Very, Very & Fantastic

She struggles with each verb and noun,
Adjective, conjunction, article and even
Pronoun.
All to better brain:
Maintain
The art parts, smart parts,
A la carte parts.

There are leaders:
Chairmen of the boards who stay
Long adolescent in some way.
Ambitious, never swaying
From their standpoints, outlooks and perspective.  Oy!
A very, very Oy yoy yoy!

“I am best!  Don’t mess with me,
Don’t carp or bleat.
My words unquestionably
                                         right
And those who choose to disagree…
Are rendered useless usefully.
My deeds, and all I nominate
Are very, very, very great!
I live on very un-elastic,
Very, very and fantastic!

Very, Very & Fantastic 7.29.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Another April poem.  Am I obsessed, or is it April that is the catalyst?

A reminder of what April,  1997 was like in Sweden.  It's April 2019 and in my part of Sweden it's lovely.  
PS everybody!  This will go into my upcoming book "Swedish Book"  ☃️

       Waiting For Spring

I wash the brain with peace,
Synapse to sleepy synapse.
Themes may change from day to day,
The mind and will working that way.  Today,
It’s peace – a motif that I never ‘got’.
I’m one step nearer, sensing it.
Behavior freer, talk a bit…
I’m more polite, considerate.
Something’s taking ‘way the ****
That usually rolls around as chaos;
Something near to paradise’s
Innermost best aspect peace, is
Uppermost. I use this basis
For my practice,
Imaging, imagining, examining,
Pretending, willing…
All that matters is the stilling
Followed by activity that does some good.
(What I wish is that it would).
Meanwhile, I am smiling more and more.
This ‘peace wash’ must be working.

Washing Over /My Newest Trick) 2.23.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

I wash the brain with peace,
Synapse to sleepy synapse.
Themes may change from day to day,
The mind and will working that way.  Today,
It’s peace – a motif that I never ‘got’.
I’m one step nearer, sensing it.
Behavior freer, talk a bit…
I’m more polite, considerate.
Something’s taking ‘way the ****
That usually rolls around as chaos;
Something near to paradise’s
Innermost best aspect peace, is
Uppermost. I use this basis
For my practice,
Imaging, imagining, examining,
Pretending, willing…
All that matters is the stilling
Followed by activity that does some good.
(What I wish is that it would).
Meanwhile, I am smiling more and more.
This ‘peace wash’ must be working.

Washing Over /My Newest Trick) 2.23.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

Watching The Advertising World

Watching The Signs Of Aging

Watching the signs of aging;
Ultimately,
Finally
An end.
Notice, I don’t say THE end.

Not a film, a flimsy bit of flimflam,
A clouded artificiality, life imitated, intimated.
As stated:
A downgrading: witless and insensate,
Thinning at the temples,
Eyebrow hairs a crazy zigzag;
Tummy more rotund and round;
Fingers, which, however trained
No longer want to grasp or grip.
Compression of the whole foundation
Underscore the downward trip.

Aging signals watched with care –
Obviously there!  Involuntary!
Glasses that you never needed;
Tender spots you never heeded.
Fragile scenes that make you weep.
Couplets which you once thought cheap
Resorted to, which you now keep.

Compensations: pensions, patience;
Many words that end in –pence
Because, and just because
All signs become a Santa Claus:
Signs of good –
That is, when you are in the mood.
Stiff fingers finding newer ways to play piano, open jars,
The mental auto-search a galaxy of syndrome-stars
Bursting unused.

No longer worrying ‘bout standards,
You’ve your own.  
No need to join
The middling crowd,
The mediocre: in reality, the herd.
Small ambitions,
Minimized conditions
All good and fine, but still
Signs of aging ultimately will
Win out.

Watching The Signs Of Aging 12.5.2016
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; Bath Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Watching The Signs With Sighs

No journalist, I –
No Instagramer, Twitterer,
No any out-in-worlder;
Only poet, intellect,
A heart
That tries not to be sentimental,
Hooked upon emotion –
So, and too misleading, to mis-reading,
Impulse and projection
Of our egotistic needs.
Yet,
One cannot
Resist it all:
The evil of it all,
Coming, going, fooling one
Into believing
That a calm will always be.

Last night a ventured coup in Turkey,
Night before, Bastille Day in Nice:
Terror, violence, crushed, the try
At overthrow!
I just don’t know –
I’m speechless, but confess
I must write something, being helpless too.  
To cry and yelp
Is not to help.  

