Brain, Give Me The Answers

Does this sound too much like prayer?
A little red-faced,
Weakness in my psyche.
Embarrassed ‘cause it’s not like me,
One feels the hypocrite:
I, who stake
My life on ‘God, who makes not one mistake’,
And here I sit,
Baby-ish,
Asking to change destiny –
At least push it my way.
Shame, shame on me!

I’ve got to wait –
Just like all others.
Meditate,
Reject my druthers,
Concentrate.
(I’m poor at that).
Be grateful for the goods I’ve got
(and that includes MyQ
and its capacities))

Nonetheless, addressing you,
Dear self so true,
We have a pact
(And that’s a fact)
So if you will cooperate,
I’ll wait
Until who knows, the whimsicality of fate
Is ripe: propitious, and/or generous  
And brain-wise,
Advantageous.

Brain, Give Me The Answers 8.24.2017
Pure Nakedness; I Is Always You Is We; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Someone Out There Needs This

So you write!  
So I write,
Trying hard to say it right,
Forthright but kind:
Trying hard to find the word
That does not hurt
But flirts and heals,
Feels universal
By some sort ‘you’
Who needs it then
At just that moment.  
For
There’s always someone out there
Who needs what you have to say.

Someone Out There Needs This 9.26.2017
I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

Illusion

What isn’t an illusion?
That’s the question.
You aim for fame. Well, forget it – it gets boring
When the door to happiness subsides.
How long before the ride of charm
Turns into gasp; one last-ing gasp.
What circumstance, experience, ambition
Doesn’t turn to opposition
Some time in its life?
One thing turned into two
And diametrically opposed:
Up/down, down/up, then seeing through –a last, last sup.
Illusionary, but that’s not to say it doesn’t matter.
Everything a smattering of truth
For you to act through,
Watching diligently as you do it.
Not to say you must be stiff –
Just act as if
The whole thing’s real.
Don’t let it steal the real you,
That’s all.
There is a real you –
Let’s call it soul
Or essence; outer/inner
Unity of you-nity (that’s funny).
Ok, so it isn’t money,
Gathering (of many things
Such as position, power,
Family and all the things I can’t remember).
Passing, unpredictable, unstable,
Every syllable of all you want
Attainable – but then what?

Illusion 7.1.2017
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Illusion - what isnt?

I was watching a reportage about the strong possibility of a war between Iraq and Kurdistani Kirkuk.  I don't consider myself a political person, neither politically aware nor politically active.  But sometimes, I'm moved on a deep level at the futility of and process leading up to war.  This is one of those moments.  I went directly to the computer.

        You Can’t Have A War

You can’t have a war

Unless you have weapons;

You can’t have those weapons

Unless you have industries;

Can’t have an industry earning no money -

And money means profit,

For who runs an industry

That doesn’t profit -

Profit the carrot.



Weapons-to-profit:

The distance is multi- or many small instances

Building the one upon other,

Easy to disregard,

Turn a blind eye to.



Oil or real estate,

Access to coast,

Minerals, labor:

Possession and use.

Passions’ abuse

And war is the certainty.



It’s terribly sad,

This fighting for terra;

A sickening error

Pretending it’s doctrine or canon or righteousness.

Overruled, conscience.



You can’t have a war,

Restrain it,

Unless there’s this chain of re-action,

Everyone playing his part.

It’s breaking my heart.

Ain’t it yours?



You Can’t Have A War 10.14.2017

War Book II; Our Times, Our Culture II;

Arlene Corwin

Written this morning, I had an inkling that the title sounded familiar, so I looked it up (bless the computer) and lo! there is was - a poem, not at all the same, written in 1998, twenty years ago, even published under the misprinted title Pushed Around by Fat.  Anyway, here they are:  Pushed Around By Fate#1 &
#2.
      Pushed Around By Fate #2

On seeing the Hawkin news some hours ago: Be the first to read/react to my reaction.  Not about jazz, not about yoga, but about recognition.


         Outside Time: Hawkin March 14, 2018

No obit this,

But chance to memorize, memorialize,

Tattoo the size of genius,

How it comes to earth in time

Then goes god-only-knows how/where –

Knowing only: not ****** here.

Yet ‘there’, by definition place,

Perhaps is space;

Maybe a ‘where somewhere’ in space -

A guess both uniformed and obvious.



Mister Hawkin, master Hawkin

Freed from chair and ALS,

Cells and intellect’s fine processes;

Mammoth efforts of all kinds

To feed the body,

Read the mind(s)

Of universes.



To record this day inordinately mixed

With sadness, pride, heroics -

That a man second to none

Has been an Einstein all his own;

Whose works we’ll clone (to yet go farther)

For ‘by works you shall be known.’’

God blessed the non-believer Hawkin.

Outside Time 3.14.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Revelations Big & Small; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Corwin

The Books I Write & Thoughts At Night

It’s 2am and I awaken.
Thoughts break in
And I begin:

I write the books.
Charming, informative.
They do not sell.

