This Strange Thing Happening

What is this strange thing happening?
An opening, acceptance broader than before,
Love as  chaperone.
Sights, ideas, sounds,
A seeing to the core of things –
Gradual, ongoing; every morning fresh.

Things foreign, new and unfamiliar,
Things outside my mental door:
The whole as if I’d had a drug of one or
                                                       other kind,
So new one thinks about one’s state of mind.

Mad?
A chemistry?
Not bonkers, loopy, cuckoo, batty.
No!
Perception changed:
A little bolder, unafraid –
New thoughts sprung from the hubbub of the old;
New sympathy - rich empathy,
And there’s the rub -
Unused to, as it were, to stand up for…so openly,
Articulately, stating what one thinks is true.
One wonders if the people round have noticed too.

One thinks of Huxley*
Will it stay?
Settle down or go away?
Does it have a meaning?
A broadening, one hopes – but frightening -
A bit.
One’s entering an untouched land.
One hopes one lands just right.

The Strange Thing Happening 7.2.2016
To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Pure Nakedness; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

*Aldous Huxley (see The Doors Of Perception)

Thoughts On A Sunday Morning After Coffee

Three Pages A Day

Like Leonardo I am mad for everything.
Like Leonardo, I like clothes.
Word, not art, the heart of me, my character.
I am a little Leonardo.

Not born in Vinci but in Brooklyn.
Interested in anything I see, touch, smell and taste.
Knowledge, love, and nature;
Cause that leads to happening
That leads to cause again…
And so on.

Curious from the mundane to the profound,
From the concrete to the abstract,
And of course from abstract back to concrete.
That, the sweetness of my thought.
Forms, patterns –all fantastic!
Looking always for the underlying.
Not content with the apparent, the ostensible.
Expanding then contracting;
All a Maya – an illusion.

Institutions do not know this.
Rightists, leftists,
Churches, unions.
Countless eons of reshaping -
To accept this is the art.

So I write, rewrite and edit.
See a science in the holy,
Holy in the scientific.
Aim for fame but not for ego,
But for what is left for Them, the future.

I, no genius; I, but Pooh of little brain
Dare compare myself to Leonardo.
Only,
Quintessentially
More plain.

Three Pages A Day 6.27.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Through Poetry I Try

Through poetry I try.
I try through poe-try
To throw some light,
Unscrambling actuality
Through beauty, teaching/
Beauty, reaching for reality -
Though trying not to sound banal,
Repeating thought through channeling
Words, phrases canned.
Traditions show themselves, of course.
I’ve no excuse,
No one to blame if you see through me, for
My passion is to waken focus, senses, balance,
Tolerance and breadth, aware
That all’s projection and interpretation;
Codes there to be broken through
To kernel truth
Long couched in years from youth
And long before.
Through poetry I try.
I try through poetry.

Through Poetry I Try 11.6.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Tip of the Day: Become A Meditator
        ( in plain street talk)

A meditator
Can become a better,
Even good creator.
You should try it if you haven’t.
Just a tip,
Not only for the hip;
The brain feels sharper,
Extra bright.
Longterm,
Not just a single night.
Life seems to go your way,
Black turning white,
The hard stuff easy,
At least easier;
Easier to find the self,
Dine alone,
Put those problems on a shelf,
Give self-help.
Like good nutrition or a diet,
It takes time.
So try it!

Give it three good months or so -
Time to feel and time to know.
It’s nothing fancy,
Not a fancy,
Wait and see:
Continuously
Or in fits and jerks
It works,
Accumulating over years.
Start now, this minute’s very second.
You can reckon
                        on success.

Tip Of The Day: Become A Meditator 4.20.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover corwin

.

