The Politician

Has he kept his word?

Kept to promises you heard?

Are you satisfied? Let down?

Waiting to see what comes round?

These choices voiced, unvoiced

From voters of the officers new crowned.



To those who vote by rote or call

To those who vote at all:

Has he or she distorted vows

To overpower and devour:

Double thought through double-think?



Misconstruing and misstating,

Skewed with bias filled with hating.

Stinking skills to sell and buy,

To peddle lies which sink a country –

Even if potentially –



Are the aides, incomes denied,

Who stand to profit on the sly,

Men in masks, men in power

Hidden men, men of the hour,

How will tasks now basked in

At whose call flasks, casks are drunk from:

Will affairs of state be slunk from?



This a call to politician;

Call to listen;

He or she just person

In the end.



The Politician 2.28.2017

Our Times, Our Culture II;

Arlene Corwin

The Politician

This to those who vote by rote
Or vote by call -
To those who vote at all:

Has he kept his word?
Kept to promises you heard?
Are you satisfied, let down?
Waiting to see what goes round:
(Several choices
Of the voices
Voting for the offices
Meant to be filled.)

Has he gone back on his vows -
Contradictory or harmful now?
Double thought through double-think?
Does it stink, prepared to sink
A land with aids, advisors, incomes
Sly, and on the side?

How will issues relevant be dealt with?
How will tasks be basked in
By the men
In power,
Typically men of the hour;
At their call, flasks, casks to drink from:
State affairs for one to think from!

The Politician 2.27.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

This was written in two minutes, two minutes ago, the bolt of lightening hitting as I was doing hand laundry.

       The Princess & The Pea 2020

Since my operation, I mean amputation
I’ve become the princess & the pea:
A whole set of new formed, framed sensitivity,
Plus a set pf parts I cannot feel.
Forever reeling with the adaptation,
Realising all life is but adaptation -
And perhaps adoption of the new.

Bare feet and I feel every crumb.
Two knuckles barely touched
And I am numb,
No more the nimble fingered
I was used to from
The decades prior.

Poor princess!  Now I know
Why she goes down in history,
Fairy tale no airy tale: reality.

Time will pass
And more will happen.
Whether it will be ‘Alas’
And I the captive,
Or a brand new happiness
I cannot prophecy.
But by and by
The pea may liquify
And dry, and I,
A princess only.

The Princess & The Pea 2020 4.30.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Married, unmarried, with children, without - this reaches out for all in one or other .

      There Are Daughters, Sons

There is a daughter and a son
One or more to almost everyone.
And when we’re gone
We want to leave a sign
That we were here.
A legacy, a benefaction
Some provision
Carried to a future, a hereafter
With a memory or memories
That we were here,
The seed in us that brought them where
They are right now.

Some symbol
In a form tactile;
Visual (a picture, books)
Aural (music)
Journals, diaries or cash.
Reminders in moments of flashback.

We love our progeny,
We think of them as prodigies,
Love so miraculous and strange.
Phenomenon we cannot, would not change
For all the tea in China.

Read this, sons and daughters;
Be respecters, benefactors of your own
To carry on and far beyond
The life on loan.

There Are Daughters, Sons 2.26.2020 Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

To Jonathan & Jennifer

I started out to write a song.  Instead this came out.  Anybody out there wanna have a go?

     There Are So Many Xmas Songs

“You better watch out,
You better not shout;
You better not cry -
I’m telling you why.
Santa Claus is coming to town.”
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
There are so many Xmas songs
To sing along to.
Messages of cheer and legend:
Santa land and fairy land
Bonded by a band of reindeer
Flying low to clear each household,
Santa chuckling all the way,
Rounding globe the mystery.

Package giving,
Living in the coming light -
Santa driving all the night
Never disappearing or appearing.

Every year and filled with fervour
We still sing
About his coming.
Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas -
Another a term for Father Christmas.