Carefully worked on and out until they gel,
Spontaneous but ne’er pell-mell,
Tight, concise, the format small;
Life’s storms,
Its call to arms,
A bawling at our time’s alarms,
Wailing ‘gainst life’s wailing wall,
Admiring the beauty of it all…

What e’er it is I have to tell:  
They do not sell.
So what the hell!

But what is hell?
The poet’s railing wall?
Perhaps the tiresome need to sell.

The Books I Write & Thoughts At Night 7.12.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

I’m Lucky

I’m lucky.
I don’t have to earn my living as a poet.
But I have to write it.

No reward to energize,
No prize,
No monetary chance for status,
Fame the same;
A nano-chance to spread my name.
And yet, and yet,
Out of the air
Ideas occur.
And while I sit or lie or stand
Wholly unplanned,
Forced, driven
Structure, meter as yet hidden -  
To seek pad and pen
With no predicting what and when
Will come to mind,
Inside the thing,
Inside the process of the writing.

It is as if some muse takes over
Former Arlene Faith Nover,
Improvising from said air
Ideas she never knew were there.
What could be luckier?
Silly couplets sometimes deep,
Forms arriving from the beep of spontaneity.
How lucky can one be!

I’m Lucky 4.12.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II; Revelations Big&Small; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

The Making Of Perfect Love

The *** is simple.
Though there’s pattern, never boring.
Feeling new, e’en better every time.
How can that be?
The years have passed the ‘sell by’ date,
And one knows couples who
Are either bored to death or hate
The touch, approach,
Who ******
Just to escape the loathing
(even some who wear their clothing
into bed).

But with us, we focus.
Simple, the affection real,
Start so gradual
It’s hardly recognizable as such.
As for the finish,
Since there never was a start,
It sometimes has no end,
Just petering from aged tiredness
With never a dissatisfaction,
Life and day continuing
In the most natural of ways.

The Making of Perfect Love 5.9.2017
Circling Round Eros II; Pure Nakedness, Circling Round Aging; Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

The Sin Of Pride

I heard the phrase: it froze, was glued.
First thought: What’s sin?
The second: what’s pride?

A sin is when you miss the mark,
(connected to, sadly, with guilt)
Pride is when you’ve chosen wrongly,
Guided by a mostly falsely high opinion
Of oneself and one’s importance.

Yet we use it as a virtue;
Word to nurture
As if it were a good.
Pride in country, children, kin..
Pride: exclusion and restriction.
Leaving out, eliminating,
Failing to include oneself as sinful,
Ignorant and rude.

Reality contains the certitude
That we are all a family
With variations in the tree:
Tendency and quality, person, personality.
None is better or more worthy -
(one more fancy-pants idea).

We’ve all filled with invasive traits:
“All-inclusive” like the place.
Different nose, different face,
Different color, difference race;
Talents more or less intense;
On the fence.  
Misrepresented.

Pride: let’s swap it for humility,
A lack of vanity,
The ever growing insight that we
All are everyone and nobody.

The Sin Of Pride 4.26.2020 Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Hypocrisy Confessed

There are those times
When I enjoy
A murdered leg
Or rib
Or thigh.
I
Call it steak
To make
Myself
Feel comfortable,
The rumblings of the mind assuaged.
Most of the time,
Prime hungry, up to eating like a horse,
I don’t eat cow (of course not horse),
But making food
Not rude or ******,
I, non-fake and non-pretender
Eat my beans, my reds and greens
With appetite.
No bright, slight, sprite
I eat my peas,
My eggs and cheese,
My pasta à la Genovese
Well pleased as punch,
Needing no med. rare meat for lunch.
But then those times…
Oy, oy those times!
Ashamed,
Soul feeling maimed,
Smell of sweet, soy, garlic-y meat
I fall
To ribs [deceitful] call.

Hypocrisy Confessed 4.25.2017
A Sense Of Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin




What can I say - You caught me out!

I was reading, by some fluke, a book that’s been sitting in the hall waiting to be given away to some charity or other.  On this day, I happened to pick it up on my way out to sit in the October sun.  The name: The Nobel Prize for Literature 1901-1983.  

It’s Always For Others To Interpret

Dylan’s won the Nobel Prize.
You write, you fall, you rise,
Or rise and fall
Pleasing none or all.
You’ve written self…part of…
Round themes of evil, good, dark shadows, love -
All universal;
That, despite the personal,
For I is always you is we
With never objectivity,
But always subjectivity,
Seeing what we need to see.

The ‘prize of prizes’ always questioned
While the choosers are sequestered, and
We never know their standard.

Be yourself!  That’s a command!
You’ll never will, unanimously,
Be a star (though shining brightly),
Idolized by all the masses
(Think of Jesus).

You can just write for self alone,
Not cloning some source you admire.
Others will attire you
With clothes of their imagining,
Projecting who and what they are.
Your star will always be you
Till you die and after.

It’s Always For Others To Interpret 10.14.2016
Special People, Special Occasions; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

I Cook For My Husband #2 (shaved & scissored)

I cook for my husband
The way I would cook for a king.
And I’d cook for the king
(If ever he’d ring)
The way I cook for my husband.
With skill, choice and taste of the day,
What e’er’s in the cupboard to make a buffet
Fit for a king or my husband.
No problem or trouble,
Food is a bubble
Lasting an hour from mouthful to bowel.
If house guest should scowl or glower or frown,
Finding it uphill to get the food down,
I take it serenely,
Comport myself queenly,
Tell him or her
The next meal will be better,
It’s fine to leave morsels of food on the plate
And leave it at that,
It being one method to never get fat.

I Cook For My Husband #2 7.27.2017
Definitely Didactic; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

Once I Was Young

A cliché maybe,
For the multitudes have said it,
Yet,
One thinks it now and then,
In one way or another.
Situation, circumstance transport it to
The frontal lobe.
One probes the wardrobe of the brain
Where dreams have lain
And lie there still, so very still and quiet.

But today I chanced to see
A photograph of me
And chanced to say,
“Once I was young”.  
It did not feel like cliché,
But fresh, revivifying
Memories I had not thought about,
Affections that now brought about
Sensations not particularly rosy –
But not jarring either.
More a nosy statement not opposing fact;
In fact, prosaic,
Dry.

I
Once
Was young
Not to
Be that again.  
Do you
Experience that also?

Once I Was Young 7.23.2017
Birth, Death & In Between II; Circling Round Aging;
Arlene Corwin

You may have to use a dictionary for this one.
      
                Word

What is the word?
Sound, vocalisation to be read,
Seen, heard;
Give meaning to intention?
One might guess
The first invention of creation
Carried forth - an innovation
Was the utterance of word -
Coming from a throat.
To ask, command, demand, emote
Shades of devotion;
No threat of drought or running out,
Expressing in the subtlest ways -
Revealing hidden selves from what
We think we are to what we are
In psyche’s inmost core;
Things sure of and unsure
That may, may not be posturing.
The word is there!
To gird up courage, bind the herd
Of common folk to common world.

If anything can be called sacred;
Venerated and respected,
Even purified and cleansed
By honesty in its intention
It is word; the word;
Well meant and tied
To goodness, curiosity and knowledge.

Word 2.21.2021 Definitely Didactic II;The Processes:Creative,Thinking,Meditative II; arlene Nover Corwin

Sometimes I get the silliest memories.

The Twenty-One Inch Waistline

When I was young -
As yet unsung,
I yearned, no, burned
To be like she
Who had a waistline twenty-three:
I was twenty-four.
Hungered voluntarily.
Now they’d call it self-starvation,
Anorexia;
I soon set sights on twenty-one.
There was envy,
There was vanity.
Oh, if I could only be
Like her.
But I remained a twenty-four.
It wasn’t in my nature
To be less or more.
These days I’m fine
With my twenty-four/five inch waistline.

Twenty-One Inch Waistline 11.22.2017
Circling Round Vanities I; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

My Jazz Has Changed

My jazz has changed.
Warts and all,
Jazz is my call
Reflecting life’s endeavors.
I could never leave it.
I mature and it matures.
Meaning: freedom and invention.
Freedom of invention,
The sensation near ecstatic.
Who cares if I use elbows to create a chord?
No one!
Who cares if I make ***** up,
Am not a nerd – part of the herd?
No one!
Everything is up to me, in me, from me –
Each note, each beat, each melody.
Coming each year, parting fear
That was and used to be there.
A ready leaving of control,
Letting an other whole come through.
The point is: no one knows or cares but you.
The freedom and invention where it should be
At the very point in history.

My Jazz Has Changed 4.16.2017
Vaguely About Music II;
Arlene Corwin

A Career From Bed

It’s luxury.
To lie in bed, thinking thoughts;
Pillowed head, notepad and whatnots;
Lifting laptop at my side
(my writing bride –
or husband, as the case may be)
And write my poetry.

Uncomplicated, ‘easy peasy’
(English jargon) child’s play
To type some fragments,
Work them through,
Sending them away
To you.

In come the comments.
Not a penny changes hands.
No long-term contracts –
Only contacts,
“Like you”come-backs
Unseen as a daytime star:
With sweet, smart followers galore.

This passive bed of roses
Lap of splendor and much more…
Career from bed
Conducted solely from my head,
Solely in unsaid creation.
What in heavens could be bed-der?
(Sorry for the awful pun;
An un-withstandable temptation).

A Career From Bed 4.4.2018 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Corwin

Believe me, I don’t start the day with intention of writing.  And then it happens, a moving phrase read, extrapolated and boom, the synapses light up in connection.  
I’m not a nerd, not especially informed, but something inside is always on the lookout and knows more that I do.

Many Small Acts Of Indifference

They pile up one by one.
The largest iceberg melting, crumbling. falling slowly:
Then, ‘all gone’!

