I’m still in nature mode.

         The Daffodils Are Out

The Day Trump Tr-i-ump-hed

Trumpeting, he ******* and triumphed…
Did he, has he?
Thumping his way forward,
Jumping through the hoops of word and phrase,
Razing those that blocked his ways,
He dazed the lot.
Crazed, ablaze – or not.  But hot,
He took a stand,
But didn’t seem to understand (and may not still)
That energy attracts a gangland:
Thinking not that crowds could form,
Become a throbbing, clobbering or bombing mob:
A swarming army.

Young we heard,
You can’t take back the caustic word
Once in the air it’s there!
So rather than lie down
Crowds gather,
Drawing to themselves an anger,
War uncivil,
Civil war
                  once more,
And monies that he’s vowed to earn
Will burn in costs for crowd control, police patrol.  

The day that Trump was voted in
May not, in fact become a win -
For reasons manifold and sundry.

The Day Trump Tr-i-ump-hed 11.11.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II: Special People, Special Occasions,
Arlene Corwin

THE DEFINITIVE BOOK

THE DEFINITIVE BOOK

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious ( revised, revised, revised)

How to say this briefly:
Firstly,
Words that help convey the hidden.
They exist.
Here is the gist:
Churches, sects, cults, creeds, the claim
Of being chosen.
Tenets frozen,
Woven into scripture
Which professes knowing
What is best for all,
Where if you’re good you rise
And if you’re bad you fall.

Spirit's -ality puts stress on union,
The approach to life
Emphases
On oneness under all beliefs;
On peace and joy and getting these;
Transcendence over time and space
A sense of being face to face
With truths about reality, its indescribability -
Yet not impossible to give a voice to.

Fear that goes,
Love that grows.
Agape’s universal call,
Connecting to an All in all.

Practices to help along:
Meditation, psilocybin, prayer and song,
Means to fit all shapes and sizes,
Geniuses as well as dunces,
Non-, theistic preferences
Which need to be demystified.

Not magic, pagan, or god-based,
Theo-physical, but meta-: deeply meaningful,
And mystical, the core of all.

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious 2.9.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

The Dim Red Light So Far Away

One often wonders what God looks like:
Not a question but a wond’ring
Valid as a thought can be.
For we, mere beings who have hope in something
Not described as thing or non-thing,
But as endless power beyond thinking,
‘Thing-ness so mysterious
Still have within the will to know -
Our senses tell us so.

We want to smell, to see, to hear
The far and near;
We have a visual imagination,
That serves purpose,
Comes from, is,
In fact, the search for truth

And so, from youth to age,
We read the sages, analyse,
Use our eyes - both inner, outer.
All to understand the real, the utter
Real behind the ‘real’.

Mystics, other types who kneel,
Contemplate and meditate -
Of those, some have “beheld’’ a light:
A dim red light
Far from the night
Or universe’s outer sight -
Clear, not near
To those who’ve seen and gleaned from it
Attributes that shine from it.

Idolator or doubter,
Those who call it theatre.
All in search of comforter
May find it someday in the dim red light
So far away from darkened night.

The Dim Red Light So Far Away 2.6.2021 Circling Round Reality; God Book II; To The Child Mystic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Disappearance Of The Flora & The Fauna

As usual I watch TV.
Not news but documentary.
“Care and Sustenance of Nature” theme, wherein I learn
The world’s downfall is not the climate, wars or other,
But the disappearance of the fauna, disappearance of the flora.
Population out of hand, we continue in our building,
Take the forests and its bounty.
Must we mutiny?

In the forests are the flora and the fauna:
Insects, mosses, mushrooms, herbs;
All dependent on the flora, all reliant on the fauna.

Population out of hand; swelling daily,
How to build for it more wisely?
Species dying out of hand,
We, the ostriches in sand,
Where lies duty, where lies blame?
Where lies power and restraint?
Who shall act with calm and tact?
I, you, we who lacked the facts?

T has plans to dig the Arctic.
There can be no Noah’s Ark. Bit bores and drills.
Do we need oil?
Fated to be hanging there somewhere in space,
Green, over-green, impure for sure?
Seen from up above, sun-blocked from war?
Submerged in water. What could be:
‘Hell on earth’ no more cliché but nature’s blithe reality.
The Disappearance Of The Flora & The Fauna

12.1.2017 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Nature II; Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Corwin

The Doped Olympics

Why don’t they simply create a new branch
And call it the Doped Olympics?
By the laws of semantics
It soon would come into the language, legitimized:
Youth forgets past.
Soon the word would have lost its original shame,
While the name of the game
Would be guilt-free and blame-free
Free, and those who would qualify
Could have drug freedom, build muscles defined,
And have bodies divine.
If they dropped dead at forty
At least they’d have entertained millions,
Fulfilled their ambitions,
Made lots of folk rich
And set records untold.
Let those few or those many spend hours in training;
Let chemists develop concoctions so new
That the pole-vaulter flies,
And the sprinter’s a jaguar,
The shot put is sent into orbits of space,
The long jumper jumps twenty meters
While men become fierce
And the women grow beards,
Which gives all of the chemists new projects to work on.
A yes to the ***** Doped Games.

