Just when I was thinking that I'd run into a wall of writer's cramp...✍️

4:07a.m.  Under the covers.  Flashlight for light.  Handwriting definitely going to look unreadably shaky tomorrow.

           Slowed Motion

Slowed motion
Gives you time to feel,
Time to observe
Instead of reeling round with verve
And upset nervous systems
Setting up a curve
That lead to nemesis.

Slowed motion is a key
To subtle brilliancy and insights
On dark nights
When flights of fancy
Fake and take…

Stomach squeezed, stomach breathed;
Jiggled hips, wriggled toes;
Who knows what?  Perhaps the nose;
Elbows pressed: in, out, back, down,
Leading collarbone to fast become
A flattened beauty, which in turn
Moves shoulders, both, the one
For-, backward, in- external.
Hands supporting or at rest,
Pushing so that biceps harden.
And if you are working best,
Triceps also get their job done.

Nature’s principles in push and pulls.
Burned calories, earned benefits.
Stretches, creases,  pulls, releases
Worked on in their opposites.
Managed slowly, consciously,
The slowed down works to our advantage,
For the language of the mind
Likes one thing undistracted, done,
And that, alone.

Opposites attract
And that’s a fact!

Slowed Motion 3.31.2020 Circling Round Yoga II; Circling Round Experience;  Arlene Nover Corwin

After my poem “Ageing” I received the following comment.  One on which I hadn’t reckoned.  It inspired this answer and a new poem:

“Well, it is so true and depressing. I was reading this hoping that you wrote something positive at the end, bot not…I would really like you to conclude the poem with a POSITIVE end.  It’s my desperate request as I need it.”
T.

Dearest T—-
     The positive in it is this: If you soak yourself in every moment (which requires constant trying - for trying is training - focussing on every breath, every deed, your whole existence changes.  The point is to become ‘perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect’ while you’re still alive.  Then there comes an automatic joy and insight In other words, the whole chemistry changes.  Ageing doesn’t change, but you do!  And for the better.  
     We must talk about this!  But I’ll continue to send you my poetry for most is filled with hope and optimism.  Even fun and funny.

Soak Yourself In Every Moment Or, Trying Is Training

Keep cool inside yourself.  
Detachment is the key.
It’s not un-interest or indifference:
But an objectivity, Impartiality,
Ability to see
                    things as they really are;
Possibility in probability
And vice versa.

When you peel off the outer, see the inner,
The illusion of exclusion drops away,
Inclusion comes to stay
And you’re so much, shall we say,
Gladder, gay.*
(There was a time when gay meant light and full of glee;
Free of care, carefree:
A surely helpful way to be).
Keep cool and be life’s fool: flexib’ool’, adaptab’ool’,
Versatile and tool of circumstance.
Life can be a dance,
Full of significance,
Non-material,
And joyful.
Soak yourself with honesty
In every little point in time - and see.
Life’s often fun - and funny.

Trying Is Training 9.12.2018 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

So Have A Happy Birthday

It is a challenge these days to find ways
To praise and honor birthdays of a man
Who’s lived for seventy and nine decades,
Seen much, done much.  Time’s memory fades,
Almost like dreams you can’t remember.
So the number
Doesn’t really count.
It’s the amount of joyfulness that does.

One more year and you’ll be eighty.
What will I say then when I
Can hardly think of what to say
Now that you’re reaching  seventy and nine?                      
I reason from the handsome man I see before me
That you’re fine.
And though sleep doesn’t stay
The way it did some years ago,
You work (and walk) and play,
And all in all, you and I know
That life is good.  
So put yourself into first gear
To have a pianistic year,
Good intonation and good ear.
Eat your food
With appetite;
Continue making love at night  -
And morn
While thanking God you don’t need ****
To stimulate.  
Actually your life is great,
So have a very HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

So Have A Happy Birthday 2.8.2017
Birthday Book;
Arlene Corwin

Some Kind Of Sadness

I seem to have a mark of sadness
I don’t see when writing.
But when read again,
Plain as the nose upon my face
I see it and I say:
Am I that doleful soul
Whose miles of smiles
Make each day,
An inner and an inner, inner
Spurned when I’m awake?
A Janus or an understand-er of existence,
Real both?  Real or both?
I know-eth not
And do not care.
I’m where I ought to be:
Here always.

Some Kind Of Sadness 6.25.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Someone Out There Needs This

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

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

Something Always Tips The Scales

It is, will always be:
Something tips the scales.  You die.
We read, we see that most who pass away, I.e.
The older in society
From virus in modernity, contemporary
(virus C so anti-trendy);
Those with underlying illnesses, sepsis, so on,
Ills potential, known, un-shown.

Life’s end always has a cause,
The time between your birth and death but pause;
It’s no surprise: sunrise to -set,
Scarce discussed but always met.

Death comes at will;
Lying still or sitting, walking,
Making fervent love or talking,
Even taking food and such,
The unavoidable the touch of fate.

Corona’s crown, not crown but ‘downer’
(see corona’s origin: medieval Latin word for crown)

Starvation, war, lopsided Nature,
Technology and fire, water…
And the vices - greed and anger,
Traits unconquered…
Slowly building wind in sails
To some finality
That tips the scales.
Something Always Tips The Scales 3.10.2020 Our Times, Our Culture; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Having written “Things I Cannot Do”  and gotten so many spontaneously positive comments “Things I Cannot Stop” popped into my head  as a natural follow-up a week or two later.

     (Some)Things I Cannot Stop

Skin satiny and pigment-free
Withut a a freckled speck,
Creased, dry, wrinkly -
Or becoming so,
So unbecomingly..

Diet good, wholesome food
Eaten in a happy mood,
And still, a flab where muscle should
And used to be.  Rude
Mother Nature in her stature
Augur of maturing age.

Other things I cannot stop:
Hubby’s snoring from the deep,
Broken sleep,
The stiffened vocal cord that hides
The youthful voice once both our pride;
The sleep, the snore, the youthful voice
Are things that cannot be denied.
And though one tries, cannot avoid.

One might translate it all as unalloyed damnation.
One adjusts - without a bit of condemnation.
It’s acceptance all the way;
Living for the day
With phases come what may,
And living with each day
As stages in our destiny.

(Some) Things I Cannot Stop 8.7.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between III; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sometimes I Wake Up Thinking…

Do you ever feel like or identify with so and so?  

Sometimes Like Whitman✍️

Like Whitman, I love women, men,
Children, cats, dogs, birds, ants, even
Flies, bees, wasps - the things that bite
By day or night -
That come and go
As in the ego
Rlsing like a queen –
Pushy, domineering,
And between a humble nun.
Ego’s power’s a sneaky one;
Self-ness changing hour by hour,
Self-less self-ness into -ish-ness.
Sometimes I’m like Whitman:
Full of fullness or
A structure frail and faulty.

Sometimes Like Whitman 3.18.2015 revised 3.18.2019 Pure Nakedness; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Corwin Nover

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God

The atheist soldier or sailor who, drowning,
Calling for mama, God or simple help,
Have mind-sets identical yelping for help.
Secular, temporal,
Pious and scriptural,  
Chemistry’s at the mysterious base,
Influenced neither by race or by grace.
The mind/brain’s the same when conditions are right,
The fact is that truth is the same, day or night.
Only the names are dissimilar.

Faith is a standpoint, dependent on hope,
Not on piety, dogma, nor doctrinal dope.
Everyone has wishes in one form or other;
Money or status, -isms or power.
Most neither useful nor lasting: a feather!

Faith is invisible, chemical: personal.
Often irrational but somehow functional.
No one knows how, why it works, but it does.
Therefore, it pays to have something to trust;
Something to go to when all’s a big bust.

Grown and mature, you see through illusions,
Knowing the platitudes, maxims and truisms.
Tired and seeing, you seek what is true:
Principles governing metamorphosis -
You’re seeking its purpose.
Change doesn’t fade.  No thing has ‘stayed’.
Sometimes one needs to believe in a God
That can house all of this.

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God 4.1.2019/re-composed 4.1.2021 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Reality; Circling Rond Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Starting Out Of Time Again

Still 9/11

Still 9/11
With not seven minutes more to go
Before it turns to twelve
When I cease staring at my conscience,
And stop being conscious
Of the shameful tragedy,
The change of policy and policies
That had the tendency
To police our activities
And make, have made, are making us suspicious
Of a world become malicious
As we go from trust to mistrust
‘Cause we think we must.
You must agree,
THAT is the tragedy!


Still 9/11 9.11.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Still Needing Reminders

Still Needing Reminders #2

Storm Michael: One More Symbolic Sign

Worsening fires,
More dire censures
From poor mother Nature;
Storm winds and torrents
Since last tempest Florence
Hit North Carolinas;
Coastlines more flooded,
And still those who doubt it.
Like President Trump,
Dumping the evidence,
Still in denial.
Shunning the evidence…
What about Pence?
The climate thing vile.

Yesterday’s hurricanes,
Quickening winds and the rains with no drains…
Roofs blown off, trees blown down;
All of it happening all over town,
And all of it shown on TV.

We are living in times without equal.
With sequel statistical  flooding next door.
Storms know no borders,
And people are urged to be hoarders -
For crises like this are but chains,
And the rains have no enemies.
(maybe the sun - but that’s only one,
And nature’s not done with us -
That is for sure.

I’d bet my Schwinn bike
That Michael is far
From ‘taking a hike’
And happy to hear
That there’s not been one like it
Since records began.


This entire ramble
Is merely a gamble:
A figure of speech
For the breach in the wall
Of political wailings
And also their failings.

Storm Michael: One More Symbolic Sign 10.12.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II;Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Easier to read than the first:

Storm Michael: One More Symbolic Sign

We Are Strange Mixtures

Human beings are notorious -
Thinking up excuses
In defense of faulty judgment
Or of ‘right out’ low intent.

One knows people, modest, kind,
Who fall down on their sword
When it concerns the lie.
Defensive in the most unworthy sense
Which to the hearer makes no sense,
Is nonsense clear, reasoning vague, logic  dense.

We are a race of contradictions,
Our convictions often faulty.
It is bravery
To always try to tell the truth,
Admit one or the hundredth myth.
What, why this fear of truth?

The ego, which we need to live -
A dual tool for our survival.
Slap bang that! - a dual fuel.
One part tells that us we are we,
The other gives us vanity.

To allay and keep at bay the negative,
Become the person meant to be:
Open, humble, self assured, free of funk-anxiety,
Unified and undefiled
Is the gift we will receive.

We Are Strange Mixtures 6.12.2020 Circling Round Experience; Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Stuff To Talk About

Either I’ve a lot to say, or I convey
The selfsame things in lots of ways.
If the latter –
Ten degrees above ch-chatter,
It’s my nature.
As a watcher and a searcher,
It’s a feature picture:
Fixture of that nature
In a structure something that I’ve got to…

Here is what I’ve got to say:
In the long run books are syllables in print.
Remember the Old Testament:
Apples, snakes, man, woman, knowledge.
In the short run, they’re terrific – [books]
[an] aid and shorter route through college.

That said, it’s projection all the way,
A basic you which never brooks stupidity,
Though fixed, and fix a thing,
But give it meaning:
Means and leanings leading to, letting you…
A simple but-not-easy-principle
Where there is circumstance and fate,
Chance, cause, luck and upshot.
Notice I don’t mention choice.
We choose and voice, but inside lies
Our nature – always you who’s you.

Is character your nature?
Is nature you identity?
The answer’s tricky
And you definitely have to try…
You have to definitely try.

Stuff To Talk About 9.22.2014 Definitely Didactic; Arlene Corwin

Sublime But Subtle

Truths that seem most obvious,
Like being kind and generous
Are more demanding than you’d think: androgynous
As any double sided thing can be.
The most divine suggestions
Simplest in theory, hardest to employ.
Virtues and their energy:
Goodness as integrity, nobility and purity -
So easy to define, the list goes on
With honesty of spirit the essential function.

‘Sublimity’ means such a high degree of excellence
It cannot be surpassed,
The question being, how does one
Get the sublime once reached, to last?
Or how does one identify sublimity at all?
How not be a puppet at another being’s call?
Lies and infidelity, intrigue, hanky-panky:
Also easy to define and place
But signs as veiled and as delicate as lace.

Life’s facets, their intentions subtle, fragile, clever:
Truths which often sidestep mind of doer and observer.
The question of existence
Boils down to more than happiness -
Its happenings confused in ways,
With no advice but laws whose source
Is cause/effect, pauses that pass on
To more and more of same.
“so subtle are the signs”,
“so subtle are the signs” - Corwin:To The Child Mystic 2010  Arlene Corwin

Sublime But Subtle 2.28.2021 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Success & Epic Failures

A quote I got from Mr Rampton on
His twirling Tweet account.
I thought, impressed, amazed,  “A catchy phrase,
I think I’ll write it down and later write it up,
It being just my cup
                                     of tea:
‘Success and Epic Failures’,  
You and me:  
Sporadically, frequently,
Scarcely ever, almost never –
Take your pick.

Who hasn’t had them both?
Betrothed to neither,                                            
One should rise above the two -
******* ‘round with mind and ego as they do,
Never lasting, alternating
Life throughout.

I think I’ll write a song -to-be:
Avail myself of phrase as symbol:
‘Failure and Success’ et al,
With appeal universal,
With potential to sell millions,
With success and epic failures,
Which of us has never been derailed
And won
Ten-umpteen times
In life?

Success & Epic Failures 7.17.2016
Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Reality; Out Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin





Success & Epic Failures 7.17.2016
Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Reality; Out Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Summarizing Something Nice💞

I’m so happy when you ‘get it’;
That you get its subtleness -
The latent and the unexpressed.

Happy that there’s one who takes on board
The theme, the art, both intertwined
In effort’s mind.
Just happy - nothing more
With not a jot of longing for the glory
Or the possibility of money.

As the jazzer makes the song her own,
The notes and chords and lyric one,
The improv, playing, unified,
Theme, technique grown,  
Thus, sweat and fuss,
The sugared press of muse and genius,
Poet builds on stuff and nonsense,
Common sense, the mystical, ,
The mundane-******-metaphysical-potential endless.
It’s all nice:
Expression giving peace to practice,
Practice peace.
With you the object of release.

Summarizing Something Nice 9.26.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Vaguely About Music II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Summer Hugs

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

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

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

Symptoms Of Development: After An Election

One would hope that thoughts,
Their hiddenness, their essence
Are transformed into behavioral
And verbal evidence.

Take the election on this day, two thousand sixteen;
Candidates with different pasts,
Different posts,
Different paths and values:
What they chose
And what they choose.

Flawed by dint of being human,
‘Being human’, having reason, character
That makes them what they are,
The symptoms gradual, invisible, but there,
And one so hopes that they, you, I,
All turn towards openness, transparency;
Truthfulness to one and every. i.e.
Growth through an infinity
Of ways,

Symptoms Of Development: After An Election 11.9.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Synapses

A scien’terrific, spiri’tool
To fool around with; a reality
The best of microscopes can see
And measure.
Pure arithme-ticking over,
Showering the brain with light;
Sparks queueing up in scans,
A cue to IQ variations, and
The more the better.
Riches of all human wishes lying there
Waiting to be bared then shared:
Nature in infinitude.

One good turn deserves another;
One good synapse serves another.
“Wakey, wakey” here comes knowledge!
Insights new, fresh out of college!
Insights causing you to grow;
Daring you to dare to go;
Blowing horns you dared not blow.
Synapse and invention new;
By definition a new you.

I’m signing off with love (or luff),
This synapse stuff the glove
That warms,
Synapses’ arms
The magic charm.

Synapses 12.9.2017 Circling Round Science II; To The Child Mystic II; Arlene Corwin

Taking Care of Body Parts

Take care of the body parts.
All the same, remember that
Most of what is going on,
Is going on inside you.

Organs, blood, I don’t-know-what,
Brain, realms therein.
All in-, invisible.
Cause encased:
To be addressed.

Take care of the body parts.
They show.
It’s nice and comfortable to know
                                   they work,
And more than that:
A pointer signal to research
The itch that doesn’t cease,
The lump or bump, the crease
Here, there or anywhere.  

Of course take care,
But find what’s there -
And not.
Fix the flub on neck and throat.
Booboo unattractive,
But beware, take care and ‘suss it out’.

Remember,
No appendage or a member
Is the issue.
It’s what’s going on inside
That describes the living you.

Taking Care Of Body Parts 3.22.2017
Circling Round Yoga; Nature of & in Reality;
Arlene Corwin


Of course!

Talking To My Brain

Brain, do the righteous thing today –
Health-wise, peace-wise,
Be wise and obey.
Be creative.  Be at peace.  
Make life easy.
Be a brick* -
Choose the moral and the ethic,
Thought spontaneous without cliché.
Make this day
A blend of deep and, let us say,
The funny,
Seeing humor, beauty and delight
In every action, every minute.
It’s not difficult for you – you’re clever,
Taking knowledge out of everything,
Making knowledge out of everything -
Memory dug in.
Brain, I’m talking to you.
Listen!

Talking To My Brain 4.12.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Corwin
*(English slang for ‘be a good fellow’’ or ‘be a good guy’.)