What could be truer -
People neither bad- nor good-er:
Just indifferent;
Never seeing unconcern
Till forests burn.
Therein the problem.

Mostly, one can’t lay a blame.
There is no name, no exclamation:
Maybe something thin and lame like, “****!”
To call this sad phenomenon.

It’s all of us;
Our routine habits that are cause;
Unoriginal, derivative. monotonous…
For where the planet stands today, we’re breaking laws
Set down by nature.
(This planet ‘ doesn’t ‘stand’ it goes,
But where it’s going no one knows);
Round and round or down and down:
It’s all a terrifying puzzle.
We, the powerless and muzzled.

Anyhow, the very slowness gives one hope.
You and I, the dopiest
Can change this moment.
Coral, porpoise, whale dies; gases rise;
Oceans foam, the whole fomenting
Sentiment and action:
Thanks to worldwide inter- nets:
Information at its best.

Beware indifference’ shrugging off,
Bent, trump-ian off-sloughing of the evidences.
It’s you and me, kid,
Who can rid the damage done,
The inner mental situation
Of those small indifferences.

Many Acts Of Small Indifference 4.23.2021 Our Times, Our CultureII; Definitely Didactic II;  Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin
Pandemic-wise

The Sun, Birds, Cozy Cats & Light

There is the sunny side:
The bursting green of tree and bush,
The light, delight, the precious ****,
Processes key to happiness.
A breakthrough, negatives decried,
And you
Awaking,
Taking in,
All full of beans.
Within your day, the friendly means
Of sun, the birds, the cozy cat,
The light within,
The light without.
You, the end result content.

The Sun, Birds, Cozy Cats & Light 6.29.2017
Circling Round Nature II; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

I write everyday. This daily practice leads more and more to ignoring the past. Here is a poem - as newsworthy as ever, from one of my books published 2012 called Our Times, Our Culture which I happened to be going through this evening:
It's page 162 of a 302 page book; was written in 1996.

Becoming Braver

Turning thought to poetry,
Trusting that it’s worth conveying;
Turning impulse into input;
Turning input into form.
Becoming braver as your norm
Is to be distanced from result:
The very meaning of release;
Of taking on the difficult;
Of being an adult.

Becoming braver does not mean
To throw all caution to the wind.
You still must care.
It means ‘to dare,
Guided by inherent gifts,
Its freedom sifting through
The need for house, home, life: just you -
Risk-takers oft-times gone adrift!

That said, one can come back:
The failed business, loss, love’s bed -
But simple things: a recipe, a book,
Shifting round the furniture to freshen up the look,
Unhesitant and unafraid
Of testing, trying and applying;
You will still have faults.
There in the vaults of gene ad cell,
Heredity, the ancestry, the body shape, the temperament;
Activity, passivity,
The tendencies to act and be,
To always have;
They never leave.

What you have as genesis - your pre-born base,
Becoming braver can’t erase,
With not have a need to hate or praise;
But you can weather, persevere,
Develop better, actions freer:
That is you, unfettered, braver.  

Becoming Braver 2.16.2021 Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Gerontology

Sitting in the car
Mulling over near and far,
There
And what is definitely here:

Youth cannot ‘feel’ eighty-two.  Doctors too.
Your doctor, my…
So many symptoms pass them by.
‘Tis pity, for ‘tis
I who suffer, study,
Face to face with, analyze.
Use self through trial and t-error,
I who ponder, for I must,
There being no one I dare trust
(except for God unseen
who has the charge of body mine).
Nonetheless, geron (Greek for old man)
Plus –ology (the study of)
Is what is needed in our time,
Oxymoron though it sounds, and given that
The young can never feel out
Time’s dealing out,
Apprentice doctors in their prime
Should get to know the facts of age,
The pages, wages of real life,
For theory is theory,
A fact that disappoints me
Visit after visit,
Closeted by slow decline
When I am looking for relief.

Gerontology 10.18.2016
Circling Round Aging;
Arlene Corwin

Hot off the press!
The Hottest May On Record
I write about the land I live in
Just because I live there and the land’s at hand.
A land forgiven,
For in heaps of, hopeful ways it’s grand.
The hottest May most every day
Since records started to be written, and
A button on the past,
It points to profits oft’ ill-gotten
In a world of greed, technology: half-rotten.
All the harmful tendencies in man
Brought forth, the times and growing population
On their prideful side.
Oh, I hate to be a just one more harbinger
Of god-knows-what:
Plagues and wars and everything that
Brings disaster.
All this from the weather
And this hottest May on record
Within
Little Sweden.
The Hottest May On Record 5.30.2018 Swedish Book; Nature Of & In Reality; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Good morning!
Love,
Arlene
       Embedded In The Problem


Rooted in the problem sits an answer

Well inserted by the laws of physics:

Every energy, each action, force

Contains an opposite and equal heart.

Not obvious, because of course

You’re coming face to face with one small seam,

Large though it seems,

With un’s that scream their presence:

“We’re Unanswerable, We are Unsolvable!”