The Doped Olympics12.2. 2004 revised 1.27.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

The Doped Olympics

Why don’t they simply create a new branch
And call it the Doped Olympics?
By the laws of semantics
It soon would come into  language, legitimized:
Youth forgets past.
Soon the word would have lost its original shame,
While the name of the game
Would be guilt-free and blame-free,
And those who would qualify
Could have drug deliverance, muscles defined, bodies divine.
If they dropped dead at forty
At least they’d have entertained millions,
Fulfilled their ambitions,
Made lots of folk rich
And set records untold.
Let those few or many spend hours in training;
Let chemists develop concoctions so new
That the pole-vaulter flies,
The sprinter’s a jaguar,
The shot put is sent into orbits of space,
The long jumper jumps twenty meters
While men become fierce
And the women grow beards,
Which gives all of the chemists new projects to work on.
A yes to the ***** Doped Games.

The Doped Olympics12.2. 2004 revised 1.27.2016re-revised 7.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Every 4 years I post this, hoping that the message, although lighthearted, will come forth.

             The Doped Olympics

Why don’t they simply create a new branch
And call it the Doped Olympics?
By the laws of semantics
It soon would come into the language, legitimized:
Youth forgets past.
Soon the word would have lost its original shame,
While the name of the game
Would be guilt-free and blame-free,
And those who would qualify
Could have drug deliverance, muscles defined, bodies divine.
If they dropped dead at forty
At least they’d have entertained millions,
Fulfilled their ambitions,
Made lots of folk rich
And set records untold.
Let those few or many spend hours in training;
Let chemists develop concoctions so new
That the pole-vaulter flies,
The sprinter’s a jaguar,
The shot put is sent into orbits of space,
The long jumper jumps twenty meters
While men become fierce
And the women grow beards,
Which gives all of the chemists new projects to work on.
A yes to the ***** Doped Games.

The Doped Olympics12.2. 2004 revised 1.27.2016re-revised 7.25.2016  Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Corwin

The Essential It

More refined and more defined:
The essential ‘It’ still growing.
One can’t know this
Unless —
One looks back with two ‘eyes’ anew
When suddenly, no instantly
What was approved
Now begs to be removed
Because one’s changed and different.
Hard to put one’s finger on, but altered.
So revision and reshaping is in order.

One refines,
Remakes mistakes
Although the stakes are low
For you’ve no place to go, your work also.
You write well but you never sell.

The new is fun.
For instance, one’s
Mistakenly typed in placebo.
One’s been given someplace new to go,
Refined and new defined the artist.

The Essential It 4.23.2020 The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Serious stuff.

The Funniest Word: Sesquipedalian: Long-Winded

I just learned the strangest word:
An adjective ne’er seen or heard.
Sesquipedalian.
Sesqui-pedal-ian:
Are we the aliens depicted?
Is it us the word has painted?
Latin for a foot plus half**
Which makes me laugh.
“Polysyllabic or long-winded”.
If there ever was a winding
Longish ended word, it is sesquipedalian.
You have to laugh
At something that’s a ‘foot plus half’
That uses fourteen signs to say it.
‘Sesquipedalian names, or prose’
God only knows how long is wrong,
And even, what is wrong with ‘long’!
Eighteen inches, fourteen letters.
Something in the letters fetters.

Words are born from situations:
Every nuance. each emotion.
How they come about’s the question.
Are we so observant, we,
Disposed to live linguistically?
I’ve no idea,
But it sure is
****** funny.
18 inches or 45.72 centimeters.
The Funniest Word: Sesquipedalian 9.27.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

sesquipedalian | ˌsɛskwɪpɪˈdeɪlɪən |
adjective formal
(of a word) polysyllabic; long: sesquipedalian surnames.
• characterized by long words; long-winded: the sesquipedalian prose of scientific journals.
ORIGIN
mid 17th century: from Latin sesquipedalis ‘a foot and a half long’, from sesqui- (see sesqui-) + pes, ped- ‘foot’.

This was sparked off by watching a documentary last night on Leonard Cohen & Marianne both of whom I knew wall when I lived in Hydra.      

    The Goal

There are those who can’t
And those who can
Become what’s called ‘a family man’.
Those who must live solitary.
Those who must have friends a-plenty:
Women, chums, amusements, ***;
Many current, many -ex.

There are those who roam the earth
Without a faith,
Looking, looking, never finding,..
Never binding self to one:
Finding none.

Those who run and those who search;
World-weary urchins*
Existentially un-gladdened, burdened,
Mightily or slightly saddened.

No one thing that’s best for all,
No inner voice, choice, norm of form;
Then, waking one day to a call,
It settles all.