There Are So Many Xmas Songs 11.30-2019
Our Times, Our Culture II Arlene Nover Corwin

On reading a 1997 interview with Saul Bellow who when asked about his near death experience at the age of 8 and then again at 80 something, said “I (still) have the feeling there are so many things to complete”.  (Gothenburg Post)

(There Are) Things To Complete✍️

[There Are] Things You Can Never Change

You make provision for; you train,
Prepare, do anything you can,
And still,
You have to deal with the moment:
Variations never-ending,
Ever modifying and evolving
Subject to the will
Of something your own will,
Will never understand.  
(why do you think there are so many meanings to the word?)
Good luck, and blessings on us all.
May we cull the best from life in every world
That may/may not exist.

[There Are] Things You Can Never Change 11.25.2017
Definitely Didactic; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

[There Are] Things You Can Never Change

There Is A YOU That’s Only You

There is a You that’s only you
And no one else:
The meditative point’s dynamic
Force that stimulates all progress;
Within the system You or process.
You the core, nub, bottom line:
You without a fine distinction.
There is a Cause that’s cause
And nothing, nowhere else.
For some an easy goal,
Even a means of solid gold.
The point of points is to unite
The You that’s only you with Cause,
Invisible, one might
Proclaim invincible.
So let us start with you, your tool:
Arms, legs, trunk, head
Inside of which the trillion cells
(More than the stars, the galaxy’s as well)
Which make up I and All Q that is you.
Why do you think they’re there?
To share with others, naturally,
But to evolve to unity:
A two in one,
(or if you’re into Trinity
Then three…)
To make the story short,
Wise thinkers, seers over all the planet
Have perceived pragmatically
Two ends:
To find the You that’s only you;
To get into
The Cause that’s root.
After which you’re through
To all that is and true.
The end.
There Is A You That’s Only You 1.9.2018 To The Child Mystic II; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Corwin

This is always on my mind (almost).

      There Is A You Within The You

I'm on a roll.  Same day, two poems:

             There Is No One Method

I was sitting in the bath doing my usual grubblande (Swedish for brooding, musing or contemplating) when I had the thought that there's no one special way that suits everyone.  All great teachers have know this, and I, being a 'great' yoga teacher thought about my lovely ladies each of whom has entirely differing needs when doing the same posture.  Hence, There's No One Way - written on a near standing envelope with a dull black eyebrow pencil.  It was a hell to read what I wrote hours later.

        There’s No One Way

Isn’t that grand?
There’s no one hand or leg or breast or eye;
No muscle, vein, no capillary:
No technique for everybody.
Find out who you are!

No one way to take a bath,
Wash a dish, play the harp.
No one true A that’s flat or sharp.
Find out what you want!

Nature’s force is infinite;
The ways of change spectacular.
Sudden sometimes, mostly slow,
So you don’t know what’s happening
Until it blows (as in volcanoes).

What conclusions can we draw?
“Know thyself” the door essential, referential.
Gleaning rules for self -behavior,
Self- analysis, for judging not;
For simply knowing what
And how and when to do
What’s good for you
Because there’s not one ‘tried and true’ for Fu Manchu,
The cuckoo, the well-to-do.
Renew yourself in any way that suits!
There’s No One Way11.30.2017 Nature Of & In Nature; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Corwin

Sitting up in bed, energy-less with toothache, I suddenly wrote this.  (Well, it took a while). Boy, the mind is a miracle!

        There’ve Always Been…

When a poem comes out from head and hand in twenty minutes, one is suspicious, almost sure it will be returned to for revision and correction - often re-creation.      
So far, thirty minutes and adjustments later this head-to-hand is still content.
        
        The Right Attitude

Sinatra had ‘the world on a string’.
Some have the world on their shoulders,
Walking ‘round a wounded Atlas.
What attitude
Can turn an Atlas tuned to self essential?
One which takes the stance
That though life’s no dance,
We cannot “change the thing we can’t control”
But view it holy in its whole,
Defined, refined by character and rectitude
Which spreads its finite wavelengths
Without damage to the soul of strength.

The Right Attitude 10.25.2020 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

I’ve Got The World On A String Lyrics;Ted Koehler Music; Harold Arlen
*Serenity Prayer; Reinhold Niebhr (often used by Alcoholics Anonymous)

The River Of Poetry

The giver of poetry
Shows the river of life.
The poet - a self
Who expresses the lot,
Who has got to address motley thought,
Oughts and will,
Who can never sit still
Until writing is done
For a verse routed out
From the roots of inquiry,
Theory,
Doubt and much more to impart
In a river of eloquent art.

The River Of Poetry 8.31.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

As I appreciate the small inner utterances that make for poetry, some may (I hope) appreciate this amusing little poetic speculation.
Fondly, on the second day of 2021
Arlene
PS
If there are words you don’t know the meaning of, just write me.  I know there are many out there for whom English is not a first language.  It’s always good to keep a dictionary handy.
         The ****** Self
Is it in
The eyes, the skin,
The hormones, mind, the veiled nerves,
The attitude or aptitude’s genetic drives?
What is it most that serves
To makes it good, bad;
Person super duper glad?
Do dreams reveal what days congeal,
Conceal with facets still in store
To show you clearly what you are?
Without a doubt
Freud’s ‘outing’ of his insight,
Onslaught on an uptight world,
Was right.  
Perhaps not wholly, but more than a bit.
Postscript:
These small verses,
But a dabbler’s analyses,
Came this caffeinated morning  
Without warning
Like the magic elf that is our ***’s self.
The mornings lift not deft
But even so,
Its gift.

The ****** Self 1.2.2021 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Exerience; Arlene Nover

The Simplest Of Poems

Everyone is born
With their own
Destiny.
Don’t mourn,
Forlorn and shorn
Of trust.
Inheritance and circumstance
Does what it must,
There being no coincidence.
Stay on the fence
Of faith;
Youth’s health and breath,
Wealth’s stealth and death
Will have its ways.
There being almost nothing more to say:
Let intuition guide your days –
It is the easiest of ways.

The Simplest Of Poems 9.9.2017
Definitely Didactic; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

The Sin Of Pride

I heard the phrase: it froze, was glued.
First thought: What’s sin?
The second: what’s pride?

A sin is when you miss the mark,
(connected to, sadly, with guilt)
Pride is when you’ve chosen wrongly,
Guided by a mostly falsely high opinion
Of oneself and one’s importance.

Yet we use it as a virtue;
Word to nurture
As if it were a good.
Pride in country, children, kin..
Pride: exclusion and restriction.
Leaving out, eliminating,
Failing to include oneself as sinful,
Ignorant and rude.

Reality contains the certitude
That we are all a family
With variations in the tree:
Tendency and quality, person, personality.
None is better or more worthy -
(one more fancy-pants idea).

We’ve all filled with invasive traits:
“All-inclusive” like the place.
Different nose, different face,
Different color, difference race;
Talents more or less intense;
On the fence.  
Misrepresented.

Pride: let’s swap it for humility,
A lack of vanity,
The ever growing insight that we
All are everyone and nobody.

The Sin Of Pride 4.26.2020 Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Today’s didactic insight: just happened to hear the phrase ‘the sin of pride’ this morning.  So here:

        The Sin Of Pride

I heard the phrase: it froze, was glued.
First thought: What’s sin?
The second: what is pride?

A sin is when you miss the mark,
(Connected to self- condemnation -
Sadly, to iniquity )
Pride is when you’ve chosen wrongly,
Guided by a mostly falsely high opinion
Of oneself and one’s importance.

Yet we use it as a virtue,
Nurture as if it were good;
Pride in country, children, kin..
Fact: exclusion and restriction;
Leaving out, elimination;,
Failing to include oneself as sinful,
Ignorant and rude.

Reality contains the certitude
That we are all a family
With variations in the tree:
Tendency and quality, person, personality.
None is better or more worthy -
(one more fancy theory).

We’ve all filled with invasive traits:
“All-inclusive” like the place.
Different nose, different face,
Different color, difference race;
Talents more or less intense;
On the fence;  
Misrepresented.

Pride: to swap for modesty,
A lack of vanity,
The ever growing insight that we
All are everyone and nobody.

The Sin Of Pride 4.26.2020 Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Stimulant

There is a plan.
Prevailing since the dawn of man;
A master plan that never pauses,
Working through unchanging laws
Consisting of effect and cause.

So knowing thus,
I’ve pledged my whole - Including what I call my soul
To have a voice (despite no proof that we have choice)
And ‘spite my preconceived ideas;
To ‘giving in’ before I die
To changeless codes in changing life.

(if death means bye, bye-bye and bye -
If not, then learning reasons why…
I’ve got to understand the rest,
All that which serves this life as best;
Or life seems meaningless or mournful,
And who thinks we’re born to mourn!

Every instinct longs for joy:
Contentedness and happiness
Insect to four-legged beast - man, not the least;
From ignoramus to the fool,
Pursuit of joy both goal and tool.

What works for me is godhead nearest
(who I sometimes all God dearest).
Universes far from me
Yet deep inside, implicitly.

Thus, ‘fore I leave, ‘fore setting sail,
Believing in a force for good
And something which controls it all -
And this, right in our neighbourhood,
I leave this paper meant for Man:
There is a master plan inherent
Meant for us and our enjoyment;
Stimulant for saint and mortal:
Total life we have a right to.

The Stimulant 10.4.2018 God Book II; Circling Round Reality; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Striving After Truth

I always strive for truth in verse,
Seldom using or ab-using license
Granted to us poets:
Metered rhyme half of the time,
Essences of substance:
Those are  one key.
Non-superficiality, honesty,
Non-weirdness in the here-ness.,
Nearness to the self its pelf:
All these are in the processes.

Striving not that easy -
Not as simple as you think!
No squint or wink can help you think.
No pain, no strain and no technique
Can leak the truth from inside out
From brain to paper, plain A4,
There being some mystique
That tweaks the mind
So that without a whine, it finds
A thought not ever thought about,
A light turned on by some deep wonder,
Some ‘cool’ processes down under.

Does it pay?
I would say
It’s more like play than labor.
Hour by hour one may babble,
Scrape the barrel of ideals,
Using up scraps of ideas…

Processing it endlessly,
Grappling, struggling to apply
One’s theme insistently.
All to get the truth-in-me
Into a form called poetry.

The Striving After Truth 2.14.2021 Pure Nakedness II;  Arlene Nover Corwin

The Sun, Birds, Cozy Cats & Light

There is the sunny side:
The bursting green of tree and bush,
The light, delight, the precious ****,
Processes key to happiness.
A breakthrough, negatives decried,
And you
Awaking,
Taking in,
All full of beans.
Within your day, the friendly means
Of sun, the birds, the cozy cat,
The light within,
The light without.
You, the end result content.

The Sun, Birds, Cozy Cats & Light 6.29.2017
Circling Round Nature II; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

The Tendency In All Of Us

There is a tendency in all of us
To be extreme: inherent and in situ;
Likely to appear when time is ripe.
The husband had a kidney stone.
He cut out spinach.
Not one leaf, one atom – that, despite its iron
Reached his lips, his tongue, his throat.
Because of its remote connection to a stone.

One can imagine what becomes of one
Whose tendency is greater than
The kidney man
Who soon or later,
Prone to act on notions
Which have conquered reason
Does.

The Tendency In All Of Us 10.25.2016
Nature Of & In Reality; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

The Things We Take For Granted

The tastes and that we taste,
The smell and that we smell.
The sight and sights themselves;
The fact of silence, how it feels.
And touch?
Is velvet like our bristly toothbrush?
How asleep we are
Though eyes are open.
Who is it, that real person
Inside you?
And who is you?

The Things We Take for Granted 11.15.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Things We Take For Granted

The tastes and that we taste,
The smell and that we smell.
The sight and sights themselves;
The fact of silence, how it feels.
And touch?
Is velvet like our bristly toothbrush?
How asleep we are
Though eyes are open.
Who is it, that real person
Inside you?
And who is you?

The Things We Take for Granted 11.15.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Note: I could have called this “Some Things We Take For Granted”, for I well understand the limitless extent of what we do not think about or notice. But as one who has lost the sense of taste and smell, who has had fingers amputated due to sepsis, I know and am beginning to deeply understand the before and after of what it means to 'take for granted'.

To select and understanding friends, with love and empathy.

    The Thinning Skin Or, I Never Stopped To Think


I never stopped to think,

The skin gets thin.

Then looking down, I saw my leg,

And there it was: the winter

Of my life in action: reneging,

Processing past youth - and losing.

Not amusing!

Definitely not!

Fragility, a new reality;

Oils, creams and salves to save

A youth no longer tangible.

Every syllable wail of decline.

Not fine,

Definitively not, not fine!

And yet, I saw the possi-probablity

That by design God is benign,

And if the wine goes sour

Some divine sweet guarantee

Will make it fine -

Despite the programmed skin of youth’s denial.

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

The Thinning Skin Or, I Never Stopped To Think

The Treacherous Illusion

Progress, growth, expansion:
Cycles, only that.
They never last, just grow and die,
Their concepts unreliable,
Their goals so pliable
They ‘rat you out,’
Attack you back
Unless you are prepared,
Scared underneath it all,
Aware of what a pattern leads to.

Take heed of trends –
They end.
Did someone say once long ago
To keep your lantern lit?  It’s so.

The treacherous illusion
May say all is fine.
See each headline, every fact as sign -
Then go forth bravely.

The Treacherous Illusion 1.27.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

The Trick Is To Stay Fresh

I heard a band four decades old.
“Good God, I thought, what a good band!”
How do they do it? Forty years?
What do they think night after night
When each man steps up to the stand –
Night after night his horn in hand,
Old licks, clichés
Takes his solos even on the days
His wife is sick?
And still they’re slick and stick it out
Night after night, year after year,
Internal tensions always there.
It must be like a factory job,
To entertain the drinking mob.
Or maybe not.
Maybe jobs have been a ball,
A chance to leave four walls,
Create, maintain a freshness,
Make some music on the spot,
Feelings tapped, without pretence;
Spontaneous, and proud of what
The dents he’s chalked up on his horn
All signify.
Perhaps, instead of blasé scorn
He manages to like the crowd –
The drunks, the dancers raw and loud.
Maybe the leader has charisma -
Makes each guy feel that he’s good;
Shows respect for solos
Drummer, sax or trumpet blows;
Drumming, blasting, bellowing.
By hook or crook, the trick’s eternal:
Keep the kernel of renewal growing,
Tapped and showing;
Ever crowing.
The trick is to stay fresh.

The Trick Is To Stay Fresh 11.30.1994
Vaguely About Music; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative;
Arlene Corwin

Sometimes I get the silliest memories.

The Twenty-One Inch Waistline

When I was young -
As yet unsung,
I yearned, no, burned
To be like she
Who had a waistline twenty-three:
I was twenty-four.
Hungered voluntarily.
Now they’d call it self-starvation,
Anorexia;
I soon set sights on twenty-one.
There was envy,
There was vanity.
Oh, if I could only be
Like her.
But I remained a twenty-four.
It wasn’t in my nature
To be less or more.
These days I’m fine
With my twenty-four/five inch waistline.

Twenty-One Inch Waistline 11.22.2017
Circling Round Vanities I; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

The Way of Things

Things start out simple, plain,
Get more complex.
All things start out minus blame,
Get more corrupt:
[It is] the way of things.

Non-beings, beings,
Gases, minerals, to stones
To seas become-an-earth
With complex life forms:

Trilobite,
Shells carbonate and calcium;
The oldest animal
That swam, then crawled,
That walked, then talked → become-the-us!

Take note and make a list:
Life, rocks so meshed, entwisted
They transformed the whole: this planet.
**** to hut to trade and product;
Industry and change of climate
(As we’re doing now, this minute)

Down to up and down again!
A long way either way. But then,
It is the way of things.

The Way Of Things 8.29.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

This funny little phrase occurred to me today, and so I wrote...

Can't help it.  I see what I see!

The Whole Trinity

We are a brain that has a body,
And a soul that has a brain:
A trinity, foreordained; pre-destined
With design and specificity, tendency
Both dark and light.
What a mixtur-ed mystery!

The most of fixtures:
Cells like batteries,
Organs, hormones, anti-bodies,
Arteries and veins through which red liquid runs
To carry precious oxygen to all the tissues in the body.

What a list to get the gist of!
So encyclopaedic, google doesn’t stand a chance.

Even synapses connecting all the billion bits of detail:
Nerve cells with a tiny gap where particles can mingle.

We are a brain that has a body,
And a soul that has and is the whole,
Examining which you’’ll
Comprehend.

The Whole Trinity 10.18.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Wonder Of The Human Brain: A Learning Tool

Beneath the hair
I think it there.
In the genius and *****
A hundred billion neurons
(more likely eighty-six that charges up our many tricks)
Brainstem/spinal cord connected;
Cerebellum which located
In the rear
For balance, schooling that is motor.
Cerebrum fills most of the skull;
Cortex called cerebral -
Sliced in half, a left and right,
Small other parts for thought:
Decisions, mem’ry , learning(s) sought,
Communication and perception:
Stimulation out and in.
(You’d think the parts were wearing thin).
Brain soft,
A craft
In white and gray.
Monsieur Poirot was fond of braying
About his  ‘gray cells’ intellect.
(One sees a giant self-respect)
Two percent of body’s mass
With twenty-five the body asks
To keep it thinking, (***’ as well)
Energized in best of health.
It gathers up what we call knowledge;
It’s a collage in a  college.
Sleep or in activity, we’re using all that energy.
In other words, the brain’s awake all for our sake:
Yours mine, a mine of wonder.
The real wonder is that it
Creates new cells to keep it fit:
A hippocampus we can’t see
For learning and for memory:
Seven hundred cells that grow
Each day that we don’t know about.
We do not feel them, seal them, heal them.
They’re just there – like air.
And so the brain rains down upon us
Means and answers, thoughts unanswered,
Mysteries inside
And we’re along for this glad ride.
For whose sake and for why?
Some sort of wonder in the sky?
Could be.

The Wonder Of The Human Brain 6.14.2018 Circling Round Science II; Nature Of &In Reality; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Word Is So Inspiring #2

The word is so inspiring ‘cause
The world is so…inspiring, yes!
So connected word and world, that
Whether reading, hearing, speaking,
One cannot hold out against,
So hard resisted -
World/word every inch insistent.

Adjectives are what it needs:
All kinds of namings and descriptions.
Verbs to give the state an action,
One’s reaction heightened, strengthened.

What would mortal being be,
Idea too - without a word
To give a world to;
Love or hate, brake, dominate…
The catalyst to cause a chain
Without sustaining change itself; yet mate
We cannot do without.

World and word.  Add or drop the letter L
And you make a hell of heaven, heaven hell:
Reach the soul of being’s kernel.

Don’t we all adore the word,
Forming terms to upgrade, downgrade, add to, shade;
inescapable, a tool
To make us stronger, nicer, if you will
For we are partly in control.

In other words, don’t hesitate
To spread the word, but waste no words
And keep your word;
Express yourself in ways untiring,
Heart and head both unified
In spoken or the written word inspired
And inspiring.

The Word Is So Inspiring #2 1.19.2020  Definitely Didactic #2;  Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Word Is So Inspiring #2

The word is so inspiring ‘cause
The world is so…inspiring, yes!
So connected word and world, that
Whether reading, hearing, speaking,
One cannot hold out against,
So hard resisted -
World/word every inch insistent.

Adjectives are what it needs:
All kinds of namings and descriptions.
Verbs to give the state an action,
One’s reaction heightened, strengthened.

What would mortal being be,
Idea too - without a word
To give a world to;
Love or hate, brake, dominate…
The catalyst to cause a chain
Without sustaining change itself; yet mate
We cannot do without.

World and word.  Add or drop the letter L
And you make a hell of heaven, heaven hell:
Reach the soul of being’s kernel.

Don’t we all adore the word,
Forming terms to upgrade, downgrade, add to, shade;
inescapable, a tool
To make us stronger, nicer, if you will
For we are partly in control.

In other words, don’t hesitate
To spread the word, but waste no words
And keep your word;
Express yourself in ways untiring,
Heart and head both unified
In spoken or the written word inspired
And inspiring.

The Word Is So Inspiring #2 1.19.2020  Definitely Didactic #2;  Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Yup!

     The World Is Full Of Words✍️

The World’s Best Lovers

Musing on a thing I know,
A thing I know a thing about,
The trick is not to mention names.
Think: name unknown - the names anon.
The traits are what illuminate;
When it becomes an education:
Theory to academic and didactic;
Not the least bit pornographic
(even graphic, for that matter.)

Mr X climbs into bed with Ms XY.
No sly ardor but good will,
They lie quite still.
A good beginning and an intro.
No big ego runs the show.
Start is slow, no expectations.
With no goal, the ***’ awakens.
One is passive, one is not.

Cool and hot, yin and yang,
One receiver, one with spring.
This can vary in the doing,
Cupid’s arrows, sightless, blind,
Innocence and eros blend.
The tactile governs.
Thigh to thigh, hand on hand,
Eye to eye, and, and, and…and

A motion, whispered groan;
Skin on skin, the moans begin.
Step by step and far from finished,
Visual, olfactory, the beating heart,
The swelling heat, the two best lovers taking part,
A start, an end, two friends united in
Spontaneous combustion
(which they say cannot be found,
but silent causes can resound.)
In any case, all ceased and feasted,
Lovers rise. A second breakfast.
Lovers who have had the most -
Juice and oatmeal, buttered toast…

The World’s Best Lovers 11.21.2020 Circling Round Eros; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

They’re All Agreed

They’re all agreed –
It’s very, very quiet there.
Up or out or maybe in
A space so hidden
That it is a twin
To so-called outer space
Where it is very, very quiet
In the place where
It is all created:
All the synchronistic sequences
That take the meaning
Out of chaos.
I read that they ‘re all agreed,
And I’m afraid
A little,
Which just shows that I’m not ready.
They’re All Agreed 6.13.2010 Revelations Big & Small; To The Child Mystic; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

Things Come & Go

Things come and go:
Lightening bright and sudden
Over in a nano-second.
Dew, its job completed,
Lost in air, evaporated.

Forms diverse;
A shared non-substance: emptiness.
A single thing the ring of truth is that we are illusory.
Still paradoxically,
But for a shape, look, name
We are the permanently same inside;                                    
The rest a mutable ephemeral,
And seldom in the know
That things come and they go
As quickly as they do.
Things Come & Go 6.4.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

Things Come & Go

Things come and go:
Lightening bright and sudden
Over in a nano-second.
Dew, its job completed,
Lost in air, evaporated.

Forms diverse;
A shared non-substance: emptiness.
A single thing the ring of truth
Is that we are illusory.
Still paradoxically,
But for a shape, look, name
We are,  we have the permanently
                                            same inside,
The rest a mutable: ephemeral
And seldom in the know
Things come and go
As quickly as they do.

Things Come & Go 2.4.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

I cannot say what was my motive in writing this, believing all the time that I  was through with talk of amputation.  And then I saw and heard a splendid performance on TV and as one does in moments of exuberance, even while sitting in one’s living room, I was moved to euphoric applause.  The result? No sound, just blunt and muffled ache.

   Things I Cannot Do* (see bottom note)

I can no longer play a chord.
Cannot applaud,
Stand on my head,
(Joints stiffening, weak and one-sided).
Unattainable: the open can or zipped up pants
The coffee cup that’s minus handles.

Cannot roll up a left sleeve,
The right hand being less effective…
Buttoned blouses flatten me
Daunting, wearying and taunting me
While I, one-handed, work to fill
A much-too-narrow buttonhole.

Every day the list goes, growing
Markedly, perceptibly, unreasonably.
Turning up when breaching laws
An ordinary man ignores:

Reaching, stretching… temperatures:
The hot, the cold,
The simple, slippery things to hold:
All those courses now on hold
Until some bright, prostheticist
Comes up with some adroit device;
New, useful for this jazz pianist.

