Hallelujah For The Older Woman

Hallelujah for the older woman,
She’s a prize for the world to see.
Hallelujah older women!
Age spots, wrinkles – deeply lovely!
Sure, there may be much to cure –
She has the cure.
Gone the ****** appetites,
Luring hormones God ignites,
Tiring drives the world invites.
The cosmos is her paramour.

No more of this world - just in it
And the world a thing - her plaything;
Something only age can bring,
Minute by each ageing minute.

Hallelujah For The Older Woman12.15.1999revised 3.4.2021 Circling RoundWomanII; Circling Round Ageing;Arlene Nover Corwin

Handicaps

Handicaps: we have them, each and every one of us.
Too busy with the busy-ness to notice,
Till one day life catches up;
Former choices do no longer;
Slurping, supping, sipping wine and caviar.
What you’ve been, no longer are.
Leg, finger, hand-icap:  
Pand-epi-demi-cap.
Imprisoned and aware
In new surprising ways, forced to adapt:  
Perhaps pace slowed, head bowed,
The lapse of time interpreted anew.

Doings take on an insistence you
Ignored all through the years before;
A not-so-secret cue to more-than-woo a state
Wherein resistance is effete,
Clues lord, you servant.

Yes, we have them in the karma.
They may harm.  They have no charm.
They are the permanent new feature,
You, prisoner and creature
Left to farm this new terrain,
Use its fertility to seed again
A life of happiness;
Fruitfulness no less than it was once:
A handicap turned Ponce de Leon.

Handicaps 4.26.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Happy Birthday, Daddy Dear

Happy birthday once again,
Daddy dear.  April fifteen,
And you’re not here to share it
For you died so many years ago.
(the year before we reached two thousand).
But the fifteenth rolls around
And somehow sounds a chord inside me.
This year happens to be
                                      Pesach, Easter;
Easy to remind myself.
You would have been one hundred nine –
Not unattainable          
As age today.
But still you went celestially.
I hope you’re happy
As I wish you happy birthday anyway.
So with a happy memory,
I’ll say happy goodbye
And start
A hopeful, happy day.

Happy Birthday, Daddy Dear 4.15.2017
Birthday Book; Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

Happy Birthday, Dear Departed Brother

We weren’t awfully close,
You far away in Hollywood,
I, far, far up north in Sweden.
But our soft sibling emotion
Never dwindled, for
We loved each other dearly,
Maybe more than siblings dwelling near,
And so, each wrinkling year,
When February fifteen comes around
(one day post-Valentine)
It’s effortless to love-propound
Through past and present anodyne
What’s lived no more, consigned
To storied history,
A morning, mourning benediction:

Happy Birthday, brother true.
I’ll always miss you
Just a bit,
Whenever I can think of it –
Like at this moment.

Happy Birthday Dear Departed Brother 2.15.2017
Birthday Book;
Arlene Corwin

It’s not yet tomorrow, the 8th November. But like a child I’m already celebrating it with anticipation.  I’ve no real emotion, rather a quiet gratitude and awareness of life itself.  My eyes see nature differently, I hear and put together sounds in a newly discovered way.  The whole picture of what and who makes up life has taken on a new significance and hue.

   Happy Birthday To Myself

Happy Birthday To Myself!
My outer self, my inner Self!
The body me, the mind-full me.
The trillion cells
That keep me well.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO IT ALL!

Happy Birthday to the mood
That helps to make me feel good.
To fates that brought me where I am;
The virtues, gifts, the blames I claim.

Happy Birthday to the tricks
I’ve learned to use  at this
My new day’s eighty sixth;
Tricks and tips, clues, hints to share,
(One is ever part aware)

And so I send myself this mail
Literally as I am able.
Satisfied that I’ve not died.
With years that morphed
Into an age where I can sing this song:
Happy Birthday To Myself! 🎶
Toodle-loo and Cheers!  So long!  💕

Happy Birthday To Myself 11.8.2020 Birthday Book; Arlene Nover Corwin

Happy Easter

There is no master holy day
That beats the Easter holiday.
No fiesta with its vista of eternal life:
The basis of an Easter.

Sister to Passover,
Depth more than a four leaf clover
Where no fluff can dwarf its notion
And no proof but a convention
Grown from Biblical tradition
It is history worth telling;
Worth the celebrating,
Pondering;
Astonishing, confounding:
Jesus’ fall and rise
The most bewildering surprise.