Rising, falling with a grin,
Settling in to nature’s cycles,
Sizing up the grand delusion,
Each day’s challenging illusion.

Inner joy reflecting off a shining face
Now well defined and more refined,
They help without a conscious motive,
Simply by a way of living.

In order to find inner peace,
“Know yourself”, said Socrates.
Where under decrease hides increase
Which then in turn feeds happiness -
The ultimate in goals that please.

The happiness infectiousness,
Is  virus kissed and truly blessed.
Conclusion from this authoress:
“They’re not all baddies I would guess.”

A Reference to Noel Coward’s song “World-Weary” (1928)
The Goal 2.29.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

The God Question

Why the papers scientific:
Guidelines; ordering the havoc;
Logic looking yet for more:
What can and is the unexplored.

Take affection’s definition:I see that you have responded and reacted positively to 3 of my poems.  It means we're on the same page.  onderful!
Not an easy one to home in on;
Take theologies:
Fusions of the theories
Of thinkers, mystics, visionaries -
They who've always been - oft’ hidden,
Metaphor their only language.

Multi-universes:
It is said; “My Father’s house has many mansions"
Fine-tuned  functions unlike ours;
Or, is it that they are also tuned to mortal powers?

Devotees of Christian thought
Have rarely sought another’s vision.
God can’t care, He’s always been,
Knows the ropes. Made the ropes!
Not always in accord  with hopes.
That we consider of importance
For what we conciser of importance
Is an insolence, an ignorance Of God’s dispassion -
Absolute’s indifferent nonchalance and essence.

When you seek the ‘infinite’ and ‘ultimate’
Consider what is Absolute:
First Creator, laws of nature;
Forces that don’t disappear.

Always two: the smooth, the friction;
Yin and Yang of every action -
All with heads and tails of coin:
The God debate can never end.
For every foe is also friend.

The God Question 1.12.2015/re-written 2.8.2016/re-written 4.15.2021 God Book II; Circling Round Everything II;Arlene Nover Corwin

The Good Ethic (a)

We have to have good leaders
Upright, ethical.
Leaders who, role models all,
Rather than distort the word
Would, if a situation called
Fall on the situation’s sword.

Tidal waves, cracks in the earth,
Lava, outbreaks at our teeth,
Pre-set, present, hard to say,
What’s needed to de-threat
Probabilities that link mortality:
A changed morality,
And from the start, start
Well before calamity
Starts rumbling.

It can’t, does not take much to just not cheat.
Susceptible, corruptible,  unreachable
Can suddenly become  impeachable.
Bleating, leaders,
Grumpy, tweeting…
Ought not take much to delete
A leader’s grumbling, tweeting, bleat.

A man of trust is what we need;
Whose only beads come not from gods
But from a creed of noble hearts.
The Good Ethic 4.25.2020 Defiant Doggerel; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

      The Good Ethic (b)

We need, must have good leaders
Upright, ethical.
Leaders who, role models all,
Rather than distort the word
Would, if a situation called
Fall on the situation’s sword.

Tidal waves, cracks in the earth,
Lava, outbreaks at our teeth,
Pre-set, present, hard to say,
What’s needed to de-threat
The probabilities that link mortality
Is changed morality,
And from the start, start
Well before calamity
Starts rumbling.

It can’t, does not take much to just not cheat.
Susceptible, corruptible, unreachable
Can suddenly become  impeachable.
Bleating, leaders; grumpy, tweeting…
Ought not take much to delete
A leader’s grumbling, tweeting, bleat.

A man of trust is what we need;
Whose only beads come not from God
But from a creed of noble heart.
Simply defined and hard to find
We miss the ethical of mind.
The Good Ethic 4.25.2020 Defiant Doggerel; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Good Thing With *** After Eighty
                     (a metaphor only)

The good thing with *** after eighty
Is that it’s never flighty,
Never to be taken lightly
Although playful to the fullest.

Having age’s benefits, which far from few,
The very slowness giving each and every feeling newness
Of a you-ness never felt in springtime’s days:
Rediscovered in a hundred lovely, treasured ways.

Yeah, yeah, one reads the lists:
This, that and fists of facts:
The thin, the fat,
The morning aches in joint and bone
With sleep that’s partial, un-profound.
Multifarious the pains and ills.
And still, the benefits outweigh.
So never underestimate sagacity,
The knowledge and experience; the knowledge from experience
Which only comes from several hundred thousand segments.
Several thousand days behind,

Find yourself and who you are.
Differentiate the light from dark.
See the differences and then unite them.
Learn to welcome and not fight them.
There are many good things with the after eighty ***.

The Good Things With *** After Eighty 6.2.2019 Circling Round Eros II; Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Great Communicator
             (self confidence, low self-esteem)

He eats the cake, the bread home baked;
He never asks or comments.
Eats in silence.

There are men with little interest,
Curiosity, desire to know;
Silent husbands
With repeated jokes, repeated patterns;
Showing growth, but oh, so slowly.
Holy moly!.
Passive in aggression, but aggression there.
Defensive, self-protective;
Inner stuff that doesn’t dare,
Except in dreams when he is violent.
Mostly silent,
He observes the weather, future seasons.
He can reason, have his reasons
Sometimes faulty, sometimes right.
Doesn’t recognise a compliment - can’t take it in.
Apologize? It doesn’t happen.
And those violent jerks at night!
Reveal a healing that has never taken place:
The chases, villainous and shadowed faces, traces of what nowadays
Is called low self-esteem.
It’s natural one wants to scream, become a fem-
                                                                             inist.
It’s so unnerving!
Serving no one in particular.
Who needs a ‘great communicator’
Like the one who wants no insight.

exclamation US dated or humorous
used to express surprise or dismay: holy moly, this is exciting news!
ORIGIN
late 19th century: alteration of holy Moses, popularized in the 1940s by the character Captain Marvel in DC Comics' comic book of the same name.
The Great Communicator 2.17.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sometimes it’s great fun to write nothing.    

  The Great Debate: Shower Vs Bath
(or 15 minutes with the, worth the pen & paper)

She:
Nothing can compare with
Bathtub filled with
Water’s warmth of H20
A-top an un-warapped body
Draped moistened luxury.
He:
Ah, the freshness of the ******!
It’s too, too much!
Standing under such a pressure pleasure:
So difficult to measure the enjoyment!
She:
But employment of an arm or both
Seems such a waste, the taste of water in the mouth
Unnecessary and uncouth,
You either have to swallow or you spit.
What is the sense of it?
He:
Ah, but freshness has its own
And special feeling and sensation.
Hard to put your finger on.

So it goes…
The great debate is never closed.
No conclusion, no one swayed
Each walks away, their water spray
The one and only means to get self clean -
And that’s okay.

The Great Debate: Shower Vs Bath 4.18.2021 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Highest Prize

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

It was dead of night, 2:30 a.m. when I awoke with unbidden memories clear as day, and subsequent ideational poetry in my head.  It all became (under bedcovers with flashlight, pad and felt tip pen) this: which may require two readings or more.

            The Hourglass Of Time ⏳
  (an awakening in the dark of night)

Shape, form, hope, dream, name, fame
Sifting through the hourglass of endless time -
Seamless, endless, untamed time.

Reactive in the night a.m.
Drifting in and out of ‘I am’,
Why the lingering of memory,
The self biography
Coming back with age,
Links welding chains of change
So strong and strange?

Why, because it must,
When revelation bites the dust,
The fuss when dust itself is shifting,                                        
Sifting through time’s hourglass,
Time’s powerglass?

Passing (one-can-only guess)
Through structureless unclearness
And a consciousness of moment’s movement which,
Because of pause-less laws, effect and cause,                        
Course charted by some unseen force,
A nameless, undivided source:
What Is the message?

I’ve a hunch it was a master stroke
That woke me up, shook me up -
Ideas that spoke
With images clear and opaque;
Feats feeling fake, mistakes my earthquake,
Baked into aches of un-achievement
Which cemented the reality;
A revelation dark and light, the naked night
Revealed to me  (for all to see eventually.)
The Hourglass Of Time 3.4.2020 Revelations Big&Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

I hope you’re not getting tired of my little inspired inserts.  I love them all (my small children) each one that shows up one after the other.  Sequences that surprise even me, the author, each one a little world, a little microcosmos.

The Houseguest You Never Want To Leave

The 'I' Form

Some like it, some do not.
Some avoid it, voiding it
Into the well of meekness, weakness;
Too confessional to speak.
I was one of them,
Sometimes still am.
The ego’s always there with shame.

If the theme is terribly self-biographic,
Graphic, ******…
Then ‘’i’ becomes ’one’, ‘he’ or ‘she’.
Usually, I don’t need privacy
But like to share a message
Writ as poetry,
Assumption being ‘we’
Is always you and me -
Same experiences,
Feelings, senses…
All that differs is the tongue.
Behind it all, one song that’s sung,
Pearls of life strung on one string,
The common gong of simply being.
Let us share the ‘I’ form bravely!
I is always you is we.

The ‘I’ Form 4.4.2021 I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Illumined Poet

Who is he?
Does he exist?
Is he consistent?
What does he see others don’t?
Does he know what others don’t?
Is he he, or can he also be a she?
In these days you have to ask,
For it is ‘in’ to be defender
Of the genders one and all.

Poets stand, some sit in chairs;
While sitting up in bed some stare
Into an inner or an outer space
While letting, waiting, waiting, letting
Ideas come with no thought as to future comings,
Future poem-ings,

Afterwards he/she is empty.
Emptied of all relevance
To theme that took poetic stance,
Metered dance,
Seemed to be an endless well.