Tipsy

I was tipsy last night,
Quite enjoyed it.
Drinking just a thimbleful one time a year,
And there was I, a stumblebum, but clear
In head,
Dutifully fulfilling all that needed
To be done.  
A charming, wonderful sensation – fun.
And yet, I thought about my liver.
Will I ever, no, I’ll never
Be a drinker,
I’m too much a thinker
And a Jew.
And if you didn’t know
We Jews are not great drinkers,
Just great thinkers,
Contrite sinners on Yom Kippur
Nobel winners,
Alcohol not in our tribe.
And so, it is not likely I’ll imbibe
Too many jiggers wine or *****;
Too many calories
And I don’t want to lose
My liver’s life too soon –
Or looks, or senses or the boon
Of brain and knowing
Who I am
And who I’m born
To be.

Tipsy 7.1.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

I re-discovered this a day or two ago and, I must unashamedly admit was altogether and immodestly charmed by it.  So here it is - again.      

            Tipsy

Tired of..

Housewives tire repeatedly
Of empty answers,
Inattention, the cliché
She must live with day to day.

Oft, one has a sneaky feeling
That a partnership stops growing
When the moments turn to echoing.
Repetitious, detrimental,
Present and habitual,
Diluting conversation’s scope:
Buddy stripped to muddy-ship.

What to do to stave off ruin?
Patience? Duty?  Contribution?
Temperament or character
Of either and/or partner
With the union a rehearsal
Without thought of a reversal?

Can one remedy a situation
Without simulating stimulation?
How,
       when there is love, a vow?

Self-understanding standing under self?

Perhaps we’re counsellors to each other.
Therapists with kindness very like a brother.
Therapists who do not smother,
But who warmly listen,
A considerate, receptive cushion.
“Tired of’s…” a mean exclusion.
Certainly the wrong conclusion.

Tired Of 9.14.2020 Circling Round Experience; Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

You've all heard of "A Space Odyssey".   This could be called "A Space Hypothesis".

To All The Criminals In The World

What will you do with all the money that you steal?
Such frivolous ambition, such shallow drive!
To feel alive?  A fancy meal?
Believe me there are better things to make life real.
Designer clothes, a fancy house?
Lots of *** to prove that you are more than mouse?
What’s wrong with you?
You’re gonna die.  We all just do.

What in heaven’s name (or hell)?
Greed just makes you small and smell -
The whole ambition yellow.

Gluttony, and hunger, all those drives for more –
Their more is less.  They’re glamor-less!
Not to speak of pain you cause:
The drain of pain,
The chain of pain you deign to cause!
What can I say?
You betray what human beings’s meant to be:
Nice, kind, with generosity
Abounding in all thought and deed,
All energy, all conduct and activity.

To all the thieves and villains,
All the gangsters, burglars, miscreants,
You’re not the fancy pants you think you are - or aim to be.
So I repeat, believe you me,
It’s all so hare-brained.  Wait and see!
You will wake up one day agreeing.

To All The Criminals In The World 5.16.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Nature Of & In Reality; Our Time, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin






You're gonna die.  We all just do.

It’s 4:40am wakened, wide awake .  Therein, lie cycles  all thei own - neither nocturnal nor diurnal but somewhere in the middle.  And working on a level of acuteness, phrases, insights, images, I catch hold of one or the other and begin to write…


    To Be Read & Spread

One wants one’s output
To be read & spread: remembered,
Often wondering why the need.
Reflection shows renown to be
Illusory.
It’s quality one wants to share,
The DNA determining
The factor in this factory.

It isn’t air, nor intellected-mind of self,
The body or the pelf.
You’ve learned to know
It’s neither ego
Nor seeds sprouted by conditions,
But a passion to pass on to generations
What was high inside the low, the mediocre.

At long last you’ve found an answer.
One more sensibility
That makes most sense In some abstract and senseless way.
Unexplainable, you’ve tried,
Not knowing why,
This gift of instinct pushing daily.

We copulate to procreate.
The writer's urge is surge enough:
A procreating in creating.
Whew, one’s coughed it up at last.
Laughed because
One’s found an answer in-the-rough.
Hah!

To Be Read & Spread 4.28.2020 the Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

pelf; money

Today I Was Accused…
    Today I Was Accused…

Today I Was Accused…

Today I was accused
Of using too much rhyme;

Of bruising Keats and Shelley…

Is it that my rhymes are smelly - 

Pressed by some unconscious vanity?

