You’re welcome to share this usually ignored truth with the world.  And for those spiritually oriented people who think I’ve left out ‘soul - even soul has to take a body before it can function. Otherwise, it’s just up there somewhere in the skies.

Arlene

             Body  

Everybody is a body:
Underneath it all, a body total.
Big or small, broad and ample,
Slight, but never trivial,
Arrival on this planet
Nothing short of miracle;

We’re meant to love it, but without
The pride of vanity,
For we know, vanities
Are valueless,
The body, paradoxically,
A  transiency;  
One could just say,
A moment’s instability.

We’re born to care
And not be fooled by armpit hair,
**** and cheek.
Soon or late all parts are weakened.

Tooled to grow, unroll, unfold:
It is a body, after all.
A million, zillion cells
That only ever wish us well.
Dimply, pimply, faintly smelly.
When each jolly quirk is tallied,
Everybody but a body.

Torsos weak and torsos strong
See us through the whole lifelong;
All of you and all of me.
This solely one and only body.

Body 7.22.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Body: A Chemical Factory

Fascinatingly exciting and perplexing,
Process wondrous:
Neurons, synapses
To shoot off sparkling energy the eye can’t see:
Electricity!  And we,
So lucky there existed a Galvani
And his twitching frogs..

We can measure states of consciousness,
Assess the contents,
Name the highs and lows,
With means to influence
Or understand surprising Wows!
The brain so layered,
Bodies calibrated
For a life of capabilities:

Jokes to coax a smile,
Brawn to run a mile,
Lusts to make a child,
Strength enough to lift a car,
Brains enough to get to Mars.

Body! Such a factory
Of complex, interacting chemistry;
The greatest and the  subtlest mystery
Of species Man.

Body: A Chemical Factory 7.12.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Bombarded📡🔭☮️♨️‼️
(a little reflection on our times, our culture)

We’re so bombarded,
We’ve been hardened,
Brains diluted,  convoluted.
What of us? The focussing?
You ask, “What is this focus thing?”  It is:

To isolate, to single out,
To deeply delve,
Steeping the self into a matter,
Inner chatter quietened,
The scattering restrained, frustrated.
You, the goalie concentrated.

Deluged by the information’s
Huge amount of information
Taken in each night, each day
From which we never get away.,
It is in every sense a blitz
Common sense’s road to denseness.

Even with this idiocy
One cannot leave society.
Are there solutions?
Meditations? Isolation?
Exploration of the self by watching, snatching
With an inner eye the ‘I’ inside?  
Yes.

To ride out the assault that baits you
Is to learn what translates into
Independence and detachment,
Kindness to your fellow man,
Knowledge of what’s really real:
A heart of gold and mind like steel.

These are just proposals sent
To free you from this time’s bombardment.
Hints and tips to steer your star -
That’s all they are.

Because you suffer,
Seldom knowing what you’re after,
From not knowing that you suffer.
Yes, not knowing just how much you suffer
From not knowing what you’re after.

Bombarded 8.1.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Boredom #2

I’ve never seen so many synonyms for one small noun,
Blocking maturation and enjoy-dom:
Boredom.
“Weariness, ennui: frustration;
Restlessness, dissatisfaction, unconcern: frustration;
Lethargy, lassitude, flatness and frustration;
Dreariness, repetitiveness, apathy: frustration;
Tedium, monotony, dullness. yes, frustration.”

Can it be overcome, this boredom?
No more war - the boredom won,
Exchanged for something more like fun?
It can.

A friend who, when we speak, says,
“It’s a part of nature…has no answer...”
Reasoning fallacious,
She is wrong as wrong can be
And her reasoning a fallacy.

Awake at night: hormones, full moons;
The glut of light: electric gadgets and devices,
Radios that play a song too strong, too long..

A trick I’ve learned that’s brought results;
A knack, a shortcut worth consulting
Is to train the brain to focus on/in/with the brain;
Travel round in, sense and feel…
Make it real – as if you really feel
The part you aim at, frame then tame.

In seconds you’ve an object that’s becomes a subject.
Boredom fled, you freed,
You and your mood well pleased, released
And taken places least expected,
Un-objected to by you,
The burden boredom’s through.
And doomed!

Boredom 11.24.2016/ #2 revised 2..16.2017
Revelations Big & Small; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Born Without The Empathy Gene

Sitting bored in front of the TV, open computer on the coffee table in front of me, this came out.   A poetic babble perhaps.        

     Brain Change

It happens all day long.
Inside the head, its gorgeous throng of targets sits
The brain; synaptic nerve cells.
Tiny gaps across which impulse tells
One or another thrilling and exhilarating news
                                                                    to use,
Communicating and collecting,
Stimulating and connecting,
Electrical or chemical;
Pre-, post-, now,  past,
It hosts the most.
With a tiny blast of current,
It emits, transmits life long,
From head to body-solid.

(With its) mind-boggling effects,
The synapse’ clean neuron-ic jets
Affect each thing we think and know,
How and what we know and do.
How the brain arranges you!

Place targeted,
Remembered never to forget,
Some venue in that gorgeous head,
Its gorgeous throng of secrets
Sits a brain of infinite and wondrous range,
Perpetually changing.

Brain Change 1.23.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Nover Corwin

Brain, Give Me The Answers

Does this sound too much like prayer?
A little red-faced,
Weakness in my psyche.
Embarrassed ‘cause it’s not like me,
One feels the hypocrite:
I, who stake
My life on ‘God, who makes not one mistake’,
And here I sit,
Baby-ish,
Asking to change destiny –
At least push it my way.
Shame, shame on me!

I’ve got to wait –
Just like all others.
Meditate,
Reject my druthers,
Concentrate.
(I’m poor at that).
Be grateful for the goods I’ve got
(and that includes MyQ
and its capacities))

Nonetheless, addressing you,
Dear self so true,
We have a pact
(And that’s a fact)
So if you will cooperate,
I’ll wait
Until who knows, the whimsicality of fate
Is ripe: propitious, and/or generous  
And brain-wise,
Advantageous.

Brain, Give Me The Answers 8.24.2017
Pure Nakedness; I Is Always You Is We; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Building Walls

To build a wall beside your neighbor,
(though he be not dearest neighbor) -
Build a wall to hide your neighbor
And to hide yourself,
Is wrong as wrong can be.
Don’t you agree?

What neighbor has no overflow?
Is not magnifico?
Has not a folk to which we owe
Our history:  our languages, our citizenry, heroes and mythology;
Poverty an un-destroy-able
“The poor are always with us” still, will always be.

What neighbor doesn’t ebb and flow,
Fail then grow?
He next store or ‘cross the border.
Not our job to build a fort  
Against a fancied enemy.

Building Walls 5.22.2017
War Book II; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin;

Can It Be?

Can it be that we
No longer have to worry,
Be concerned about IQ and such,
It not much longer meaning much
When something’s to be learned?

Can it be we do not need those centers
To adapt and enter
Higher states,
Taking in non-useful crates
Of knowledge and/or information.

Wouldn’t that be lovely…
Days that don’t demand the shove
Of knowledge from an app
To make you happy?

Synapse, axon, neuron:
Hordes of intricate connections
Just to reach a level new;
Some new standard, some new status
You consider you.

Well, it seems that they’ve discovered
What you probably knew all the time:
You only need a darned few dendrites,
Through the days and nights
Of facts and figures all around;
Surrounding signals chemical/electric
To slow down the darned runaround.

Can it be that life that thrives
Is simpler than our brains surmise
From all the data thrown at us?

Maybe just a little meditation
And the silencing of motion
In the ocean of illusion
And the feeding of a news that’s false -
What we’re really needing,  
The concoction and the potion
Has been right before our noses
All the time.

Can It Be? 3.29.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II;  Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Corwin

Can It Be?

Can it be
That when you die
Your atoms go into eternity,
Come back collectively,
Attracted by
A law of magnetism and attraction -
A cycle and a miracle;
After all,
They’ve always been
A You since time began.

Can It Be? 2.24.2021Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

I never intend to write and then….  reading something that moves me, I write.  Maybe that’s the secret behind this poet's produce!  Reading, hearing, seeing, thinking, reacting…

Can Meditations Influence A World?
  
Can meditations sway the world?
Dare one respond?
One waits for answers there, unlearned
Through insight’s scene,
The mystical discerned.

A world? To have effect on? Shape through some sorts’ inspiration?
Misery, the suffering, the evil, the corruption
Where we know that all that we can do
Is purify and cure our selves: the flawed and imperfected self
Whose weakening shortcomings are so onerous to shelve.

Can little we, (and little me) alone on cushion, chair or sofa
Offer up this blemished being
To a seeing eye up in the sky
We well nigh can’t be sure of?

Breathing tricks, mantric techniques,
Sound and focussing and tweaks -
Can each ache **** a world into a working peace?
Endeavours and experimenting reach long-term
Through  reaching in and out the brain?

One hopes!
We see a world that barely copes.
Whose bleak, weak, tweeting leaders
Cheeky-cheat the bleating of the latest.

Science tries, the churches try; social-minded allies too.
But here is little you, a-seat as I am seated now,
Mulling over if and how,
Wondering if our meditations are a mediation
Of conciliatory worth,
And if they reach the big round earth
With leverage from this average me.
We’ll speculate and try, and see!

Can Meditations Influence? 3.24.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II;  To The Child Mystic; II The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;Circling Round Meditation; Arlene Nover Corwin

Once again a mini- wondering has pushed me to the keyboard (not the piano this time).  Three hours have passed and here is the result:

       Can One’s Meditations Influence The World?

Can’t Keep Up

Overwhelmed, well nigh.
Stuck, in any case.
Habit, certainly;
Dependency, it’s possible.
Too cowardly to hit delete, unsubscribe,
Headline drawing, leading,
Wooing into worlds of guidance -
There I am,
Adding one more site,
Email list so long
I’m sensing danger.

Yet, and yet,
I’m in the pit of knowledge, help;
Seduced
By eagerness and curiosity,
Induced, I click.
I fall,
A toy so miniscule,
I’m putty in their hands.

Motives suspect, motives pure - it’s in our times.
Motives all - natural.
But how can I create
When time is drained?
Promoting’s pace accelerating,
I’m just me, a Pooh of little brain.
It sounds so negative, but then
It’s all a double-sided coin.

Can’t Keep Up 2.24.2016
Out Times, Our Culture II; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Catch That Thought
  
Catch that thought.  It closes down.
Paul Tillich once said to my friend,
There are those thoughts that never come again.
I don’t agree.  Not wholly, but
Within the moment that flies by,
It vaporizes.  I,
A Pooh of Little Brain,
Not very focused  
Need to trap the moment
Or it’s gone, and I must wait
Until some friendly fate
Brings back the catalyst
That brought
The then-what-felt
World shaking thought
And write it down
Perhaps to get it out
Into a world I think about
Spontaneously.

Catch That Thought 10.12.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Rescued Cat
(To Veronica, his rescuer)

This very eve
A cat retrieved
From execution -
(Known as ‘putting it to sleep’
In worlds polite.)

I am relieved.
Others too -
Others who were grieved
At contemplating Mickey’s plight.
(We’ve named him Mickey.
It seems right.)

Every living thing loves life.
Who’d take the life of such a creature?
Harmless, causing not one other creature
Strife?  Well, mice of course:
A course he takes out in the wood,
Hunting out there as he should.

Saved by the bell.
Saved from the hell of being killed
By skilled hands, skilled injections:
“Put to sleep” a healthy, pretty cat rejected.  

Time to cheer.
A darling, eager friend
Consulting friends,
And friends of friends
Until she reached the blessèd end
Of finding little **** a home.

Cat Rescued 2.15.2017
Cat Book II;
Arlene Corwin

Tychism*the doctrine that account must be taken of the element of chance in reasoning or explanation of the universe.

         Cause vs Chance & Chaos
                  (an intro into…)

Nothing winds up accidentally,
Nothing is an accident
An arithmetic; from some all-hidden source.
A mathematic not yet solved, but real nonetheless,
With causes, laws that do not pause
On earth and in the universe.

The chases, choices
Numberless conditions
With their endless combinations
Make for every present moment.

Causes vs Chance & Chaos 6.17.2020 Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience: Arlene Nover Corwin

I was thinking about human essence and this came out.

Sorry and sad that this comes out of my brain again, it does at the moment,  for among the ubiquitous money orientated TV competitions are the ever-present newscasts with their on-the-spot reporting.
     As usual, I’ve worked and reworked this to produce a piece of art.

              Chaos & Teargas II

Chaos and teargas
Now choose and viruses once again,
When
What I want is to pass the years
Without the tears, awful fears
In place on a crying face.
How to, It being an end you want too:
All of, each of you
Out there,
Wherever the chances and choices have placed you.

With nearly the yearly Thanksgiving
For most of us living in peace
(Rewriting in March)
Exposed to the chaos while sitting as such,
In chairs or on couches -
Not crouching or fleeing,
Pursued by policemen or soldiers,
We miss being fodder.
How lucky we are!

Suffused with the anger and violence
While eating our turkey and cranberry sauce,
Exhausted and worried
From scurrying youngsters,
Flurries of gangsters & burying mothers…
Smothering gases of withering fires,
And masses of dawdling, dithering leaders,
Chaos and teargas the emblem for hire
We, worn out and tired,..
And now it’s the virus dear readers,
From all of this chaos that rages and grows,
And nobody knows how to stop it.

Chaos & Teargas 11.17.2019/revised, rewritten 3.1.2020
OurTimes, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Charting The Changes      
     (Once Again)

How can I leave them?
I have eyes, the body, brain;
These changes subtle and not so… going on,
And I a part.
The ***: it never leaves.
You watch the nuance - age regardless.
Muscle, limbs, all inners shifting;
Dangers one could ne’er imagine
Years before -
And there they are,
Daily dominators from within
And from without,
Pushing, shoving, tugging
Quiet, noisy, brash and smug.
Dangers one would - if one could -
Convert to chance both sound and likely;
At the center of it all:  you. I and we,
The question being, how to cope with,
Deal with it undisturbed; philosophic, unperturbed,
Optimistic, cool, detached,
Present-living, hatching new ideas
From day to day as if it’s play,
The way presenting self on impulse, off-the-cuff
And you obeying  
Soundlessly in laughter.

Charting The Changes (Once Again) 8.7.2016
I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

Christmas  Face

Looked once again
At the face in the pane.
Lines up, down, long, short.  
More than or…more than before.
Is the mirror telling lies?
Does the looking glass disguise?
Beastly age upon the face
Like an old and rotting carcass.

Rubbed, scrubbed clean in the tub,
With Christmas near, a new New Year,
It needs some makeup.
Careful not to fake,
I thereupon take up the day
Smile away,
And leave the Christmas face to stay.

Christmas Face 12.22.2020 Circling Round Vanities II; Ageing; Wrinkling;  Circling Round Experience; arlene Nover Corwin

Circling Round Everything #2
                  2018

After Brexit
          Circling Round Self-Interest

I watch the news.
Scotland refuses,
Wants to go its way and wants
To stay In EU.  
It’s an issue.
Everyone has something that they want to clinch
Will not give an inch or forfeit .
How to beat what eats the issue,
Makes you blind and binds you?

To defeat self-interest is the issue.
Take the long gone League of Nations,
Its creation to end war –post World War One.
Did some good, but still it failed.
World War II was on its tail.
Came the UN - still extant.  
Now the EU, is it canting?  

Things start out with good intentions.
Nature’s thing is to evolve:
Grow, contract, break down, dissolve.
Replaced by new forms and conditions;
The self-interest’s hidden skeleton.

Political by unintention,
Few convictions, few opinions,
I see pure idea and the spirit,
Reason true and what’s behind it,
What is missing and what is.
In this case what is, is always
Circling ‘round, you guessed,
Self-interest.

It’s Always About Self-Interest 6.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Sitting up in bed on a Sunday morning editing, re-writing, refining. A bit long but worth it in the reading - thinks I!

        Coffee (A Conflict Of Values)
Catering to a certain need for stimulation,
Even relaxation and the psychic high,
Coffee bean in cool, dark tin,
Fragrance and the oil in
The box or jar or bag’s supply
Of pleasure ought to make the drinker
Think a little about why
The bitter sweet is such a stinker,
In whose absence droops the mood
The energy, the good;
Whose undemanding look
In cafeteria or china cup and just a slurp
Creates the nervous, wrecked and hooked.
Symbol of that quiet urge
For pleasant conversation’s purge,
To say this has a feeble ring,
Insistent urge to reach a high, high as the sky
From just a thing
(to say this has a feeble ring),
Well, surely pleasure comes from means
Far less addictive than caffeine’s
Delicious smell and taste,
Java’s clutch (was Java Dutch?)
Conversation’s time-filled waste;
That needs no brew,
Nor company of two.
But then, an energy from what?
Oh dear, the will is weak
When pleasure lies within the cheek and coffee ***,
And one has never learned the art
Of keeping silence in the heart.
Bitter devil, wreaking havoc like a weevil
On plantations of the body.
To steal upon the cells by stealth,
Speed the heart, adrenals, pulse,
God knows what else;
Claiming vitamins and health –
And still the perils lie elsewhere,
Where habits have their hidden lair,
Vice/virtue, meet excess;
Battling for their piece of peace,
Posing as a social duty,
Threatening in bitter beauty.
Dear, oh dear, I fear that life (it’s clear)
with coffee’s here to stay,
My own cup one small hour away.
From Macbeth: the coffee oath:
Stir the sugar, stir the milk,
Make the coffee smooth as silk,
Help the migraine, the depression;
Be benign in our transgression.
Tranquilizing our confusion
Make gregarious the nation.
Cof-free or cof- fiend?
Or just plain coff… and what you make it be?
Coffee (A Conflict of☕Values) 4.21.1999/ 1.8.2011/2.4.2018Coffee Book II; Definitely Didactic;Arlene Corwin

Hello world! Though written in 1997, how I love this one (Happen to find it while editing “Swedish Book”).

.          Collapsing In On Itself
  
A week-dead pike on local stone wall,
Placed there or dropped by some passing seagull
And ignored; once fresh and full now meagre and dull,
Is almost the same as the day that it came,
But entrails have started to go.
(Are they ‘entrails’? I don’t really know.)
Of course it has innards; the roe, liver gall,
And I’d guess there’s a stomach.
It think it’s a pike - maybe perch, not a haddock!
The thing that’s essential, its cardinal what-ness
Is something that shows now whenever I to pass it.
Everything rotten or heading that way,
Falls in on itself in its terminal rot-ness.

Collapsing In On Itself 8.16.1997/revised and amended 5.13.2019 Swedish Book; Circling Round Nature; Birth, Death & In Between; Nature Of & In Itself; Arlene Nover Corwin

Comeback

Perhaps I should be grateful
That I never was recipient
Of great applause,
Years of adorers,
Broadway’s honey,
Years of being stunning,
Grateful that
I never had to kowtow, bow out,
Miss the kudos and the fame,
Never knowing what life was
With and without them, since I never got them.
Never got to play Las Vegas,
Glad there never came a time
Of longing for a non-existent encore,
Cheering I no longer hear.

Hair going grey,
Kilos heading the wrong way,
You are asked to make a comeback,
Or you’ve asked to make a comeback;
Life feels boring,
No alluring pleasure takes the place
Of listener filled with earful grace.

You sweat and strain, extra kilos off again,
Get back routines,  
Move as you did in your teens,
Flexibility, the voice retaining every nuance.
Frank and Cher came back again - and then again.
We followed each rendition, each gradation, limitation;
Cheered until the cheers turned into hesitation.

I am grateful that I never
Had the clamouring for autographs and tresses,
Shredded dresses, theirs and mine.
Never had the glamour and the clamour of masses,
Fervent need to make a comeback,
Coming back to audiences smelling wine:
Hard to define.
And still I play and sing and grow.

Comeback 5.28.2008/revised3.19.2021
Birth, Death & In Between; Time; Vaguely About Music; Arlene Nover Corwin

Coming Down To Earth

If you’re famous,
There will always be a someone
Who has never heard or seen a picture
Of the likes of you;
Not seen your picture,
Doesn’t have the least idea
Who, what you are
Or what you stand for.

Doesn’t that scoot little you right down
To terra firma?
Started this in two fourteen.
Found it on a teeny hidden-somewhere-scrap.
It’s two eighteen: I feel the same as.
(rhymes with famous – see line 1)
Poet’s freedom once again,’’’
I can’t resist.
Might have been comedienne,
But then,
It’s not my calling.)

Anyway,
It does become one
(rhymes with someone -see line 2)
To come down to planet earth
And stick to anonymity.

Do your job,
Stick to your your day.
Things are working out your way
Without you knowing
What they’re doing.
Let the winds of fate and karma
Make the lack of show your army.

Coming Down To Earth 3.1.2018 Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic: Arlene Corwin

This is a standing consideration of mine:  In fact, I've just rewritten it and dared to make it even stronger

This is a standing consideration of mine:

The title was a phrase I was attracted to and thought to write a song to.  My poetic self took over and ‘conceived in Paris’ became this instead. A poem dedicated to the person who first used the phrase, Marc Myers, creator of the site Jazz Wax, who was conceived in Paris but born in New York.

Here I was, watching the new Swedish prime minister Stefan Lofvén (pronounced Levain) giving his important program point by point on TV.  Intending after to edit my upcoming book Swedish Book. What happens?  Another thought and I’m wandering, not taking in each detail, each important name and role…. The following resulted:
Signed, Compulsive but not yet developed,
Arlene

I was surprised when this poem showed up this morning, chosen as 'front page picks' on AllPoetry.com, (most popular poetry site in the world? the universe? - I don't know, but who cares). I'd even forgotten I'd written it. But reading it over, it's good! Good and even informative. Have a read. ✍️

"Who ever thought of it as the peninsula it is. Inhabited by native Americans and called Narrioch, a ” land without shadows”, “always in the light”, its beaches facing south and ‘always in the light; a “point” or “corner of the land”. Come 1600’s and it’s Dutch bought for a gun, a blanket and a kettle. Also called Coninen Island, then Coney Hook, then maybe Conyn Eylandt. Maybe even Konah, even Colman after John Coleman, slain by the natives 1609."
Wikipedia
CONEY ISLAND

Who ever thought of it as the peninsula it is. Inhabited by native Americans and called Narrioch, a ” land without shadows”, “always in the light”, its beaches facing south and ‘always in the light; a “point” or “corner of the land”. Come 1600’s and it’s Dutch bought for a gun, a blanket and a kettle. Also called Coninen Island, then Coney Hook, then maybe Conyn Eylandt, maybe even Konah, even Colman after John Coleman, slain by the natives 1609.
Wikipedia

So I write about my Coney, phony, and for me my lonely island.
Land of rides and fun’s placations,
First such park for work vacations.
Frankfurters with ***** and mustard,
Frozen custard, chocolate syrup on the top.
Brooklyniters, Jackson Heighters…New York City’s pop…ulation
Come by subway all that way.
(Who had a car?  Everything and place was far,
Every stranger from a land they landed from –
At least their dads or moms or grand or great-grand dads and moms:
Generation and the nation of the 20’s 30’s, 40’s).
Cotton candy, candied apples sweet outside, sour within.
Who thought of sugar then?  
Who thought of staying thin?
Miles and miles of sand - all gray.
Cold Atlantic blocks away.
Parachute ride, new and daring.
Arlene Nover, longing, raring.
Merry-go-round wan and childish,
She, wildishly shy, tongue-tied,
Watched by grownups there not sharing any wooden horse beside
Which could have turned the ride
To fun
No parent un-derstood.
Clear and queer these memories.
Showing up spontaneously.
Sequences squeezed out of fate
Some seventy years later – late.


Coney Island 5.1.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Confession To A Body

Body, you’ve been kind to me.
I’m not sure I’ve been kind back,
Complex the weaknesses which don’t perplex
Because of ignorance and vanity
And all those failings we abhor,
But still ignore.

When skin & bones, the organs, cells
Rebel because they don’t feel well…
Poor body!. While we are busy messing round,
You carry on by blessing all we do and more.
You’ve been a store of energy,
Instinct, tuition in each cell.
And now you do not feel too well:

Pains in the back, the sides, the middle.
Pains a riddle, piddling round, a joke that’s not a joke;
That pokes around in secret parts,
Yokes deficits to circulating heart
Which pumps its longing to survive
Because it knows the price, how nice to live,
The drive primeval.

Partnering with brain, it thinks,
“There’s so much left to do…”
And we, rewarded in abundance,
Know it’s true.

Confessions To A Body 10.7.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Ageing; Circling Round Experience;

Consumer Of Existence

Even if it’s all predestined
It’s you who choose.
So go, so do.
It does what it does
Despite your choices;
So many factors out and in you.

Even if it’s all predestined
You don’t know a thing,
So go, so do,
And carry on as usual.
You win, you lose,
You pay your dues,
Thinking that you have control
Though you have none at all.

A panorama of existence,
You consumer and disarmed.
They call it karma.

Consumer Of Existence 12.14.2016
Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Coping

The lord of boredom is the mind.
If you can’t find
This bond with mind,
You’ll always seek external aid:
Stimulation from outside.
And with no inner guide
One cannot help but slide
Into displeasure which
No pleasure can assuage.

To cope is not to mope
But increase in one’s scope;
Enduring to the -enth degree.
Enthusiastically adapting the whole time
Through silk or slime,
Change bringing hope
If you can only cope.

What type are you?
The basically dissatisfied,
Always looking for a lot, lot more?
Unhappy, filled with pain, aggrieved?
Reaching, searching for the truth,
Your youth again?
Passive, extrovert, submissive?
Angry maybe, and aggressive?
Do you think it’s all a lie, conspiracy and bluff?
The easy explanation not an ‘if’ but ‘is’  - and stiff;

Qualities of character inept,
Or ones to fix or plain accept;
If knowing who you are’s the aim,
Then play the game.
The start:
To know components of the heart.

Coping 3.28.2021 Circling round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Note: “to know is also to know that you don’t know” - Kent Anderson

COPYCATS ALL: AN ODE TO PEP YOU
(Revised. It lacked so much before✍️

We’re copycats all - and it’s healthy.
Coins have double sides, so naturally,
One can spend months, years, merely days
Courting the wrong face of one's pennies.
It can’t matter.
Everything we do is cluttered
(slight. very, copiously, lots)
The moment’s mind-state fixing choice.
So give your voice to instinct’s sense
That does SO matter
As you climb the human ladder,
Mindful of each phase's border;
Copying what touches, reaches,
Even from the cheapest bleachers.

As you climb each step,
This tiny ode is here to
Snap, push, pep you up
With vim and zip.
Copycats All: An Ode To Pep You 1.24.2019 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

A bit schmaltz-illy didactic, but so what! It’s what occurred to me this morning and I worked many an hour on it - believe it or not.

   Corruption Of The Heart

Cosmic Coordination.  

(4 years later)
Meter righted, verbs re-chosen, rhymes clearer, form tightened, economized and easier to read;
even message and its nuance altered
 
Moment ‘now’ can never come again,
Not poetry, not inspiration;
Angle, viewing never contain the  prefix re- (again).
Moments have a nano-difference, nano-variation -
Two sided coins
Joined by rows of nows.
 
Moments have no measure,
No more import one the other –
Value too.
Does sitting on the loo
Have more significance than any other thing you do?
Same dance, same chance, just nuance new.
 
The instant used for what it is:  a one and only,
Friendly, sunny or tsunami —
It, unique and passing.
Yet not random or haphazard.
Influences, guides that sway –
You need to take them,
Soaking up the many ways.

Remember, be aware,  
You also guide and shape and sway
From where you are, for you have power,
Synchronized with galaxy and star
And all the spheres that ever were.
Coda:
Not to sound too know-it-all, sententious
That’s the way it is!
Cosmic Coordination 12.18.2016/ 12.19.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality Arlene  Nover ‘Corwin
sententious
given to moralizing in a pompous or affected manner: he tried to encourage his men with sententious rhetoric.

Cosmic Coordination

The moment of now can never come again,
Never to be repeated:
A double-sided coin -
Now and not.

To be used, it must be used for what it is –
An irreplaceable
To use up to the hilt;
An instant problem to be solved –
Just then.
A life improvisation.

As for influences,
You don’t need to take them,
You can give from what you are
For you are synchronized with universes -
Yes you are.

And so it is.

Cosmic Coordination 10.30.2016
Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Cosmic Coordination #3
(one day further, meter righted, verbs re-chosen ,rhymes clearer, form tightened, economized; made easier to read;
even message and its nuance altered)

Moment now can never come again,
Not poetry, not inspiration;
Angle, viewing - changing. never to be re- a thing,
Moments have a nano-difference,
Must have nano-variation;
Individual, a coin
Two-sided, joined
By now and not…

Moments have no measure,
No more import in the one than t’other –
Value too. Does sitting on the loo
Have more significance than any other thing you do?
Same dance, same chance - with difference.

The instant used for what it is –
An irreplaceable – shall we say, space?
(Let’s call it ‘space) to use with all its use                                      
As product, project, problem solved:
A life improvisation.

Influences, guides that sway -
You need to take them,
(soaking up many ways unawares).  And unaware,
You also guide and shape and sway
From where you are, for you have power,
Synchronized with galaxy and star
And all the spheres that ever were.

Not to sound too know-it-all, sententious, preachy:
That’s the way it is!

Cosmic Coordination #3 12.18.2016
Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

This is actually a spontaneously inspired message of love and appreciation to new found Facebook friends from all over this varied globe.    

             Cryptic Time

Posts from all the world!
Who would have thought that flags unfurled
For little me from many you,
And many you from little me.
I’m filled and swell!

Time passes and with glasses raised up high
I sigh a gladdened sigh
That sitting here on chair in Sweden
More than one admiring eye
Is reading this, this very minute
Taking in the things I have to say
On chairs a million miles away.  

Quell mystery! For we  
Will all be history a hundred years from now,
Perhaps no documentary fragment left
To inventory our best efforts.
Yet, we’re here, to write and wrestle with
A universe, and universal questions all have faced
Since time began.  
And we, each other’s fan
Give love through likes and hearts and upraised thumbs.
Fumbling, tumbling round, zooming in on every crumb
That life can offer
Never coming to an ultimate.
Offering love to every Facebook friend
Not succumbing to the humdrum of an end
But encouraging each other.  
Is that not grand!

Cryptic Time 6.14.2019 Circling Round Time !!; Circling Round Reality; Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is actually a spontaneously inspired message of love and appreciation, to new found Facebook friends from all over this varied globe.  

Simply following the flow of thought.    

            Curiosity

Curiosity!  
So admirable and so worthwhile.
It never ‘killed a cat.’
It’s so much more than that.
in one who has it,
It may seem idiosyncratic.

But a treasure trove potential,
Of the jewelled and ideal,
Experiential and essential,
Meant to be a quality of more than ‘simple’,
Curiosity which makes you strong,
Through broadened knowledge,
Every living thing and not, a college,
It is spirit:  spirit of enquiry -
For none deny
It is a spirit.
Oddity  but spirit always is;
All have, few use,
The masses leaning on old views.

One thinks a thought and wonders why
And where and how and who
And so on till the thought is through.
These days it’s only to pursue
And follow through: so easy
With technology.

A universal literacy is all that’s needed.
Freedom helps.  
Once seeded, curiosity might gain nobility,
Respectability.
Both well deserved
And In the end, serve self
And all humanity.

Curiosity 7.15.2020 The Processes: Creative, thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is serious business, series stuff!  I hope it’s not too long to hold your attention. I don’t wish to try your patience.

        Days After: Post Birthday

Day Of The Nobel Prize
             (October 8, 2020)

My poetry: No Nobel Prize,
No metaphors, few images;
Just plain old pragmatism
Made of rhyme and meter,
Themes that speak to those that need them,
Underlying or spotlighting
What is, mostly under-stressed by common folk,
Or spoken in their honoring
A local past or now or
Beauty or complaint or pain, for
Poetry is road; a world
Which is or is not typically unfurled.
Rhythm’s pattern flow its own,
A beat repeated lyrical,
Graceful, elegant, worth hearing,
Moving to, for, from the soul,
Every poem worth Nobel.

Day Of The Nobel Prize 10.8.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Days Of Distraction: The List

What can they be?
They seem to go on endlessly.
Helping out a friend in need;
Finding ways to heed the need(s)
Of several needy friends in need.
Ignoring things that might be done,
Might be some fun
And useful monetarily.
Ignoring requisites of I, myself and me.
Structure: that’s one key.
Thinking practically; harmony.
Priority to me, myself and I.

Life is simple.
Roof, warmth, food -
Summed up sample of the simple,
Which gives ample time
To carry out the other,
'Other' meaning tools which further
Happiness and satisfaction.

Paying bills and buying,
Days of duty and temptation;
Stress and tension:
‘Stressed out’ grown to idiom.

What to do about this ‘dream’,
For dream it is.
This is a list and not a scheme;
Not a plan nor stratagem.
Read and think, find out!
The answer lies in nought but thee.
(That’s you and me).
You’ll see
               what works.

Days Of Distraction 10.21.2017
Definitely Didactic; I Is Always You Is Me;
Arlene Corwin

Chatted with my 'English rose' of a daughter (raised in Oxford, England now residing in Oregon, USA.) who complained of distractions which keep her from other, perhaps more practical or and/or rewarding things.  It inspired these little reflections.
It will go into my collections: Definitely Didactic and I Is Always We Is You.  By the way, my 16th book Birth, Death & In Between II went into publication today!

Just editing my next book "Definitely Didactic" and thought I'd share this.

   Days Of Distraction: The List

What can they be?
They seem to go on endlessly.
Helping out a friend in need;
Finding ways to heed the need(s)
Of several needy friends in need.
Ignoring things that might be done,
Might be some fun
And useful monetarily.
Ignoring requisites of I, myself and me.
Structure: that’s one key.
Thinking practically; harmony.
Priority to me, myself and I.

Life is simple.
Roof, warmth, food -
Summed up sample of the simple,
Which gives ample time
To carry out the other,
'Other' meaning tools which further
Happiness and satisfaction.

Paying bills and buying,
Days of duty and temptation;
Stress and tension:
‘Stressed out’ grown to idiom.

What to do about this ‘dream’,
For dream it is.
This is a list and not a scheme;
Not a plan nor stratagem.
Read and think, find out!
The answer lies in nought but thee.
(That’s you and me).
You’ll see
               what works.

Days Of Distraction 10.21.2017 Definitely Didactic; I Is Always You Is Me; Arlene Corwin
Chatted with my 'English rose' of a daughter (raised in Oxford, England now residing in Oregon, USA.) who complained of distractions which keep her from other, perhaps more practical or and/or rewarding things.  It inspired these little reflections.
It will go into my collections: Definitely Didactic and I Is Always We Is You.  By the way, my 16th book Birth, Death & In Between II went into publication today!

Dear Diary #1

Dear diary,
I’m getting oh so clever.
Washed my hair,
Took a bath and clipped my toenails
Scraped and shaped the cuticles.
Tiny miracles indeed:
Tiny miracles in need.
Tracking down these daily wonders,
Dealing with the ‘going under’
May become a daily task,
Inspire the rascals to desist:
Rascal stiffness and discomfort,
Rascal bother, pain and strain.

Simple rhymes to rule the roost,
Give my warmed-up self a boost;
Easier to jot, oppose the rot of
Mind and hand,
A brand name for the ones who can’t.
Amputees.comPensate.
(Any dot you can create).

Dear Diary12.7.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

DEAR GOD: A LETTER & A STATEMENT