I’m here, on paper writ.
That’s it.

Watching The Signs With Sighs 7.16.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Birth, Death & In Between II; War Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Watch The Mind

Watch the mind, it’s really quirky.
Let it go and watch it work,
For when you see what it creates
(I don’t see how ‘cause that’s a secret:
‘How’ and ‘why’ the hidden states),
You may discover what a neat trick
To stand back, let go and watch.
Letting go, a chance to ******
At fantasy creative:
Courage by encouragement.

Fantasy invents by fancy
Giving order to what’s left.
Creativity can steal from nature’s bank
And it’s not theft,
The dancing arts all mind expanding -
Honey way to jar the door
Of quintessential being -
Just by watching what goes on
And doing what needs to be done.

Watch The Mind 7.8.1994
The Processes: Creative. Thinking, Meditative; To The Child Mystic;
Arlene Corwin

We Are Strange Mixtures

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

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

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

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

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

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

On my way to teaching my lovely yoga class this paradoxical poem:✍️
       We Die When We’re Supposed To

We die when we’re supposed to,
Karma chained in cause/effect.
One eve I lay there,
Sorry, sad and full of fear
When of a sudden, shocked, aware,
The snare of truth, as clear as day,
Told me that we pass away
From causes self-created
From our characters, our choices,
Gene pushed, situation fated…

You know, when you get these flashes,
(call them insights, revelations, mind disclosures)
You can sense veracity’s exposures crashing in
And you’ve no choice
But to believe
What mind and thought receive,
In this case this:
Death comes when it will,
And it is up
To us to give this hidden ‘reasoning’ a whirl
And take the pill
However bad the taste.

We Die When We’re Supposed To 9.18.2012/8.16.2018 Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Welcoming 2019

We’ll Call It Global Warníng

Global warming
Is alarming
'cept when hot
when it should not.
It's always thrilling
With a spring that comes in March.
Of course,
One may be wrong, but
What's a robins' song
Doing in garden mine
When everyone in Sweden
Knows it's win-
                           ter?

We’ll Call It Global Warning 2.26.2017
Circling Round Nature II; Out Times, Our Culture II; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin

We’ll Call It Meditation

We Who Keep Writing

I listen, read and look,
The world around a book.
This simple observation
Stimulation.
To one linguistically inclined,
As Swedes say,
“It lies ‘in the spine” *
Another way of saying,
In the gene or DNA.

This Facebook thing,
The many, many sites that ring,
Communicating, reaching out
To those of us who think and write
In words
Are worlds of benefit and benediction.
So-so intellect and talent
Notwithstanding.

We who carry on,
Persist, keep on
By virtue of some motivation
Indivisible, invisible,
Yet Siamese twin
Are blessed without, blessed from within.
This tiny verse took 15 minutes.

We who Keep Writing 3.28.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
* (for I live in Sweden)

We Who Keep Writing

I listen, read and look,
The world around a book.
This simple observation
Stimulation.
To one linguistically inclined,
As Swedes say,
“It lies ‘in the spine” *
Another way of saying,
In the gene or DNA.

This Facebook thing,
The many, many sites that ring,
Communicating, reaching out
To those of us who think and write
In words
Are worlds of benefit and benediction.
So-so intellect and talent
Notwithstanding.

We who carry on,
Persist, keep on
By virtue of some motivation
Indivisible, invisible,
Yet Siamese twin
Are blessed without, blessed from within.
This tiny verse took 15 minutes.

We who Keep Writing 3.28.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
* (for I live in Sweden)

What Are We Aiming At?

What is it one is aiming at?
And what the means?
Is it utopian to think about?
What is involved?
Such questions asked and answered as the road resolves.
Most times the answers overlap – in fact, each step
The coinciding
Of events and chance
So often and so many, they bring unforeseen abundance!

Means and goal, a little list:
Clarity, transparency,
Ethics and morality;
Fondness of simplicity,
Liking, warmth and care;
Focus and awareness
Of yourself - your faults and gifts.
The means to sift through both
And tackle, challenge, intercept,
Take responsibility for; respect, accept, correct;
To form belief
And follow through.  
It’s hard to let a shape come through you
Like a leitmotif;
A thread that is the real you,
That you were born to find, to be and do.  

What is it that we’re aiming at?
Guess with boldness:
Happiness and peace, of course,
A course of life that’s conquered stress
Made easy by
The depth inside.
Become its bride.