Talking To The Brain

I sometimes take the initiative
Taking, talking to the brain,
As if it were a representative
Of good and God, silent, present.

With no answers, no response,
I know each synapse is no dunce,
Transmitting neurons no morons
But batteried intelligence.
I’ve no solutions, but It has: Brain jazz!
And so I trust, with each new thought,
Each new idea, impulse or not
That something in the mono-ation’s conversation
Is productive, non-destructive.

With analysis, this mono-business
Is an enterprise filled with surprises;
Answers come each in their kind,
Blindly showing up in weeks, months, days
In ways I scarcely recognize:

Answers to a thought once prized,
I do not intellectualize
But go on with the one-on-one,
Knowing that it’s being processed
By some clever chemi-physicist
Up in-the-skies.

Talking To The Brain 10.22.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;  Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

I have been drawn many years - by instinct or some gene - to the relationship of the chemical workings in our body to the working in the body/mind.  Never having consciously thought about this, I I noticed only this morning while watching a young lady who’d written a book about admiration and its effect on the body/mind that I’d been writing about that in poetical form for perhaps 40 years.  Below, one of the latest, (yesterday, in fact) is one.


      Talking To The Brain

I sometimes take the initiative
Taking, talking to the brain,
As if it were a representative
Of good and God, silent, present.

With no answers, no response,
I know each synapse is no dunce,
Transmitting neurons no morons
But batteried intelligence.
I’ve no solutions, but It has: Brain jazz!
And so I trust, with each new thought,
Each new idea, impulse or not
That something in the mono-ation’s conversation
Is productive, non-destructive.

With analysis, this mono-business
Is an enterprise filled with surprises;
Answers come each in their kind,
Blindly showing up in weeks, months, days
In ways I scarcely recognize:

Answers to a thought once prized,
I do not intellectualize
But go on with the one-on-one,
Knowing that it’s being processed
By some clever chemi-physic-sist
Up in-the-skies.

Talking To The Brain II 10.22.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;  Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

I woke this morning with this word somewhere in my brain. Looked it up and my brain did the rest.

"she saw youths tampering with her neighbour's car: interfere, monkey around, meddle, tinker, fiddle (about/around), fool about/around, play about/around, toy, trifle, dabble; do mischief to, doctor, alter, change, adjust, damage, do damage toLeading nowhere useful in particular.
harm, deface, vandalise, ruin; informal mess about/around; British informal muck about/around."

Tampering With✍️

Teaching Yoga

Teflon Trump?

The news today: Donald Trump
Has skipped some taxes.
We’re not talking hundreds, thousands.
(speculate for poem’s sake)
We are talking millions – money millions.

Now we know that each of us
Wants money we can christen ours,
Most of us not prone to share
Or give away.  But let’s be clear –
These millions can help many poor:
Many, many, many poor!
There he sits with nothing more
Than sites aimed at more, more and more:
Expand! Collect! – focus lost;
A blindered horse on blindered course,
Priorities askew and wrong.
(observation and opinion)
Yet he seems to skip away, slip away, a Teflon Trump
That no one seem to strip away
Whose gotten far - so far…
One’s hope is that with aims made pure,
And as he storms, norms queer, unclear –
His love for folk (which he declares)
Will force – at least induce – reform.
And if I find that this is so,
I’ll change my mind and just might go
In his direction.

Teflon Trump 3.15.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

When I read this to my husband, no, discussed the thank theory, he mentioned a whole list of things I would never think of…sun, nature, family, friends, sky (not in that order) and I realised more than ever, it’s all about priorities and whatever takes first place in your mind and heart.
       I suppose as long as you feel a thanks at all, that is the essential, for so much of life is suffering.

                Thanks

Thanks for the consciousness
Of vitamins
And maintenance
Of health;
Things keeping me alive
At eighty-five.
We will not mention the mistakes
Made out of ignorance
And vanities.
But anyways,
Thanks for the consciousness,
However small,
Of learning concepts:
Words that smell of wrongdoings and weaknesses
That lead to nothing gained
                                          and pain.
Thanks for brain, mind, love,
The mysteries shaped from above
Revealing selves from day to day:
Gifts, middling or developed, held up;
Musicality, culinary, long-time waiting;
Gifts from genes and fate
For which one can’t claim credit.

But with gifts come debit:
Karmic debts that must be paid from insight,
Dis- illusion, self-deceptive strengths and loss
Of will and energy to toss them out,
Swapping every wrong for right.
Thanks for seeing through the scrap, the traps
To late night insights.

Thanks for indispensables at fingertips:
Food, clothes, warmth, which list goes on
An endless on and on:..
The value of philosophy - of having one;
Of having fun, but seeing through it.
Thanks for/to the comfy bed I’m lying on,
The pillowed back support for writing from,
The little knowledge in this bank, this little think tank;
For this writing - Thanks!
And Thanks!
Thanks 3.6.2020/edited 12.8.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round The Universal; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Ability To Cope✍️

The Absolute & Greatest Mystery

If there is a force that is
A force that has no force behind it;
One that is and only is,
It must be
Absolute and absolutely
The most prized uncertainty
To solve, get close to, pierce and know,
For at this moment being only
Trust and hope.

There have existed, even now
Both women, men, child uncommon
Who, through chain of fate and gene
Have felt first-hand,
The mystic Hand, the magic wand
Of coming face to face with Law.
In other words, who saw
The force dubbed Lord, God, Word;
The lauded way and means Supreme,
Giving rise to loud esteem or wordless awe.

Thus, and but, and hence, and so,  
The question with the loudest clang:
The Bang behind the first Big Bang! ⚡️💥🌟💨

The Absolute & Greatest Mystery 4.3.2020 God Book; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; ToThe Child Mystic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

This may be the first poem of my next book to be called “Circling Around Ageing” - a subject that applies to all: each and every.

   The Aim Of Living

The Art of Criticism

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

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

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

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

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

The Art of Criticism 6.30.2016
Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

This is the opposite side of the coin to “Everything We Do” (Facebook or Wordpress site)

        The Bad, The Harmful & The Worthless

The nail biting, smoking, drinking,
Mind cliches, the one that ******* -
All the zillion daily habits
Which, like rabid dogs are glitches
Which are setbacks which push back
The forward ****** of progress,
The kind of life meant for the best:
Life happiness!

Repetition may be key
To all achievement.
But like energy's great powers;
Sources that house forces
Dour, sour on the hour;
Positive & negative;
Latent, inherent, permanent
(Reference: atoms vis á vis the bomb.
Doesn't that just make you numb?)

Tips and hints: Pointing nose in the direction of,
You guessed it: truth and fact;
Learn to act with light and love,
Convert the covert negative
To merit, benefit and giving;
Good for all and plain overt.

The Bad, The Harmful & The Worthless;10.31.2020 Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

This started personally, turned philosophical, then existential (or vice versa) but ended with the current pandemic!  
Fondly, Arlene
The Benefits Of…Having Been, Becoming, Being
Once you have been comatose,
Been handicapped, come home and started life.
There is no pre-supposing.  
It’s a door.
You pay attention so much more.
You notice other’s posture,
Belly, maturation, stature.
On yourself and on the other -
And say nothing.  
Judgement gone
It’s but to carry on.
All mankind is afflicted.

You are functions and non-functions:
Need to buy a button-hole-der, buttoner (they do exist!)
Set in motion one more ‘trick’ or sleight of hand;
Leave the left, to write with right
Hold the knife without self-wound.
When standing up to feel heel first,
Be wary when foot's bare, ground's wet.

Yet, what you notice even more’s, the gifted
And the giving, all the love around,
The boundless care
When your own hair is falling.
People are so kind,
So hard defined.

As for every passing day.
Creative in its way,
With pandemonium’s pandemic,
You now frolic in the kitchen,
Train and try new, fewer gimmicks,
Mimicry from TV inspiration one's own new found brick.

Oh, the things you learn from having been.
Most of all, that you remain.

British informal, dated a generous, helpful, and reliable person: ‘You are really a brick,’ Gloria said.

The Best Thing  I Know

The best thing I know
Is to scribble down longings, life’s wrongings,
Love’s singing,  its stinging…
By letting the mind re-examine itself;
Watching world going by while in bed,
At its head, sitting silently gathering info
On news fact and mail,
Nailing knowledge on some tricky wiki- or so.

Christmas will be here in only some days,
A new year announcing a new phase
Of conflicts world-wide and world round;
Science will stumble upon some new ground
It has searched for for years,  
Praised and surprised, encircled by cheers.                                    
Fashions and trends, starts and ends will go on.
I will write into night seeking thoughts to dig into;
Unknown and new, cued by visualisation:
Thoughts to set words (not set worlds) afire,
Freed from the mire
                             of frazzled cliche.

The best thing I know
Is to grow through an intellect
Coupled
With Mac so fair,
Happy it’s there.
We’re a pair.
The Best Thing I Know 12.19.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative  II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Big Decision

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

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

The Book

It’s something to put out into the world,
And maybe everyone should do it.
Well, not everyone would do it,
But at least one book is in us all.
Oh, yes,
We all have one book in us.,
Thoughts at bottom ageless,
Basic, universal,
Willing reading level
Out there
Somewhere.
All that is required is –
And there’s the catch:
Stamina, stick-to-it-ness and ready cash.
That said,
It is no guarantee of being read.
The bonuses are breakthroughs,
Insights into self and style,
Inner jokes that make you smile,
Self distance
And, God willing, fans.
Yes,
Something to put out into the world;
To dare and do with flag unfurled
At least just once.


The Book 9.22.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

The Books I Write & Thoughts At Night

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do I sound too radical?  too old fashioned?  Too silly to make the case for abstinence?

The Case For Upper Case

I am traditional.
Each line I write
Starts with a capital.

I’ve gotten slurs,
Have had to plead my case
Give reasons for…
Well, can’t say more:
It looks right, feels right, lights my fire.
Capitals inspire!

Upper case to start a line
Seems to define a poem
As does a rhyme and meter.
And it seems to me, a writer/reader
That the message is delivered stronger,
More aesthetically and stylishly
Than when composed and written out
In form that’s free
Of commas, brackets, sentences,
Spelling, colons (and the semi-…)
All the marks that clarify,  
Unifying all and any…

Upper case in verse
Is not a race or contest
To see who is best.
Upper case is, in this case
A quest for knowledge,
Autobiographic collage:
Search and synthesising:
To  two eyes that just may realise
A Self and what’s behind:
The mind and whatsoever else I find.
(Or should I say whoever else…).
But never mind,
I face the upper case dissent
With quiet acquiescence,
And perpetuate, to celebrate
Tradition.

The Case For Upper Case 1.12.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Clock Tick-Tocks Your Socks Away⏳
                      (quirky but not funny)

The clock ticks like a wick downsizing in the dying:
Temporary, transient, here today and gone tomorrow.
Pastimes burrowed into passed times past,
One thinks of famous men and women, fired, admired.  
Mind gets tired, for they’re gone,
Their traces ploughed into the fertile, furrowed place beyond.
Cassavetes* and Columbo*; cancer and dementia.
Legacies of wizardry and yet, their own and grievous ends.
Death leaves a black hole - pointless, endless,
Llfe a mole (in every sense):  secret agent, blotch and spy.…
Gulf between ability and what is real:
The real causes in this wheel of cause/effect, effects so spread
It breaks one’s head to think about.
Life and end:
Serene or more than flesh can stand.
What’s left of name, what’s left of fame?
In a wink consigned to limbo.
What is left for one to do?
Desiring nothing, seeing through the great illusion:
Corwin’s view: nothingness of/ in the all.  
So do not cry but live the by and by with joy;
Pain of any sort’s a sore-ful, wearying and taxing bore.
Know yourself, and carry on, not with tons of worried hurry, but with kindly moderation.
Suns and stars - the galaxies are growing out, then easing off.
Continue pleasing you yourself
With coffee, for all coffers are but coffins — truth you cannot slough.
Habits sound, so as to lengthen years with scarce few tears and fears;
Apostle of benevolence to one and all in the small, small spheres of sway;
Continuing in doings that belong to each propensity,
Refining all the while, smile!

The Cold

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

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

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

Watching some Youtubes, in this case interviews with an 83 year old Ginger Rogers and a same age Gloria Swanson.  Remember them?

   The Comings & The Goings

The CPS or Cordial Praise  Society

We who write, responding kindly,
Are the humble members of
The Cordial Praise Society’s
Appreciation of what others say,
Each in his way, (and naturally, her way as well.)
We do not try to sell ourselves,
And if we’re liked or even loved,
Get or give approval,
We are strengthened to the depths,
Feeling whole.

With no razzmatazz,
Let’s call ourselves the CPS
The Cordial Praise Society
Who push each other to the sky.
Not asking why,
We know it is the best and only thing to do.

The CPS or Cordial Praise Society 10.21.2020 the Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin