An Entire Slowing Down

I woke this morning, watched my morning TV, ate breakfast, and outcame this: having been worked on 3-4- hours; refined, more clearly defined, even as I write for sending.

     A New Awakening

For me, each day’s become
A new awakening.
I don’t remember yesterday,
(that, almost literally).
Each day I feel a newly born
Who hasn’t had a day before;
For him or her,
Each day’s events, the weekly sequence that lacks reference:
Wholly fresh and unprocessed.
No programmed habits in the way,

The learned unnecessary.
Every breakfast, lunch and dinner
Informing and a finding
With the force of creativity
Touched by serotonin, dopamine
And filled with oxytocin, which means
Happiness, and with that -ness invention.

Ageing has its benefits.
The days untied, untried,
Duties less a press;
To the better in the dwindling senses, subtle changes;
Fun in what was obligation:
Cooking, laundry, scrubbing, dusting -
All the ordinary musts amusing,
Yesteryear’s mad fusses fusing!
An awakening!  
A new sense-action and a prize
Of unadulterated size!

A New Awakening 11.17.2020 Circling Round Ageing; Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

At least it feels that way.

A New Phase Of Awareness
   (Bared For All To View)

I am conscious;
See and hear and all the rest.
I am aware, newly aware
The I am consciousness.
That’s huge!
Not only senses but
The sense behind the senses,
I am sense-ness.  
Consciousness.

As soon as you add suffix -ness
A noun becomes the all-embracing;
Something in itself.

No longer parts divided and connected
But a unitary abstract quite un-nameable;
Sustainable — an ‘it’.
Not’ only ‘quite’, but It.

Oh, the limits of the word!
It is absurd that what you are
Is in reality an It:
Alive, eternal, undivided.
Some deny it, but it’s true.
Consciousness is you.

A New Phase Of Awareness 4.27.2021 I Is Always You Is We;Circling Round Experience;Arlene Nover Corwin

Tomorrow is my beloved Swedish Kent's birthday - a day he completely rejects.  I do not, writing this birthday poem which I will present to him in spite of all protestations. I'll bet he loves it!
         An Icke* Birthday

“I have no birthday” you insist.
Bemused, a bit confused
Reflecting, un-rejecting, I conclude,
“Good for you!
You never need add numbers to
Your written age.
You’ll grow more sage
Without a wrinkle.
Passing years will never sink you,
You who have no birthday,
Never born,
Never gone.”

At any rate,
I celebrate
This date
And will continue every eight,
For February is your birthday.
Enjoy the numberless-ness in your way.

So if I may,
I’d like to take you out to lunch
To munch on something to your taste.
Why waste an eight?
Why wait?
We’ll go to lunch sometime this week,
Take
       our big car somewhere
To crunch on something nice to eat.
Peaceful, sweet,
We’ll have a great
                            non-birthday dear!
Your icke- birthday’s growing near.

An Icke- Birthday 2.8.2020 Birthday Book; Arlene Nover Book
*icke; Swedish for non-

I’m sending this out to my jazz musician and jazz loving  friends.   It’s not a finished product by any means, but a spontaneous tribute to Annie Ross, who died yesterday.
Arlene

       Annie Ross

The loss of Annie Ross
Is loss indeed.
I was a teen in ’53.
Mom owned along with Slim Gaillard
The first jazz club in all Long Island.

There stood a Juke Box.
On the box
Were Hendricks, Lambert, Annie Ross!

There was I, a blossoming young, singing teen,
Young, listening, music major;
There were they, two hims and her,
Scatting kings and scatting queen.

Oh, how I learned!
How much I earned
From Lambert, Hendricks, Annie Ross!
They were my boss!
Not mom, not Slim,
Not Chet or Stan or Mulligan.
No, it was them!

And Annie!
Ultimately forming me
With E above high C.
Her ‘Twisted’, ‘Doodlin’, ‘Airegin’.

Eventually,
Lambert died (too, too,i too early)
John became a valued friend.
But Annie, who I never met
Whose influence I’d later get,
Has met her end.
And I regret not meeting her
And telling her how great
She was.
Annie Ross!
I hope it’s not too late to say it
To her listening spirit.

Annie Ross 7.23.2020 Vaguely About Music Ii; Circling round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

A Nose In My Ear, Or Ageing Love Song

Watching morning TV,
Eating late – toast, egg and coffee,
He leans in and nuzzles me.
(A funny word: to nose-el,
And a funny feel.)
Have you ever had a nose in ear?
You can no longer hear –
Not for that second, it somewhat vexatious,
Nonetheless, a candy and ridiculous,
And  yes, oh, yes, a sugared kiss.
It was and is.
A Nose In My Ear 1.13.2013/revamped 6.3.2020
A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Circling Round Eros II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Another Autobiographical Anomaly✍️

My memory, how is it working?
Reconstructing what I will,
But no matter how I will it,
Using tricks or keeping still,
It goes downhill while lurking.

Mostly, I can’t get the date
Or the event - details I railed at,
Smiled or wailed at.
Where I laid the pen just used;
That is NOT amusing.

Histamine.
I read that histamine boosts memory.
Priority.
What do I prioritise with ear, nose, eye?

My husband tells a story
But his story and the history keep changing.
Joke?
Sheer smoke based on illusion in the first place?
He’s an honest man.
Why change the plan or plane?
How to help boost our brain!
Enigma
And for some a stigma.

Diet, food:
The marvel is the wondrous good
It does in spite
Of all the things we don’t do right.
We’re losing neurons constantly
From ages six- or seventy.
Exercise:  
Training.  Learning.. Instrument.
Being bent on something!  Anything!
For just about all/everything is heaven sent.
That’s what I read
And what I think,
And where my intuition and my instinct lead.

Anyway, this poem is just another way to do it.
Renewing bits with any course available,
And one in which a syllable will stick.
The main thing is to get a kick
Out of the rhythmic lyric of our life.
Yes?

Another Autobiographical Anomaly 2.11.2019 Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Another Boding Sign

The smultron* bush outside the door
Is still producing; a barometer.
Sweden in October;
Theoretically it should be over.
(not the month, but bush)  I wish
It could and would remain all winter,
But of course, it won’t
And shouldn’t.
Another sign
That all’s not fine –
But there it is!
And exclamation points galore
Can’t halt the boding danger.
It’s called climate change.
Let’s hope it isn’t primate change…and more.

*smultron; wild strawberry

Another Boding Sign 10.4.2016
Circling Round Nature II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

I just happen to be God oriented.  It often provides the best language for me. To my non-God-oriented friends, this is as much a comment on 'our times and culture’ (the name of one of my books, book two to be edited sometime in the future) as it is a God thing.

I'm becoming quite, quite addicted to sharing with all of you out there.  It's elating!  I thank you all for being there.
              Another Realization

An Urge Is Not A Wish

I have no wish to write.
It is an urge I can’t resist,
And so,
Not only do I not desist -
Not slowing down, but speeding up,
The whole accelerating,
It invigorating,
I encourage this particular urge large!
(syntax queer, I’m aware.
rhyme peculiar, but it’s there!)

An urge more subtle than a wish,
Ranging from the brush to flesh.
I urge you all to keep the wish,
Examine urge.
If good to let it surge,
Become an act that serves,
I wish the very best for you.

An Urge Is Not A Wish 12.11.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Have I offered you this before?  Having just found the scrap I wrote it on, and having a dreadful memory, I'm offering it up - perhaps again.
       Anyone Can Write A Poem

Anyone can write a poem, but,
To call oneself a poet is another thing.
To be a poet calls for gift:
Humdrum persistence,
(Some would call it patience)
Mulling over, musing on; but with distance.
Facets focusing upon all faces:
Places, spaces, graces…
And their antonyms; the oxymorons.

If anyone can write a poem, write one!
If you like it, write another.
You and I are everyman: unsung, unclear.
Become a thinker, sluice and duct;
Avenue for inner construct.
Everything has drama: kitty’s purr,
Dying fir, cowboy’s spur…
The insignificant betrays a stir
That sits within a coma.
All is magma in the planet’s inner.
You, the [unknown] poet winner.

Anyone Can Write A Poem 5.20.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Anything can inspire, for example, sitting in bed this morning.

It's really about ways to develop.  Or rather, the Way among ways.  Or, ways to The Way.  There's a word I've always been fond of.  It's 'ineffable'.  It means many things, but it really means beyond description.  That's what all this stuff is.  One is always making a stab at it, but that's it.
      
      A ******* Of The Present

A ******* of the present -
It is thought?
Perhaps.
And yet you have to use thought
To divest yourself of thought
(at least to start with).
Riddle; paradox; conundrum:
How to solve it?
Krishnamurti, (clever man)
Used verbs like ‘carve the brain’
‘Scoop out’, ‘uproot’, and ‘empty’, aimed
At silencing a brain that’s interfered with by:
‘Ambitions, greed, stupidities, & vanities’.
All the same,
He never tells you How
He only tells you That.
Corwin (not-so-clever girl) says,
It’s the Now and only Now
That is the What and is the How;
The instrument, the what-to-do
That only you
Can find
Inside that mind
                               of yours.

Focus on a body part,
Your spleen, your heart
A word repeated,
On your breathing in and out.
On God, a saint,
If that’s your bent.

Focus, watch, come back to Now
When sidetracked,
Drift away or stray.                                                            
The only entrance back is Now.

I’m limited, I know –
But it’s a start with which
To scratch that wandering and misleading itch
Of wishing, longing, reminiscing,
Guilt and backward/forward thinking;
Start by which
To squelch & wash away the errors, launch your niche
Your cubbyhole, your branch…

I promise you, you won’t go wrong.

A ******* Of The Present 12.29.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

A Poem For All The Publishers Who Say “No Poetry”

I’ve looked it up a million times –
(a little bit of overstatement never hurts)
I think in meter, think in rhyme.
It suits my temperament.  Reverts
To chimes of nursery rhymes
Instinctive in us all –
This call to childhood’s guiltlessness.
Yet publishers of good repute
Refute this claim
And to their shame,
Their snobbish, profiteering shame,
Say No to poetry.

We should attack!
Abundant in attractiveness are we.
Ever clever, disciplined;
Deep, reflecting all reality:
And yet they say, “NO POETRY,
DO NOT SEND POETRY”.
Refused, rejected
Are we bards dejected?
Never!
We go on forever,
Eager in our hunger.

While you publishers go under,
We are there, bad, corny, muted,
Understated and astut-ed;
Couplets, meters, forms abstract,
Highbrow, lowbrow, autodidact:
Rumbling on like thunder.

A Poem For All You Publishers Who Say “No Poetry” 12.21.2016
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

A Poet¨s Diary  ✏️⌨️

Extract from a letter answering a friend about my productivity:
     “I have neither habit nor stamina - at least not consciously.  It’s more from laziness - the writing, that is.  I see, hear or read a phrase or reportage and I’m off!  That’s it!  And  because repetition creates habit, be it smoking, biting your nails, or quilting - then if you have a particular talent, well, there it is - the automatic stamina and habit..”


           A Poet’s Rationalisation

She writes daytime and night.
She’s neither stamina nor habit.
It’s because she’s lazy.
When she’s complimented (as she’s been at times)
The only word that has occurred’s tenacity.

Reading, seeing reportage, message hitting the right the spot,
And lo, she’s hot!
Computer open, blank page there
And she is where she ought to be,
Comfy, lazy, some ability
Wakened for the sake of…
Nothing!

Prolific - she’s aware of it.
Gazillion ideas make her sit.
And when she sits and pushed to write,
She writes because it’s what
She’s pushed to from within, without,
Stimulation like a clout from heaven -
Happy as sandboy,
Seventh heaven’s brand new toy,

Theory, philosophy, hypothesis,
This, her only explanation
For the many extant stanzas
Published and unpublished
With no purpose whatsoever.

Thank you to whomever
Pays a tribute or has praised
Or lauded and applauded reveries,
The fantasies that intellect can cover.
What more can one ask for?

A Poet’s Rationalisation 12.6.2019
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Approaching Eighty-Four

A Problem And A Blessing

It’s a problem and a blessing;
I never do the same thing twice.
My omelets, cookies, ice cream –
Never twinned and absolutely never thrice.
My husband says, “That dish was consummate,
The best I ever ate…you must, must imitate it!
Why not write it down”.
And there’s my limit.
Always acting in the moment,
Home ingredients at hand,
Forced to recreate a dish
That will not taste of sand,
That may or may not turn out grand;
A failure or success – there’s no predicting,
But who cares!
My brain enjoys the dare,
For dare it is,
And there it is,
The blessing.

The problem?
Codes of norm, jazz (my profession), daily dressing;
Not recalled, created by improvisational necessity
Anew;
New strains, all things thought through
As if they’d never been.
What do you do?
And how?

A Problem And A Blessing 5.12.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin



A cutie.

The phrase came through at a sleepless 3am.  Couldn’t resist, of course.

It's wonderful how a cup of  morning coffee can wake the inspired and inspiring part of the brain.

       A Question To Be Thought About


Brooded over and annoyed

To not be read

Before one’s dead

Is justifiable.


Poor guy, Van Gogh,

And other names we’ll never know

And God knows how

****** many artists of all sorts

Went to eternity, their arts

Unknown, unseen, unsold

Is undeniable,


This sad, sad, fact

Which begs the question:

What is it one’s aiming at

When writing, or composing that sonata?

To be reflected and accepted, for

It may be my, your

Very

Destiny.



Many say

It is the journey.



A Question To Be Thought About 2.18.2018 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Corwin

A Reader Commented

“it can get repetitious
When you write about the brain.
The same refrain again, again.”
I answered:
“Variations on a theme, that’s all it is.
Not repetitious, but delicious."

With so many things that need attention.
Variations in an endless fund,
The emphasis on fun and essence…
But just now I am in body mode,
Brain unfolding
Undercurrents sensed and flowing
In a stream of consciousness
That feel almost blessed
Because I don’t know where they're coming from,
Not really.

What I do know is, there is a train:
Ideas starting in the brain
And through the hand,
Their end a piece of paper,
As if life was cutting some sweet caper,
In the art of understanding.

A Reader Commented 7.20.2020 The Processes: Creative,Thinking, Mediative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

A Really Silly Moment

I get so bored when I can’t write.
It feels so wrong when I don’t write.
(Get it?. Write, wrong?) ****! Ding ****!
Among the songs I’ve ever sung
(I am a singer, after all)
The throng that’s hung around
That sound like music in my head,
The syllables that bubble forth,
A babble like a gaggle of slim glossy geese -
(Not the least bit schmalz obese
And definitely not for roasting)
On this shoestring of a playful thread
(Line six to see the rhyme to ‘head’
This poet (me)
Is off to see awful TV.
Anyway I’ve had my ‘fix’
Of perky, quirky tricks today.

A Really Silly Moment 12.1.2020 A Sense Of the Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Stumbled upon this one while collating my next book "Circling Round Ageing”. Seeing ‘ deficiencies',  I’m revising it,  the older version already in my book “Pure Nakedness” (page 30).

                    Ascetic Youth

When I was young and immature I took a ‘no’ as absolute,
Not understanding that
A ‘no’ implies alternatives.
I lacked perspective.
Who looked for alternatives;
A complement, a supplement?

Without a doubt,
I gave myself deficiencies
Of every sort.
The diet that said don’t drink milk,
Did not say don’t get calcium.
Who knew?
Who knew the wrong side of obedience Is ignorance.
And so I’m thinking,
That’s how despots do their thing!
Ascetic Youth 6.1.2010 I Is Always We Is You; Pure Nakedness; Arlene
Corwin

You've all heard of the American in Paris.  But have you heard from the American in Sweden??

As I Meditate…

As I meditate upon the general idea of peace,
Wash my brain with waves of …waves
I see an impact and increase
In the days that follow; expertise                                        
Unexplainable inside these
Small, small, small effects.
Nicer, kinder jets of thought;
Generous, inclusive this:
Embracing (the flip side of scorning or dismissing)
Giving ‘thumbs up’ easily.
I
Even feel my IQ up.
Recall dropped into my lap;
The bank behind them all
Accessi-ball,
(a jokey bit of poet freedom)

Patterns and impressions sharper.
Harping on the small things lesser.
Plus,
My mind turns bad to good.
(As I’ve always hoped it would.)
All opportunity!
I never understood
This peace idea.
Not worldly grounded, power founded; sheer
Self caused and self achieved.
Every pause a chance to sieve
The good from bad, the stuff that had
A weakening effect on me.
Since I is always you is we,
All university,
I simply send this little notion;
Hoping it brings oceans
Of the positivity
It’s giving me.

As I Meditate 2.26.2018 The Processes; Creativity, Thinking, Meditative II; Revelations Big & Small; ArleneCorwin

I suspect it’s all of us.

A Swedish Midsummer 2020

Geography the usual;
The place on planet just the same;
The night light full till after midnight,
Daylight’s dawn at one or two
With so few hours in between.

This year then,
A little different.
Last year when
A crowd would meet
To dance and sing and drink and eat
On park or lawn or balconies,
Families and friends to hoopla til a dark
Which almost never comes
Makes the ending for them.

This a deviating year;
Debating and departing from
The customary dancing, prancing,
History may chronicle as Distancing,
Fiascos, blunders, six-feet-unders.
Romance from six feet of space

This midsummer in the North
Coming forth with likenesses
Has, by the laws of nature
Put the  emphasis on differences
Which we, survivors aa a race
Will surely neutralise and chase away
One future day.

A Swedish Midsummer 2020 6.16.2020 Nature 0f & Nature In Reality; Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sometimes I write the most serious thought whimsically.  This is one:

    A Terribly Prosaic Poem

A/The/My Way

I never knew I had a ‘way’.
And still it shows up da by day
Laws but felt, themes unmeant;
Through sudden fountains of content;
Through many offshoots but one road,
No signposts to direct or goad.
Still it is:
A kiss of fate though non-insistent,
Usually
An accident and serendipitous.

And because, and just because it is a whisper
I’ve no choice
But to
Tune into
And obey,
Swaying to its hinted push,
The glint of pressure
Nothing but a pure, faint sureness
And a pleasure.

                      ----------

Minutes past I ate three plastic plates of pasta.
(a pun-ny lie, but funny)
Now I sit with pen in hand
On my verandah, in the wind,
Thankful for not understanding
Karma’s muted law un-grand,
Inscrutable but suitable
To me alone,
One on her own
Within the schemes and actions of concern.

A/The/My Way 8.6.2017
Pure Nakedness; Revelations Big & Small;
Arlene Corwin

A/The/My Way (redone)

I never knew I had a ‘way’.
And still it shows up day by day
Laws but felt, themes unmeant;
Through sudden fountains of content;
Through many offshoots but one road,
No signposts to direct or goad.
Still it is:
A kiss of fate though non-insistent,
Usually
An accident and serendipitous.

And because, and just because it is a whisper
I’ve no choice
But to
Tune into
And obey,
Swaying to its hinted push,
The glint of pressure
Nothing but a pure, faint sureness
And a pleasure.    
            
Minutes past I ate three plastic plates of pasta.
Forgive this frilly, dilly of a joke.
I can be such a silly yokel
With punch/pun-ny lines that hit my funny bone(s).

Now I sit with pen in hand
On my verandah, in the wind,
Thankful for not understanding
Karma’s muted law un-grand,
Inscrutable but suitable
To me alone - one on her own
Within the actions and concerns.

A/The/My Way 8.6.2017
Pure Nakedness; Revelations Big & Small; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin

A Thought To The Writer

I’ve decided - no concluded
That there is no finished product -
That the motto is revision,
Which takes courage and reflection;

Perspective, understanding that
It’s destiny that leads,
Needs continually changing,
As are viewpoints -
Frame of reference
Ever you.

When you’re reading what you’ve written
(I say this from observation)
You’ve come back a different person.
You discover when reviewing,
What was smitten needs renewing:
Shakespeare tearing up the script,
To Romeo and Juliet
Because he thought the first was sh_t.
No double suicide;
No place where anyone has died.

Yes, there is no finished product;
Not in literature or life.
We inspect, reflect, reject
And we rewrite.

A ThoughtTo The Writer 6.29.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

A Useful Note

The eyes - they’re seeing what they see,
Which at the moment is to watch tv.
The hand is tapping out this poem
Which at the moment is more pastime
Than a paying job or métier.
Each part is doing its small bit
While ‘I’, the ‘I’ behind the eye
Is there with brother/sister mind
And steering, cheering on
Each object that it finds
For concentration and attention;
Each function filled with unction
One can but applaud.
As for we and me inside this head,
We can and ought to spread the joy
From using what the body lead to,
(What felt true and what felt best)
Leaving all the rest
To it and to the whole of you.

A Useful Note 1.30.2021 Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin

By coincidence and AFTER writing this poem I read “Kings of old, rich in virtue and in harmony with the times, nourished all beings”.* WHAT a coincidence, eh!

              A Well-Functioning Society

The people are the goal.
But that includes the whole:
Their health, their wealth, their psychological well-being -
Familial, emotional: their simplest needs met,
That, until their death.
Simple but not easy.

How do you make people giving?
How do you secure their living?
How do you reduce a greed
That goes much further than the need?

Then how to teach a folk to share?
You cannot preach a folk to sharing.
Propaganda and brainwashing only go so far.
Though faith goes to the furthest star,
Well supported,
It can also be perverted.

Think, dear reader near:
Meditate and contemplate,
Work through a restlessness
To inner peace, acceptance, patience.
Answers lie in your own essence.
Every thought and every deed spreads in a sea,
Rippling out eventually.
A well-functioning society
Begins and ends with me.

A Well-Functioning Society 5.4.2019 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin
* I Ching; Richard Wilhelm translation

A World Full of Beautiful Songs

There is a world full of beautiful songs
Out there;
Each more sweetly silencing
And bringing forth
More tears than t’other.
Myrrh
Mellifluous as fragrant honey.
Money cannot make or buy it:
Songs so lyrical you cry at
Hearing.

The child, sensitive and innocent
Of harmonies and reading notes
Looks back on songs she learned by rote,
With warmth and ardor.
Learned by heart,
They weren’t hard to memorize.
Their beauty struck a chord
The size of don’t-know-what.

Sweet song or hot,
A taste for this, a taste for that;
It’s music that gave solace,
Reassurance, dancing feet.
World full of song and beat,
Time complete.

There is a world of euphony
And melody
To sing about.

A World Full Of Beautiful Songs 8.25.2017
Vaguely About Music II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin


,

There's always more to think about and say.

A ZILLION WAYS TO HEAL YOURSELF✍️

Bad Thoughts

Bad thoughts in youth:
Energy, gifts given, offered,
Why we suffered…
We knew nothing.
It just was.
‘…wasted on the young’, said Shaw.
This truth endures:
Energies were boundless.
Such a plus and it was us.
But minuses with M, big M,
They were the dross,
The rubbishy behavior of those days
When we paid no mind to the affluence,
All assets.
We were young, un-formed.
But now, formed, social-normed,
What have we for excuse?
Those days diffuse,
We leave those days all honeycombed.
Now we know.
Bad thoughts have nil excuse;
Crave discipline to loosen.
Self-destructive in their essence,
Nuisance to the mind.
Trust this writer: make you blind.
Know thyself, said Socrates.
The phrase that follows - obvious.
Be kind!
You cannot lose.

Bad Thoughts 3.20.2018 I Is Always You Is We, Circling Round Egos; Circling Round Energy; Arlene Corwin

Basic Kindness To Bugs Imprisoned On Window Pane

Planting glass on window pane,
Sliding it to tiring bug -
A creepy-crawly stuck inside.
You slide it forward
Delicately inching toward
The anthropod.
Lifting glass you slip a card
To gather fly or bee or bug
Safe under glass,
Protected from a dire passing.
Lifting whole so carefully
So as to not crush head or wing
While bearing thing
To door and freedom.
It, a test, trial, task - a problem
Of the kind that gets you points in heaven
And, of which you feel well pleased
When finally you do succeed.

Basic Kindness To Bugs Imprisoned 8.11.2016
Circling Round Nature II;
Arlene Corwin

Bass Deluxe: Ron Mathewson

Bass stands against a wall.
A singing, dear, expensive bass
Unused and tall,
Its agoraphobic player on a chair he calls his ‘throne’,
Alone, with daily cigarettes,
Watching TV, living in, on the touring pasts.
Half understanding - just half understanding
How great and talented he was.
Perfect recall, perfect pitch
All he broods about is what he’s done -
What was attained long, long, long, gone.

Life’s contradictions:
Great gifts. great restrictions.
One feels the ache of disappointment:
Talent that resigns from life with that great depot of accomplishment,
Finely filed on disc and film.
Not to be bettered, that bass with its singing-ness.
Like men of genius gifts and neuroses,
Ron’s bass was divine, a mine of nuances,
Shades, silken tones, harmonies endless.
That sensitive ear!  What chords he would hear!
Phrases he’d play on!
A multi-boxed crayon.
He could pluck, he could bow .
Did his intellect know why, what, how?
He just did it!

The box of wine, that pack of smokes.
The emails, phone calls, stockpile of anecdotes;
Remembered peers, recalled remarks,
The names of tunes leaving their marK;
The taste and technique, the recall
Combined, his all.

Yet all that one can say
Is that one of the ‘chosen few’
A treasured, master jazz bass player
Lived his last day
On a Thursday, 3rd December, 2020.

Bass Deluxe: Ron Mathewson 12.9.2020 Vaguely About Music II; Birth, Death & In Between III; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is the kind of spontaneous nonsensical thought that shows up out of nowhere.
        
       Beauty’s Tide
      
I watch a certain TV lady;
See her daily.
She has reached the peak of beauty,
But
She doesn't know it.
Doesn’t know because
She doesn’t know its opposite -
Not yet.

Still there are signs to spot:
The thinning hairline;
Traces under eyes when she’s been working hard;
No sign of crepe-y neck.  Not yet.
No jowl-y chin, skin smooth and tight;
No ******* falling;
Waist still small.
One of a certain age can tell.

The menopause that takes no pause -
Facing just the right decade,
Beauty’s manifested light will fade,
But she, her gifts
Will probably not choose facelifts  
Or any kind of lift at all.
Her mind will shine - charisma too.
She will reach out to the ones who view
Until she decides - not to.

Beauty’s Tide 5.3.2020  Circling Round Experience; Circling Round The Ego; Circling Round Vanity II; Circling Round Woman; Arlene Nover Corwin

Becoming Braver

Turning thought to poetry,
Trusting that it’s worth conveying;
Turning impulse into input;
Turning input into form.
Becoming braver as your norm
Is to be distanced from result:
The very meaning of release;
Of taking on the difficult;
Of being an adult.

Becoming braver does not mean
To throw all caution to the wind.
You still must care.
It means ‘to dare,
Guided by inherent gifts,
Its freedom sifting through
The need for house, home, life: just you -
Risk-takers oft-times gone adrift!

That said, one can come back:
The failed business, loss, love’s bed -
But simple things: a recipe, a book,
Shifting round the furniture to freshen up the look,
Unhesitant and unafraid
Of testing, trying and applying;
You will still have faults.
There in the vaults of gene ad cell,
Heredity, the ancestry, the body shape, the temperament;
Activity, passivity,
The tendencies to act and be,
To always have;
They never leave.

What you have as genesis - your pre-born base,
Becoming braver can’t erase,
With not have a need to hate or praise;
But you can weather, persevere,
Develop better, actions freer:
That is you, unfettered, braver.  

Becoming Braver 2.16.2021 Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Bedfellows

One’s had friends in bed and foes in bed.
How do you tell the difference?
A friend can wait, showing no heat,
No urgency.
The friend acts with simplicity,
Intuitively taking in each movement:
Packing it away as knowledge.

Enemies may never learn.
Don’t know the game.
Full of sexuality,
But ***** if encouraged.  
Something’s missing in this bedfellow,
This fellow is a foe.
Soft, rough,
His bit of fluff will never feel enough.
In some way he’s the enemy.

The friend will stop when he intuits.
Never grouchy, even-tempered, ever civil,
Showing love in darling ways,  -
Almost asking for permission,
*** not the priority –
Except when it is, really.  
It is sweet and turns one on.

Friends in bed, and foes in bed -
The difference subtle.
Friends produce a long-term trust,
Long-term acceptance;
Enmity defined by just
Its opposite:
Relation that starts out with love
And loses it.

Bedfellows 11.6.2012/ discovered on a scrap 6.4.2014 and re-worked.
Love Relationships II; Circling Round Eros II;
Arlene Corwin

Being Honest

It’s hard.  
Sounds simple, but it’s hard.
It’s brave. It’s subtle.
And you’re scarred and marred.
It is so many things
That dare I write them sans façade
My friends complain:  
Too ****** demanding,
Hard to deal with; so much
Nuance; synonyms abounding.
They want simpleness: the easy way.

Simple, yes, but challenging.
You’ve got to be considerate,
Your character to deal with.
Why ****? Death comes to all.
An honest **** is still a ******.

Why press ideas?
You know that ideas change,
That phases are the germ of life.
It’s hard to stand against temptation,
Vengeance, easy money, vice;
Hard to be right-minded, truthful
Self-restrained, just being nice.

Funny, but
It’s easier to tell the truth
When you begin to show you’re age.
People show respect, in fact,
They think you’re sage.
They’re happy that they’re getting honesty
Straight from the shoulder:
Benefits of growing older.

Old or young or middle life,
We’ve all had problems, woes and strife.
There is an art to being honest
Without cruelty or exploitation,
Without character’s temptation.
Best we start.

Being Honest 4.5.4027
Definitely Didactic; Circling Round Reality;
.Arlene Corwin

Being Remembered

How would you like to be remembered?
Do you leave a name unblemished?
It seems to be today’s decor
That it is fame one’s going for:
Instant fame and more, more, more.

Life affirming while you’re living:
Your ambition:
Do you listen?
Does it have humility as spark?
Candidness, the best of trademarks?
Honesty, transparency?
A structure or a stricture?
Does the structure have self-knowledge
And the willingness to say “I’m wrong”?
A part of songs you wish to sow?

Bona fide fame comes slowly. (Pronounced bona fid-ee)
Doesn’t last if it comes fast.
Real work lurks in its background:
Lack of vanity to say you’re ‘so-so’
And indifference to fiasco.

But the trend is chasing marathons,
Traveling to distant lands,
Building ships on sinking sands
In lands where lava sleeps
And water ever creeps
Onto small isles that tremble.
Be remembered.

Be remembered
As the good go-getter for a better
World, the ground
Of future fertile worth
Whose girth is round.

Being Remembered 10. 9.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Being Remembered

I had completely forgotten that I'd written a poem with the same name earlier this year.  Wholly different the one from the other.  What a brain!
I think the 2nd is better than the first.

          Being Remembered ✍️

Bemoaning Similes & Metaphors

         (the lack thereof )


I cannot think in similes or metaphors.

I can, but it’s

An artifice.

A gift

I’ve not been left with.

Of course,

I’ve got Thesaurus –

My old pal -

To push me

In the simile

Direction.

Those

Whose

Aptitude’s

To see,

Their inner eye

Comparing parallels unconsciously –

A gift of gene and DNA –

Overwhelm me.

While I moan about my lack,

They sit with throne and luck

Expressing with an ease,

Anything they ****** well please

In metaphors and similes

I lie in bed,

This running through my head.

That’s why it’s here.



Bemoaning Smiles & Metaphors 1.13.2010/8.17.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Watching the ‘’religious’ conflict.  So useless! Perspired, tired, but inspired.  So useless!  

Bits Of Absurdity
It isn’t fun:
The more insightful I become
The more aware and dumb
I know I am.
Glaciers melt;
Is there a hell?
We rave and rant;
The disappearing elephant, rhinoceros or ant.
Some things we can or won’t, or can’t;
We war, invent new types of guns,
Dependent on developing more weapons,
Losing an inherent faith
An unsure housing, planet Earth.
Speculation, reason, treason…
Truth’s relation wobblier.
To remain pain-free, completely sane
Is not too much to ask,
The task a mission in disguise.
Addictions, stimulants, inner crises,
Pills for peace and for release
Messing up the consciousness:
What functioned generations past
Working not at all for some.
The die is cast.
In our numbness we are dumber,
Soon to fumble into slumber
That may last a thousand years or more.
Bits Of Absurdity 5.14.2021 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Times, Our Culture Ii; Arlene Nover Corwin

Waking at 7am, my mind went to peace, power, purity, knowledge love and bliss - qualities I’ve been told make up the origin of origins, its machinery, innards and insides.  Having thought deeply about the first five qualities, writing about them in sundry ways, finding numerous images to use, I have never been able to understand and certainly write about the last.

Somehow, I was and am inspired to give it a go.

                          Bliss

What does bliss consist of,
Or, to put it properly,
Of what does bliss consist?
One has been told
The properties of godliness
Are power, peace and purity,
Knowledge, love and bliss.
An easily dismissed and hard-defined
Form of continued happiness.
One so refined
And sifted through a sieve so fine,
There’s no impurity of sadness left,
The deftest hand designing it.

We human beings never quit
In walking roads, bearing loads,
Experimenting with all sorts of modes
To get to, feel it.

A unit with no parts,
Mind, heart dissolved and blended
In a homogeneous and splendid fire,
Sparkling in it’s colourless, see-through attire.

He or she in whom it’s sired
Has aspired eons.
Then, as if by accident
It’s sent!
A burst, a still, a calm,
Perhaps the ultimate of balm.

Who knows of what this bliss consists?
Does he or she go on existing?
Or is this state out of which
One never is the same?
Is it the final aim?
God knows.

Bliss 7.7.2020 To The Child Mystic II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin