No One Person

No one dancer moves like another,
No one singer like another –
So unique are we.
Movement, voice, technique and timbre
All unique and at their best lyric
(pronounced lyreek).
How I adore
To see the store
Of talent and capacity,
Technique and flair,
Dexterity and artistry
In all from dress designer
To the finer forms from
Sculptor, painter,
To the lesser forms – whatever
They may have as name,
The  nomenclature all the same to me.
Movement, sound,
The world goes round
In every creature’s singularity.
That’s all.  Take care.

No One Person 5.20.2017
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

No One Reads Poetry

That’s what they tell me:
Verse doesn’t sell
- Nobody reads…
No one will buy…
Poetry!  
Well-meaning kin,
Publishers who make it known,
Who **** you around
When you send in your soundest work:
Who say,
“Do not send us works of verse!”

Self-trust torn a-sunder
One starts to wonder,
“Is it me that’s mediocre?”

Let me tell you reader dear,
Thousands out there read each stanza, each cadenza
Meant to catch, attach, draw, touch the heart.
Thousands care!

Ingenuity, fertility, a universe in unity;
Intensity and lyric beauty:
Wholly, utterly and unreservedly
Unique!
The peak of truth and culture, muse and genius!
“No on reads…”
Ridiculous!  

No One Reads Poetry 4.27.2021 Circling Round Everything II: Arlene Nover Corwin

There is part of a system of thought that says every time you dwell on the thought of people or things you lose sight of your self.  It makes sense because thought, its being an ephemeral, comes in and goes on to another at the speed of lightening. Where is the you in that moment? A you that is essential, the you you want to find out about, go into at will and stay for longer than that lightening.  

     The habit of thinking about people and things disallows that, discourages that, waters down the ability.  Result?   One is spending hours of the day reaching out to an illusion, a passing evaluation, an ever changing object.  Time wasted.

No Protective Language or, A Call To Arms
(found this in my email just now. I never remember what I've written, writing as much and as often as I do, and this seemed particularly appealing at the moment. I found myself thinking, "Gosh, that's good!")

Hello everyone on this January 3rd! Lend an ear

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

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.

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

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.

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.

Once again, sitting in the bathtub cogitating

Old

Old:  What then?
Nothing you envisioned.
When you still see nothing’s happened.
Brain and head, the genus strain of breed
Inside precisioned:
Supremely known to God alone.

Mirrored image says to one,
Stifled by all kinds of blarney,
“This is me!”
While scolding image old keeps screeching,
“This is really you, you creature!”

Stretching like the rainbow’s arch,
Gold out of reach, perennially out of touch,
More a cockroach than a torch.
The young cannot conceive of it.
You believe, for you perceive it.

Doctors twenty-eight, or so,
Policemen new, firemen too,
Lawyer and aristocrat…updated.
All are babies.
Old is known - and hardly that -
By those who daily flat out own it.
Even when you’ve got it, are it,
Even then, what is it?
Old will ever be a ‘What!’.
 
Old 10.5.2015/re-composed 1.31.2021 Circling Round Ageing; Circling Round Experience; 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

Older ******

Love life can smoulder still
When you get older, till
The gasp and sigh die out,
Expiring total.

Where tenderness lives
Carnal knowledge survives.
Where love and affection survive,
A good love life will thrive.

The union of two
That is moving and true
Has a life of its own,
Not on loan but a power of staying,
Of carrying on.
Tenderness leaves out the hinder of ending.

While there are pauses and fadings away,
Touchings and strokings are blessings
That not only grow and develop, but stay
Till the ecstasy in its finality must die away.

Older ****** 10.1.2020 Circling Round Eros II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Old Is Old

One phenomenon weighs me down:
Humans killing humans -
It a thing that never ages,
Being at the top of sinful wages.

Ebb and tide does not die out,
But we too soon glide from this planet
When we ought to all live out our days
Until the very final phase  
Of nature’s meaning
As was meant in Eden.

Oblivion, as Shakespeare says,
Arrives anon.  In any case,
Soon or late, fate has its voice,
The thing we call free choice erased.

Old is old.
We cannot scold the unpreventable,
Determined and unshakeable,
Regimented by laws born
In every momentary bubble.

Old is simply to observe.
Old is simply to accept.
The script all tightly written.

Old Is Old 5.24.2020/7.18.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

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

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

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

arlenecorwinpoetry.com/duanespoetree.com/youtube

Hello!  