Straightforwardly the way I think,
My rhyme in sync-
With evolution and enlargement of unformed idea,
My rhyme an incubus
In *******
With lover genius?
Nover’s genie?

Taking no offense
I had no other license,
Than to search my mind,
Which is like using wind
To cook a meal.

All that I want’s the real deal.
With rhyme my not-so-secret weapon,
One I lean on,
So be it!
There’’ll be no rhyme cremation
Of this norm and form creation.

Today I Was Accused…11.15.2019/revised 2.24.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Nover Corwin

Function of rhyming words:  I don’t remember where I read this, but I surely read it somewhere and took the thought to heart.

“Rhyme partly seems to be enjoyed simply as a repeating pattern that is pleasant to hear. It also serves as a powerful mnemonic device, facilitating memorization. The regular use of tail rhyme helps to mark off the ends of lines, thus clarifying the metrical structure for the listener. As with other poetic techniques, poets use it to suit their own purposes; for example William Shakespeare often used a rhyming couplet to mark off the end of a scene in a play.”

To grandmas everywhere:

             Today’s Grandma

Today’s Lovely Word: Justice

Such a weighty concept: justice.
Simple Latin meaning ‘right’,
And nice to rhyme with ‘trust’,
No single ‘must’ in sight.

Doing what is right
Is to include what’s fair.
But there’s the snag, and there’s the hinder;
Born with ego as we are,
Temperaments and character,
Leanings that go far too far,
It isn’t fair!  
But nor are we.
There it is, the needed discipline
Oft’ hard to learn, to start, to do,
Continuing the whole life through.

Of seven deadly lust-filled sins, wrath is in.
What is not ‘in’ is prejudice and bias.
(Bible didn’t have those words.)
Of course, the “love your neighbour as yourself”
Is not far off the gist and ******
Of training to become all-just.

Today’s Lovely Word:Justice 4.23.2021 Our Times, OurCulture II; Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Yesterday: your Birth Day!
Not just  'birthday', automatic as a ****,
But Birth Day: Such two words!
Important!  No, essential!
Referential, consequential!
Did not forget.
I hurt my foot, so didn't write,
It hurt all hours, day and night!
But here I am, in bed, inspired,
Caffeinated and un-tired,
Thinking lovingly about
Dear gifted Frederick inside out,
And wishing, hoping for the best:
Rest, blessed and lifelong:
*****, bass & muscles strong,
Knowing that you are among
The  smartest and most seeking of the throng.
With all my loving-est of song,🙏✍️🎹🎼🎤
Arlene (and Kent, of course)

To Hell With Meat

To hell with meat!
To men who load the animal
Alive and kicking,
‘Finger licking’.
Down with transport mean and evil,
Cruel, contemptible and vile!
Yes to bean and green and boycott.
Can’t you feel
A  burst and shrinking of the heart,
Smarting from
The crushed, the smothered, starved of drink?
What ARE we thinking?
Down with law’s futility,
To values without empathy!
We, who buy expensive food for bird and cat,
Keep doggie fat -
Where ARE we at?
Can we not do without?
Find other foods to eat and buy,
The price of giving up so high
We cannot sacrifice,
Waive appetite, and by and by
Find other possibilities?
The drumbeat of our lust for meat
Exchanged for keeping all things living
Live with mercy.

To Hell With Meat 8.2.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

To Only Deal With What You’ve Got

To only deal with what you’ve got,
Not what you had,
And seldom think one step ahead,
That is the art.

To start each day
With not a hope that it will stay,
But use each sense of consciousness
With might and care:
Sight, smell, touch, taste, aware
As second authorises.

Seconds shrink to nano-points,
Muscles, joints awaken
For the sake of mind and spirit.
To give in to mind lets spirit grow,
For mind knows that you’re doing right;
Doing what you’re meant to,
Sure of what you’re meant to
Nano-hour by nano-hour;
Pure and purer, power by power.

To only deal with what you’ve got,
With what’s been handed
Where you’ve landed
Is the license of consent
To the whole science
Of existence.

To Only Deal With What You’ve Got 6.30.2020 Circling Round Experience;  Circling Round Existence II; Arlene Nover Corwin

To Remember At all Times

You wake up vague, objectives dormant.
Focused on the now-ment,
In the habit of the moment,
Higher power to relate to,
Husband, friend or wife beside you,
You seek thought, goal, frame to fit in -
Any measure to begin
A day serene
With something like a slogan:
“Everything that happens, happens for my best”
Whether lesson or reward: a grace,
A gift with not a price tag.
Always in the air
In lives particular and singular,
You aim the morning self that was,
And turn it into self that is,
Its comforts and rewards.

To Remember At All Times 7.25.2016
Circling Round Reality; The Processes: Creative, Thinking,  Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

I wrote this in 2002, revised and renewed it in 2004.  It is the kind of subject that has no ending for all that is still wrong and all that is yet to be done.  It is now 2019.  My former doctor has it framed and on the wall.  

To The Doctor Who Examines Me

To the Poets of Hello, Hello!

We write, we share.
We hope there’s someone there
To read
Perhaps need
Poetry,
Precisely as we
Say it,
Hoping that they see it
As we do.
(They seldom do, but
It’s the memo
Of the heart,
Our smattering of art
That matters.)

Hello, Hello,
My fellow poets.
Ego-less
I come to you,
Admiring, commenting,
Caring for the things you dare to share.

Over simplified, naïve maybe,
Never diva we,
The weavers of profundity.
Hello, Hello to poets and to poetry,
Its crystal-gifted company
And you who take in what you see
Here.

To The Poets Of Hello, Hello! 7.4.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Hello Poetry; a site encouraging one and all to submit & share their oeuvre.

In response to a TV insert on the feeling of remoteness and aloneness or, of someone who has lost a loved one.

To Those Who Feel Alone

To Those Who Say…

Those who say, “And then I said….”
Are short of something in the head;
Hidden pride in there instead.

Those who say, And then I told her…”
Dearest reader, here’s an answer:
“Then I said’s,”
A subtle, passive, ego-centered taking lead;
A mixture of denial, fugue,
(If ever there was such a thing).
It’s not a joke,
And I’m not kidding.

To Those Who Say…6.25.2017
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

To Write For Whom

You reach an age when friends, your generation
Dying off like flies.
And you, full of ideas
Alive and kicking,  
Finger licking fresh in mind
Trying to find
One out there,
To read your wares.
Your teeming thoughts,
Aware and deep with meaning
Warranting a reader,
Radar to its most intense.
Looking, writing, hoping for an audience,
Shakespeare felt the selfsame yearning -
Handel, Beethoven, each earning by conducting,
Not to mention poor Van Gogh
Who went the way of painters who sell nothing go.

To write, paint, sculpt, dance, sing, compose:
Any noise that oozes art.  
For whom?
That is the theme, the problem
And the question.

To Write For Whom12 27.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Transform A Bad Poem To A Good Poem
        (tinkering & fooling ‘round)

It may take days, months, years:
You tinker.
That’s the key.  
You definitely do not linger,
But go ‘way, come back, go on
To see with psychic opticons
(my own construct-ee-on) a vision
Of’ creative options,
Freedom new,
A fooling ‘round
That’s new for you -
And you are new and changed a little;
Flexible, unbrittle-ized,
(another word vocabul-ized)
A new-sized you
Wherein you see the tool in all,
And all’s a tool.
You’ve fooled around
Just as I’ve done
With word and sound,
And lo, a sound and solid poem transformed
From
Bad to good.