What Are We Aiming At? 5.9.2018 Revelations Big & Small; Definitely Didactic II;  I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

What Characterizes Life?

Bodies born & change & die.
They live and pass.
But what is life?
What marks it out?
In my assessment it is consciousness -
Just being conscious.
If so, leaf must be…
Virus must be…
On one or many levels
All that ‘be’ must ‘have’ it, ‘be’ it
Till those bodies go.

I can’t think that there are exceptions to the rule;
That is, if life is consequent, consistent;
Essence, distillate,
Underneath all things that do a something by themselves.

I don’t know yet.
Can’t find words, a name, an adjective, a verb,
A sound that does it justice.
I know now – and only that.
And when I go inside myself
That’s all I meet

What Characterizes Life? 1.22.2017
Nature In & Of Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Whatever You Concentrate On (Is Where Your Mind Will Go)

What Happens After Death?

Bathing daily as I do,
Listening to the radio,
Emergencies, catastrophes,
Boats sinking or aflame or both:
What happens after death’s end breath?

‘The poisoned lung… the old, the young…
The fire set on purpose,
One hundred fifty-nine lives lost’
Through living skin I take it in:
Corrupted ethics, trials.  Why?
August weather’s all but frosty.
I, with plethora of food in fridge,
Them there rigid,
Stench of rot.
I, desk full of paper, notes;
Money to buy more.
Stuff stuffed into each shelf and drawer;
The closet door can hardly close for all those clothes,
And I, asking ‘bout death and after.
Am I daft to wonder, wander into guesswork’s trap?
Or have I found a craft to cope,
Yoga’s science and art of hope?
For something must exist - a consciousness
Not here, but in a sphere somewhere.
It isn’t logical
That something can become a nil –
Something that has had a pulse.
What else makes sense?
This senseless chaos I sense is not chaos
But some inner justice
Somewhere, somehow in the universes
                                                              of creation!
In a sudden quickening of thinking
In the probabilities of speculation
Here I sit in bath’s ablution, asking questions
About what happens after death?

What Happens After Death? 8.9.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin
arlenecorwinpoetry.com/duanespoetree.com/Youtube

To those of you who know about my seven fingers. (It’s just a whim that makes me write this, hoping that t’s good poetry, that’s all.)


     What I Cannot Do: To Date…

Zip up zippers; hold a glass;
Unscrew caps sealed, fused or plastic.
I’m begun to keep a list
To check what’s missing, missed and lost.
There must be hundreds I will run across -
Beyond the bounds of possibility,
Unfeasible and unattainable.

Climbing into shower or tub is easy,
Getting into places ‘squeezy’
Can be handled (but not ‘hand’-led).
I find other means uncovered.
I’ve discovered mouth and tongue,
The art of ways to stretch and hang
My clothes on hangers;
Knots and bows and ways to share
Each strand of hair
So that each hair is neat and pretty.

I can tweeze my brows,
Clip all small toenails wobbly held.
There is a problem with the cold;
Day/night, room/room -
Temperatures not temperate.
Dust and stuff too disparate.

Vacuuming is hard to deal with,
That’s the time to steel myself,
No matter how it feels.;
Knife and fork can be a hinder.
Clumsy, tender, the best boon
Can often be a bowl and spoon.
(not in public where chagrin
Would soon persuade me to constrain;
(Which shows a vanity devoid of training).

Anyway, and without straining
I grow stronger,
Lists grow longer.
Things I cannot do to date
Will train my patience while I wait for
Only goodness knows, for what!

What I Cannot Do: To Date 5.7.2021 Circling Round More Experience II; Arlene Nover Corwin

What I’d Like?
      (my not-so-secret heart)

You know what I’d like?
To be a part of your day’s reading;
Play a role in all your thinking;
Though it sounds distinctly crazy -
All the households that abound.

How to get to hearts and minds
Like Shakespeare or da Vinci.
Inch my way
To dreams behind each word I say -
A theme, which may take decades to bear fruit,
Take more than decades to bear fruit.

I’d like to open doors, but also keep old gold.
Create a Corwin vogue perhaps
From hunches munched on,
Thoughts thought through with vigor;
Transform half a planet - be a part of it:
A part that lasts.

You Know What I’d Like 6.27.2016
Circling Round Egos; Circling Round Vanities II; Pure Nakedness; Our Times, Our Culture  II;
Arlene Corwin

What Is Bliss?

I have known happiness;
But bliss? I’ve not known,
Often wondering how, what this bliss kiss is.  
Pondering, oft meditating with success
I’ve met the qualities of inner peace,
Knowledge, love and happiness.
But bliss? Supposedly,
The highest state of joy and glory:
Blessedness benign, divine,
Coming from the source of sources
(choose your name.)
Force of forces having in its essence
Attributes that shower power
Hidden from, mysterious
To each of us.

Postulated, taking shape and form
As all on earth and every faith.
It is a mystery: its signs and causes
Working from its pre-formed laws.
Nonetheless,
It doesn’t stop one wondering thus:
What in heaven’s name is bliss?
And how to get it.
Some suggestion? Be my guest!

What Is Bliss? 12.27.2020 God Book II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; To The Child Mystic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

What Is Faith, Really?

The Pope is coming here today, ‘here’ being Sweden.
Sweden has around a hundred fifty thousand Catholics;
Loyal bricks
In a religion with its world mystique;
Jesus the pivot, One-theistic.
Kind of him.  Kind and broad-minded.
Plans to meet with not just Catholic,
But Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Lutheran -
A sojourn
Ecumenical.

So what is faith?
It’s expectation, trust, conviction, hopefulness and confidence
In something that can only just be sensed,
For instance,
If you’ve faith in money, you can touch the money,
But the green can never guarantee the thing,
The happiness that it will bring,
And for how long.

Imperceptible, invisible, an energy
With wish inbuilt;
A wish and hope.

I understand the atheist.
To him the whole unjust-ifiable and –fied;
Unwarranted:
He can’t believe in God.
But what he doesn’t understand
Is that he too has faith –
Perhaps in love, his father, mother, one
Or other institution:
Faith in something -
All of it a veiled mostly unnoticed hint;
A blended tint linking the man to one thing
Or another.

of course when I say man, I mean both, all and every gender.

What Is Faith, Really? 10.31.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; To The Child Mystic II; God Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Today’s thought.  (Isn’t thought a strange phenomenon?  It chooses itself)

What Is Pleasure?

What is pleasure?
Listening to hubby play a jazz improvisation?
Voicings vested in ten gifted fingers?
Revelling in chords unrivalled?
Food in mouth?
Massage’s touch?

Pleasure, what?
Delight?
Elation?
Gratification?
Simple fun?
Sheer diversion?

To take pleasure is to savour,
As a sample, for example,
Kent’s piano not just pleasure
But a treasure trove of silver;
Coin of worth, worth imitation.

What is pleasure, measure of…?
Anything that makes you smile,
Any force that keeps you mobile.
Any word what ends in -phile.

In opposition to the concept ‘down’,
Such as ‘downheartedness’,
Is feeling blessedness,
A boon your own.

A simple thought in bed last night,
Feeling warm and light,
A bed of roses, height of ease
No pain or seizure.  Not inertia but a closure.
This is pleasure
Also.

What Is Pleasure? 2.25.2020 Circling Round Reality; Vaguely About Music II; Arlene Nover Corwin





.

What Is There To Gain?
      (apropos the morning news)

What is there to gain
By killing six or seven million people,
Insects, plant life, animals and soil?
Bomb of hydrogen
A hundred times more potent
Than the bomb that foiled Hiroshima.
.
What is there to gain
Except a laughing Kim Jong-un –
In front of cameras that
Will televise to almost no one
Anymore? Not to mention
Money?  Trade?
Nearly or completely gone:
At least out of the question.

Of course,
Now that I think of it
What’s there to gain by killing?
Sadly, all the scriptures have it, do it, yet,
Beneath it all is peacefulness
And yes, non-violence.

It’s amazing what one thinks about
While watching news that’s sprouting.

What is there to gain by murdering
A fast becoming hopeless people
Living on a fast becoming heap of scrap
In nature fast becoming put to sleep
For what will probably be
Quite a long, long, long, long time.

to be continued… (not or maybe)

What Is There To Gain? 9.3.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II: Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

What Shall I Call This?

What Takes Time
(when fingers have been amputated)

Buttoning and chopping onions.
(you don’t button onions, natch!)
Throwing ***** and playing catch;
Diverse actions needing oneness:
Three note chord, arpeggio
(If, of course you’ve played piano)
Wiping *** with just a thumb,
Zipping up,
Applying make-up.
Writing with a pen or pencil,
Lifting any large utensil;
Twists of wrists, techniques and muscles
While you’re rustling something up -
Things take time. You learn to cope,
And so,
You learn to take things slowly,
Much more slowly than you used to
When you ab- and mis-used time
By buzzing, cruising ‘round
Quite inexcusably.

Now focussed and enthused,
A strange new way infused,
The will to live renewed,
Things viewed as ordinary now extraordinary.
What takes time with digit gone
May have more than one compensation.
We shall see in years to come.

What Takes Time 11.24..2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

“Erosion of spiritual values… the underlying cause of the crises that the world is facing today.”
Sister Jayanti

           What We Need

To think, have faith in the material,
The physical, corporeal
Is to believe in things of constant change,
Change which will forever be
Subjected to the ups and downs,
The sprout and rot of growth and death…
Is that a thing we really want?
The body that?  Wishes too?
You get the wish - it comes, it’s through.

Can it be the time’s extremes,
Are the result of dreams
That lead to climaxes, calamities,
Crises and catastrophes,
Crossroads, zero hours
When the powers of destruction are at zenith point,
The ‘thing-steered’ nose all out of joint?

Is this the underlying cause
That fills each soul with nausea?
We know we’re in a dreadful pickle.
Stuck in muck of the all-tangible.
What we need is permanence, the meaningful;
The something, one-thing that can never change.
Something to reverse the de- and disarrangement.
Don’t you think so?
I do.

What We Need 2.2.2021 To The Child Mystic II; Circling Round Reality; Our Times,Our Culture II; Circling Round Everything II; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

What Would I Do Without You?
(Or Scribbling in the Car)

What would I do without you, lexicon?
What would I do without you, dear thesaurus?
Rhyming book to rhyme with -saurus: chorus, porous, e’en papyrus if it fits?
Wiki’s storehouse ‘cyclopedia?
Little things that make me big and ‘pigg:
Languages that set agog
The richness of the word?

So much I would  not do without;
And isn’t that what life’s about!

Mind so connected to the word,
I would think
Without a varied herd of word
T’would shrink.
T’would atrophy,
T’would wear away,
Become cliché
As cliché wears away the play
From boredom’s lack of stimulation.

So connected is the action of the word
To all the wisdom, the absurd
in all the minds in all the world
Of minds and hearts unaired, impaired…
Is mind to word.

pigg is Swedish for lively, spirited
What Would I Do Without You…Mind So Connected To The Word 7.19.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

What You Do Makes A Difference

Pro /con, yin/yang:
What you do makes a difference.
Bad/good, good/bad.
Each and every nod of head,
Each preference made:
What’s done to those nearby or world,
Though indistinct, unfelt, subdued,
The deeds send tiny substances
Into some airborne agencies
With waves that dance Into continuance,
To spread existence.
What you do has a significance ;
Makes a difference.
So be vigilant.
You are important.

What You Do Makes A Difference 5.23.2021 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Remember this always:
Love,
Arlene

What You Think & What You Do Is You

To know, to really know by intuition what is true,
Rather than by intellect’s analysis,
Which going so far by the book
Will never brook reality, big R:
The star.

There in us seed of divinity,
But also personality and ignorance and folly
Which clog the way so constantly
As to obstruct each single day.

In theologic terms: Christian, Hindu, Taoist, Sufi
Shake hands on one thing categorically:
A unitive, intuitive discovery
Which sculpts life’s aim;
Truth, big T, its contemplation as an end,
Activity its means.

Belief in humans doesn’t work.
You only have to look.
We fight, we ****, we’re angry as we lurk in corners
Passing laws to dig for more
Deep oil, coal… searching from a parched ambition,
Marketing on boundless scales the superficial and addictive
While vindictive leaders staunchly march,
Their Janus faces smiling, starched.

Philosophic, scientific principles at odds -
Where, what, if there is a god.
To know, to really know the double-sides
Of all observed would serve the good.

If you (or Man) will spend the time,
Insides reaching for the prime,
The look inside its total aim,
Some good must come of it;
Not total good, but it’s a start.
The brain connected then to heart,
The body horse, synapses cart.

Abnegation (not negation) of the ego,
Trying out the test of virtue
Probably, no, certainly will help
Speed up this royal trip.
You bet there will be blips galore,
So try some more to reach the core
Of Truth within, for
What you think and what you do is you.

What You Think & What You Do Is You 12.7.2019
Circling Round Reality; Circling Around Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

When I’m Gone

When I’m gone
I’d like whomever,
To sit ‘round a table,
Read a poem or two or eight,
Tell a joke, a story,
Concentrate
On me with love the modus operandi.

Meanwhile I endeavor
To make this life a label,
Every movement something –
Health, a lesson, teaching.
Life is peachy if I let it,
Up and out and reaching.

When I’m Gone 7.1.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

When I Was, So Long Ago

When I was young I thought that fame, the famous
Was and were to aim at:
Constant, stable, durable and permanent.
Never dreamed fame came and went.

At the end of Grable* films,
The musicals in Technicolor
Leading ladies got the part
They thought they’d never get;
The men they disliked at film’s start
Became ‘the one’,
Love, applause and confirmation!

illusion, fantasy, appearance, dream!
Any/all the synonym.
Yet the young are out there
Sharing all the four above.
Five years later most shoved aside,

The false dream but delusion,
Forced by fame’s real pain,
Groom, bride divorced
To glide into a normal trade.

When one is new and in-the-making,
Ipod, tv, thousand apps,
Mental processes taken over
By the ‘happenings’ competing for
This so-called glory, popularity and stardom -
Oh, my goodness, time will come
When what and who
Is young and new
Will have, like me, a ‘long ago’
To refer to.  Then they’ll know.
Like me, they’ll know.

When I Was. So Long Ago 11.21.2019
Circling Round Ageing; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

*Look up Betty Grable

One of those not-so-often reflections.
    
When joy leaves, what steps in?
Nature doesn’t love a vacuum -
Almost never leaves a vacuum.
When joy leaves
Rampant listlessness of mind takes over
And a person by the name of Nover is observer.
Paucity so strange and foreign
Doesn’t doesn’t really want that thing - that joyless thing
To put the mind, spine, neck to swing
(As in the concept ‘noose’’).
When shorn or torn from mind-set,
Sleeplessness replacing it,
The active peace hard to get back
Unless one has provided self
With some kind of a silent frame
With any kind of name, (though lame) for comfort -
Times when happiness has left its home inside your heart,
It’s but to wait it out,
To find again the peaceful state
With gentle and unsentimental will
To stillness.

When Joy Leaves 4.9.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
rempant listlessness; an oxymoron

When Laila Smiles  

When Laila smiles, white wagging tail,
All around her smile too.
Her happiness comes rolling through.
Running, jumping,
Even when she humps a doll which she can pull onto the floor,
She is adorable.

Smile contagious, doggie-gorgeous,
Lively Laila, lovely smile, canine fine
Is most divine!

And when at night she goes to bed
There’s nothing more that need be said,
Except “Goodnight,
You dog delight!” 🐶

When Laila Smiles 6.11.2020 Love Relationships II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

I noticed how people argue, and how what should be a win-win situation often goes off the rails.  I got me to thinking...

When Summer Ends

When summer ends,
The air is strange, the mood estranged,
Winds begin, heat descends,
One wends one’s way
Across a browning lawn
To go back to the city, town.

Winter coming.
Urban living, job or studies,
Plain old washing dishes humming.
Kids in school again.
It could be you relax again.

When summer ends,
Visits, guests and nature over.
Leisure, in so many ways,
But as in everything, the flip side too.

Summer, fall and winter blends
Into one year
Again
As in
Its antecedents.
Life goes on.

When Summer Ends 8.23.2017
Circling Round Nature II:
Arlene Corwin

What else can one say, but …  

    When This Is Over

When this is over
You’ll still have your character
To deal with.
Times will alter,
But there never is an after.
That’s to say, there is,
But business
Is the thing: merely continuing:
Busyness and nothing more.

And there you are,
Left with character,
Its strength and flaw,
To grow, evolve, refine, define
Through change and understanding,
Standing under with humility,
God, destiny, not pining
From mistakes, goals missed
And all the things ones’s pis_ed away from ignorance.

We’ve talents, gifts
To sift through, filter out;
Finding what we’re all about
To work and use
Amusing us and fusing them
To worlds around,
To bond and bind societies;
Bid welcome to the mishy-mashy miscellany,


Watch the mind: it’s shifty, tricky;
Thus, the one security
Is to be found in in purity!
Work on it!

When This Is Over 5.17.2020 Definitely Didactic II; Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

When You’re Alone

When you’re alone more than half of each day,
Can you make sure that it doesn’t decay?
I suppose
You could wash out the hosiery,
Dust, vacuum, chat on the phone,
Watch the tube
(Feeling much like a ****) -
I know lots who do that.
You could scrub walls and floors,
Pots and pans…
My own day has its plans
Which it forms from its hub,
Is its nub:
A lie in the tub,
A walk to the post;
Whatever shows up
Ends in verse anyway,
Which lipsticks the day
As it coiffures the gray
Of aloneness.

Original:

When you’re alone more than half of each day,
How can you see that it doesn’t decay?
I guess and suppose
You could wash out the hosiery,
Dust, vacuum, chat
On the phone, watch the tube.
I know others who scrub
Out the pots and the pans.
My day has its plans                                                    
Which it forms from the mail
And whatever shows up.
It all ends in verse ;
Some is good, some is worse.
But it feels jolly good
And it sure lifts the curse
Of aloneness.

    When You’re Alone1.28.2000 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; 1&2 (revisited, re-formed 3.6.2018)Arlene Corwin

This was/is in response to a lovely comment to what could be considered a not entirely straightforward poem I presented the other day.  
A.

         Whoever Is Receptive

Whoever is receptive
To your works, ideas and thoughts
Will slurp you up and in
With pleasure’s grin
While others spit you out.
And that’s what life is all about.
So, not to worry,
Life’s a magnet of attraction:
Primal law that governs action;
Matinee of love and ardor.
Therefore, don’t work harder
Than you must,
And don’t be disappointed,
When the things you want go bust,
Turn into dust.
The persons  who need what you’ve got
Will come to you and stay because, and just
Because the law’s at work
To everybody’s satisfaction.

Whoever Is Receptive 10.3.2018 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Who The Hell Is Reading Me?
        (a first draft, pre-sleep whimsy)

Who the hell is reading me?
Occasionally, I see one, two, three -
It’s rough,
And certainly is not enough!

I usually do not complain,
But fellow poets, you know
It’s the ****-dest pain
To work for hours,  - sometimes days
Refining, re- re- re-ing phrase
And syntax,
Checking idioms and facts
To get across idea and spirit.
Are you with it,
                         reader friend?
No trend, no agent/publicist to wave a wand,
No publisher to send you huge advances
Because he’s of the sole conviction of your chances.

[Do you], get my drift?
Shifting in your seats,
Because you recognize the whiney bleats
That you would like to scream out too?
Well, *****
                   the reading force,
That leading farce that forces us
To sit it out in silent grumble,
Mortifyingly discomfited and humble.

But know what mate?
I love it!
Never sated, secretly, I love it!
As my confidante, I tell you this.
I wouldn’t miss this silliness
For all the tea in China!

I don’t have to be a winner
Eating Nobel Prizes for my dinner,
Nah, I’m happy just to do
What you do - writing for the one or two,
(there used to be three – one has split)
Get the isolated compliment
From someone honored
– or not.
(everyone’s got
                         their own way of seeing things).
Not trying in the least, to be convincing,
Cheerio, to you who may be just my opposite;
And good, good, good, good, good goodnight!

Who The Hell Is Reading Me12.19.2016
A Sense of The Ridiculous; Defiant Doggerel;
Arlene Corwin

Who Would’a Thunk It?


Who would’a thunk it?

Fifteen books

Sliding piecemeal into six…

Other’s bibliographies

Whose credit lists go on and on

In pages worn

By use unceasing.


Here sit I

Noon sun high,

Ablaze with phrase

That turns into (most likely will)

Ideas instilled

With rhyme and substance,

Probing, pressing cortex’ lobe

Gushing, pushing out the job.


Who would’a thunk, in any case,

That it would form the base of hours

Spent each day as child’s play?

(Except that I’m grown up!)

Who would’a thunk it?


Who Would’a Thunk It? 8.16.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Thunk; informal or humorous past a

Who Wouldn’t Mind Being Remembered?

Who wouldn’t mind being remembered?
It’s not the same as wanting fame -
Naiveté’s vanity its other name.

Who wouldn’t mind some impact?
An itch to reach out
Maybe teach, knowing one knows so little –
Naught at all – We are so small.

But art is there,
And impulse wants from within wants out,
Shouts quietly with word
When you yourself have disappeared.

Who Wouldn’t Mind Being Remembered? 8.16.2017
Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

Who Would Want To Be World Famous?

Who would want to be world famous?
This, the planet so humongous,
Virtuous and villainous,
Full of goodness, full of badness.
Who wants to expose himself’
To the injustices of pelf
That lay in wait upon the shelf of fates unknown?
I’ve come to think: Remain un-shown,
Roof up above, food for the day,
A bed on which to lay your head,
Doing what you’re born to do,
Meant to fulfill you
Without pushing for reward.
Those who aim for fame today
Go absolutely the wrong way.
That’s it – and all I have to say.

Who Would Want To Be World Famous? 10,1.2017
Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Why Has Everyman Turned To Beards?

It’s weird,
This shift to beard controlled appearance.
A trend it seems, not only spreading,
But which has no end.
Scratching when it kisses,
Missing out on blisses, I assure you.
Shaping face, I must admit,
(but not to everyman’s face-benefit).

If truth be told,
It must be hell to keep a chin/cheek fold all squeaky smooth.
But who in heavens want to hold, take hold
                                                           of bristles,
Or see badly shaped and prickly thistles?
Men have aped since lunar’s start.
Everyone knows that!
Fashion is contagious as the rabies from a bat.

Long, short, food-y flecked, unchecked,
Yet there is self-absorption’s admiration.
Let us hope the puppy generation
Growing up will razor up,
Shave every self-helped hair
Formed there (or anywhere.)
It grows unlimitedly wild.

Undefiled, I plead,
Wield the blade
And beauteously shear with care.
Brave new men, you are not cavemen!
Shave men!
One more time and once again -
Just shave!

Why Has Everyman Turned To Beards? 3.27.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Why I Use Punctuation

I use punctuation
To help people read my verse onto
A resonating air;
Verses you can hear, i.e.
Aloud.
I’m proud to say that it has
Meter, rhyme,
Capitals that start the line
So the intention is fulfilled
And joined up with tradition.

A dot has meaning, comma too.
The semi-colon’s there to help you
Understand my thought processes.
When I want emphasis
Or that you accent,
Or I make a special statement,
I take care with punctuation,
For communication is the key
That underlies all poetry.

I might use exclamation points,
But never when it’s not important!
I use hyphens quite a lot
Because my lot lies in creating words,
The standard dictionary not enough.
And I do so want you to ‘get it’.  Get it?

Ah, dear punctuation!  
We could go through all the signs for pauses.
Unimportant technically,
They’re there to help you verbally.
A poem is to be said - not read.  
It’s all for you!

Why I Use Punctuation 6.27.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

WHY MOURNING

Do you know anyone who doesn’t die?

Who hasn’t died?

Who will not die?

Not I.



How to accept?

Not mourn?

Think through to not have pain,

(For pain seems fruitless), for

To not accept

Is like rejecting sun and moon,

Existence, proven, measured, seen.

Do I lament when atoms split?

Grieve, regret,

Have sadness that I can’t get over.

Nover

Doesn’t.



Pain [we have] when others die –

That ‘other’ human, cow or dragonfly.

The local forester sawed down a fir

Which was for sure,

A hundred fifty years or more.

I mourned,

Stump and its rings all it passed down.



Is it absence or remembrance?

Is it longing for a something now a non-thing non-existing?

Is it clinging to a someone

Over whom we have no power,

Never had? Could it be wrong-er?

Fate and destiny his, hers or its

Through all of time and history.



I cannot think of one good reason

Vindicating mourning.

Were we meant for suffering?

Though I [clearly] cannot clarify,

We’re seeing wrongly,

Thinking strongly wrongly,

Wrought of ego’s braggadocio,

The hallowed hoaxer of emotions.



Nover: me, born Arlene Faith Nover

Why Mourning 11.4.2017

Birth, Death & In Between III; Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small; Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Egos;

Arlene Corwin

Wiping Out A Planet

Will it be called a plan-out
Or continue as a planet?
The question
Mass extinction:
Holocausts that came about
Five times before, long, long ago.
We know when where and how
And still we don’t believe it’s happening now,
Right now.
The cause not asteroid, volcano, no!
The cause ambition, greed and wars;
In other words:
Expansion and the chain that follows:
Degradation moral, ethical most subtle -  
For all causes have effects long term.
I squirm
At the prognosis.

Wiping Out A Planet 7.11.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Nature II;
Arlene Corwin