Hello!  

Once Again…

Once again I find I’m saying;
“Plan my day”
One of those potential phrases
In a phase of a quasi-prayer.

Though going to, into thin air
Aware in mind of finding nothing,
There is a kind of blind belief;
A pragmatism; faith
In nothing I can feel - like lace or steel.

Based on daily observation;
Sensible and level-headed
Practical and logic-driven:
Balanced person -
When the daily mode reveals no voice,
I have no choice but to receive a day
Of ‘outer’ planning’s voice turned play
(The voice of possibility)
By saying to myself and It,
“Plan my day!!
And take what follows,
As it comes and as it goes.

Once Again 5.26.2021 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover 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

Once I Write ‘Em

Once I write ‘em,
I don’t read ‘em.
If you’ve had a feast,
You don’t go back to feast again -
At least not feast selfsame.
Eaten’s eaten,
Drunk is drunk.
The yester- feast a kind of bunk
When looked at and reflected.
Looked at un-corrected.

Nothing’s wrong
With bettering that song,
Polishing and honing,
Yes, fine-tuning.

Last night’s feast had too much salt.
You won’t do that again,
Fix the fault
But write some more.
More’s the door
To consummation.
Less salt to improved digestion.

Break the silence, the taboos.
Make the ‘boo boos’.
Keep on going
In the imperceptibility of growing.
Cook the feast.
Release the moment’s best
And once you write ‘em,
Leave ‘em.

Once I Write ‘Em 9.13.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Vaguely About Music II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Once More I Watch

One Day Before A New Man Comes Through The Door

I was just wondering:
Where are the children Trump detained
In nineteen hundred seventeen,
Or eighteen/nineteen...?
Do they still remain
On floors and mattresses both here and there?
Oh, where, oh where, are they today?
Back home in Mexico to live, laugh, play?
Or here alone in ye olde demos- USA?
One Day Before A New Man Comes Through The Door 1.17.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

One Hundred Percent Spontaneous

I can feel cell connecting
Self correcting;
Writing righting, righting writing,
Deepening, expanding
The idea, its landing..

Without method or intention.
It’s a wonder when you think about it.
All the rest a slowing down,
This new detail of living
The most giving,
Making outlook, inlook most enlightening:
Lightening a flash of thunder;
Lightening the load from under -
Or at least from going under.

Impetuous, spontaneous,
Unplanned, extemporaneous…
What could be better!
Letter and the law of living
Superseded by an inner craving
For a non-existent caring  
Of the world of judgement and acceptance.
As for instance,
This short flight of insight
Both inciting and igniting,
Written with the speed of lightening
And approved of by its writer
Could have never made her happier.

One Hundred Percent Spontaneous 1.24.2021 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes; Creative, Thinking; Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

One More Wrinkle On The Upper Lip

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

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

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

Inspired by the story of Petra Kormos.

   One Of Forty Thousand

It’s Sweden, 2020.
Population:
A shade over ten million,
Ranking country’s population
By percent of Europe’s calculation
Sweden ranks as ninety-one.

Not many people one might think,
And they’d be right,
                              and yet,
Forty thousand humans yearly,
Life corrupted by a sepsis,
Interrupted  by a virus,
Death an outcome or a nearly…
Limbs that blackened;
Life force slackened:
Source unknown;
And amputation!

I, one of the forty-thousand.
Coma housed, un-rouseable,
Hand  defaced,
Erased forever, their profession.
No appeal or cry for pity.  No confession
Only fact; a plain statistic:
Unemotional, un-egoistic,
‘Forty thousand’ makes it prime;
Time to make the virus traceable,
Follow up the un-erasable,
Taking sepsis off the table.

A task that’s not too much to ask,
As one sits fingerless
At the piano.

One Of Forty Thousand 9.3.2020 Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin
*sepsis| noun [mass noun] Medicine
the presence in tissues of harmful bacteria and their toxins, typically through infection of a wound.

A twin to the moment of silliness.

One’s Always Aiming At & For Good Art

One’s always aiming at and for good art,
Emotion just a minor part.
One amuses using humor;
One weeps from milk that’s spilt;
If one’s longing tops the theme,
All the same, one wants good art:
Intelligence, truth from the start,
Not smitten by cliches,
For if they must be written
Make sure they’re on purpose, not from weakness.
(Neither smart-*** smart nor cynical
But heart dug in the spiritual)
Readers are not seekers, not in quest…
Nonetheless,
The verb, conjunction, placement careful,
You desire your work, its poetry
The -ality which underlies expression,
Reaching with finesse the chosen few intent on you,
To generate a luminescence,
(Not to speak of essence.)