With not a soul to sue,
The things I can and cannot do
Continue to run neck and neck,
Tied for first place, stroking,
Karma, nature, God’s good grace,
The ever racing Time
Take trophies back to each their homes.

* August 3, 2020 will be one year since I collapsed with sepsis and had 7 fingers amputated.

Things I Cannot Do 7.30.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Things One Loves About Facebook

Addictive, non-restrictive;
One can use the pronoun I
In prose or poetry,
Signify love lost, tossed, forced;
Love aflame;
Politics, not use a name,
Just saying  ‘you-know-who’…
A site whose frame is liberal
Without exhorting fibs tall, small.
And most of all,
One gains new friends
From planet’s corners. nation’s ends.  
An always open screen somewhere
Where receptivity awaits to make one cleverer,
Help build the character.
To  FB’s singular transforming site,
A special accolade, salute:
A red pre-Valentines Day heart and tribute!

Things One Loves About Facebook 1.5..2021 The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Feeling frisky!  I love this!

Based on an email.

     Things To Do In Times Like These

Enforced by climes,
Potentially creative times
For those indoors; creative hours
Using things of daily use
To make you happier than usual:
Training, both to get and keep
Your strength and flexibility;
Practicing a hobby’s pleasure;
Art of leisure;
Cooking from ideas not tried, new acquired -
Meant to eat and cure at once;
Lance the boil spoiling all the current toil;
‘Things’ each physical and mental,
Incidental and essential.
They but ‘things’ - activities.
Not only there to ‘live’, but please.
No matter what, life’s there to please,
The ease not always easy.

To give to you some things to do
While undergoing a non-boring
Squeezing out of this disease
By seizing on a life of things  
To do small things in times like these.

Things To In Times Like These 1.28.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Thinking About …Jealousy

I don’t sense envy in me -
But sense jealousy
Given the right (or always wrong) occasion
Why?
The past disloyalties?
A guilt? The lies?
A deep and hidden narcissism?
Is it them that I surmise?

A sickly need to own –
To call someone my own
When I, in fact have known
That no one, nothing is my own?

Does it begin in fantasy?
One asks the question
Wherefrom, why from
Comes that special gallery
Of idle fancy?

If the simile is ‘green’ with envy,
What then color jealousy?
Red, brown, orange, pink or blue?
Perhaps there is no hue
In color’s range
To chronicle that landscape and its danger!

Thus adding one more deadly sin
To slot into the other seven:
Is it…could they be akin
To chilling, killing, love destroying jealousy?

Thinking About…Jealousy 9.18.2016
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Thinking Clearly

I’m simply trying
To think clearly,
Times and destiny against me.

Not alone, it is we all.
A world of digits and addictions,
New temptations:
‘Lead me not into temptation…’.

Tiny hippocampus shrinking even more than ever,
It’s an effort,
I admit.
A part of words, a part of worlds
Inside a frame that gilds the lily,
Curls around reality
Like smoke from chimney.

Headlines chronically bad,
Chronicles of planetary sadness –
World of digits,
World on fire,
World that cultivates desire,
It is all the harder to think clearly
And sincerely:
Ergo, I
Am trying as a consequence,
To change the sequence
And think plainly, deeply,
Patently, indubitably
Clearly.

Thinking Clearly 6.18.2017
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II: Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Thinking Clearly

Simply trying to think clearly -
Times and destiny against me;
Not alone, it is we all.
A world of digits and addiction,
New temptations,
It admittedly an effort,
Tiny hippocampus shrinking ever.

Worlds and words that curl around reality
Like smoke from chimney.
Chronicles of global sadness,
Headlined news chronically bad.
A world of digits and statistics of a world on fire,
World that cultivates desire.
Ergo,
Ego mine is trying, as a consequence,
To change the sequence.
No veneer or scornful sneer.
Pensive, clear, fully sincere -
Harder probably, than ever.

Thinking Clearly 6.18.2017/revised 2.25.2020; again 6.2.2020
Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

This Body

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

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

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

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

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


A good look at reality.