till you find the calling key;
Use it in tranquility and fervor -
They go hand in hand, auguring well -
Passion can be quiet too.
You deserve a calling.
Serve the calling coming to you.

Your Calling 2.27.2018 I Is Always You Is We; Revelations Big & Small; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Corwin

The Way of Things

Things start out simple, plain,
Get more complex.
All things start out minus blame,
Get more corrupt:
[It is] the way of things.

Non-beings, beings,
Gases, minerals, to stones
To seas become-an-earth
With complex life forms:

Trilobite,
Shells carbonate and calcium;
The oldest animal
That swam, then crawled,
That walked, then talked → become-the-us!

Take note and make a list:
Life, rocks so meshed, entwisted
They transformed the whole: this planet.
**** to hut to trade and product;
Industry and change of climate
(As we’re doing now, this minute)

Down to up and down again!
A long way either way. But then,
It is the way of things.

The Way Of Things 8.29.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Bass Deluxe: Ron Mathewson

Bass stands against a wall.
A singing, dear, expensive bass
Unused and tall,
Its agoraphobic player on a chair he calls his ‘throne’,
Alone, with daily cigarettes,
Watching TV, living in, on the touring pasts.
Half understanding - just half understanding
How great and talented he was.
Perfect recall, perfect pitch
All he broods about is what he’s done -
What was attained long, long, long, gone.

Life’s contradictions:
Great gifts. great restrictions.
One feels the ache of disappointment:
Talent that resigns from life with that great depot of accomplishment,
Finely filed on disc and film.
Not to be bettered, that bass with its singing-ness.
Like men of genius gifts and neuroses,
Ron’s bass was divine, a mine of nuances,
Shades, silken tones, harmonies endless.
That sensitive ear!  What chords he would hear!
Phrases he’d play on!
A multi-boxed crayon.
He could pluck, he could bow .
Did his intellect know why, what, how?
He just did it!

The box of wine, that pack of smokes.
The emails, phone calls, stockpile of anecdotes;
Remembered peers, recalled remarks,
The names of tunes leaving their marK;
The taste and technique, the recall
Combined, his all.

Yet all that one can say
Is that one of the ‘chosen few’
A treasured, master jazz bass player
Lived his last day
On a Thursday, 3rd December, 2020.

Bass Deluxe: Ron Mathewson 12.9.2020 Vaguely About Music II; Birth, Death & In Between III; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Nover Corwin

I wash the brain with peace,
Synapse to sleepy synapse.
Themes may change from day to day,
The mind and will working that way.  Today,
It’s peace – a motif that I never ‘got’.
I’m one step nearer, sensing it.
Behavior freer, talk a bit…
I’m more polite, considerate.
Something’s taking ‘way the ****
That usually rolls around as chaos;
Something near to paradise’s
Innermost best aspect peace, is
Uppermost. I use this basis
For my practice,
Imaging, imagining, examining,
Pretending, willing…
All that matters is the stilling
Followed by activity that does some good.
(What I wish is that it would).
Meanwhile, I am smiling more and more.
This ‘peace wash’ must be working.

Washing Over /My Newest Trick) 2.23.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

Three Pages A Day

Like Leonardo I am mad for everything.
Like Leonardo, I like clothes.
Word, not art, the heart of me, my character.
I am a little Leonardo.

Not born in Vinci but in Brooklyn.
Interested in anything I see, touch, smell and taste.
Knowledge, love, and nature;
Cause that leads to happening
That leads to cause again…
And so on.

Curious from the mundane to the profound,
From the concrete to the abstract,
And of course from abstract back to concrete.
That, the sweetness of my thought.
Forms, patterns –all fantastic!
Looking always for the underlying.
Not content with the apparent, the ostensible.
Expanding then contracting;
All a Maya – an illusion.

Institutions do not know this.
Rightists, leftists,
Churches, unions.
Countless eons of reshaping -
To accept this is the art.

So I write, rewrite and edit.
See a science in the holy,
Holy in the scientific.
Aim for fame but not for ego,
But for what is left for Them, the future.

I, no genius; I, but Pooh of little brain
Dare compare myself to Leonardo.
Only,
Quintessentially
More plain.

Three Pages A Day 6.27.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Lazy Love

They wake –well, ‘wake’ is not the word.
Lids refusing opening, muscles slack,
Wakefulness alone marking awareness.
Arm reaching left, remote device bedside,
Sliding, a mere automaton
Reaching near, she presses On;
Lo, light, sound and the television.
Still, the eyes are shut,
Yet something’s wakened.
Lying still, an arm embraces;
Bodies in slow motion snake-en.
Unidentifiable, un-nameable, encased
In one another’s arms, things happen -
Young, fresh, hippy Happening
Straight from the ‘Swinging Sixties’.
Here’s a pair way past their 60’s
Rising high above the years,
Skies above their years
Entranced, in love, enlivened,
Eyes blinked open where
The mini-moans of pleasure bear
Some mini-tears of joy.

Lazy Love 7.23.2016
Circling round Eros II; Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

Knocking On The Doorway Of Eternity

I’m a mystic out and out.
I never shout it out,
But I’m a little ‘high’ right now
(the morning coffee works – and how!)
Simple prayers, requests and hope,
A little child-like – a puppy.
Yet coming by small feedbacks in small ways;
Minutes, hours or days -
It can’t be just coincidence.
It could be basic innocence.
In any case,
Face flushed with happiness -
Muted or giggly.
No great gesture,
Just a cherished jest
‘Tween the divine and me.
A mystic always knocking on the entrance
To eternity.

Knocking On The Doorway To Eternity 4.2.2018 To The Child Mystic II; Arlene Corwin

A World Full of Beautiful Songs

There is a world full of beautiful songs
Out there;
Each more sweetly silencing
And bringing forth
More tears than t’other.
Myrrh
Mellifluous as fragrant honey.
Money cannot make or buy it:
Songs so lyrical you cry at
Hearing.

The child, sensitive and innocent
Of harmonies and reading notes
Looks back on songs she learned by rote,
With warmth and ardor.
Learned by heart,
They weren’t hard to memorize.
Their beauty struck a chord
The size of don’t-know-what.

Sweet song or hot,
A taste for this, a taste for that;
It’s music that gave solace,
Reassurance, dancing feet.
World full of song and beat,
Time complete.

There is a world of euphony
And melody
To sing about.

A World Full Of Beautiful Songs 8.25.2017
Vaguely About Music II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin


,

It’s so important to record these things.  For whom?  God knows.  As art, as etude, as a meditation?  As a way to think through and clarify for one’s own benefit daily eventualities.  God knows – all of those.

          I Went To A Funeral Today

Simplistic in its way to say, but
I went to a funeral today.
Our ‘tractor man’ laid in the ground;
I wrote about him year two thousand.

Taking care of all he owned,
Scraping stony muddy snow;
Driving round his tracts of land;
Doing turns that only tractors can
And which, our tractor man was bound to.

Not to milk a tale said once,
Finance, romance, weakness, strength
But tale of more significance
Than in those years when I gave him, his circumstance
No jot,
Well, not a lot of thought,
To make up for it, for I now too am démodé,
And it’s important that I say:

Surreal-ly dreamlike is this life
With time’s phenomenon in strife
With peace we aim for,
Always on the move, at war, divisive;
With no inside proof, it’s tough.  Life’s rough.

Death, funerals banal,
My skull a barrel of confusion,
Is it all a grand illusion?
Peer groups going,
I here, with no chance of knowing
What’s in store, no more
Except to hope that time and fate will favor
Generations, generating
As all beauty queens declare,
“World peace with no death anywhere.”

All this from the lain to rest
Of neighbor passed occasionally -
Known to me but casually.
Respectfully I went to honor
Just to find myself a more intent participator.

I Went To A Funeral Today 11.30.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Saving Me From Myself

I pray for this, I pray for that
And wonder why I never get
Or haven’t got
The goals I set.
Suddenly in one great burst
One leap,
Gone is the thirst
And I feel cheap,
See the task before my eyes -
It’s just to bask, not analyze.

I’m getting everything I need,
The rest irrelevant indeed,
And full of greed and ignorance,
Requests of inborn arrogance,
Destructive if un-timed.

Instead I should be thanking It
For waiting until I’ve been primed
For It, and saving me
From everything
Unscheduled my self.

Saving Me From Myself 5.14.2000 Pure Nakedness; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

Summer Hugs

Summer hugs and Arlene tries to rescue bugs
On windowpane, in sinks and tubs;
Wasps and bees, creepy crawlies
And the flies.
And while she tries
To save from drowning
Insects downed, in need,
The floating few, the struggling all,
She does not (sadly) oft’ succeed.
Wings stick to hand or tool, whichever…
Wings the godly weaver
Curved, swerved so impressively.

Summer green and flowery,
Life narrowly escaping death;
Ant on the road,
Frog and toad…
When sun’s been hot
And not predicted;
Storm and thunder
Under destiny’s unnerving hand.
Is it any wonder
That the wandering gypsy caravan
Had wheels?

Summer Hugs 5.30.2018 Circling Round Nature II; Swedish Book; Birth, Death & In Between II; Nature Of & in Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Earth Fights Back

Mercury, methane – it’s not retaliation.
Earth neutral, holds not a grudge;
It follows laws, the sludge of ***** oil
And the sea that whitens coral
No revenge just law,
No matter how ****** awful it may seem.
As I react so it reacts,
Our pact with nature and its every star.

Perhaps the verb to fight is faulty.
Not a fight, just a response.
Not a response, just a reply.
Earth answering, perhaps with love
Obeying laws within, above.

I propose a theme in prose, transposing theme
To poem for those
Who also think in meter
Satisfying, clarifying thoughts,
Allowing them to peter out in symmetry,
Some understanding, amity and harmony,
Satisfied if poem when through
Gets through to you,
In which case
Phrase fights back
Has had impact.

Earth Fights Back 1.28.2017
Circling Round Nature II; Our Times Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

What Is Faith, Really?

The Pope is coming here today, ‘here’ being Sweden.
Sweden has around a hundred fifty thousand Catholics;
Loyal bricks
In a religion with its world mystique;
Jesus the pivot, One-theistic.
Kind of him.  Kind and broad-minded.
Plans to meet with not just Catholic,
But Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Lutheran -
A sojourn
Ecumenical.

So what is faith?
It’s expectation, trust, conviction, hopefulness and confidence
In something that can only just be sensed,
For instance,
If you’ve faith in money, you can touch the money,
But the green can never guarantee the thing,
The happiness that it will bring,
And for how long.

Imperceptible, invisible, an energy
With wish inbuilt;
A wish and hope.

I understand the atheist.
To him the whole unjust-ifiable and –fied;
Unwarranted:
He can’t believe in God.
But what he doesn’t understand
Is that he too has faith –
Perhaps in love, his father, mother, one
Or other institution:
Faith in something -
All of it a veiled mostly unnoticed hint;
A blended tint linking the man to one thing
Or another.

of course when I say man, I mean both, all and every gender.

What Is Faith, Really? 10.31.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; To The Child Mystic II; God Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Flattered

This is actually a letter
To the editor.
I'm flattered, flattered, flattered
When the editor begins and ends
His email with "You're trending."
It mattered, boy, it mattered.
The kind of confirmation
That gives artists of a genre whatsoever,
Faith and trust and strength
Which almost never
Happens otherwise.  
Thank you Hello.
You have made me feel like Jello.
Thanks and thanks and thanks.

Flattered 11.26.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous;
Arlene Corwin
This is really a thank you note in disguise.

To Remember At all Times

You wake up vague, objectives dormant.
Focused on the now-ment,
In the habit of the moment,
Higher power to relate to,
Husband, friend or wife beside you,
You seek thought, goal, frame to fit in -
Any measure to begin
A day serene
With something like a slogan:
“Everything that happens, happens for my best”
Whether lesson or reward: a grace,
A gift with not a price tag.
Always in the air
In lives particular and singular,
You aim the morning self that was,
And turn it into self that is,
Its comforts and rewards.

To Remember At All Times 7.25.2016
Circling Round Reality; The Processes: Creative, Thinking,  Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

What Characterizes Life?

Bodies born & change & die.
They live and pass.
But what is life?
What marks it out?
In my assessment it is consciousness -
Just being conscious.
If so, leaf must be…
Virus must be…
On one or many levels
All that ‘be’ must ‘have’ it, ‘be’ it
Till those bodies go.

I can’t think that there are exceptions to the rule;
That is, if life is consequent, consistent;
Essence, distillate,
Underneath all things that do a something by themselves.

I don’t know yet.
Can’t find words, a name, an adjective, a verb,
A sound that does it justice.
I know now – and only that.
And when I go inside myself
That’s all I meet

What Characterizes Life? 1.22.2017
Nature In & Of Reality;
Arlene Corwin

I've re-written it.  When i read it over this evening I hated it.  The sequences needed adjusting, the whole thing made more sense of.  it was too abstruse, downright vague the way it stood.  Crap.  Here it is:  I hope it's better, clearer, stronger.

       Vanity Or What?  Or Not?

Will they miss me when I’m gone?

Would they miss me if I went?

Is the Facebook thing, this Instagram,

Snapchat, this and Snapchat that  -

Is only just to reassure, insure and all the -sures

An immortality that’s hardly possible

With such as these?

A question and a statement.



If you should land upon an isle,

No phone, no clothing, just a smile,

Who’d care that you’re not there or where?

The ego takes a jolt when true result is that

A lively world’s been going on

In the short while you’ve been isle borne.



When you take up, upon waking,

Cell phone, laptop out and working,

Think about your motive deep, some path new chosen.

Leap into the seasons, steeping self in new horizons.

Public profiles pass from sight, from mind, from heart

Once they depart.



Querying the motives that define,

I’m off to take out, open mine,

The whole controlling

‘Spite the knowing.

Vanity or not?


Vanity Or What?  Or Not? 3.18.2018 Circling Round Vanities II; Circling Round Egos; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Corwin

WHY MOURNING

Do you know anyone who doesn’t die?

Who hasn’t died?

Who will not die?

Not I.



How to accept?

Not mourn?

Think through to not have pain,

(For pain seems fruitless), for

To not accept

Is like rejecting sun and moon,

Existence, proven, measured, seen.

Do I lament when atoms split?

Grieve, regret,

Have sadness that I can’t get over.

Nover

Doesn’t.



Pain [we have] when others die –

That ‘other’ human, cow or dragonfly.

The local forester sawed down a fir

Which was for sure,

A hundred fifty years or more.

I mourned,

Stump and its rings all it passed down.



Is it absence or remembrance?

Is it longing for a something now a non-thing non-existing?

Is it clinging to a someone

Over whom we have no power,

Never had? Could it be wrong-er?

Fate and destiny his, hers or its

Through all of time and history.



I cannot think of one good reason

Vindicating mourning.

Were we meant for suffering?

Though I [clearly] cannot clarify,

We’re seeing wrongly,

Thinking strongly wrongly,

Wrought of ego’s braggadocio,

The hallowed hoaxer of emotions.



Nover: me, born Arlene Faith Nover

Why Mourning 11.4.2017

Birth, Death & In Between III; Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small; Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Egos;

Arlene Corwin

Flawed

Listening to Thelonius Monk.
(Give him a try -
If you haven’t already)
I myself am sunk
In heaven.
(or is it ‘raised’)
Anything for a rhyme
Anytime.)  
Ouch!
Anyway, there’s genius
In being flawed:
In honesty, in bravery  -
Wrong notes,
Strong, short, long notes;
Flatted fifths, half-tones the chord;
Finger placement – absurd.
Who can be bored!
Who cares?
He dares.
Stares into space,
Jumps up and down,
No smile, no frown -
He plays his junk,
Always a Monk – Thelonius..
And so I sit in pillowed bed,
Caffeinated (to my toes and head),
Cogitating.  
Letting, simply letting…
Waiting, writing
With an honesty and ***** (see Monk, sunk, junk)
Flawed to the gills.
Hmm, sills, bills, chills, kills…hmm.

Flawed 11.19.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Vaguely About Music II;
Arlene Corwin

As much as one hates to use the pronoun “I”, writing or speaking, there are times when ‘I’ is the middle point and of the essence.
Sincerely,
Arlene (see footnote).        

  Now & Then, How I Miss…

I practice living the Now.
But now and then
I miss the old Arlene
Who had ten
                    fingers;
Who could play arpeggios
With ease:
Adagios, capriccios,
Effortlessly
Trouble-free.

Un-nostalgic, chanced to see
And old Youtube of Arlene-me
Singing, playing“All God’s Chillun” speedily,
Gleeful, musical and jazzy.
Wound up teary-eyed.

With just three left to play with:
Thumb and index on the left, only lonely thumb the right,
Filled with weakness
I can play a swinging bass
With Monk-like dissonance between,
The right thumb not at all a small dumb finger.

The trick will be to sow creativeness anew.,
Augment, stretch, grow and not go into
Any other place than Now
(if Now at all can be referred to
                                        as a ‘place’.
I rather think of it as space).

In any case,
I was a little sad today;
The old Arlene who cannot play
The way she used to,
Caused by nature’s vagary.

Dear reader, please forget  
This sentimental, reminiscent “…How I Miss…”
A useless business at the very least.
Now &Then, How I Miss…1.6.2020 Vaguely About Music; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Nover Corwin

Arlene Corwin collapsed on August 3rd, 2019.  In a coma for a month, when she awoke, there were 4 fingers missing on the right hand, 3 half fingers on the left,  and two catheters in one kidney   The cause: Blood poisoning or sepsis (from the Greek ‘sepin’ make rotten).  After two months she was home.  Muscles shrunken, walking with help she began a regime of sit-ups, pushups, yoga…and using every object inI the house as tool now is fully flexible and growing stronger with each day.
But the hands, those hands…We’ll see what happens.

Involved in Self

No one is more involved in self than
Self, for self is everyman  
And every self a constancy,
The constancy ubiquitous.
Once you have a grasp of this  
And use it thus,
You know all that there is to know
About this large and growing human race.

Some dispute the truth that is.
Ergo, the key — one of the keys
Is letting go the ego to please
Ego’s needs,
Which ego feeds self-interest,
(Not always the best of interests.)  
Nonetheless,  
No one is more concerned with self
Than self - oneself.
If one can land in understanding
By the  broadest of acceptances,  
One’s earned and learned the keys
To standing inside happiness
Outside of loneliness.

Involved In Self 2.27.2021 Circling Round  Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Married Love

Let us try to not/not to
Repeat the stories we have told/we tell
Each other,
Which reminds one more of sister/brother
Than it does of would-be lovers
Who just happen to posses a license
Because that’s what law requires.  
    
Let’s be fresh each day
Without cliché or worn out tale
So stale that wedlock’s
Locked into a place
For always.

Married love should be
Un-harried love, unhurried love, unworried love,
And never tired and overworked old-storied love
If it’s to triumph.

Married Love 6.22.2016
Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

Transform A Bad Poem To A Good Poem
        (tinkering & fooling ‘round)

It may take days, months, years:
You tinker.
That’s the key.  
You definitely do not linger,
But go ‘way, come back, go on
To see with psychic opticons
(my own construct-ee-on) a vision
Of’ creative options,
Freedom new,
A fooling ‘round
That’s new for you -
And you are new and changed a little;
Flexible, unbrittle-ized,
(another word vocabul-ized)
A new-sized you
Wherein you see the tool in all,
And all’s a tool.
You’ve fooled around
Just as I’ve done
With word and sound,
And lo, a sound and solid poem transformed
From
Bad to good.

Transform A Bad Poem To A Good Poem 7.6.2016
Definitely Didactic; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative;
Arlene Corwin

Who The Hell Is Reading Me?
        (a first draft, pre-sleep whimsy)

Who the hell is reading me?
Occasionally, I see one, two, three -
It’s rough,
And certainly is not enough!

I usually do not complain,
But fellow poets, you know
It’s the ****-dest pain
To work for hours,  - sometimes days
Refining, re- re- re-ing phrase
And syntax,
Checking idioms and facts
To get across idea and spirit.
Are you with it,
                         reader friend?
No trend, no agent/publicist to wave a wand,
No publisher to send you huge advances
Because he’s of the sole conviction of your chances.

[Do you], get my drift?
Shifting in your seats,
Because you recognize the whiney bleats
That you would like to scream out too?
Well, *****
                   the reading force,
That leading farce that forces us
To sit it out in silent grumble,
Mortifyingly discomfited and humble.

But know what mate?
I love it!
Never sated, secretly, I love it!
As my confidante, I tell you this.
I wouldn’t miss this silliness
For all the tea in China!

I don’t have to be a winner
Eating Nobel Prizes for my dinner,
Nah, I’m happy just to do
What you do - writing for the one or two,
(there used to be three – one has split)
Get the isolated compliment
From someone honored
– or not.
(everyone’s got
                         their own way of seeing things).
Not trying in the least, to be convincing,
Cheerio, to you who may be just my opposite;
And good, good, good, good, good goodnight!

Who The Hell Is Reading Me12.19.2016
A Sense of The Ridiculous; Defiant Doggerel;
Arlene Corwin

Just editing my next book "Definitely Didactic" and thought I'd share this.

   Days Of Distraction: The List

What can they be?
They seem to go on endlessly.
Helping out a friend in need;
Finding ways to heed the need(s)
Of several needy friends in need.
Ignoring things that might be done,
Might be some fun
And useful monetarily.
Ignoring requisites of I, myself and me.
Structure: that’s one key.
Thinking practically; harmony.
Priority to me, myself and I.

Life is simple.
Roof, warmth, food -
Summed up sample of the simple,
Which gives ample time
To carry out the other,
'Other' meaning tools which further
Happiness and satisfaction.

Paying bills and buying,
Days of duty and temptation;
Stress and tension:
‘Stressed out’ grown to idiom.

What to do about this ‘dream’,
For dream it is.
This is a list and not a scheme;
Not a plan nor stratagem.
Read and think, find out!
The answer lies in nought but thee.
(That’s you and me).
You’ll see
               what works.

Days Of Distraction 10.21.2017 Definitely Didactic; I Is Always You Is Me; Arlene Corwin
Chatted with my 'English rose' of a daughter (raised in Oxford, England now residing in Oregon, USA.) who complained of distractions which keep her from other, perhaps more practical or and/or rewarding things.  It inspired these little reflections.
It will go into my collections: Definitely Didactic and I Is Always We Is You.  By the way, my 16th book Birth, Death & In Between II went into publication today!

The Big Decision

Today in Sweden, parties;
Midsummer solstice has been reached.
In England’s Stor Brittania* (Great Britain)
Union has been breached -
The vote: to leave a Europe’s huge and first attempt
To make a Europe one.
Now it’s done!  
Great Britain is the first to leave,
Reminding one of Union
And Confederate:
The US Civil War.
What more?
We don’t know what will follow.
Will the morrow turn to their advantage?
From the vantage point of Sweden,
Whose dependency is export,
It may be for the worse.
For all the rest, a blessing or a curse
Is yet to see.
Meanwhile, it’s for the likes of me
To write, describe and not project.
The project European Union
Will, in every likelihood,
Go on.
For my part I’m opinion-free.
Now on to my own party.

The Big Decision 6.24.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin
*Swedish for Great Britain

I Need To Think Of Starts

Everything that starts has sparks of coming into being,
For everything I know through all my senses
Has a life, even the rock.
Tick tock. (its life takes time).
It isn’t hard to think through to a cause primeval; one original,
Pristine: a first!  After all, what hasn’t had a first?
With first comes what will form.
Will form forms from a light.
What doesn’t have a core of light?
Without the light there’d just be night,
Light being first in all the firsts.
Completeness not yet born.
(Oh ****, words are inadequate).

In this entirety it isn’t hard to picture bliss;
But with this bliss unhappiness - qualities with opposites:
Good/bad and something in between.
Light and dark, it’s suffix –ness.
Consciousness.
  
If anything will lead to starts,
It’s knowing that and all its parts -
Or is it one?
Now there’s the fun –
Finding out if it is One,
If you and I and we are one.

It may lie in the memory;
This need may start primarily with me.
I need to think of starts.

I Need To Think Of Starts 8.1.2017
Nature In & Of Reality; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Getting Loonier But Freer

Sitting in the bathtub come prepared:
Pen and pad squared off,
Ready for the spinoff
Boring or imploring
Phrase, theme, word
To make inspired this not tired,
Not yet batty lady
Who, in dotage her,
Is sounding more and more like Lear
(not king – the other one)
Using words in play from fun
To pleasure those with fun-ny bone
Or anyone come close –
With dose of looniness and freedom.

Each thought legitimized – seen through her eyes -
She writes as if the script were scripture,
Thought brought down from god-knows-where,
She, prepared to edit if she must,
Every bit writ down on trust.

The paper pad is soaking wet,
Words dimmed and saturate.
Time to get out of the tub,
Dry hair, the ***’
And superficially skin deeply
Watch the evening’s mediocre,
Scary, all too interruptedly TV.
(For TV’s actually for money,
Not for me, or them’s that’s like me.)
Pity!

Getting Loonier But Freer 11.6.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Bath Book II;
Arlene Corwin

What's on my mind today?✍️

In A Quandary

In a quandary.  In a pickle.
Temptation and dependency;
Enslaved by self-indulgence;
Keenness that becomes a blend
Of day’s beginning and day’s end.

On the bus, inside the car,
Telephone beside the ear;
Walking, talking to yourself? Oh no,
It’s talking to a god-knows-who
For god-knows-why.

Am I the only person
Riled by this phenomenon?
Addiction to diversion
In the guise of help and benefit?
Yes, even these can dig the pit
Of hell-p-less-ness.
Information, facts mind-blowing, quick.
Fascination and allurement on a stick.

Having learned some new found tricks -
Heartening, supportive pick-me-ups,
One notices, (I notice) that the
‘Pickle’ quickly trickles down
Into those risky parts of vanity,
Its need for company
And other longings.

Frisky sports who gaily own
Desktops, laptops, Ipads, smart phones…
Know what I talk about:
Joy that takes you from yourself
While telling you it is yourself:

Programs, sites and violent games,
Interaction with big names –
Presidents and criminals -
All their problematic schemes:
Everything’s on board for every sort:
The bored, the interested, the scared.
The strong, the undecided: snared.

A sticky, tricky, muddled mess,
A sanctuary become quandary:
Game of chess and source of stress
And one we seldom choose to harness;
Goodness!
Can one win it?
I’m not sure.  I’m in it.

In A Quandary 7.26.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

A Dangerous Place

Not new; the world
A risky place:
Too many schools of thought;
Their base defective.
Schools, which in themselves are seeking
Thought that knows thought’s ever-rules.

Kipling’s twain which never meet;
Krishna’s castes all separate;
Towers fall on Babel Street.
Not new.

Impossibility out there:
Worlds of danger everywhere;
Dangers that we can’t escape
Except by staying put
Content with parsnips.

A Dangerous Place 5.9.2004 Our Times, Our Culture; Birth, Death & In Between; Arlene Corwin
          A Dangerous Place #2

Two thousand four come/gone.
Two eighteen still anonymous.
Am I apocalyptic?  
World the warmest since…forever.
Messiurs Putin, Trump and every nuclear dictator,
Arsenals as big as ever.

What we were afraid of then
Is now in multiples.
Viruses that won’t give up,
Fighting each development.
Small to middling large eruptions
Under, over, on the surface.
Coverings and dryings up;
Methane gas, folk that pass
Leaving matches in the grass;
Flarings unintentional.
My old bones susceptible
To substances and circumstance they never knew.
Nature duping us.
Boo hoo? Or ballyhoo?
Is there something new awaiting?
Something generating happiness,
Content with standing-stillness? Wellness?
Who can tell,
Things being as they are:
Not fine, with every sign
An indication
That we’re going in the wrong direction.  
Sorry!

A Dangerous Place #2 2.1.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Corwin

A Big, Big Moment

It was a big, big moment
When I noticed
God and I were one.
I think they call it revelation;
Like an insight only better.

He or It was in my brain,
And that was mind
And it was mine,
And all I had to do
Was not to go somewhere,
Some real place,
But face the thinker in my mind
And it was done.

A down-to-earth
But heavenly
Acquaintanceship:
A quiet pleasure,
Followed by a change in days,
A change in ways,
The ways no longer aiming ‘up’
As if an ‘upwards’ was the target.

I’m not claiming it was angels;
But it wasn’t’ babble either.
It was cool.
There was no rule to follow.
Cool and yet
A big, big moment.

A Big, Big Moment 6.27.2016
Revelations Big & Small; God Book II;  to The Child Mystic II;
Arlene Corwin

Very, Very & Fantastic

She struggles with each verb and noun,
Adjective, conjunction, article and even
Pronoun.
All to better brain:
Maintain
The art parts, smart parts,
A la carte parts.

There are leaders:
Chairmen of the boards who stay
Long adolescent in some way.
Ambitious, never swaying
From their standpoints, outlooks and perspective.  Oy!
A very, very Oy yoy yoy!

“I am best!  Don’t mess with me,
Don’t carp or bleat.
My words unquestionably
                                         right
And those who choose to disagree…
Are rendered useless usefully.
My deeds, and all I nominate
Are very, very, very great!
I live on very un-elastic,
Very, very and fantastic!

Very, Very & Fantastic 7.29.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

I Am So Grateful [Anybody Reads This Stuff]



I am so grateful anybody reads this stuff.

Exasperated that most others don’t.

And even with an inner miff

I carry on, pushed by an inner drift,

(some would add an inner gift)

Ambition not my motivation.



A brainstorm popping from wherever popping up pops up from.

You will recall it’s happened to you all;

You know, thoughts over which you’d no control.

And yet you thought them, acted out on

Drives beyond what’s called

Free will.



So, am I grateful or detached?

Dispassionate, disinterested, crosshatched?

Standing alone from strength

Yet obstinate from weakness’ lack of confidence.

I’m sure of this:  the length

Of life that’s left to me,

I will persist in poetry.

(One must

When it lies in the guts)

Tampering with syntax, spelling, yummy slang,

Choice aesthetics in good taste/

Choices ****** and a waste;

Writing with a rhythmic sense,

Caring very much for tense,

But not for meters recherché;

I, utmost mystic and most earthy:

Quelle dichotomy!

Hypocrisy?  No, contrast only!



I am grateful for and to the one

That read Ms Corwin.



I Am So Grateful 11.14.2017

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; I Is Always We Is You;

Arlene Corwin

I’m Writing For The Universe



I’m writing for the universe;

No man or woman, special group.

I’d hope you understand this,

Aim, a statement/thought

Encompassing the concrete and abstract.



The philosophic reaching out

To turn into endeavors

Which depend on character

Which finds itself in x conditions,

In you, out you;

Efforts too,

All undertakings the result

Of birth and genes and chance surroundings.

(is this dance really just chance?)



Special needs abound within the needs of all:

The ego, vanities, the strengths, the skills;

Bad, good, dark, light,

Mediocre and the bright –

A sameness sewn in rich arrays

Of hims and hers,

A one which covers,

Pierces through the universe.



I’m writing for it all, the All, the Goal.

In short, the whole,

Myself included.



I’m Writing For The Universe 11.10.2017

Nature Of & In Reality; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; I Is Always You Is We;

Arlene Corwin

Lower/Higher

Even the eyebrows lower;
It shows in the darned mirror:
Life changes constantly,
A going downward mostly –
At least physically,
For I, the inner I invisible
Am rising high,
Am rising high.
And so to hell with vanity
And negativity.
Life’s outer is a liar,
For I, I rise still higher.  

Lower/Higher 8.20.2016
Circling Round Vanities II; Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles;
Arlene Corwin