One’s Always Aiming At & For Good Art 12.2.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

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A twin to the moment of silliness.

One’s Always Aiming At & For Good Art

One’s always aiming at and for good art,
Emotion just a minor part.
One amuses using humor;
One weeps from milk that’s spilt;
If one’s longing tops the theme,
All the same, one wants good art:
Intelligence, truth from the start,
Not smitten by cliches,
For if they must be written
Make sure they’re on purpose, not from weakness.
(Neither smart-*** smart nor cynical
But heart dug in the spiritual)
Readers are not seekers, not in quest…
Nonetheless,
The verb, conjunction, placement careful,
You desire your work, its poetry
The -ality which underlies expression,
Reaching with finesse the chosen few intent on you,
To generate a luminescence,
(Not to speak of essence.)

One’s Always Aiming At & For Good Art 12.2.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

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On Facebook

Gladdened and astonished
At the countries that are reached
By writing simple verse;
That old and young
Whose native tongue
Is manifestly not the English one,
One’s filled with admiration.

We should all be grateful
If, by easy clicks we set a ball a-rolling,
Sharing, seeing commonality
In all humanity.
My tears, fears theirs or bared,
My hopes, the insights, all I’ve earned
Shared, learned by all the yearning, scared globality.

Wars come and go.
But flows of longing, kindness, information
Are the highest trophies reaching nation
After nation
From this windy, rainy Swedish morn.

Inspired, un-tired and breakfasted,
Looking forward to the Mac,
Face-booking, and the fact
That there will be somebody out there
Somewhere in Antarctica, Australia, Africa or Papua…
Who will be made the happier by stanza,
Or plain utterance .  

On Facebook 11.2.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Only As Old As You Feel, True, Untrue?

Platitudinous and overused,
Imposing truths on types
Receptive to the cliche myths
Of age and youth.

I look inside myself,
That self intrinsic to the child I was
Since my first  powers of recall.
The same as when i was a child:
Tendencies, reactions,
Sensitivities and inclinations.

Though I’ve learned,
Values waxed and deepened,
Body aged unhurriedly, steeped  
Continually in time.
This is sage:
Do not think in age,
Absorbing adages!
It is not sage.
Life’s stage consists of phases.

You are quantity
Exposed to change
You are quality:
A gene unvarying, enduring;
Altogether darling.

You are you life through.
Not young, not old,
But gold which stays as is
Forever.

Only As Old As You Feel, True, Untrue? 9.21.2020 Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between III; Circling Round Wrnkes; Arlene Nover Corwin

On Meditation

A gateway to the brain,
Doorway to You,
You and your brain in essence one:
Encephalon: a part to focus on
And concentrate.
This only a suggestee-on,
You and your brain halves one.

He said, “Me and [my] God are one”
(a paraphrase, a rendering)
What did he mean?
What could he mean?

The only you is body/brain.
Ergo, a god in origin.
Not easy to experience when
You’re the type
Who needs the hype of separation.  Then
It’s near impossible, and certainly hard work to think on
You and God as being one.

That said, it’s worthwhile and rewarding
To initiate, train, and pursue
A life of meditation
For its sake alone.

On Meditation 9.1.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Working it through.

      Ought One Bathe In Sorrow?

Crowding my Mac desktop along with more than a hundred others, I’m trying to clean house.  In the process of removing these 'more than a hundred’ I find that some need and will need revamping.  This is revamped number two.

The first, by the way is in my book Circling Round Eros published by Xlibris, 2012.

       Our *** Life Is Changing (re-composed - the original 2005)

Our *** life is changing –
But not for the worse.
Seventy.  Ageing.
There was a first:
Not coming but comfortable;
Chatting, conveying; perfection this staying…
Knowing  the sense not to knock oneself out.
Not interfering, just noticing, touching,
Declaring and whispering;
Passionate, intimate, eros approved.
Our *** life is changing
In tune with the ripening
Gradual move towards the groove
Of senescence.
                                    
Our *** Life Is Changing 11.3.2005/re-composed 1.9.2021
Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Eros II; Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

Our Tractor Man

Our tractor man is doing
What he really likes to do:
Clearing snow.                  
He suits my mental man-with-plow.
Trading pig and cow
For gear he likes to sit inside;
The tractor hut;
Tranquil woods to clear and saw,
Chop and cut;
Tractor wheel, forest smell,
Alone deciding what to fell.
Muddy potholes in the spring,
Flood and crud his tractor´s thing.
Nicely chubby,
Slightly tubby;
Sixty odd,
His tractor and the woods his God.

I esteem this earthy man
Dharma bound to seasoned stars
That fix the farmer life and plan
Unchangeable and stable.

Our Tractor Man passed away 2016.
                                                      
Our Tractor Man 3.4.2003 (revised 11.19.2016)
Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Time; Special People, Special Occasions; Birth. Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin


                                                      

our devoted tractor man who plowed our road in the winter.

Outside And Inside

Outside a pigeon eats my crumbs.
We call him Walter
Inside hairy news continues.
Warm and numb,
I rustle up the casserole
To fill this hungry tummy hole:
Seoul, the polls…
Shall we succumb?
Shall they?
He wants to have it his way.  Is he playing?
You may ask, “Which he?”
There are so many he’s,
So many ****** he’s.
Walter pigeon loves his crumbs.
The lovely pecking beak becomes him.
He, so carefree, eating of necessity,
Unaware of death or of his iridescent beauty.
Me?
I carry on with poetry
While radio debates the possibility
Of war, annihilation,
Which or any winning nation,
Madly grinning dictators,
Bad, head spinning leaders…
Glad I’m cooking,
Looking out the window
At my Walter
Eating crumbs.

Walter Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Hollywood actor who starred in many films.

Outside And Inside 9.5.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
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

Pain Is Such A ‘Pain’

Besides discomfort, pain’s a pest;
A nuisance, bother, hinder,
At its worst or best
A hurt that quashes thinking’s process:
On the list of inconvenience highest.

Common idioms in use:
‘Pain the neck’ ‘pain in the ***’.
****** yes, but two most graphic!
To be optimistic,
Usually, it takes a rest;
Not long, perhaps, but any pause
Is better than no pause at all,
The standstill most appreciated.

If it’s un-retreating, un-vacating, un-evacuatable,
Make a vehicle that’s readable -
And write!

Pain Is Such A Pain 4.14.2021 I Is always You Is We; Circling Round Experience;Arlene Nover Corwin

Pain Of Place

We were happy or we weren’t.
Blended feelings formed the most;
College, restaurant, bookshop, church,
Street, park, architecture host
To chunks and bits of searching,
Forming eyes of yesterday.
Covered market, cups of tea,
Open market on a Wednesday,
Stalls of veggies, jewelry;
Child to school and child picked up,
The walking to, the walking back,
The elder tree we plucked, hands cupped,
While counted blocks betrayed a lack
Of some fulfillment.  What the target?
Surely not the streets and market.
Not the people either, nor
The daily passing through home’s door.
Gone.  But pictures still remain.
And with the pictures tints of pain.
Of place that’s not the face,
Not company.
The place acts independently,
Its energy “the spirit of…”
Its colors move.
Algos: pain.
Nostos: going home again.
Sweet nostalgia’s pull is ‘bull’.
Place may frame the pre-ordained;
Memory’s the game pre-pained.
Twists and lists: a dream.
Place and act, smell and sound:
Mind boundaries.
Mostly, we were happy or we weren’t.

This is long, but go through it.  It’s worth it.      it was originally called "Words That Changed Our Lives", being inspired by the  connection between pandemonium and pandemic.  

           Pandemonium

Words that show lives but a tribe:
There to scribe, describe our lives.
Words that come from health or sickness: mind and body:
Prowess, fearless, speechless, endless;
Dangerousness, selfishness, childishness - nothing escapes;
Sowing seeds of mental shapes
That come from mind-to-mouth.

Now’s come the time to learn some new:
Epidemic and Pandemic,
Plus another word to view: Endemic.
Just a few, but whew!
Hoping that it’s not titanic - the Titanic!
Let me help you.

First came epidemics:
Measles, smallpox, influenzas…
How to conquer, name and aim,
How could and could we control the sum?  
Sometimes.  Some.
Coming back to hit us all the same,
But vanquished?  Germs and viruses not dumb -
Survive  anti-biotically (the foe of symbiotically).

Year twenty-twenty,
Epidemic now pandemic,
Plentiful and more than plenty;
Too, too many - far too many.