So let us spend a day
To think about eternity
And then be happy
At the possibility
Of love that lives immortally
Happy Easter!

Happy Easter 4.2.2021 Our Times, Our Culture Ii; Arlene Never Corwin

Photo discovered on Facebook's 'memories'.   Wow!

Have A Merry…

My first reaction was a ‘Merry’…
Going on from there to ‘cheery’;
Then came leer, and then a ‘dreary’.
Finally a feeling wary,
Underlying yuletide ruined
By dollar, euro, kronor, coin.

Later on, and not too soon
I turn to have a Merry Xmas,
Start to join the friendly masses.
Who am I to analyse!
Darting to a love-filled heart.
I leave behind the gifts and mart,
Impart good cheer,
And wish the world a grand New Year!

Have A Merry…12.21.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

On our minds more each day:
          Have I Come Too Late?

Helping Attitudes With Platitudes

You do not have to be
Anyone but who you are.
Refining character
To help define your aura
Is the only thing you need acquire.

To experiment,
Pretend you are a foreigner,
A highborn neighbour
Or a stranger.

Be yourself and you will help the globe
As well as every microbe;
Setting off the chain reaction
Near and far
Encapsulating who you are.

Helping Attitudes With Platitudes 7.17.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

He Never Did Believe

He never did believe in God –
Just couldn’t.
He went yesterday.
I hope he faded, simply faded,
Fell asleep pain free, thought free
And no anxiety.

I never preach.
I cannot teach,
But feel some It does reach us all
According to capacities,
The faculty through faculties,
Our capabilities.

Belief or not –
Life’s crux takes care,
Taking generations through -
To rid the self of doubt,
Of frailty and flaw.

There’s force out there
Before the stars,
Before the universes
And our cares.

He never did believe
Or even contemplate the reasons why.
It’s all okay.
It has its reasons reasoning
Beyond the sky and comprehension.

He Never Did Believe 12.11.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; God Book II;
Arlene Corwin
(to Å)

Waking with a fuzzy mind I had to collect myself.  Here's what I did.
          Here & Now: A Mantra✍️

Sometimes it’s better to look at a writing years after.

     Holding On To Empty Spaces

This body is a scandal.
Hidden clocks we cannot handle:
Agings, dyings out;
Impossible to rise above.
Easy prey for ego-love;
Body, with its rotting ways,
Craving undue notice.

Power-loving beast of burden
Following illusion’s burgeons,
Chasing visions leading nowhere
But to temporary shelters:
Time’s ordeal the ‘real deal’.

Sweltering in breathing shells
That lose their health and too soon fall
From superficial aim & goal
And shrugging off the inner graces,
Chasing after outer-places:
Holding on to empty spaces.

Holding On To Empty Spaces 10.30.2003Birth, Death & In Between; Circling Round Time;
Re-composed 2.20.2021  Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

First came the title, then came reasoning, then summing up - the rhyme and meter genetically built in.  I loved justifying the concept.


  Homage To All Things That Happen

All according to some plan -
New, alien - to keep things going, rescue man;
The right, the wrong: it all belonging
To some one humongous system
Far beyond our comprehension.

I have read
There are a hundred million neurons in our head,
These having millions of their own:
One giant telephone;
Small galaxies
To please the laws
Of effect’s Cause..

Hard to take in,
Come to the conclusion
That all things that happen
Are for something larger than
You, me, the galaxy
And on and on…
One cannot help but gape in wonder.
Homage To All things That Happen 5.27.2021 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is to show how development’s ‘evolution’ works.  It’s a phenomenon worth exhibiting every now and then.  Don’t you think? I write this to writer and artist friends!✍️
Love, Arlene

Wrote this 2.24.1998: Home Truths before I ever got a computer or published a book.  This is a revision and a refinement. Tighter, better meter, chopped and cut, more condensed and readable.  Much better, I hope.

1st version 2.24.1998
For the man with eyes/The universe lies//In the stories I tell/Through typewriter’s ribbon,/The rhymes that spell/Out the good, ex-uruban nature, food,/My neighbourhood,/The body-me’s,/ The mystic, politic,/Prosaic, partly;/Energy or laziness,/Clarity or haziness;Words that hurt and words of hope/(Mostly hope, for hope encloses./Criticism separates/While hope’s ambrosias/ Fuel the fates/To spurt and cope,/Give life to heart’s least/Beat and last.)Home truths open personal;/Signs of weakness and reversal;/Love with and without libido;/God with and without a credo./home truths for the one with eyes,/
Worldwide spread on paper size A4.

               Home Truths
             ( latest version)

For the man with eyes,
The universe lies in the stories I tell
Through typewriter’s ribbon;
With rhymes that spell out,
The good, food, my old neighbourhood,
Body-ness, politics: prosaic partlys,
With energy, laziness, clarity, haziness,
Hurtful words, hopeful words,
Hopeful curds, for hope encloses,
While nick-picking separates all hope’s ambrosias,
Fueling the fates to spurt upwards and cope,
Keeping life heartbeats last, least, lost a-throbbing…
Home truths are personal,
Signs of shortcomings and signs of reversal.
Love with and without libido;
God with and without a credo.
Home truths are for one with two eyes to surmise,
Spreading worldwide on A4’s paper size.

home truth
noun (usually home truths)
an unpleasant fact about oneself, especially as pointed out by another person: what he needed was someone to tell him a few home truths.
Home Truths 6.13.2019 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin
((found, by the way, on a floating scrap)
8.3x11.7inches

Home University

Mandy Mercer-Neder, friend, daughter of composer Johnny Mercer for whom he wrote the hit “ "Mandy Is Two”  in 1941, died Sunday August 30, 2020, age 81.      
    
      Honoring Mandy

Deep inside
I sighed, I cried;
Internal sighing, crying
So, so hidden and unbidden,
Bringing life's death to the forefront.
With an unexpressed
Heartbrokenness.

Mandy dear, unwell for years,
Brave and perky,
Generous to kin and peers,
Using what low strength she had
To cheer on others.

A state from fate we all shall share.
We were not there.
We will be there one dated day,
One way or t'other.

In the foremost corner of my mind
I honor Mandy.
Innermost, I find regard
I saw no hint of,
But by dint of her departing
With intention, mind and heart,
An unexpected urge,
A surge of empathy stirs, spurs me on
To honor Mandy.

Honoring Mandy 9.1.2020 Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

A momentary observation:
               Hot, Hot, Hot

Whenever I have naught to say
I write about the weather.
It’s a good old English way
To say whatever’s
Easiest to pass the time,
The personal not being prime.

Yet here I sit, sunny comfy
Admiring the blue of sky,
The marvel of a lake whose look
Can take the breath away:
White, yellow water lily scattered *****-nilly
By some law of nature I will never fathom.
Row- and motorboats parked here and there
Far and near, on shores and little docks ad hoc.

Cirrus clouds are forming
Storming many hundred meters high.
And yet the sky, still blue
Looks still, yes, tranquil.  But I’ve moved from chair
To capture all in nature so enrapturing these eyes:
The butterflies, the dragonflies, the bees and flies,
Gnats, ants and ticks.
But I digress, for there are ducks to watch, nothing to fix -
(except, perhaps those nasty ticks).
This life as perfect as God made it,
Sun and cloud and shade quite perfect
Though the day is hot as hell.
I welcome every bit of it.

Hot, Hot, Hot 6.9.2018 Circling Round Nature II; Our Times, Our Culture II;  Swedish Book;; Arlene Nover Corwin

How Are You: The Unpredictability

They almost always start the conversation
With “How are you?”
You say “Fine”.
It is the norm.
Time-honored, automatic, form expected.
        
Yet, you reach an age
Where you no longer fit the norm accepted,
And you hesitate,
Waiting just a little bit
                            ‘fore voicing back.
Unpredictable tomorrow:
Routine ailments, triumphs, sorrow;
Unpredictable around-the-clock.

Is it wrong to linger?
Wait to answer?
I think not.
To blur convention, slur cliché,  
You spur [real] candor
For the day.

When they ask you how you are,
Think of instability
And take a second to reply.

How Are You: The Unpredictability 8.9.2017
Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

How Are You Today?

Volcanos are waking;
Villages shaking.
My husband and I
Had our second shot yesterday.
Me, I have questions concerning bacilli.
Aways the bad mixed with good, good with bad.
While lying in bed
Learning lots from TV,
All that’s around me,
Patiently waiting to see any side effects;
When, and or if…

Friends on the phone,
Themselves all alone:
Some CoVid and sick-ish, some fine,
Some immune.

All is in movement:
My cat at the moment.
Icebergs and soil,
Men drilling for oil;
Out of one’s hands, much unpreventable
Maybe the whole.

All that I wonder propped up as I lay,
Head on three pillows, is how, really how
Are you feeling today?

How Are You Today? 4.10.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

How Can I Resist You?  
(based on a true story - as they say in films)

“How can I resist you?
Says the husband to the wife.
You are the treasure of my life.
I can’t desist.”
“How can I ignore the body next to me?
A body that I love to watch and love to see,”
Says the husband tenderly.
After many years of nights together,
Days deciding whether such and such is right;
For him the very sight of her
Excites his eagerness to please,
Put her at ease
In any way he can.
There is no plan,
Just following the fancy of the moment.
“Will it be potatoes, eggs or rice?!
Without thinking twice,
The meal a catalyst
Anything can taste as nice
When fancy’s fantasy takes part,
The mind and heart allied.
For both of them, no whim or hunger is denied,
Including pride in what the other realizes and attains.

How Can I Resist You? 5.23.2020 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Just thinking…

How Long Is A Dream?

How long is a dream,
Stream of consciousness
Mirroring –unconsciousness,
And speed of thought
Reckoned
In seconds,
Pinned into entities
Clear as a bell.


The pain or the joy of
Of a day gone away,
How long is the theme
Crammed into a dream,
The bad and the good
Reflecting the childhood dance
Of experience,
Mire of desire explicit as film.

How long is a dream
Is the same as to ask about time
And the time that it’s taken
To organize, star in, produce and direct -
(You do/are all four)
Constructions so tricky and dotty and flighty
It might take one years
To write out all those fears, hopes and wishes
Compressed into minutes
From snippet to whole.

How long is a dream,
In its limits or boundlessness
Fluff as reality stuffed into seconds.
Puzzling, perplexing,
It keeps a man guessing,
The question as madd’ning
As how long is string?

How Long Is A Dream? 1.25.2017
Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

How Many People Would You Have To Change To Change The World?

How many people would you have to change
To change the world?  
The other day the man I love,  
One who has faith in God above.
Declared the impotence of man.
Insisted phrase by rehashed phrase:
“This world has never been so bad.
It’s getting worse and worse and worse!”
He feels so helpless. What a curse!
Has no belief in his own richness;
Can’t understand the reach
Of butterfly’s effect: the flap
Of wings in Florida
With vibes that stretch to Africa.

How does it work?

You find the thing you’re born to do.
You do it hour by hour by hour.
Work through the furor,
Take your power,
Use it, focused on the now.

There’s nothing more.

That small series called your life
Is quite enough to end all strife.
Not instantly, not right away -
For life takes time.
But yours is prime:
A mix of self-esteem
Humility and bravery,
Seeing life reflectively
With love and strength
The length of days.

How many people would you have to change
To change things?
Think of wings!

How Many People Would You have To Change To Change The World? 3.2.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II;

How Much We take For Granted

There’s more I can’t do than I can.
With seven fingers amputated,
The only thing I find that’s bettered
Is creative mind, un-fettered
And un-shattered by the principle: mind over matter.
For it’s matter/mind
Refining, re-aligning
By  some all-surpassing intellect.
It’s odd that forces we call God
Set courses new;
Courses brewing in the quiet
While the body riots
In complaint.

So many things to learn to handle:
Twisting, turning, grabbing, holding,
Pushing, pulling, squeezing, folding,
Lifting, mixing, gluing, fixing…
What a list! And what I missed
When there were ten.
How much we take for granted!

How Much We Take For Granted 3.24.2021 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

How Quick It Goes

How quick it goes to eighty-six!
(Excuse the grammar, deviation its deluxe,)
When rhymes delight
Their author in a wakeful night.)
How quick it went, how quickly gone;
The present sent each second on.
Went, sent, lent from heaven
Both to time and human.
Quick is this phenomenon!

How Quick It Goes 1.6.2021 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

How The Brain Works

It loves detail, first of all.
Generalities do not excite it.
Non-specifics, loose and vague
Give no delight,
Carry no weight,
It wants the truth.

If body’s trained, or has within it energy,
The tendency to move with speed,
The lovely brain transforms each need,
Breaks down each fact as act
To fit into its aim,
Which movement may or may not have a name;
Duty, task, procedure, chore
Undertaking taken for no more than fun.

Endearing brain loves to explore,
Take on itself the new untried.
It has a visionary side inside
That keeps it fresh and beautiful:
A purposeful conception, not by half,
A dutiful creation in itself.

Talents, gifts, its origin
Non-convention its beginnings.
Gem potential when you get it,
Plastic and experimental if you let it.
It holds to the good lifelong,
Yet treated wrongly values wrong.
Born to serve each one on earth
It is the gain of endless worth.

Amused, confused oh, reader dear?
Come near to this cerebral matter,
Leave the life of nattering,
Chit-chattering.
Live to see what really matters.
Train.
It’s all there in the brain.

Addendum:
There are things I did not cover,
Could not cover: will; willpower.
Brain likes detail.
Unconcerned by big and small,
What is and is not trivial,
Import (to it) all the same:
Detached neutrality its other name.

How The Brain Works 5.30.2020 Definitely Didactic II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

How To Communicate Climate Change

Alliteration just won’t do it.
Numbers about record years –
This one worse than last,
The last more awful than before:
More godawful than before.

“Table water, rivers shrinking…”
We can’t take it in.  
Had they words like:
‘Foods stop growing, seeds stop sowing,
Banks have nothing; people starve” -
You know, basic stuff,  
We just
Might ‘get it’.

Hard to feel for, God knows where -
Fires in LA, Oregon,
Igniting all at once;
And they’re not war zones!

Choppers hurling water
Onto states the size of galaxies.
Helpless, you’re de-sensitized.
(your only arms against disaster).

Have the ‘big guys’ seen the chain?
Folk on the move, the extra heat, the lessening rain?
Its flip side, folk closed in, the Arctic drain,
Shops closed down or vandalized?
Life’s fundamentals random-ized?

How get them? Fundamentals.
Goat, pig, cow, tree, flower, how…
Urgent treatment, urgent action;
Urgent sense of the connection.  
It’s a matter of disclosure and, of course,
Compassion.

How To Communicate Climate Change 6.14.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

I’m taking the liberty of sending you something just finished,  Motivated first by the thought of Co-vid people (stuck down or not) living in small apartments, forced by necessity to be alone and perhaps going bonkers.  Then, of course, I knew I was speaking to any- everyone - period.
Hot off the press:
     How To Tackle Loneliness

Tackle: such a funny word,
A lovely word, an active word.
Loneliness: a sad, inactive, ‘only’ word
Which smells of isolation,
Friendlessness, abandonment, rejection.
Unalloyed projection
Of a mind not seeing rightly.

All it needs is rectifying;
Taking thoughts from out the air
Or in the head where thoughts are spread.
Rejecting systematically the whirling round,
And casting out their ugly sound;
Lifting hand or leg or ‘***’
To something new albeit ‘dumb’.
It does not matter what you do.
It’s just to shift the thought somehow;
Shake the body, use the eye, eyebrow;
Limbs too are there to help you stay
New focussed, endlessly creative.

You’re not alone when you’re alone.
Make your thoughts a telephone.
Ideas are constant.
Change the coin
With which to launch the motivation -
And the whole becomes a boon
To get your ‘happy’ hormones working.
Happiness is always lurking -
There to make you comfortable.

Loneliness, the thief of solace,
A grief giver, full of malice
Leaves when you create in mind,
Find and form and shape some kind
Of Anything.

Use your senses - all of them:
Eyes, nose, ears, tongue, touch: each limb.
You’ve got a toolbox built within.
You have and are your best companion.
There!  A sound and practical solution
Lies at hand.
How To Tackle Loneliness 6.22.2020 The Processes:Creative,Thinking, Meditative; Definitely Didactic II;Arlene Nover Corwin

Hypocrisy Confessed

There are those times
When I enjoy
A murdered leg
Or rib
Or thigh.
I
Call it steak
To make
Myself
Feel comfortable,
The rumblings of the mind assuaged.
Most of the time,
Prime hungry, up to eating like a horse,
I don’t eat cow (of course not horse),
But making food
Not rude or ******,
I, non-fake and non-pretender
Eat my beans, my reds and greens
With appetite.
No bright, slight, sprite
I eat my peas,
My eggs and cheese,
My pasta à la Genovese
Well pleased as punch,
Needing no med. rare meat for lunch.
But then those times…
Oy, oy those times!
Ashamed,
Soul feeling maimed,
Smell of sweet, soy, garlic-y meat
I fall
To ribs [deceitful] call.

Hypocrisy Confessed 4.25.2017
A Sense Of Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin




What can I say - You caught me out!

It’s simply amazing what phrases pop into one’s head and stick - and as they stay there they develop, and as they develop the inner life takes over and what started out a superficial bit of twaddle turns into poetry of some substance, proving anything can become anything with a little bit of reflection.

      I Am A Housewife

I am a housewife.
Organize and deputize,
Buy and cook,
See that everything’s delicious,
Making dishes at my best,
Matching wish of man and guest.


Preserving and conserving, I economize,
Hunting down the clever buys
So there’s savings at year’s end.  
Mix and blend creatively,
And when I shop
I stop and hesitate; contemplate
And seldom buy on impulse.
That said, I occasionally fall and do.

But mostly, shopping for our food’s
A yoga.  So’s the
Washing, cooking, dusting…more;
The most and best health giving chore:
Hands cleaner in the water,
Waistline smaller, reaching up and for…

No breadwinner,
But a winner baking bread.
Cakes and cookies all included.
For, of course, the friends and husband
Whom I feed,
Try to supply each need
Not because it is ‘the done thing’
But because it is the fun thing.

Then there’s me.  Filled with creativity.
Actually, a private soul
With my own needs to feel whole.
I do not underplay the housewife role
As many in society
Who downplay tractability and duty.
For to me it stands for beauty,
Not for slavery.

I am a being who serves house,
Deserves the house,  My house!  Our house!  
No mouse by any means
But combination heroine
And superstar,
Dishing out the wonder
Of existence
With insistence and persistence
For a comfy coexistence
Dishing out the dishes
And a family’s wishes.

I Am A Housewife 12.23.2018 Circling Around Woman II; Arlene over Woman II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I Am Guilty Of All My Failures

I take the blame for all I’ve done;
Own up to all those failures mine;
Failures from:
Naivetể and laziness,
Unworldliness
An focus-less

Yet I’ve managed to fulfill
Some crude achievements,
Accomplishing on intuition:
Not a bad guide, nor a good one.
All sits in the readiness;
Instinct in the readiness,
Prowess in the readiness.

Even if there’d been instruction
I’d have had to wait it out
Until my twenties – eight or seven
When the background synthesized
Into a foreground wise.

Inborn, unshorn weaknesses
That held one back,
In untold ways,

I could say, “***** it!”
Or complete the work
To fight off other frailties;
Develop and maintain
A lively strain
Of concentrative energies,
So that my foibles will be few-er.
Mea culpa!  Mea culpa!
I say, “Do it!”

I Am Guilty Of All My Failures 3.27.2018 Circling Round Egos; Circling Round Energies; I Is Always You Is We;

I Am Here…Now⏰⏳

Today as I read about the vandalizing and the bomb threats I feel, no realize that may be as important as ever.

       I Am Jewish

I read about

An upgrade of the Jewish hate

To say nothing of the Jewish state:

Renewal and revival

That makes the Jew a rival

Present and eternal.


Pressed anew

To say “I am a Jew”

Interned in worlds of other faiths,

Each based

On love

But peopled by

A fractured many

Filled with fractured understanding,

Wear my Star of David,

Feel the coming holidays

With childhood love of coming days,

As always,

Living with those few-ish

Who know also that they’re Jewish,

Forced by some upbringing me,

Living, as I always have in lands where I, minority

Forget, neglect, omit so easily

My true identity:

I am become the Jew I’m born to be.


I Am Jewish 10.17.2016

To The Child Mystic II; Pure Nakedness;

Arlene Corwin

I Am So Grateful [Anybody Reads This Stuff]



I am so grateful anybody reads this stuff.

Exasperated that most others don’t.

And even with an inner miff

I carry on, pushed by an inner drift,

(some would add an inner gift)

Ambition not my motivation.



A brainstorm popping from wherever popping up pops up from.

You will recall it’s happened to you all;

You know, thoughts over which you’d no control.

And yet you thought them, acted out on

Drives beyond what’s called

Free will.



So, am I grateful or detached?

Dispassionate, disinterested, crosshatched?

Standing alone from strength

Yet obstinate from weakness’ lack of confidence.

I’m sure of this:  the length

Of life that’s left to me,

I will persist in poetry.

(One must

When it lies in the guts)

Tampering with syntax, spelling, yummy slang,

Choice aesthetics in good taste/

Choices ****** and a waste;

Writing with a rhythmic sense,

Caring very much for tense,

But not for meters recherché;

I, utmost mystic and most earthy:

Quelle dichotomy!

Hypocrisy?  No, contrast only!



I am grateful for and to the one

That read Ms Corwin.



I Am So Grateful 11.14.2017

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; I Is Always We Is You;

Arlene Corwin

I Can’t Tell A Joke, But…

I Can Write But I Can’t Speak

I can write but I can’t speak.
It’s as if God says,
“You have a message.  Write the words.
I’ll give written words a glaze,
But eloquence that can be heard’s
Off limits, for I slow you down
For honesty, integrity:
To **** the vanity you’ve sown.
I’ll make you stumble, clumsy, dumb,
Slow-thinking, witless,
Sounding somewhat girlish.
I’ve obscured your verbal self
So that you can’t impress.
I keep you in the house
So you must guess
What is and what is not success.

Left there to stammer,
Lose my language;
Syntax, grammar
In a sandwich
Of aphasic doublethink,
The phrases weak,
Technique oblique,
My karma manifestly leaking,
Left to do my dharmic seeking,
(Swim or sink)
Through scribbled, scratched and silent ink.

I Can Write But I Can’t Speak 2.11.2003

I Cook For My Husband #2 (shaved & scissored)

I cook for my husband
The way I would cook for a king.
And I’d cook for the king
(If ever he’d ring)
The way I cook for my husband.
With skill, choice and taste of the day,
What e’er’s in the cupboard to make a buffet
Fit for a king or my husband.
No problem or trouble,
Food is a bubble
Lasting an hour from mouthful to bowel.
If house guest should scowl or glower or frown,
Finding it uphill to get the food down,
I take it serenely,
Comport myself queenly,
Tell him or her
The next meal will be better,
It’s fine to leave morsels of food on the plate
And leave it at that,
It being one method to never get fat.

I Cook For My Husband #2 7.27.2017
Definitely Didactic; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

I was thinking about all the misinformation that we walk around with in our heads, taking it as truth.  

Ideas Are Always There

In the bubbling babble, clamber, scramble
For ascendancy and clarity,
Ideas of every kind
Are forming pictures, wishes, plans and fancies,
Goals and targets; theories.
In the chaos of the mind,
Suppressed, surpassed you find
Surprises ne’er expected.

For those who write,
Who claim a ‘writer’s block’
I say “Knock, knock!”
Ideas are there.
You cannot stop ‘em.  

There to joke with, poke around, soak up
Trusting in instinct without fear,
This writer does declare
You can, whenever, fix things later.

Writing is not made of marble, though
I have a feeling Michelangelo
Could do it, ideas flowing, never ending,
Sending signals of association
And creation
To the hands which held hammer or pen.

So, friend,
When you awake, have breakfasted,
Be sure your ideation-mind is interested.
And here’s the thing:
Pure and simple interesting!

Ideas Are Always There 7.26.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round  Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

I was thinking about all the misinformation that we walk around with in our heads, taking it as truth.  ideas are in your head.  
     I’m sure I wrote this phrase somewhere before, but I’ve no idea where, in what form or what and how I said it.  So I’ll start again.

        Ideas Are In Your Head

Ideas are in your head.
Where else?
You think your thoughts,
Which thoughts are ultimately forced,
The force produced by you alone:
Your tendencies, your latencies
Your genes, your DNA - in short,
Your very own creations,
The perception never what you think.

Objectivity? No matter how we try,
Improbable, implausible  because of “I”.
No matter what the truth,
No matter what the source:
Encyclopaedic, Wikiped…
Accepted to the -enth degree;
It does’t matter.
You, interpreter of all that courses
Concentratedly or scattered.

What is idea, after all?
Purpose; porous* understanding;
Wish, belief, a supposition;
Mental picture, theory,  
Feeling, fancy…

Any drive that drives you
Forms within your head.
Recognise this fact instead of
Taking what you think as sacred.
You’ll become more undiminished, interested
And open-minded.  Guaranteed!

Ideas Are In Your Head 5.4.2020 The Processes: Creative;Thinking; Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin
*porous; poetic licence

Partly autobiographical, partly didactic, wholly spontaneous.    About a jazz singer, but meant to be about universal development      

         I DIDN’T DARE

Yesterday was, in Sweden, the day after Midsummer.  A day when one is tired from having, almost certainly celebrated the summer solstice with partying and too much food and drink.  We were no exception.  We held our yearly neighbor *** luck in our beautifully decorated boathouse, its lawn all mowed, prepared for games, the accordion well tuned and lovingly played.  
     In my next day fatigue, I sat in the sun,  body exhausted but ideas flowingly showing, I wrote poetry from the sublime to the ridiculous: four in all.  No mean feat.  I'll start with the ridiculous.

    I’d Like To Cut Down Summer Ferns

I’d Like To Find Another Word For God

I’d like to find
Another word
For God, for named in scripture’s world
It is a word – a name – word just the same,
Quenching some, offending some,
Plain annoying to some sorts,
Explaining little, saying lots.

Lord, Almighty, the Creator,
Maker, Godhead, Yahweh, Allah,
Father, Son, the Holy Spirit,
Brahma, more, the Man Upstairs,
A thousand other
Endless names for one ground grand initiator.

Birthright, culture, parentage,
History, heredity and what they’ve led to,
What we’re bred to,
Simple leaning notwithstanding,
Pre-programmed we land un-manned.

I think highly of the theist and it’s opposite the non-
With no high regard for anti-s,
For the principle of love embraces
Fat and thin, uncles, aunties.
                                      
In the meantime,
Brain un-stymied,
With ideas and inner truths,
I continue in the use of
God, the word that makes some happy,
Giving comfort, consolation
While I seek some substitution.  

What we want to know
Are secrets, keys, realities;
Of life, of death, of fate and how
To live consistently serenely in tranquility;
Long-lived and daily:
Life without anxiety,
Fulfilled with understanding.

I’d Like To Find Another Word For God 10.29.2017
God Book II; Circling Round Reality;
Arlene Corwin

I Do Not Read, I Write

I do not read, I write!
It’s like the principle of jazz:
A theme expanded single-handed
With no benefit in sight.
And with no benefit in sight
I carry on this inborn rite
With pronoun “i” seemingly right.

Not egotistical
But leaning towards the universal,
For we all are “I” behind the eye,
Its goal, the “i” up in the sky,
And  what I write mid-day or night
Comes from a seeded, seeding thought
So pressing it demands first place,
Computer space
All but ignoring those who think,
Getting their peace by pen and ink.

Others do what they do do:
Jogging, menu-ing or chewing
It’s the inward pleasured *******
Pushing unavoidably
As recreation, situation notwithstanding.

Thus I write but do not read!
(i lie, but need to boast)
Of course I read the most I can,
Loving the words of child and man)

It’s just that sitting in this sun,
Pen, paper handy, gives one
Stimulation, motivation, means and - fun.

I Do Not Read, I Write 10.18.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I was discussing this phenomenon with a friend. Then, coincidentally, I found this on Duanespoetree.com (a great site, by the way) today. Like many of my 4,000 poems, I'd forgotten all about it. Suddenly, it seemed awfully relevant.

      I DON'T THINK I WANT FAME

I enjoy making fun of myself in poetry.  At the moment, I'm editing "Definitely Didactic", my upcoming book.  I came upon this one a few minutes ago and had to laugh. Here it is for your delight.  It is rather charming, actually.
             I Don’t Watch Nature✍️

I Don’t Write Nature Poems

I don’t write nature poems.
My husband is the nature guy,
While I, I sit around
Bound by philosophies and wond’rings why.
However, last night, ten or so fifteen
The crescent moon
Outside my window
Turned from white to orange.
No mirage, I, on the edge of sleep
Sat up amazed,
The deepest part of this un-phased, rather blasé Arlene
In bliss.
How does one explain it, share it, do it justice?
How does one make clear magnificence?

Orange caused a drunken binge
Whose hangover
I had to share
With you, dear reader, reader dear.

This is an interesting one.

If They Ask: What Do You Want?

I do not want.  
I work and let the aim flow through me.
It is art and all its implications:
Polish, depth, finesse, processing –
Whatsoever makes good art.
So,  
Through re-thinkings, tinkerings, eliminations;
Many hours of flowering thoughts,
Produce is produced; wrought
Through humor, reference, experience,
And always aiming at the genuine,
Discovering that one is not as complex
As one thought one was;
More half-done and many-leveled:
Always a surprise.
Discovering that simple going on
Connects synapses of intelligence
And observation: powers unknown.
Unsuspected gifts and lacks.
Stacks and stacks of new disclosures
Brought on by the writing.

If they ask, “What do you want today?” (and everyday)
Just say, “I do not want a thing”,
And let the bell of creativity ring
Through me.

If They Ask: What Do You Want 4.29.2018 Pure Nakedness II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Corwin