Transform A Bad Poem To A Good Poem 7.6.2016
Definitely Didactic; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative;
Arlene Corwin

Transparent But Limited

Ask me more questions –
I’ll answer them all.
When/if I recoil
It’s not that I’m consciously
Trying to lie;
Deception is not in my bones.  
Guilt and illusions
May live in those hormones
I don’t know I own,
Un-known till the right time is sown.
Transparent but limited;
Blind to some weaknesses,
Thank God, not all.
Week one, a new year,
So hear ye, this typical
New year’s resolve!
Resolved: new persistence,
Stick-to-it, carry-through
Dug into
Processes, habits and thought;
See-through as glass,
Less
Limited.
Not a bad
Camelot!

Transparent But Limited 1.10.2016
Pure Nakedness; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

TRUE CAFFEINATED CONFESSIONS: WHEN I'M HIGH
(one day some coffee company is going to give me a noble prize for all the eulogising poetry I've written to it)
You all know how one just loves one's morning cup of coffee!

True confessions: When I’m High

You all know how one just loves one's morning cup of coffee!  

When I’m high,
And morning cuppa’s done the trick,
Slow-ish thyroid smart and quickened,
Then I start;
Choices clear, mind too,
Arms, legs, body knowing
What to do
And even how to do it.
‘High’ sounds utterly,
So totally, so wholly, awfully
So negative.
(Forgive the ‘so’ dear reader, dear.
Its hyperbolic overkill so clearly
The result of coffee).

Back to diplomatic understatement:
When I’m high and un-befuddled,
Elevated in an un-bemuddled way,
In optimal condition where
I share in
Energies that pick and choose
So’s not to lose a time so prime.

And yet, the wonder is,
The mind, which picks and clicks,
Multi-tasking, seeding shortcuts,
Riotous new recipes,
Old elements, new mergers.
Even quiet-less, no-fuss ideas
From made-up phrases that proliferate.
Remembering,  selecting, nominating:
High’s amazing!
And it only takes a cup of coffee to a-raise it.
Thus I praise it!

In conclusion:
If there’s been collusion between you and me,
And on some level you agree
I’ve reached the goal of vers-itry,
And these one hundred ninety
Really odd, God given words were worth it,
Then it’s worth, been worth the birth pains and the plod.

True Confessions: When I’m High 3.12.2018 A Sense of The Ridiculous II; Coffee Book II; Arlene Corwin

To all my cynical, fear-filled, skeptical friends.  And all the others, whatever variety of category you find yourself in.
Love,
Arlene

This was written for a teeny tiny contest offered on Facebook.  It offered no reward, no money was asked for.  It was just a teeny tiny contest that had one rule: no more than four line each which could have no more than 10 words.  Theme: Truthfulness.  A cute challenge, we’ll see how it went.  It only took 11 minutes.
            Truthfulness

Truth Will Out

If you’ve got a thing to say
A real thing, the words will play
Through synapses old/new,
The new unused, creating unconditionally unsaid
Phrases you alone invent unaided.

If you’ve something pregnant there
Inside the cerebellum,
You’ll be inclined to share
And tell ‘em.
Truth will out
Not shouted, but with clout
Deliberately aimed or not.

Then we come to something there
Called instinct’s intuition
To transport you far and near - everywhere
You need to go
To every place you need to know.

You must, gosh **** it, trust it!

Because all truths
Are there in places ‘neath the scalp
Beneath your hair, sculpted by the roots of roots,
By nerves that serve you night and day
Which tell you things that may,
Have what we call, the truth.
(Not every thought’s idea is true
Though it’s all you.)
A tricky thing this ‘God hath wrought’
Just always call to mind this thought:
Truth will always, in the end, want out.

Truth Will Out 2.20.2018 Circling Round Reality, Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Corwin

Trying Out Ideas In Form
          
Accepting some, rejecting others
You think thoughts (of course, what else?)
With mind that thinks in rhyme,
That sings internally in pulse or meter,
With the trying out idea
In one shape, length or other form,
A form poetic, form its norm.