Therefore, the answer, at least at the start,

Is to see the problem as a part

Of opportunity.

That would be smart!

Embedded In The Problem 4.22.2018 Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Corwin

If They Ask: What Do You Want?

I do not want.  
I work and let the aim flow through me.
It is art and all its implications:
Polish, depth, finesse, processing –
Whatsoever makes good art.
So,  
Through re-thinkings, tinkerings, eliminations;
Many hours of flowering thoughts,
Produce is produced; wrought
Through humor, reference, experience,
And always aiming at the genuine,
Discovering that one is not as complex
As one thought one was;
More half-done and many-leveled:
Always a surprise.
Discovering that simple going on
Connects synapses of intelligence
And observation: powers unknown.
Unsuspected gifts and lacks.
Stacks and stacks of new disclosures
Brought on by the writing.

If they ask, “What do you want today?” (and everyday)
Just say, “I do not want a thing”,
And let the bell of creativity ring
Through me.

If They Ask: What Do You Want 4.29.2018 Pure Nakedness II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Corwin

November 8th, 2016

November eight; election date;
New president, old Arlene Faith
Who, on that date, doth celebrate
29,930 days, 718,320 hours since birth:
A non-elected eighty-two.                              
Who wants to vote for 82 or -3 or -4,
And doesn’t want to ask for more,
Four more…and more?
For nothing’s better
Than the pancake batter
That is life & breath & health & strength,
And solving unsolved human wrath:
Wars, filth, child-death with all
That forms the aftermath.
And where and what is soul and truth!

It must be synchronicity
That Trump and Hilary
(chump/champ) compete
The day old grumpy me
Heads into grumpy eighty-three,
Hurling memories unpleasant
Into green and pleasant pastures,
Saying anything that pleases
With the breezy ease of Sophocles,
Eighty-two can’t be all bad.

Eight, November: situations:
(Discord outside, inside nations)
Eight, November, compensations.

Are there ever real changes,
Or just temporary re-arrangements –
Everything no more than fad?

November 8th, 2016 10.2.2016
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II; Birth, Death &n; Between II: Birthday Book II
Arlene Corwin

Writing In The Middle Of The Night

There’s something nice about the facelessness
Of  Internet,
The anonymity you get
Despite the photos and the instant thing
You hope will ring the bell
Of those around the global ball.
A kind of secret.
You needn’t tell your thoughts,
Spell correctly,
Use our mouth, make a sound -
Just sit there typing while the world goes round.
North, south, east, west,
You’ve got all the time to test your creativity.
Believe me, it’s the best invention
Since sliced bread, the paper clip,
The toilet roll, words ‘hip’ and ‘soul’.

For people who want name and fame
It is a trip to paradise.
The price   is shekels.
What the heck, it’s only money!
And for people whose agenda is pure vanity,
A dream (both fantasy and joy).

In any case, if I may say it once again,
There’s something I appreciate
About the gate that’s opened
Through the faceless anonymity,
Potential creativity and artistry
Implicit
In the Internet.
Writing In The Middle Of The Night 2.9.2018The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Corwin

As I wrote to a reader this morning, "I'm an R&M person, a rhyme and meter person (on which I work hard)" Content, form - they go together. This morning's work: which may need working on sometime in the future, natch'

        Vanity Or What? Or Not?✍️

Everything An Etude

Your cooking, your yoga,
Your diet, your posture:
Everything a try,
Chance to be brave
Chance to be plucky:
Symphony unfinished;
All’s a laboratory.

Everything an opportunity.
An exercise to make you better.
Never best.
There is no best.
So rest in knowing
Everything is etude.

Everything Is Etude 4.11.2017
The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Definitely Didactic; Vaguely About Music II;
Arlene Corwin

I Don’t Write Nature Poems

I don’t write nature poems.
My husband is the nature guy,
While I, I sit around
Bound by philosophies and wond’rings why.
However, last night, ten or so fifteen
The crescent moon
Outside my window
Turned from white to orange.
No mirage, I, on the edge of sleep
Sat up amazed,
The deepest part of this un-phased, rather blasé Arlene
In bliss.
How does one explain it, share it, do it justice?
How does one make clear magnificence?

Orange caused a drunken binge
Whose hangover
I had to share
With you, dear reader, reader dear.

It's wonderful how a cup of  morning coffee can wake the inspired and inspiring part of the brain.

       A Question To Be Thought About


Brooded over and annoyed

To not be read

Before one’s dead

Is justifiable.


Poor guy, Van Gogh,

And other names we’ll never know

And God knows how

****** many artists of all sorts

Went to eternity, their arts

Unknown, unseen, unsold

Is undeniable,


This sad, sad, fact

Which begs the question:

What is it one’s aiming at

When writing, or composing that sonata?

To be reflected and accepted, for

It may be my, your

Very

Destiny.



Many say

It is the journey.



A Question To Be Thought About 2.18.2018 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Corwin

They’re All Agreed

They’re all agreed –
It’s very, very quiet there.
Up or out or maybe in
A space so hidden
That it is a twin
To so-called outer space
Where it is very, very quiet
In the place where
It is all created:
All the synchronistic sequences
That take the meaning
Out of chaos.
I read that they ‘re all agreed,
And I’m afraid
A little,
Which just shows that I’m not ready.
They’re All Agreed 6.13.2010 Revelations Big & Small; To The Child Mystic; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

I was thinking about human essence and this came out.

Clearing up and out I came upon this, “The Personal Joys Og Ageing from 2016.  Now totally rewritten.

              The Personal Joys Of Ageing

I enjoy not being steered by ardour’s ***** drive,
The appetite for lots of food and varied such:
I enjoy not wanting much of much
Which qualities all counteract, exacerbate
The facts of fate.

It’s late.
I cannot sleep
But revel in the hours I keep.
Awake at night,
It is a most creative time to write.

In younger days there was so much I’d have denied,
Tried to get out of, lied about,
Taboos and mores* certifying,
Classifying wrong and right.

Sleep, food, *** vacate the drives,
Each space replaced by something fitter.
Without daily nose dives
Life is definitely better.
                                                      
Say, dear reader
What you’re free from.
I would love to hear from
Any reader sitting there.

The Personal Joys Of Ageing 12.6.2016/rewritten 1.16.2020
Circling Round Eros II; Nature Of Reality; Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

*mores (pronounced morays) customs, conventions, ways, way of life, way of doing things, traditions, practices, custom and practice, procedures, habits, usages; formal praxis.

Sitting up in bed on a Sunday morning editing, re-writing, refining. A bit long but worth it in the reading - thinks I!

        Coffee (A Conflict Of Values)
Catering to a certain need for stimulation,
Even relaxation and the psychic high,
Coffee bean in cool, dark tin,
Fragrance and the oil in
The box or jar or bag’s supply
Of pleasure ought to make the drinker
Think a little about why
The bitter sweet is such a stinker,
In whose absence droops the mood
The energy, the good;
Whose undemanding look
In cafeteria or china cup and just a slurp
Creates the nervous, wrecked and hooked.
Symbol of that quiet urge
For pleasant conversation’s purge,
To say this has a feeble ring,
Insistent urge to reach a high, high as the sky
From just a thing
(to say this has a feeble ring),
Well, surely pleasure comes from means
Far less addictive than caffeine’s
Delicious smell and taste,
Java’s clutch (was Java Dutch?)
Conversation’s time-filled waste;
That needs no brew,
Nor company of two.
But then, an energy from what?
Oh dear, the will is weak
When pleasure lies within the cheek and coffee ***,
And one has never learned the art
Of keeping silence in the heart.
Bitter devil, wreaking havoc like a weevil
On plantations of the body.
To steal upon the cells by stealth,
Speed the heart, adrenals, pulse,
God knows what else;
Claiming vitamins and health –
And still the perils lie elsewhere,
Where habits have their hidden lair,
Vice/virtue, meet excess;
Battling for their piece of peace,
Posing as a social duty,
Threatening in bitter beauty.
Dear, oh dear, I fear that life (it’s clear)
with coffee’s here to stay,
My own cup one small hour away.
From Macbeth: the coffee oath:
Stir the sugar, stir the milk,
Make the coffee smooth as silk,
Help the migraine, the depression;
Be benign in our transgression.
Tranquilizing our confusion
Make gregarious the nation.
Cof-free or cof- fiend?
Or just plain coff… and what you make it be?
Coffee (A Conflict of☕Values) 4.21.1999/ 1.8.2011/2.4.2018Coffee Book II; Definitely Didactic;Arlene Corwin

It Rules The Planet

It rules the planet, schools the planet,
Still we don’t take seriously
Storm and earthquake, flood and rain,
Temperature and ocean size,
Human death and insect death,
Animal and fauna death,
Heat waves, all the waves,
Attempting step by step
To step on it,
Then conquer it.
How idiotic!  
Wars continue.

Thinking that the cyclones, floods,
The sweep of muds, the slides and thuds.
Containers, trucks,
The heaviest of objects turned,
And then the fires, people burned
And buried
Under forces too complex to list.
Category that and this,
Numbers measuring the forces.
Cars on roofs, numberless losses;
Categories three, four, five,
Searches for the people live, the few survived.
And still the wars.

Unpredictable the changes.
Some think they have a wealth of time.
Changes in intensity, they stick around through lava lime;
Stubbornly they stay and die.
Some say we’ve learned a lesson.
Experts say it will get worse.
It the curse of global warmings.
Non-believers like D. Trump play golf through stormings.
There will be repeated more to come.
Volcanic heat that lies below,
And some don’t seem to care or know,
Which (that) alone can blow the flow
As wars and hate
Accumulate.

It rules the planet.
Still we do not seriously
Change our path.

* 1.23.2018 Horrifying coincidence; day after this is written there is a 7.9 earthquake in the Alaskan Gulf.

