I loved writing this.  It took 3 minutes (figuratively)
                
Three Hundred Sixty Joints, Six Hundred Muscles

Feel inspired:
You have muscles, joints.
Anointed by the highest forces.
You can run and walk,
Go for a jaunt,
Lift, push and pull…
Can sit completely still,
Your joints and muscles circulating,
Socializing in the company
Of body.

There is a trick.
If you are well – or sick
Locate the tiniest of movements, and
Take tiny steps within those moments:
Move!  Test! Prove!
There is a guarantee: You will improve!
Every tiny movement prompted by
Your inner wish; roused and stimulated,
Motivated and impelled
To do your will.

Each joint a function and an unction.
Muscle/joint a juncture to another.
What a wonder!
Wonderful and wondrous
All these crossroads;
Never overloaded.
Seldom tired.
Feel inspired!

360 Joints, 600 Muscles 6.9.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature; Arlene Nover Corwin

5778, So That I Remember

What a bad Jew I am -
Having to write a poem
So that I remember, can recall
Once and for all
The joy of Rosh Hashanah
And the length of centuries
The Jews have thrived,
Have managed bravely to survive.
A feast that serves the feat,
(In fact, the feat deserving feast).

So much I do not know,
Therefore, to show heredity’s identity
To world and to myself,
I shall repeat the word, the year, the sound
Till next year when it comes around,
Turns seven eight to seven nine.

To all who like this person mine
Have left all contact far behind:
Happy New Year – Rosh Hashanah!
Shana Tovah – Happy New Year!

5778, So That I Remember 9.19.2017
Special People, Special Occasions; Pure Nakedness;
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

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

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

A Blank Page

It happens sometimes that one hits the wrong button.  As in this case, I pressed a button (are they really called ‘buttons’?) which brought up a blank page.  Not knowing what to do with or about it, I started writing and this came out:
        A Blank Page

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

Abstinence

Not pain exactly
But a longing, plain for me to see;
A need that has no outward symptom -
None.  Not one.
Brain tristesse invisible and humdrum.
What to do? Is one a freak?
That hour, that day, that week one speaks,
One acts, attends to facts;
A seeking through an abstract dance -
Dependence through aloneness.

Publicity? More company?
Eternity perpetuated through some poetry?
Anyway and somehow, one puts pen to paper.
One, two, three, four hours later,
Crossings out, Webster shouting all the time,
Searching for meaning,
Meaning’s teaching, fetching rhyme:
Through growing phrase and sentence.
Abstinence finds absence.

Writing in that playful way,
One knows one’s had a lot to say.
The silence that gave abstinence;
Was abstinence from muteness.
Abstinence 12.18.2020 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

This, in response to someone who thinks I have a propensity for the negative:

    Accentuate The Positive*

In nineteen hundred forty-five
When jive was ‘it’,
Johnny Mercer wrote the hit,
“(You Gotta) Accentuate The Positive”.

It can be positive to see the negative,
Then go back to real living.
What does living really mean?
Accepting that life can seem mean,
For all life ends, which seems demeaning:
‘Seeming’ which may or not be.

One sees that we live greatly
Through both fear and vanity:
Fear of dying, fear of change,
Dependent on the trendy image;
Forging paths that lead us nowhere.
Seeking knowledge yet in *******;
We changes places, paces,
Lessen bulges, alter faces,
Binge on fashions, jumping in as if it’s best:
Adaptation at its worst.

We thirst for eternality
With no kernel of an insight
That the real answer is acceptance!

Life is not the latest style, technique or fancy.
Style and mode are but a trance, a passing fancy.
The true dance of life: acceptance!
Genuine, true, an unfeigned YES!
In compliance with the destined and the tested.

Minutes after seeing you
Folk forget you.
Knowing this, forget the ego.
Take these pointers: See what’s real.
Accept, adapt and steal away
From vanity and fear,
Attending to what’s nearest, dearest -
You in Now.  And loving Wow!
*See Youtube

Accentuate the Positive 8.12.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Dear anyone of any religion, any holiday - anytime during the year.  For you.
Love,
Arlene

                                  A Christmas Greeting

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

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 Day Of Thinking or
This Is The Way My Brain May Work On Any Given Day

           Breakfast In Bed
No one in this world
Makes thinner toast,
Better toast, winner toast.
You do not boast.
How have you learned to slice
This near-transparent, indisputably crunchy piece of bliss!
What skill!  And modest too!
No one can make such toast as you.

                Going In To Thank
Going into different segments of the brain
I thank for life in any of the synapses.
Is there a gratitude partition
Or a separate, section - special one?
An all-inclusive?
I don’t always feel it – just today.
It probably will go away.
I hope it leaves a record.

          Late Afternoon
Deep, deep inside
I’m feeling tired of society.
It’s like, what I imagine to be
What they call depression.
It’s connected to reality; civilization.
There’s the problem -
It’s not me, it’s them!
I ought to put away the TV (I’ve no phone)
Things electronic, dailies, monthlies,
All things histrionic;
The destructive, scandalous and shocking;
All things not-to-be: illusory.
Noel Coward wrote “World Weary” –
A light, song for something serious.
Perhaps that’s it!
There still exist fall hues phantasmagorical:
Food tastes, sweet music, friends amusing, loyal,
Beauty, animals…and still I feel
Despite the goodness,
Deep, deep sadness at the mess.

A Day Of Thinking 10.28.2016
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

I was intuitively drawn to record yesterdays passing of beloved  Kent’s daughter Pia, 54.

          A Death In Families

While standing at the sink doing the dishes:

Advice About ***: Consciousness

It isn’t ‘nice’
To give advice
About the art of copulating.
There are many ways of fornicating,
Very few to carnal urges,
Carnal surges being what they are.
Double myrrh
Is double pleasure;
Philosophic, not ******.

It is wise to sacrifice,
Pay the price
Of being spat at,
Being got at,
Many living lives in anguish;
The taboo in all - all foolish.

Words of wisdom come to this:
When you touch,
Be cognizant of what you feel
In your person, as your person.
You yourself are sealed onto
All the knowledge in the world.

Always subject/object both,
Know how much
You are the subject though subjecting
Other to a lover’s clutch.
Be betrothed
To him and you, her and you,
Even it, yes, it and you.

One with brain and all the senses,
Make the fences that divide,
Of flexible, transparent goods;
Not barriers but guides
To knowledge, peace and joy –
All upside with no downsides.

Here’s the pool of rule that is the school,
The tool as well as fuel:
Pay attention to sensation in your senses and your limbs.
Do not think too much, evaluating her or him.
Loving is a kind of gym –
A paradigm of health and recreation;
Educational if let:
The entire carnal alphabet.

Advice About ***: Consciousness 9.16.2017
Circling Round Eros II; Definitely Didactic; Defiant Doggerel;
Arlene Corwin

A Faster Cleanup

I’ve watched the documentaries,
Read the news and watched TV.
I wish I weren’t ordinary,
More pedestrian than I would wish to be,
Surrendering to traps of
Entertainment for diversion -
All those mediocre pastimes I accuse the herd
Of needing, and I shan’t excuse my nerdy being
Leaning on that chestnut ‘will is strong but flesh is weak’.
So before you puke I’ll speak
And say, we need a faster cleanup.

Plastic on the ocean bottoms,
Record heats and floods and rain.
Deserts spreading, Arctic’s melting: symptoms
Of the odium of inhumane
Expansions everywhere you look:
The Book of Crooked Modern-day,
Modernity’s last supper.
So, we need a faster cleanup
Mr. Trump  
                      and all the others.

A Faster Cleanup 5.27.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin



I'm sure you get the message.  It's a pregnant one!

A Few Short Years Of Grace

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

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

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

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

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

A Fragment Of Infinity

Another documentary:
Scarcely elementary, but charged with energy.
Theme: astro-cartography.
Humans working nights and days
To map the stars and galaxies,
Which mapped this moment, are eight thousand.
Multi-universes moving outward
At four hundred thirty thousand miles per second…
Yes, per second!
A small part of the great whole
A  dwarfish fraction of them all.

In any case, I had an image:
Galaxies drawn by the laws
That govern us, that are our own:
Magnetism, gravity, movement, change,
Known, the speculated and unknown.
There I saw into my brain so much in common.
I connected with the ‘there’
Feeling that the laws out there
Paralleled the mechanistic warehouse
I could use for more awareness
Of my personal existence.

All my zillion cells attracting light
By some magnetic force and might.
I drew it to myself in thought,
Imagining the links of insight
Reaching me.
I felt it come immediately;
Some form of it anyway.

I am a fragment of infinity,
Galactic laws defining this
Small lady’s universe
Exactly as they do in endless space.

Fragment Of Infinity 4.11.2021 Circling Round Everything II; Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality;  The Processes: Creative, Thinking Meditative II; Arlene Corwin Corwin

After A Terror Deed
       (this time in Stockholm)

When terror deeds occur,
Him/her is wounded, killed,
Stay still.
You are in you and where you are,
Most likely far away
Watching the telly,
Shocked, the nightmare in your eyes.
You’re wise.
You stay collected.
Though connected you dismiss
The hate, the fear,
Your present now
To feel how it is in wholeness
And in peace.
The only answer.

But aware.
(Risk statistic in your favor).
Just remember,
You are always here
Inside your now.

After A Terror Deed (this time in Stockholm) 4.8.2017)
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Strangely, “After Coffee" was written after I’d woken and written “Bored with Myself”, which simply confirms my theory that we are more chemically driven than we think.
     I’d had a pneumonia vaccine shot yesterday afternoon, and during the night experienced symptoms I’d never had before - all during a night’s intended sleep: hip or sciatic pain, sharp and nagging, 2 bouts of dizziness, general joint pain.  Nag, nag, nag1. Awful.  And when I woke from this ‘awful’ night’s sleep, I was unmotivated, unable to connect with my inner self.  Awful.
     I could suddenly sympathise with the poor souls who take drugs or those who have chronic depression.  
     :
    After Coffee

After coffee energy!
Phenomenal!
A marvel, really!
Creativity, originality come forth
From south and north,
East and west,
As if the brain knew best
What stretches under.
What a wonder!

After coffee clarity!
A sharpness present
Where transparency is formed
And shown by honesty, directness,
Plain outspokenness,
A kind of innocence and guilessness.

After coffee: not for all.
For those who benefit -
Well, have a ball!
It might release a core essential.
Finer than you ever knew.

After Coffee 8.20.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin  

       Bored With Myself

Thoughts, ideas repetitive:
They all feel done and writ;
Not un-creative, yet,
Should one continue writing
Poetry or prose-try, the same old set-up,
Corwin’s format?

It feels as if I’ve said it all,
Ahead of all,
The tragedy and beauty
Side by side,
Observing changes far and wide
Outside, inside this body, brain.
I feel drained.
Yet now, this minute and this moment,
Are what is, one has (“one” being me).

I wait and see,
Functioning as seconds tick,
For tucked away is optimism.
What an oxymoron!

Nothing to say,
But writing anyway

Bored With Myself 8.20.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; (new collection) Circling Round The Universal; Arlene Nover 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

A Glass Half Empty…

A glass half empty
Is no matter what, half full.
Actually, factually.
Oxymoron at its best a tool
At worst a fool
Disguised as philosophical.

I know a lady from whose mouth
One’s never heard a hopeful truth;
No reassuring, optimistic path of possibility,
Perception geared to searing truths
That cannot soothe.
Poor thing!
One wonders: “Is she suffering?

One of life’s commodities,
Certainly its oddities;
Those unable to see light
When sun is out or bulb is lit.

There it stands:
A glass that stands for all to see.
Half full and simultaneously empty.

Check yourself and make your choice.
Each course you choose will bless
Or curse an outcome.
Don’t be numb to what goes on.
Don’t be green and don’t be dumb.
The empty half can always fill
With possibilities.

A Glass Half Empty…6.16.2020 Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover  Corwin

As is often the case, I found this idea on a scrap - started and unfinished some time ago.  I’ve whittled it down to a simplistic piece called in a file Defiant Doggerel.  A would-be collection one day.
           A Good Ethic

To all my cat loving friends: (I’m sure I’ve left some out - in which case, SORRY!)      

Albert Cat, Eleven!  🐈

Albert Cat will celebrate
Eleven feline years to date:
Eleven years on this good planet,
His food planet,
Perfect for a house cat!

We, his owners, cat food donors
See to it that he is cat-isfied;
Yellow/red, a golden brown,
He cannot smile and cannot frown.
A ****** calm in place the whole day’s time.

Commonest of purry furries,
Albert Cat is still, to us
Unique, well-dressed, e’en glamorous.
Though his purry, furry self is modest
He is famous in our house.
He  never, ever kills a mouse.
He simply watches, sits and stares;
Leaves the birds to eat their seeds.
While they see him. They know his needs,
They know he’s there.
It is his lovely golden hair!

Happy Birthday, Albert Cat!
We’re glad you honour us
With your existence.
Flattered that our residence
Suits you.

Albert Cat, Eleven 5.6.2021 Cat book II; Arlene Nover Corwin

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

Alice Is In Wonderland



Alice got sick.

A dulling fur – a cancer here and there.

Don’t know how, don’t know why,

(We never know how, why we’ll die).

Bad and sad for doggies

And for those who hold them dear.



The vet urged she be put to sleep -

It had gone far.

It went in seconds. Not a peep

From Alice, just one beat, a bleep

And she was gone;

A little soul taken in hand

By doggy heaven land, a wondrous land.

Alice is in Wonderland.



Alice Is In Wonderland 3.24.2017

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

Arlene Corwin

In light go all the heartrendingly serious problems I've been writing about lately, I decided to write and enter another side of things.

A Lighthearted Poem For All We Scorpios♏️

This is a poem to cover
All we Scorpios alive or not.
In case you didn’t know,
We are a special lot.

‘Cover’ means:
Envelop and enfold, embody and embrace.
We are lovers
And the charming-est of ‘race’..
(of course I’m not impartial).

We are: fixed, we don’t change easily.
We must learn flexibility.
And mixed: Our colors brown and black,
Deep red/maroon;
Our rulers; Pluto, Mars, Uranus, Moon.
We’re born between:
Oct. 23 - Nov. 22
This poem’s for me, this poem’s for you.

We are the highest and the lowest:
So you ‘knowest’, we are:
Forceful and intuitive, passionate, magnetic.
Lovers,
We are great survivors.
BUT, we’re also jealous and possessive,
Wilful, secretive, compulsive and obsessive.

Make sure you choose the best;
Turn secrets to transparency…
Watch out for all the rest.

Believer in the mystic all/ material
One or the other/none of these
You are a sister, brother, father, mother
Therefore, take astrology with ease
And live with love, and how you please.

A Lighthearted Poem For All We Scorpios 10.31.2018
I Is Always We Is You; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

A Little Deep Thinking

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

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

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

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

A Little Quiz

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

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

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

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

A Little Quiz

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

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

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

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

All Day Long They Come✍️

Sometimes one's just overwhelmed by this reminder.  

All Living Things Love Life II

Written many moons ago;
Writ by life-observer poets;
Scribbbled scrutinies and comments;
Detailed now on TV shows:
Perils menacing or imminent;
Calloused killings of the other,
That despite all men are brothers;
Pain or dread;
The many dead.
Frog, fly, ant
Stepped, crushed without stop or conscience -
Well, what can one say!
Living things that pant for breath
Robbed of air from man to plant.
Air, the global element,
Constituent shared by us all:
And still
We ****.
Implausible! Impossible!  But actual
This second as thought formulates;
Loved beings each transported
To a valueless oblivion.
We watch offhandedly,
Or helpless, mourn.

All Living Things Love Life II 5.11.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Worth seeing if only for the startling, sometimes shocking but perfect illustrations!
http://duanespoetree.blogspot.se/search/label/Arlene%20Corwin

And now for something on an entirely different level:

Always In Preparation #2
          (a rather long simplification)

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

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

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

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

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

The things I wonder about are things I write about.  The things I write about I wind up by exploring, for one does not know how much one knows until one starts to write.

              Ambition

I’m never certain
How I feel about ambition.
I suspect a ‘pro and con’
Existing one inside the other;

A doubtful aim,
Passive as a dream that may be
Based on what’s illusory.
Or like a hurricane
That drives though friendships, kith and kin -
Anything that blocks the way
To his or her supremacy.

A triumph or a trump?
Does it falsify what ought to be
In inner you and inner me:
Peaceful and in harmony?

Ambition’s song feels somehow wrong;
The canvas of acceptance torn.
One's always read
One should be lead
By what goes on right now;
The loving of the here and now
The road that leads where you should go.

Ambition spends its time on what can be;
Wasted energies too in a rush
To reach objectives preached eons long gone
Standing  for patience, modesty and reason.
I’m not certain how I feel about ambition.

Ambition 2.23.2021 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin
  
.trump: a verb which means: outshine, outclass, eclipse, surpass, leave standing, concoct, fake, falsify…”
2..ambition: “from the Latin/French ‘ambire’ to go round soliciting, drumming up…A

It hit me!  What is ambition?
        
        Ambition

Ambition: good, bad, mixed?
On the surface something fixed:
A goal, an aim; useful, beneficial.
In the end, where does it send you?,  
On the face of it, to purpose;
In the end, to race
Where failing can mean falling into illness,
‘Calling’ turning into sand.

Ambition is a strong desire to achieve:
But what?  Success? What is it you perceive?
Luxury? Prosperity? Fame of name? Victory?
Does it involve a plan? A scheme or more,
To carry out one dream, or more?

To hash out, lash out with your psyche:
Them or me;
Who am I, really?
Are you ever to become the model that you had in mind?
Has ambition been defined?

Like ‘status' and ‘exclusive’, words that have been coloured,
Twisted, loaded,
We have planted on ‘ambition’
An Illusory distortion.

Life fulfils itself if you can wait.
Life fulfils itself if you can work.
Life knows your every want.
Life knows your weak points.
(As time goes, the muscles, joints).

Replace ambition with self knowing.
If you want to keep on growing,
Be Here Now!
That’s it!
The secret
                to ambition.

Ambition 6.13.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Ambitious People


The author:

Unfulfilled,

Reaching,

Stretching,

Ninety-thousand words the goal.



The singer:

Memorize,

Expand the range,

Prepare and train,

An entertaining, pleasant presence

Liking for the audience.



The painter and photographer:

Eyes that see,

Composition, color shades,

Nuances of every grade.



Who is important -

What and who’s

Significant to only you.



The lawyer, doctor, engineer,

The lab technician, cook, and waiter,

Business man, entrepreneur:



And all:

What’s honest, ethical,

What’s brave and bold,

What’s true for you

And what you think will hold

Forever.

Even when you know it won’t.



Ambitious People 6.4.2016

Our Times, Our Culture II;

Arlene Corwin

A Meditative Attempt At Comforting

You are my synapses,
My consciousness,
My chemistry  
And everyone’s.
I have no ‘my’,
I have no say.
We are combined and mixed as one.
We are a kind of moon and sun.
That being so,
One has to rest and be at ease
In seeming ****** catastrophes:
Ageing’s ills and strains unbidden.
Youth’s robustness to bed-ridden
Impotence that needs to ask for each and every  
Life’s dependency.
This, for a friend ‘who sees an end,
And for another with the bother
Of a herniated rupture.
This, a meditative scripture
On attempts to see things are they are;
As they really, really are,
Have been and will be ever.

A Meditative Attempt At Comforting 9.4.2018 God Book II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Amputation (the final word)

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

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

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

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

Strong and proud:
Join the crowd!

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

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

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

And The World Gets Through Its Day

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

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

And When Do You Write?
             (a morning thought)

Assuming that we want to grow,
Each, every one of us with much to say
With wish to make some headway, be successful,
Thoughts, ideas original -
Inspiring for others;
Considering that we’re friends and brothers;

This considered, I’ll begin
By stating that I write in morning,
Topping off between, whenever
Circumstance or whim pops in unasked for.
Breakfast is the draw for me.
A time to munch and watch and see,
For TV’s in the room with me.
Blood sugar raised,
The brain takes in a pregnant phrase
Charged with stimulation,
Even modest revelation.

But you?  
When do you do when you do do?
Just a query,
Interested as I am in creation, creativity,
Body, mind relation; a concern instinctive -
Born of intuition, intellect and love.

And When Do You Write? 10.6.2020
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Just wrote this and had to share it from the love it gave me.

    And Where Are You At The Moment?

An Eighty-Third

Ego there, but something’s going;
Some things gone –
Both nice and nice’s antonym.
Prefix Nov- linguistics’ whim -
What does it stand for?
One cares less and dares much more.
Nov means nine but mine’s eleven:
8th November, month eleven.
November eighth; November, Nover.
Arlene Faith "is now in clover"*.

Still, one has reached an eighty-three, (one being me)
We’ll see
What life has left at all…
Life being so irrational.
Et al.

*written by my 6th grade teacher Mr Martin when I graduated from public school

An Eighty-Third 11.8.2017
Birthday Book; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Nover Corwin

An End To Everything #1

An End To Everything

Driving in the car looking at the trees;
November colors, sparser leaves.
Their stunning, sunning profiles clear;
Tree trunks far or close together;
Defined the birch and pine, the heather,
The whole divine to me.
And yet one sees finality.
Winter sends a different sense.

Seasons brief;
Some bloom, some gloom, flame, flume -
All short.
But lying in my world of thought
I see the tree. the bird, the bee
As formed of start and end - and then,
A start again.

An End To Everything 11.14.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

An Entire Slowing Down