It cannot help it,  choosing not to,
Its intrinsic motto “Write!” into
The dead of night, the morning’s bait,
Some inward freight shipped in by nature,
Makes it make ideas clear – and that alone on matt blank paper.
Talking dissipates in air
While written piece is always there,
If only to be found in some museum cellar
Two damp hundred dry years later,
Made mature
By simile and metaphor-become-reality,
Affecting mankind’s then and future
Through the slow, low burn of poetry.

Trying Out Ideas In Form 8.15.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Trying Out Ideas In Form
          
Accepting some, rejecting others
You think thoughts (of course, what else?)
With mind that thinks in rhyme,
That sings internally in pulse or meter,
With the trying out idea
In one shape, length or other form,
A form poetic, form its norm.

It cannot help it,  choosing not to,
Its intrinsic motto “Write!” into
The dead of night, the morning’s bait,
Some inward freight shipped in by nature,
Makes it make ideas clear – and that alone on matt blank paper.
Talking dissipates in air
While written piece is always there,
If only to be found in some museum cellar
Two damp hundred dry years later,
Made mature
By simile and metaphor-become-reality,
Affecting mankind’s then and future
Through the slow, low burn of poetry.

Trying Out Ideas In Form 8.15.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Can't stop thinking, can't stop writing. A good sign, I would think. Everything inspires. (It's called creativity)✍️

This morning’s musing. Sent to special friends, as usual.

           Trying To Manipulate Vanity.

Once again I’m sending this out to a) friends I’m seldom in touch with, b)  people I only meet on my email site who I suspect are interested or touched by this topic, c) friends who don’t have Facebook or never look at my site Arlene Corwin Poetry both .com and net, d) people I’m fond of who have Facebook but who anyway, I like to keep in personal touch with.  In other words,  all kinds of relationships I want to stay in reach out to.  
      As for the poem, I love it.  (You now how it is with a new baby).  That’s why I’m sending it at all.  Besides which, vanity, ****** makeup or not, affects us all, and we shouldn’t be fooled by it.  It’s not a good thing.

    TRYING TO MANIPULATE VANITY

Trying To Stay Woman

I wouldn’t call it vanity,
More nature of proclivity,
Its natural routine:
We’ll call it femininity.
Showing up one day: testosterone, whisker stiff,
Non-specific, un-terrific.  
Something foreign taking over,
Over which you’ve no control;
Identity’s uncertainty,
The struggle to stay womanly
Without looking transves-*****:
Trying to stay woman.

(original version found 7.22.2016)
I wouldn’t call it vanity
(though Augustine might).
More proclivity’s routine: a femininity.
Who can ignore the whiskers stiff,
Testosterone’s attack,
The fact that something foreign’s taken over,
Over which you’re no control – a Janus head,
Identity an ambiguity.
The struggle to stay woman
Without looking like a transvestite.

Trying To Stay Woman 2.16.2014/10.25.2014/revised7.22.2016
Circling Round Woman II; Circling Round Vanities II;
Arlene Corwin

Whenever I can't think of anything to write, I turn to nature.  I've done it dozens of times: not an idea and suddenly, then gradually a charming poem comes forth.  An idea, then the work; title, words, rhymes, meter, meaning - all meshes and co-relates.  The word "orange" is a challenge, believe me.

            Turning Orange

In regions where it’s turning autumn,
Leaves red, yellow.
In our garden, they’re not yellow,
Oddly, loudly, orange yelling.

Old New Yorker I,
Used to multicoloured Falls,
I have fallen for this gaudy and remarkably
High-color, almost supernatural year phase.

In appearance, almost artificial.
What one sees is inspirational,
Which brings to mind,
Springs to mind
(It cannot ‘spring’ because it’s autumn coming soon)  
An August moon.

In the meantime, if  September
Gives  a smooth transition -
Sunny days into October,  summer
Melting into autumn:
Foxes foraging, squirrels storage-ing;
Porridge on the stove encouraging;
Summing up for coming winter:
Rhododendron green turned orange.

Turning Orange 9.11.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

To all my friends, American and otherwise:

      Two Days Of Biding One’s Time

One Day Before A New Man Comes Through The Door

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

      The Installation

Will and can he knit a nation?
Help to heal a land’s relations?
Power shift has taken place,
Donald Trump has lost the race,
Truly, fairly.
Biden/ Harris -
Such a pair as
Never opened White House door
And sat in duo chairs before
This small voter welcomes them;
Trusting that this ethical and moral team
Has destiny  on both their sides
To override the unsound side
Always found in humankind;
The un-kind sides that hide from fact;
Act in favour of an ego free
Of prejudice and ‘me, me, me’.
Installation/consecration: we will see.
The Installation 1.20.2021Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Two Looks At The First Reality
       (or What or Who creates it all)

Depending on one’s leanings,
And assuming one is interested,
I, myself am all-enthralled
By themes self-vested in.

One view is that Reality, the Primary
Is really One, without a sun - just one Entirety.
The second is the same Supreme
With arms, legs, body, plus an aim;
One which we address by name.
Who often spotlights sin and blame
But calls on us to love our neighbour -
Finely tuned through daily labor.

I find I prefer the former:
One which says that causes good in motive, act
Result in good-ness as a fact;
And causes whose intents are wrong
Though mind is rational and sharp
Will end in ends that taint and warp.

Each theory is complementary.
Depending on how you are born
(with preferences pre-natally ‘learned’)
You can arrive one early morn
At one with It-The-Energy,
Free from all impurity.

These little stanzas simplify
A lifelong try
At transformation.
Drawing on our *******-up best
At wrestling with the gifts and mess
We’re born to guest.

Two Looks At The First Reality 6.7.2020 Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Two Things Operating

Universe’s Interplay

How I love, wondering about
And pondering over
All the interplay and how
                           it happens —
That it happens overall!
“Over all”… short words
Encompassing the worlds all over.

Startling, terrifying;
All about life forms & dying  
But awakening enquiry as well.
Awe is that.
Hence, the suffix -some and -ful.

When something takes your breath away -
So stunning and spectacular
You cannot get a sound out —
When something is phenomenal,
Its primal rhyme the word ‘sublime’,
Its sight suggestive of cohesiveness
The prefix aw-
Becomes and Aww!

One plays with “interplay”;
The way in which things have effect
On each and other.
Maybe Hubble will, one day
See magic cables able to connect it all;
Strings and cords that lead
Where all is joined in one big ball
Of energy, so powerful but small
It is invisible.

Universe’s Interplay 2.27.2021 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Unmotivated Tears

I used to criticize
The eyes
Of those I knew
Who, at
Drops of a hat
Shed tears of ardor: God-knows-what.

Ascribing it
To vitamins and lack thereof,
Past, present and/or too much ‘love’.
Too something/something out of balance;
Nothing but a prevalence
Of yin or yang
Ganging up
On both those ducts.

Uncaring and unfeelingly –  I used to be.
Now, at eighty-three it’s me.
I may need hormone therapy.
Or is it age sagacity  -
Unmotivated tears
Based on a grasp of life’s chimere
That takes in all -
An all which makes one engineered
By tears
One must defer to.

Unmotivated Tears 4.24.2018 I Is Always You Is We; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Aging; Arlene Corwin

Thank you Kent for spouting out the suggestive phrase ‘up above the clouds’.      
       Up Above The Clouds

You never think
That up above the clouds
Sun blazes.
Though we know it’s dazzles,
We so easily forget
When day is dark and wet.

(Today is one such day,
As I sit typing ‘way
Shrouded by the dismal cloud outdoors.

Ah well, one manages to execute
The tasks that one might skip
If day was dipped in dripping sunbeams.

As the pearl of wisdom goes,
“Be thankful for small blessings”,
For who knows
How many unknown pains
Might be there without rains
As we engage is climate change.

And whomsoever dares complain
(As I have done this soggy day)
Does not deserve a foggy day
Like this specific sun-less Friday
When the future prophesizes ocean’s rise
And parched, infertile, ‘fry’ days.

Up Above The Clouds 2.7.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Our Times, Our Culture II; rewritten 5.2.2020/revised5.24.2020 Arlene Nover Corwin

Seeing all the photos that we put on Facebook. I found myself wondering why we do it.  Yes, why we do it!  I suppose the primary motive is good old vanity with all its implications.  But more.

     Updated To The Updates

The updates on the you-man race
Are not on Facebook
But on everyday’s experience.
I suspect the stuff we put on Facebook
Is the fluff of vanity,
The stuffing of an ego’s voice,
An ego’s voice which shouts
“Remember me!  I’m here for all to see,
So look!. It’s me on Facebook!

One way or the other,
Here to brook the only-ness of loneliness;
Give solace too,
To other you’s whose anonymity,
Like yours, is reaching out,

Updating, (which I do as well)
Is microscopic in the walls
Of our existence, when
Resistance low,
It needs to show the sides it needs to show,
Albeit photo and/or poetry.

That’s it!  So, know
That it’s attention
To ease solitude and tension,
Reveal the art of us, in us, for us.
The part of us that sits at home;
Updating not just fact but artifact,
A partial of the parcel
That is you.

Updated To The Updates 8.8.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

This will be a part of my soon to come book Swedish Book.  It's called "Vad Som Helst" or "Anything".

I saw Lars Lerin, Sweden's great watercolorist, interviewed this morning. (If you don't know who he is look him up. You'll adore his painting genius and modest charm. A great, great artist with principle, technique and endless ideas.
It inspired me to write this:
✍️

Vanities Again, Again

I watched a well known TV show.
The guest was nobody I know.
A young girl whose main aim was fame:
Through daily photoed Instagram.
Spending thousands on the shifting sand
Of makeup, bags, clothes, shoes
For “Followers” from each or any land;
Misguided and delusory!
Pathetic and illusory!.
Poor unskilled child!
Convinced that getting ‘Like’ and ‘Followed’
Have some hallowed worth.
As if a button had inherent love.
Self-starved, she struggled with her girth
Yet drank on weekends for her mirth.
Felt gratified when people called her ‘hot’.
Had not a jot of self insight,
Of who she was, should be, should do
To make a contribution to…
She read no books;
Her prime concern brand names and looks.

For happiness of real success,
She must unlearn those false ideas,
Gain insight into fruitlessness
Self-admiration, haughtiness,
For vanity is profitless,
Its origin the Latin vanus/vanitas:
Pointless, useless
                            ‘emptiness’.  

Vanities Again, Again 9.24.2020 Circling Round Vanities II; Circling Round Experience; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I've re-written it.  When i read it over this evening I hated it.  The sequences needed adjusting, the whole thing made more sense of.  it was too abstruse, downright vague the way it stood.  Crap.  Here it is:  I hope it's better, clearer, stronger.

       Vanity Or What?  Or Not?

Will they miss me when I’m gone?

Would they miss me if I went?

Is the Facebook thing, this Instagram,

Snapchat, this and Snapchat that  -

Is only just to reassure, insure and all the -sures

An immortality that’s hardly possible

With such as these?

A question and a statement.



If you should land upon an isle,

No phone, no clothing, just a smile,

Who’d care that you’re not there or where?

The ego takes a jolt when true result is that

A lively world’s been going on

In the short while you’ve been isle borne.



When you take up, upon waking,

Cell phone, laptop out and working,

Think about your motive deep, some path new chosen.

Leap into the seasons, steeping self in new horizons.

Public profiles pass from sight, from mind, from heart

Once they depart.



Querying the motives that define,

I’m off to take out, open mine,

The whole controlling

‘Spite the knowing.

Vanity or not?


Vanity Or What?  Or Not? 3.18.2018 Circling Round Vanities II; Circling Round Egos; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Corwin

As I wrote to a reader this morning, "I'm an R&M person, a rhyme and meter person (on which I work hard)" Content, form - they go together. This morning's work: which may need working on sometime in the future, natch'

        Vanity Or What? Or Not?✍️