A well, it wells up from below.
What does it do?
Flows upward, outward,
Shooting, spewing, spurting, spouting,
Summer-springs that sprout
Ideas, conceptions, thought.

No one knows where all this comes from;
Poet-sage without intention,
Living on without ambition,
Driven by no aspiration,
Only the illumination
Bringing into birth a poem
That some
Will grasp, appreciate,
Others miss or misinterpret:
Know it!
This rare member of the planet:
The illuminated poet!

The Illumined Poet 9.28.2018 Revelations Big & Small; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Land Of Make Believe

The land of make believe
Is all around and we’re ****** in.
TV, films, vampire and villain –
We are sold and they’ve got hold;
Female and male, young and old.

Our dreams are mares of night and fright
And flight we cannot take.
The make believe tears at our inners,
Thoughts and feelings not expressed
Confirming our worst fears.

No rhyme or meter,
Beat or pulse can make it better.
Make believe cannot relieve
The state of jitters fettered by
Illusion.

The Land Of Make Believe 9.1.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

I saw the word 'logic' and it suddenly occurred to me how often the lack of it, this precious tool, is missing from our daily attempts at talking.

              The Logic Of The Argument Is Faulty

The Longest Day – Again

Oh, this time business!
Reminded with, by many signs;
Symbols that we celebrate and calibrate;
Every year the summer solstice!
Here in Sweden parties, feasting, dancing, joy,
With a thread of aggravation, kicking off annoyance -
Passing time a sign indeed!

Darkening a little earlier,
Seeds sown both in earth and past
Bloomed and harvested. Some not manifest.
Autumn on its way, and winter.
Wishfully, another spring, but now is now,
One can’t allow a sorrow.
Sun is strongest.  Night is shortest. Day is longest.
And hurrah!

The Longest Day – Again 6.21.2016
Circling Round Nature II; Birth, Death & in Between II; Nature Of & In Reality; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin

The Love Of Money

The Making Of Perfect Love

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

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

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

The Many Benefits of Facebook Friends

A Facebook friend wrote meaningfully:
“Give me,
Five ways to give aid to people
Of Aleppo”
(You know where Aleppo is;
It’s on the lip(s)
                          of all the world).
A reader sent back this small clip,
A tiny snippet:
“Meditate!
Get rid of violent thoughts,
Of evil judgments that you sow
And sown,
And temper outbreaks that you’ve known.
Don’t only sit, feel sad and moan!
That is the thing this scribe can do,
Does do and plans to do.
You do it too!”

All done and said,
That was the ‘five good things’ contributed.

When he who wrote it
Noted
This.
I wrote right back and sent a kiss.
There are ten thousand like me.

The Many Benefits Of Facebook Friends 12.19.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; War Book II;
Arlene Corwin

The Many Words For Miracle

What are the synonyms for miracle?
There must be myriads:
Wonder, mystery and marvel;
Anything above the normal.
Unexplainable, for I was sick: tired, coughing, chesty,
Energy-less,
Had to rest.
That was just yesterday
And three days prior.
Three days later - now                                
There’s power.
By this hour, I’ve
Washed a rug on hands and knees,
De-branched two trees,
Wrote verse
Washed *******,
Socks, a jersey,
Trimmed the roses, bushes pruned,
Going strong, I’m strong - in tune.
Recovery, and I’m a-goggle!
Miracle is what that was!
Silent, gosh darned and mind-boggling
Miracle - and have I mentioned
That I’m grateful
For the days.
Of well-intentioned
Destiny?
So many words for thankful.

The Many Words For Miracle 10.22.2014 revised 7.28.2016
Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

This was inspired by my friend Ulf who takes umbrage at my predisposition for rhyme and meter which he interprets as weakness. You ought to write prose, says he.

The Meaning Of It All: a race that is no race
(a poet speaks)
I may never be ‘streamed’,
(the modern stamp of popularity)
No theme alike in all I write,
For all I write is as diverse as hours in the day,
The changes taking place within the mind
With just one cup of of coffee
Or the viewing of a tragedy
On a ubiquitous TV.
Yet, with eyes to see
There is consistency,
A constant that is, let us say, a me,
A thread of personality,
Of pity for the way of, shall we say, humanity.
A love for the reality of life,
A search for its illusions,
And when seeing them,
A reaching for the answers.
And then the need to write them out;
A kind of scientific paper never absolute per se,
But sure there is a key
Even to death’s mystery
Which still eludes the me.
Wherefrom come this need to share?
Not fame, not name
Though they are protons in the atom’s lair.
No, the need lies deeper than the gene or cell.
A part of creativity and tendency to feel well.
A part of love that satisfies the giver
Just as much as it might satisfy receiver.
Desire’s hope gets in the way.
A hinder to analysis and objectivity.
Hope’s desire is the night to day.
Thus verse instead of prose.
One bouquet instead of one sweet aromatic rose.
Thus a freedom formed from discipline, revision;
Tiring and emptying until a moment’s inspiration
Jostles for first place:
A race that’s is no race.