Struck by the invisible;
Questionable, susceptible,
Humans daring not to touch,
Wondering, asking when will it become too much?
And thus we come to the last word:
Endemic: background sound
Though underground many a year
Alive and well and waiting for…
Pandemonium 5. 14. 2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

pandemonium | ˌpandɪˈməʊnɪəm |
wild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar: there was complete pandemonium—everyone just panicked.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: modern Latin (denoting the place of all demons, in Milton's Paradise Lost), from pan- ‘all’ + Greek daimōn ‘demon’.
pandemic
(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.
an outbreak of a pandemic disease: the results may have been skewed by an influenza pandemic.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Greek pandēmos (from pan ‘all’ + dēmos ‘people’) + -ic
endemic
1 (of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area: complacency is endemic in industry today.
[attributive] (of an area) in which a particular disease is regularly found: the persistence of infection on pastures in endemic areas.
epidemic
1 an epidemic of typhoid: outbreak, plague, scourge, infestation; widespread illness/disease; Medicine pandemic, epizootic; formal recrudescence, boutade.
2 he's a victim of the county's joyriding epidemic: spate, rash, wave, explosion, eruption, outbreak, outburst, flare-up, craze; flood, torrent, burst, blaze, flurry; upsurge, upswing, upturn, increase, growth, rise, mushrooming; rare ebullition, boutade.
adjective
a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time: a flu epidemic.
• a sudden, widespread occurrence of an undesirable phenomenon: an epidemic of violent crime.

Paradise Lost (Can’t Let It Go)

Partners In Rhyme✍️

Passing On Experience

Passing through as in a cloud;
Passing on to all the crowd
By passing out free tickets
Transferred, shared;
Life intention, sentience,
And the Law of - well, Experience.

Passing On Experience 4.6.2021 Life, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

Although I wrote this with my own performances in mind, there was Andre Previn who, they say actually quit his job conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony because it was like throwing pearls before swine - people coughing, being there for the wrong reasons etc.  All experienced musicians and artists, I’m sure, have experienced the same!

    Pearls Before Swine.  

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

People get tattoos because

They think that there’s no change,

Because they’re vain, in love:

They think they choose, because

They’ve no idea at all

The rain in Spain lies mainly

In the plain,

That muscle turns

And what was breast or chest and firm,

De-firms, deforms

With budding bicep rose

Becoming wrinkled, wilted posy of-the-elbows.



I suppose it’s all to do

With time and how we throw

Away our energies, with time

Outgrowing side- and peepshow

We all worshipped once with gusto.



Oh, tattoo, you are a symbol

Of myopia and youth,

A cockeyed view of truth

That lets us down.



Still, people will demand tattoos,

Refusing all discussion

Until gusto gets to be disgust.

Nothing one can do

Except boo-hoo

This triste refrain to all who’ll listen;

Self abstain , and be a witness.

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

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

People Smoke A Joint Because…

People smoke a joint because
It calms them down,
It makes them laugh.
The symmetry
Of mediocrity’s conventions flee.
It also makes them hungry.

Answers come,
And often laughter is the payoff.
Nineteen sixty
Groups ingested LSD
To see more beauty,
Dig into the new,
Change patterns that were old in mind,
Find truths that were not there to find,
Break down, build up,
Sip from the cup of everything there is to sip.
So people drink because they are
More able to shift gears,
Take risks, lose fears.

The problem is to lay off, stay off.
That would be a real payoff.  
Get it? Layoff, stay off, payoff?
I liked that.

People Smoke A Joint Because… 5.25.2010 revised 8.8.2010
Circling Round Energy; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

Started 2008

Perfect

I thought for years t’was no such thing,
Believing in the ongoing of everything.
I now believe quite differently.
Fast or slow, the mind in Now.
Testing my discovery.

Details count, perhaps the most.
Every detail is its moment.
Thoughtful practice - years, perhaps.
It all becomes a lapse-less care
Combined with skilled improvisation.

Like the movement in a symphony,
The stanza in a poem:
Complete within itself,
Each segment but a leading
To the next and next
Until the text and form
Feel finished, polished: done.

To do it is the privilege,
To carry on the duty
To reach it is the satisfaction.
(perfectio; the Latin for completion.)

Perfect 7.19.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Mediative II; Definitely Didactic II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Performance Mantra

Performance Mantra

Inspired by a photo sent to me with a request that I write a poem.  And so I did!