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

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

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

The mixture of Vedanta, Hinduism and Buddhism that’s had a part in shaping all these years. Of course there have been other parts of this mixture, but this is on the board at the moment.

         A Bit Of Buddhistic Thought In Arlene-Speak

Sometimes poetry is story telling, sometimes didactic teaching, sometimes a combination of both.

A Letting Go & Letting In

A ‘ballsy’ lady I know well,
Who doesn’t hesitate to tell
Those she considers foes, to ‘go to hell’
Considers meditation
Self-deception and delusion,
Which ‘dislike’ inspired me to re-define
In easy terms,
A practice I consider firm.

Meditation, as I find it, see it, use it
Is a mind full, filled by focus, plus,
A letting go and letting in
A ‘thing’ you can’t put finger on.
All these three are meditation.
These, a brain that’s working on
A different plane or several planes.

I admire her for her ‘*****’
But sympathize a mind the sees life as a
Nothing worthy or an all.
She may be missing what’s behind -
Which may be spirit or a soul;
Some non-something behind the earth
Contactable by non-thing faith.
No meter there to measure pleasure;
Or to calculate its treasure.

A Letting Go & Letting In 4.23.2021 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover 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

Ageing

Ageing is the strangest ****** phenomenon.
It’s sneaky, going ‘long
With universe’s basic law of change.
We hate it cause we cannot change the change
With choice, with voice in matters
Dealing with each atom looming over time.
You watch a documentary of a famous person you once loved.
What you see is change or interchange.
Voice now gravely, hairs now straggly,
Mind not gaga (maybe),
But the teeth, fat, skin itself deranged.
It’s all so strange.

Invisible the first half century,
(If you’ve been so lucky)
Then they come: the boom of bombs begun in womb.
The stealthy hum of failing health a-zooming in,
The forms of  everything you took for granted
Changed from light to odium
Enchanted idioms of youth now faint or quaint.
And the damnedest twist of all
Besides what’s going on outside,
Visible and tactile,
Is that life has lied.
You thought it stretched ahead forever,
That it never stopped
And then you’re bopped on your old head:
You’re dead.

One’s left to speculate and ponder
Where does life go on from here?
Where and if…

Ageing 9.11.2018 Birth, Death & In Between III; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

I’m often asked by readers whose native language is not English.  Here are a few words of which they might like to know the meaning:
odium;  general or widespread hatred or disgust incurred by someone as a result of their actions:
tactile;  of or connected with the sense of touch: vocal and visual signals
bop;  verb (bops, bopping, bopped) [with object] hit or punch quickly: Rex bopped him on the head

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

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

How Many People Would You Have To Change To Change The World?

How many people would you have to change
To change the world?  
The other day the man I love,  
One who has faith in God above.
Declared the impotence of man.
Insisted phrase by rehashed phrase:
“This world has never been so bad.
It’s getting worse and worse and worse!”
He feels so helpless. What a curse!
Has no belief in his own richness;
Can’t understand the reach
Of butterfly’s effect: the flap
Of wings in Florida
With vibes that stretch to Africa.

How does it work?

You find the thing you’re born to do.
You do it hour by hour by hour.
Work through the furor,
Take your power,
Use it, focused on the now.

There’s nothing more.

That small series called your life
Is quite enough to end all strife.
Not instantly, not right away -
For life takes time.
But yours is prime:
A mix of self-esteem
Humility and bravery,
Seeing life reflectively
With love and strength
The length of days.

How many people would you have to change
To change things?
Think of wings!

How Many People Would You have To Change To Change The World? 3.2.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II;

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.

To select and understanding friends, with love and empathy.

    The Thinning Skin Or, I Never Stopped To Think


I never stopped to think,

The skin gets thin.

Then looking down, I saw my leg,

And there it was: the winter

Of my life in action: reneging,

Processing past youth - and losing.

Not amusing!

Definitely not!

Fragility, a new reality;

Oils, creams and salves to save

A youth no longer tangible.

Every syllable wail of decline.

Not fine,

Definitively not, not fine!

And yet, I saw the possi-probablity

That by design God is benign,

And if the wine goes sour

Some divine sweet guarantee

Will make it fine -

Despite the programmed skin of youth’s denial.

The Thinning Skin Or, I Never Stopped To Think; 2.5.2018 Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles; Birth, Death & In Between III;

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

I certainly realised when I wrote "There Are Daughters…” that not everyone had children, and I don’t mean to make anyone feel sad.  When I write, (which is everyday), I simply become, shall we say, attached to a phrase or the seed of an idea; even a rhythm or a word or funny rhyme.  These can take me in any direction.  This process has led to 19 books with two more on the way.  
     It’s a kind of yoga, a mental training - and the most unexpected ideas come out - ideas which I work on and refine.  I write on anything at hand.  Just today, I found 4 scraps, one dating back to 2015.  I’ll show you.

Notes found…refined, completed.

       This Brain

This brain invades
The good, the bad:
Everything that’s done, not done.
And so I try
To purify
The brain
And turn
Invasion into
Sympathetic action.
This Brain 2.27.2020 Nature of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
      After Surgery

After surgery
One is like the princess and the pea,
Feeling every crevice
On each surface.
After surgery
One’s sore, and golly, gee,
All parts exposed or not
Are vulnerable,
Incapable
But filled with the potential
Of life ahead,
For one day you’ll get out of bed,
Participate in daily doings:
Cleaning, practicing and s(cr)ewing.
We’ll see
How afterwards can be!
After Surgery 2.27.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
      Dear Friends

Dear friends,
You’ll never know the inspiration
You have been,
And what I’ve learned
Of gratitude and giving,
And what I lacked..

You’ve helped change aims,
And I will never be the same,
Hoping I survive and have the chance
To show the learning’s knowing
Filled with just one speck
Of your munificence, unselfishness
And open-handedness.
Dear Friends 10.10.2019/2.27.2020 Arlene Nover Corwin
      I Have Become

I have become yours
To grow in your power;
Grow and flower
Over self-love’s lowest.
Wow!
How a syllable inspires.
I Have Become 10.25.2019/2.27.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
         It Sneaks Up

It sneaks up: autumn,
And Huston sings “September Song”.
A rainbow arches:
Purple, blue, green, yellow, orange.
One can’t tell because
They blend and fade.
You’re stuck there at the window,
Captivated.
It Sneaks Up 12.15.2015/2.27.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Simplifying

I think the isolating medium -
(Pandemic’s global impact)
Has done the job for me;
Few demeaning ultimatums;
Calls returned, lunches met,
Malls paraded through
With nought of worth to do.

Oh, the benefits of saying in!
Throwing sins of wasteful time
Into the garbage bin of slime and time.
Everything brings inspiration.
Anything a motivation,
Open to inventiveness of one's creation
Which, in turn means making choices
Truer to an inner voice;
Not fiddling, waiting for some muse
To lift you from your busy-ness.

There is a principle I hold to:
Everything you wish to do
Will always be simplicity
But never easy.
That, my friend
Is, you could say, the end.


Simplifying 5.22.2021Circling Round Everything II; The Processes: Creative,Thinking,Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

One idea can lead almost directly to another  - although a day apart, as in this case:

     Sometimes the deepest questions elicit the easiest truths.  Because it is rather sillily written this ‘truth’ below is slated to go into a collection called “A Sense Of the Ridiculous #II,  A Sense Of The Ridiculous #I  already published.  (see Amazon or Barnes & Noble, I think )…and more, I’m sure.
      Simplistic, Black & White But True🤪

Teddy Roosevelt, the President,
Said, “Where you are, with what you have, do what you can”.
Do it, do, do, do”, said
Ted,
The President!

And I concur with Teddy's view,
For reader, do
You have a better, more complete
Solution?

Complex issues
May have layers,
Many sayers,
But sometimes there are no clearer
Answers than one thin as tissues.

Simplistic, Black & White But True 5.20.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

         The Elixir

If there ever was a magic potion
Inbuilt in an earthly notion,
One to change the habits old
Into a new and lifelong gold;
Outside all tricks,
The negatively nix;
A lotion of refreshment
Portioned out, the perfect servant,
Ocean of vitality and vibrancy
And most of all, not fancy,

It is doing what you can
With what you have
Wherever you may find yourself,
Tools always in your hand
Or foot, or leg or mind,
Its wangling angling,
Its instinct, intuition, reasoning.

Right there in existence
And your presence
Is the feature and the fixture:
The elixir.
Elixir 5.21.2020. Words To Love; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Elixir; (also elixir of life) a preparation supposedly able to prolong life indefinitely:

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was thinking about human essence and this came out.

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.

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

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

A Creative Nobody

I’m a creative nobody.
A follower of movie star,
Celebrity,
Biography,
Notable awards and trophies.
Here sit I,
A reasonable credential of activity;
Some published books, (19 so far)
No royalties,
Musician, yogin, writer, poet
(some other diverse roles that show it)
Still, I go unrecognised,
(well, some inconsequential prizes).
Writing daily,
In my eighties,
Fueled energy,
Heightened creativity.
There must be meaning in originality;
Expressiveness, creative skills
That over-match all other ills.
To be a nobody’s not all that bad,
A gladdening in all the rest
Feels sort of, kind of, one might say -
And pretty much the VERY best!

A Creative Nobody 5.15.2021 The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative 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).

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

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

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

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?✍️

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.

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

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

Going On Forever

I don’t want to disappear,
But stay here
Growing, learning,
Watching its eternal earning
With a quiet eye.

Yet and yet, not able
To face label Death,
There is a daring me - preparing,
Filled with stashes of creativeness
That make up for
The fear of disappearing.

Without forethought I find notes to play;
Better than before or ever.
Unpredictable the throat, but I don’t care
Because inventiveness is there.

What might have been a vanity,
Self-consciousness and worry,
Is an energy of nonchalance
Letting in pure chance
And taking in delight
In finding just what’s right
In word or song,
As if the wrong-est word
Ought still be heard by others,
Thanks to confidence
That smothers fear of being judged;
That if I’ve fudged a phrase expected,
Anything can be corrected.

Hence the fire of desire
To go on forever,
Bedded in indebtedness
Undying.
Going On Forever 5.20.2021 Birth,Death & In Between III; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Yesiree!          

SELF-HELP BOOK

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

Trying Out Ideas In Form
          
Accepting some, rejecting others
You think thoughts (of course, what else?)
With mind that thinks in rhyme,
That sings internally in pulse or meter,
With the trying out idea
In one shape, length or other form,
A form poetic, form its norm.

It cannot help it,  choosing not to,
Its intrinsic motto “Write!” into
The dead of night, the morning’s bait,
Some inward freight shipped in by nature,
Makes it make ideas clear – and that alone on matt blank paper.
Talking dissipates in air
While written piece is always there,
If only to be found in some museum cellar
Two damp hundred dry years later,
Made mature
By simile and metaphor-become-reality,
Affecting mankind’s then and future
Through the slow, low burn of poetry.

Trying Out Ideas In Form 8.15.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Truth Will Out

If you’ve got a thing to say
A real thing, the words will play
Through synapses old/new,
The new unused, creating unconditionally unsaid
Phrases you alone invent unaided.

If you’ve something pregnant there
Inside the cerebellum,
You’ll be inclined to share
And tell ‘em.
Truth will out
Not shouted, but with clout
Deliberately aimed or not.

Then we come to something there
Called instinct’s intuition
To transport you far and near - everywhere
You need to go
To every place you need to know.

You must, gosh **** it, trust it!

Because all truths
Are there in places ‘neath the scalp
Beneath your hair, sculpted by the roots of roots,
By nerves that serve you night and day
Which tell you things that may,
Have what we call, the truth.
(Not every thought’s idea is true
Though it’s all you.)
A tricky thing this ‘God hath wrought’
Just always call to mind this thought:
Truth will always, in the end, want out.

Truth Will Out 2.20.2018 Circling Round Reality, Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Corwin

Trying Out Ideas In Form
          
Accepting some, rejecting others
You think thoughts (of course, what else?)
With mind that thinks in rhyme,
That sings internally in pulse or meter,
With the trying out idea
In one shape, length or other form,
A form poetic, form its norm.

It cannot help it,  choosing not to,
Its intrinsic motto “Write!” into
The dead of night, the morning’s bait,
Some inward freight shipped in by nature,
Makes it make ideas clear – and that alone on matt blank paper.
Talking dissipates in air
While written piece is always there,
If only to be found in some museum cellar
Two damp hundred dry years later,
Made mature
By simile and metaphor-become-reality,
Affecting mankind’s then and future
Through the slow, low burn of poetry.

Trying Out Ideas In Form 8.15.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Playing With Your Self

One’s mantra ought to be,
‘No people, things; no things, no people’;(italics)
Energy that’s wasted swishing
Thoughts around illusionary realms
That kindle wish and drive desires
Rooted in the mind, and of the kind
That should be cast into a fire -
Wish/desire that sways, that leads astray.

You ask, “What’s left when one’s bereft
Of thoughts of things and world?”
Two words:
Your self(italics), its traits.
All other thoughts flung out to space,
Mind’s tissue
Focused on the one essential issue: you(italic),
You!(italic) To face the real deal you(italic)
To play with self’s true
                                       nature.
So remember,
Slow eradication of the need to talk,
Think worldly thought
Is to awaken from the slumber
Of illusion’s juggernaut.

Playing With Your Self 8.19.2016
Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Yoga II; to The Child Mystic II;
Arlene Corwin

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

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

Finger-less Or Finger-free

I’ve met those I’ve called talentless,
Who, with light irony,
I now call talent-free.
Now me?  
Not finger-less but finger-free:
Adaptability
Manifestly
               evident.

Big chords are out,
Arpeggios too.
Monk-like bass and base lines do.
Accompanied by vocal runs of dissonance
And lyricism: touching, new.

Then there are the household duties:
Kitchen, bath- and bedroom -
All rooms needing tending to;
Ways to brush, cut, ***** a cap:
Just plain old *****.

New talents, yessiree,
For those who may be
Talent-free, or finger-free,
The likes of mastering potentiality
That leave us free.

Finger-less Or Finger-free 2.17.2021 Nature Of & In Reality; Vaguely About Music II; Pure Nakedness II;Arlene Nover Corwin

This Body

Pesky, troublesome, capricious;
Efforts to control a wild-goose chase,
Farcical: a waste.
A strain in vain; hurts when it hurts;
Longings and desires, when and where it will,
Its underskirts.

It goes its way, in the way
And sometimes, thank the Lord, not…
One is forced to say,
“This is my lot.
I’ll do what I can do to help it stay
As long as possible;
Comfortable, perhaps good-looking, but
God knows, that part is least.”
This body is a beast
With some kind of intelligence that lies in destiny.

Goodbye old vanity,
Old friend one used to think so highly of,
Be steered by and obey.
Goodbye old energies one understood so little too.
Goodbye old you -
With arms, legs, trunk,
All of its useful junk inside;
The ride, the slide,
The destination thought its own,
Just bone
If that.

You notice I don’t call it ‘my’,
Belonging as it does to nature.
‘It’ an it and ‘this’ a this; this body a bo-die.

This Body 7.15.2017
Circling Round Vanities II; Birth, Death & In Between II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin


A good look at reality.

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