The Meaning Of It All: a race that is no race 3.17.2019 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Meaning Of Life, What?

Peace, love and happiness.
Three words we miss
In every sense.
a) fail to hit it, fail to get it,
Even though it is the tar-get.
b) We miss it as we’d miss a bus,
The muss of ego messing up, missing us.
c) We miss it as in pine for, yearn for:
Miss in every aspect.

Peace.  We don’t e’en know its meaning;  
Shunning, running fast away from…
Yet we want it.

Love.  And that?
The ***?  Caress? Compassion and philanthropy?
Who cares for me and only me?  
Love, what?  All that?
Yes, probably.

Last, happiness.
Contentment without need for rapture;
Focused in the niceness of the now
No matter how
The outer world appears.
No matter what
Emerges as and from your lonely lot.

The meaning? Socrates:
He knew that he knew nothing.
But his nothing had the ring
Of truth.  Though youth
Can’t know it doesn’t know,
The issue stays the same,
Theme worthy of its  noble aim:
Life: What? The meaning of?
Peace, happiness and lovely love.
The meaning of its process,
More, patently not less.

The Meaning Of Life, What? 8.24.2017
Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

I  just came across this, a poem which I had completely forgotten, having rather recently written another poem about beards (as well as tattoos). And even one before that in yet another year.  Gosh!  I guess I must have stronger anti-beard feelings than I am aware of.
Anyway, it's quite good, so I'm re-presenting it.  Comments of all kinds are welcome!😍🙋‍♀️🤩
       The Men In Sweden…🤔
The men in Sweden and elsewhere
Are looking older than they are
With whiskers, stubble, ****** hair
Of every kind.
Beards, moustaches find their place
On almost every male face
These days.
I’ve bet you’ve never heard
Of pogonophobia. A funny word
That means a fear of beards and beard!
Yes, there are such mental health conditions.
So I ask, why hide the manly jaw or chin.
A chin that’s manly out and in.
I fancy ego based on fear,
Vanity that’s always there.
Affectation, ostentation, airs and show -
All the traits that go along
With fear of judgment and rejection.
Don’t they know it’s all illusion,
And the only thing that matters
Is completion of the heart and mind
That shatters all?
Finding out who, what you are
And working to complete it.
If you’re twenty-one or two,
What can beat it?
If you’ve got a double, triple chin or none,
An open face is wonderfully
To be preferred.
Lose the beard
And keep the face.
You are a much loved member of the race -
The human…
Besides, a naked face is best to kiss!
What person would not favour this?
Shaved and clean is what I mean!
I mean a face that’s smooth and clean.
Dear men, don’t hide
The face inside.
Nature’s pride is there to share
With those who at the moment stare
And wish that there was someone daring ‘nough
To face the world un-twirled, un-curled,
And wholly, perfectly unfurled.
The Men In Sweden 9.8.2018 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Vanities II; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Ooh, I can be  brazen, sometimes...

The Moment Of Now

The moment of now
Can never be repeated;
Never come as, why, and how
It did.

To be used
It must be used for what it is,
For what it is, is without price
To use, up to the hilt, and dealt
With live, a life improvisation.

As for influences:
You imbibe them round the clock;
That is to say, you soak them up non-stop,
And by your preferences,
Confer on population near
Around the clock, non-stop,
Effects and influences till you drop.

As influencer, everyday aware
That you are kindling’s  scintilla —
The tiny spark that fires up the furthest star,
Let what you’re conscious of become
The constant one you  are.

The moment’s measurement
Is infinitely small;
It cannot be defined at all.
One can just drink it in;
The never-ending, golden link
That bends and anchors then to now.
The Moment Of Now 4.14.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Time II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Most Subtle of All: Intention

The start of neurological connection
And the start of action is: intention.  
To add a word and subtle too, is motivation.

Brain knows all.
Its protocol, a transfer at the speed of light,
A puzzle, riddle chased by all, and oh, a miracle
We take for granted all the while
We’re living: doing, with no thought as to intention,
How it comes about as action,
Never thinking that
We ought to, need to meditate -
Not change, but meditate,
Ask, state, repeat and watch.
Not speculate,
But be.  And do.  
And find out who
You are, may be,
And hopefully,
What your intentions are.

The Most Subtle Of All: Intention 11.2.2016
Circling Round Reality;’ Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Only time will tell whether you influenced another human being or not.  Numbers on a computer mean little.  To feel you are ‘an influencer’  means to ask yourself who, how, where and why.    


The New Fad Word: Influencer

The latest fad, the newest word -
A word you’ve heard;
**** for the herd.
A word dreamed up by vanity
And deemed to be an actuality
When its truth is actually
Imaginary -
Not to be taken seriously.

We influence where e’er we go.
We set examples, sway, control.
We guide, we form, we shape the norm,
Is that the ‘influence’ at which you aim?

There’s room for goodness, goodness knows,
For we’ve observed how sorrow grows,
With leaders leading by the nose
Whole groups of hopeful, wishful crowds.
They influence, oh yes!
By pressing pain and lies
Into the sighs and cries and floods
Of men and those who acquiesce.

I submit that you omit the concept ‘influencer’
From your aims.
Life’s no fame game.
Your name has value only when
You’ve lived and helped your fellow men.
To that I add a short Amen.

The New Fad Word: Influencer 1.31.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin.

The Night Is Almost Over

The night is almost over,
During which I’ve been awake
Unquantifiable wee hours.
It’s been a challenge to placate
Unrest in ***’ and soul,
Think things to do without a wrestle with my all,
Discover parts to focus on,
Breathe out and in,
Shepherding bad thought away from sin.

A challenge to make time rewarding,
Night un-worrying with means
Intuitively gleaned.
By three or four,
Night nearly over,
One is sure
There have been dreams -
A second’s worth of night-worked themes.
(Perhaps two minutes, maybe three.
I’ve patently no memory
Unawake, unaware,
All simple cognizance not there)

I’ll be ok when morning comes,
Stomach craving nutriments.
There will be toast, cheese, milky coffee
Brought in by hubby
With me glad the light took over.

The Night Is Almost Over 9.2.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

This could have been written with different pronouns (you, one, we etc.) but I have no hesitation in using the confessional I, since I’m pretty sure that I is you is we all.


          The Older I Become #3

The older I become
The more I need to meditate,
The date with death come into sight.
Not all people have, feel, need this need,
The quandary multi-sided:

Disliking the idea of ceasing,
Vanishing, not knowing
If we go nowhere, somewhere or anywhere.
And as perplexing:
Loving living,
Loving what each breath is giving
Even though the world’s in downfall,
Twisted egos big and small;
Endless ills and kills banal.
Saddest and regrettable,
Gifts that die, disposable.

The basic problem may be fear:
Deep and cold as one grows old;
An angst and anger at no longer being;
Feuds between the bad and good;
The sense of global threat and danger;
Scared of losing what comes closer…
God knows what…

And so I meditate.

The Older I Become #3 8.3.2020 Birth, Death & In Between; Circling Round Experience; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;  Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

What a coincidence!  Just found this:
                The Particles Of God II

The particles of god are falling on my head.
They’re falling on the living, probably the dead;
On believers, non-believers; equal particles they fall –
They’re always falling on and in and through the body wall.

God is particles of oneness.  There are parallels galore.
When the atom showed its kernel and revealed there was more
To meet the eye, a kind of onion-layered door
Was opened there inside the mind as just the metaphor
For simpletons like me;  
God energy,
With big or little G;
Living, knowing particles that have no personality
But which, if I’d clean up my act,
Would mystically reveal the fact
That they, the particles and I, have one identity.

I’m trying to arrange and rearrange my head instead,
Make it more receptive than a means for daily bread –
A conscious sponge, a large receptor,
Image-making faculty a particle collector.

Each impulse must be pure,
For we’re in areas of justice
And the realm of pure reward -
Particles with qualities inherent in our race:
Areas of mercy, all the virtues, love and grace.
I’d rather not involve them - just assume that they exist.
It’s the God without the person that this poem has gently kissed:
Ever-present particles that are the living’s gist.

The Particles Of God 3.26.1994 /10.4.2018/ 2.20.2020 To The Child Mystic; God Book; To The Child Mystic II Arlene Nover Corwin

Earth, Dust, Atoms, Particles… Earth, Dust, Atoms, Particles… The Spanish painter Tapies was, in one of his artistic stages taken with Buddhistic philosophy: When I Googled him, I was reminded of a poem I first wrote in 1994, revised in 2018 and again today in 2020.   You may recognise the Vedanta philosophy in me, a philosophy that grabbed me in the early 50’s and has never really let go.  Both earthy and spiritual, it has always suited my person and personality.
Arlene

            The Particles Of God

The particles of God are falling on my head.
They’re falling on the living, probably the dead;
On believers, non-believers; equal particles they fall –
They’re always falling on and in and through the body wall.

God is particles of oneness.  There are parallels galore.
When the atom showed its kernel and revealed there was more
To meet the eye, a kind of onion-layered door
Was opened there inside the mind as just the metaphor
For simpletons like me.  God energy,

With big or little G;
Living, knowing particles that have no personality
But which, if I’d clean up my act,
Would mystically reveal the fact
That they, the particles and I, have one identity.

I’m trying to arrange and rearrange my head instead,
Make it more receptive than a means for daily bread –
A conscious sponge, a large receptor,
Image-making faculty a particle collector.

Each impulse must be pure, for
We’re in areas of justice and reward;
And particles with qualities inherent in our race:
Areas of mercy, all the virtues, love and grace -
I’d rather not involve them - just assume that they exist.
It’s the God without the person that this poem has gently kissed:
Ever-present particles that are the living’s gist.

The Particles Of God 3.26.1994 /10.4.2018/1.14.2020To The Child Mystic; God Book; Arlene Corwin

The Particles Of God

This is for all, any or few who use the computer to give, get or find  some kind of comfort or fulfilment.

     The Penny Dropped

This penny dropped minutes ago:
That those who read the po-
                                      etry I write -
Who take the bite by tapping out
A Like or Heart -
Emoji showing taking part -
That they, or she or he
Is somewhere on this round, round globe
Alone and bound
To isolation’s empty ground -
For some a prism in their prison.

Rewarded with a new respect.
In twenty second’s new reaction;
Realization not to share
For any other reason
Than to know that some are there
Under the most extenuating circumstance:
Pandemic’s viruses,
Computer the main avenue
To reaching him, her,  you
(Which may be all they see
Throughout a lonely day)
Makes motive purified,
The ego minimized.

The Penny Dropped 2.13.2021 Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Nover Corwin
the penny dropped*informal, chiefly British used to indicate that someone has finally realized something: I was about to ask Jack who it was, when the penny suddenly dropped.

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

              The Personal Joys Of Ageing

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Plan: A Mantra

There is a Plan:
Inherent since the start of man,
Cause and effect, effect and cause;
Always was, works through laws,
And never, ever stops to pause.

And so I bind the whole of me,
To knowing That before I die.
If death means ‘bye’,
I want to learn, absorb the why.
If it does not,
I’ve got to understand the rest,
Scan and perceive first hand
What’s best,
Or life seems all but meaningless.

Instinct longs for happiness.
An ignoramus longs for this.
So in pursuit of bliss’ nearest,
My pursuit is Daddy Dearest,
Universes far from me,
Known to the soul implicitly.

I must believe before I leave
In plans and laws and forces good,
Something which makes all it should
And something which controls it all.

The Plan: A Mantra 1.17.2020
Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

*mantra; a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation: a mantra is given to a trainee meditator when his teacher initiates him.

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious

How to say this briefly:
Firstly, find words for the inexpressible.
They do exist.
Here is the gist:
Each has components -
Churches, sects and cults, their creeds:
The claim of being chosen.
Pure spirit's -ality doesn’t seem to need
A system woven
Into scripture which professes knowing
What is best for all,
Where if you’re good you rise
And if you’re bad you fall.

The spiritual as an approach to life,
Seems to place the emphases
On unity within the mixture of beliefs;
On peace and joy, and getting these;
Transcendent over time and space
And, most of all,
A sense that you are face to face
With truth about reality,
Its indescribability.
Yet not impossible to give a voice to;
Love that comes, fear that goes!
******, no.   A loving kindness big & small,
Universal, – if you will,
That permeates, recalibrates,
Connecting to an All that’s spirit: All in all.
Practices to help along:
Meditation, psilocybin, prayer and song:
The mystical both caused or opened.
That said, non- theistic preference
Needs to be demystified, a road for genius, dunce.
Not piety, religion, magic, paganism, or god-based,
Not theological nor physical,
But meta-, deeply meaningful,  
Yes mystical!
The core of all.

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Religious 2.9.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Scriptural

How to say this briefly:
How to find words for the inexpressible.
They exist.
Here is the gist:
Components - churches, sects, cults,creeds:
The claim of being chosen.
Inner spirit doesn’t need a system woven
Into scripture claiming knowing
What is best for all.
One wherein if you’re good you rise
And if you’re bad you fall.

The faith-based places emphases
On unity of life within the mixture of belief;
Consensus, peace and joy, and getting these;
Transcendent over time and space,
The sense that you are face to face
With truth above reality,
Its indescribability.

Not impossible to voice
With Love that comes, fear that goes!
******, no, more loving kindness big & small,
Universal, if you will.
Permeating, calibrating,
Affixing to an All that’s spirit: all in all.

Practices to help along:
Meditation, psilocybin, prayer and song.
The non- theistic preference
Needs to be demystified,
With road for genius or dunce.
Not piety, religion, magic, paganism, or god-based;
Theological or physical,
But meta-, deeply meaningful,  
Yes mystical:
The core of all.

The Pleasant Difference ‘Tween The Spiritual & Scriptural 4.4.2017
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

The Poet

The poet is a thinker:
He has to be.
The poet doesn’t only think:
He is a visionary.
He takes us from the lower to the daily,
To the higher daily quality;
A vision of reality:
The underlying daily.

He makes us see us all
In feelings large and small.
He is important in the sorting out
The whole assortment of our sentiments.

He steeps us in the deep
Without our knowing,
Showing us through images and pretty rhyme,
Rhythms in and out of time.

Showering the reader
In the afterglow of beauty
It is his duty
To be leader to a higher self:
That is the poet in a nutshell.

The Poet 4.2.2018The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Corwin