It Rules The Planet 1.22.2018 Circling Round Nature II; Our Times Our Culture II; War Book II; Arlene Corwin

Have I offered you this before?  Having just found the scrap I wrote it on, and having a dreadful memory, I'm offering it up - perhaps again.
       Anyone Can Write A Poem

Anyone can write a poem, but,
To call oneself a poet is another thing.
To be a poet calls for gift:
Humdrum persistence,
(Some would call it patience)
Mulling over, musing on; but with distance.
Facets focusing upon all faces:
Places, spaces, graces…
And their antonyms; the oxymorons.

If anyone can write a poem, write one!
If you like it, write another.
You and I are everyman: unsung, unclear.
Become a thinker, sluice and duct;
Avenue for inner construct.
Everything has drama: kitty’s purr,
Dying fir, cowboy’s spur…
The insignificant betrays a stir
That sits within a coma.
All is magma in the planet’s inner.
You, the [unknown] poet winner.

Anyone Can Write A Poem 5.20.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Highest Prize

I am not intelligent;
IQ middling, slow to think
(except when I’ve had caffeine’s drink))
I know people whose vocabulary,
Skills in math and history
Outdo, surpass and outshine mine
By kilometres miles,
Eclipsing talents, each outrivaling  
My wiliest of guiles.

And yet, and yet
I lie or sit
And never quit
Creating verse.
My biggest blessing, little-lest curse
To (all the time) be struck by phrase
That never hazes,
Never dazes or confuses.
Simply takes my life and uses it.
Perhaps fusing the parts, (I hope)
Unjoined or compromised or *****.


Of course, being the seated type
That learned to type when just a tike,
I snap things up and write them down,
Typing up and clipping to with paper clip
Each page of quip and deepest scrip
While taking ownership of ideas wise
And ideas definitely dippy.*

I admit, without self praise,
That I’ve been blessed with artist-joy.
(A gift I didn’t have to buy
It being given me for free).
The gift to knock together, forge concoct,
Then synthesise chords, words, whatnot…
The highest prize I could’ve got.

Perhaps intelligence is overrated.
One can feel complete and sated
By a zillion other qualities:
Not sensory but definitely
Meeting needs:
Ones that feed the world as well.
All other prizes, as you know,
Gone to the hell of false impression’s phantom spell:  
Of no importance whatsoever.

The Highest Prize 9.30.2018 I Is Always You Is We; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

(written certificate)
*(scatterbrained, silly or eccentric).

I Need That Drug

It’s 4am and I’m awake,
And so I take up Mac
Who sits beside,
And ***** for pen to start the ride
Into a poem,
For phrase and rhyme of the most nebulous formation
Have installed themselves into my equally
Unclear and foggy brain train station.

Left to need a drug to write,
This sluggish mind awake this night
And cloudy when it’s morning light,
Won’t think, won’t write,
Cannot create
Until that cup of coffee.

So, until the sun comes up
And hubby brings that morning cup
With warmed milk and a pancake.
I remain unwillingly awake
Mac’s screen the only source of luminescence,
Pen and paper of the essence
Funny ponderings, mental wanderings,
Scrawling like a daft bedbug
Waiting for the morning gulp
To bring my muse to shape and type
The rest.

I Need That Drug 11.5.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Coffee Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Message To Garcia Revised

I, admittedly without the skills or knowledge of
Affairs of state, power struggles, machinations
Do not get one certain thing:
Western world-ers all, bombing
ISIS, and who else I can’t remember,
With the threat of conflict spreading -
Would it not reduce the blood
If it were weapons plants we bombed instead,
Exhibitions where the latest are displayed
And all the demonstrations demonstrate,
Their potency impressive –
Would the killing not be shortened
If we bombed the messengers?
Am I naïve, so uninformed?
Or is it too undemocratic?

Message To Garcia 10.28.2017 (found ‘revised’ somewhere in Mac)
Our Times, Our Culture II; War Book II;
Arlene Corwin

By coincidence and AFTER writing this poem I read “Kings of old, rich in virtue and in harmony with the times, nourished all beings”.* WHAT a coincidence, eh!

              A Well-Functioning Society

The people are the goal.
But that includes the whole:
Their health, their wealth, their psychological well-being -
Familial, emotional: their simplest needs met,
That, until their death.
Simple but not easy.

How do you make people giving?
How do you secure their living?
How do you reduce a greed
That goes much further than the need?

Then how to teach a folk to share?
You cannot preach a folk to sharing.
Propaganda and brainwashing only go so far.
Though faith goes to the furthest star,
Well supported,
It can also be perverted.

Think, dear reader near:
Meditate and contemplate,
Work through a restlessness
To inner peace, acceptance, patience.
Answers lie in your own essence.
Every thought and every deed spreads in a sea,
Rippling out eventually.
A well-functioning society
Begins and ends with me.

A Well-Functioning Society 5.4.2019 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin
* I Ching; Richard Wilhelm translation

I saw Lars Lerin, Sweden's great watercolorist, interviewed this morning. (If you don't know who he is look him up. You'll adore his painting genius and modest charm. A great, great artist with principle, technique and endless ideas.
It inspired me to write this:
✍️

Wrote this immediately after seeing a documentary on the inscrutable, charismatic jazz pianist Lennie Tristano.  It took less than an hour - (the poem not the documentary).  I MUST have been inspired!
Arlene

        A Big Pile of Junk

Stumbled upon this one while collating my next book "Circling Round Ageing”. Seeing ‘ deficiencies',  I’m revising it,  the older version already in my book “Pure Nakedness” (page 30).

                    Ascetic Youth

When I was young and immature I took a ‘no’ as absolute,
Not understanding that
A ‘no’ implies alternatives.
I lacked perspective.
Who looked for alternatives;
A complement, a supplement?

Without a doubt,
I gave myself deficiencies
Of every sort.
The diet that said don’t drink milk,
Did not say don’t get calcium.
Who knew?
Who knew the wrong side of obedience Is ignorance.
And so I’m thinking,
That’s how despots do their thing!
Ascetic Youth 6.1.2010 I Is Always We Is You; Pure Nakedness; Arlene
Corwin

NonsensePoetry á la Corwin
  
    There is a legitimate genre called Nonsense Verse, a form of nonsense literature usually employing strong prosodic elements like rhythm and rhyme. It is whimsical and humorous in tone and employs some of the techniques of nonsense literature.
     Among writers in English noted for nonsense verse are Edward Lear[, Lewis Carroll, Mervyn Peake, Sukumar Ray, Edward Gorey, Colin West, Dr. Seuss, and Spike Milligan.
     I myself seldom write nonsense poetry, but a friend sent me an email with this phrase:
“Each little bench
Is amazingly French….
     I had no idea why he sent it, but was instantly engaged and inspired to write this back to him:

However, each *****
Who sits on that bench
Has a stench
That could drench
Every river and trench
But not quench
Any watery branch
Or prevent any mulching
By belching.
If you agree much,
Have an itch to get hitched*
Keep in touch!

*get hitched; marry.
Nonsense Poetry á la Corwin 8.16.2020 A Senses Of The Ridiculous II;  Arlene Nover Corwin

Older By The Minute  

In print,
In ink,
In body’s wrinkle              
Every atom – infinite in movement,
Older by the minute but for dogged re-arrangement,
Fortune’s plight and luck indefinite.

What then, then what?  
Some permanence within,
In atoms’ never ending movement?
Some emergent state
To start the thing all over;
Aging once again, but to initiate
Each minute-varied-minute?
Pin your hopes on it.
Monarchs, minions
And some other millions
Do.

Older By The Minute 11.8.2015/revised 9.7.2016
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; Circling Round Time II; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Peoplephobia

You’ve heard about them all,
The misanthropes, misogynists,…
But have you heard of peoplephobes?
Detestation of a group,
Fear and loathing
Women, men, trade deals, the globe:
You-know-who - I think he’s got it.
Actions show it,
Does he know it?                      
Groundless, baseless,
Senseless
To the point
Of being foolish.
One who has it
Doesn’t know it,
Has not conquered anger, temper and self-interest.
All those traits of vice that simply aren’t nice!
Traits that ultimately cause destruction
Of the self and those who follow.
Hollow traits that scoff the poor,
Prizing, praising the well-off.
Leaving Latin, leaving Greek
And colloquially stated,
New created,
Peoplephobia’s the thing
For understanding would-be kings
And you-know-who,
Thanking God that it’s not you
Or me.
Which would be woeful, sorrowful and lousy.

Peoplephobia 10.17.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Lumps & Bumps

Wrinkles, lines, ache this, pain that;
Then the lumps, perplexing bumps
From nowhere, showing, growing,
Coming and not going.
Bother!
You think cancer, other
Causes: worry, costs and doctors,
Signs and trends!
Brother!
Will they never end?
Changes down there:
Sour, cowardly -
Unsightly forms informing us
Of beauty’s loss, of songs unsung,
Boss death and wretched other wrongs.
Lumps  and bumps which must mean something;
Nature's drowsing, rousing, - dousing.
Sousing us with vinegar.

Lumps & Bumps 5.29.2016/revised 5.11.2020/re-revised4.21.2021
Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s Easier To Tell The Truth
      (Than Tell A Lie)

It’s easier to tell the truth
Than tell a lie.
That is why
Each syllable is poe-try;
Examining a prefix, suffix
To a-fix  an honesty
Found bound inside.

With hours of refinement,
Its defining of identity:
(For what else is there
But to find out who we are?)
Glacial faults, deep and broad;
Small conversions to the good;
Youth and growth to wrinkled age -
Weak > strength >, courage:
A corsage of fortitude.

And the insight that
It’s easier to bathe in facts
Than drown in lies.
Hence the art of poe-tizing,
Its requiring and sacrificing youth and froth
To new found truth(s)

It’s Easier to Tell The Truth 5.5.2021 Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin