Whenever I have nothing To write about, but feel that I’m playing hooky if I write nothing - skulking, as it were, I often write about nature.  In my bed, surrounded by forest, birds who have established their lives in the  insulation under the rooftop and above all windows, I lay there and watched the thick, fine snow floating mindlessly, windlessly  down.  Voila, a title!  Now to find content:

      It’s Snowing Gently, But A Lot

It’s snowing gently
But a lot.
Persistently and softly.
Is that not a metaphor
For …something…
An insistence
Whose importance
I can’t know but sense.

It’s the gentleness that strikes me:
A force that doesn’t force, but is.
An element and facet
And an aspect of behaviour
That could be a saviour
To a person’s happiness
And peace of mind.

The thing or things get done
Looking like fun
But with an impact on all things around.

An almost silent path
With not a sound of wrath,
But just a bath of H20
We’re calling snow,
Knowing that the whole will go in time.

I guess I’ve found my metaphor in rhyme.
It’s snowing,
But while snowing going.  
If that’s not an emblem
Of life’s semblance
And a trope
For spirit’s power and hope,
I don’t know what is.

It’s Snowing Gently, But a Lot 2.17.2021 Circling Round NatureII; Nature In & Of Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s So Much Easier To Say Yes

It’s Suddenly ’In’

We’ve had to wait until it’s ‘in’.
Why must we wait
Until it’s late…too late
To get the message to not care
About the skin -
NOT be aware,
Period.
It is absurd
That grisly ******
Must take place
Before we register the obvious:
Oblivious to face, to race
Without excuse or cause
Or any justifying basis.
Unattached indifference once expressed,
The chief compensation and success.

If evil has its origin in ethics and morality,
Dis-pathy (I made that up)
Vile, injurious;
Stinking, *****, ruinous
Where  all rejecting ‘-o u s’
Are harmful in the end,
Then hatred of the pigment
Leads the trend.
Mindless hatred, mindless rage:
It it to represent our age?

In any case, I’ll join the group
Of ‘hoopdehoopers.’
Silently, I’ll  do my bit,
Writing a little,
Saying to the world, “i love you all”.
Even if I too,
Have miles to go.

It’s Suddenly ‘In’…6.19.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s Twenty Hundred Twenty-One!


Well, son-of-a gun, it’s
Twenty hundred twenty-one!
What’s in a name and what is time?
Its only sign: change ongoing!
Ceaseless, endless, unabating,
Unrelieved, perpetual,
Indestructible, immutable;
Part wave, vibration, particle,
In patterns unpredictable;
Each a transient, sneaking by invisibly:
A birth, a death and in-between;
That decal time that we call Time;
Its silent signal, signal siren unavoidably agreed upon.
The end!
Year gone!
Here, hopefully a hearty, helpful, healthful  friend:
Year twenty hundred twenty-one!

It’s Twenty Hundred Twenty-One 1.1.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Time II; Circling Round Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s Your Decision

It’s your decision, right or wrong.
You go along without dimensions of an understanding,
Ever standing under instinct.
Moment’s instinct driven by and based in sync-
With genes, upbringing, circumstance:
All of these the dance of life
That will forever lead and follow.

Your decision, every moment.
Your voice, your choice,
You the instrument but not the cause.
Who knows what the sources are?
“It’s in the stars”, as often said.
And yet, what’s in your head
Is there,
The leader/seer,
Atmosphere and backdrop notwithstanding.

It’s your decision, yes and no.
You can decide to let it go
If time is wrong or intuition’s song
Is sensing that the time is wrong.
Impulse in life’s small complexities
Paradoxes.

Is the will free as a bird - or burden?
You decide!

It’s Your Decision 11.29.2020 Nature in & Of Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

It Was The 1st Of May

It was the 1st of May today.
I’d not one new idea to play with.
I drew an odd poetic blank.
Was this the start of writer’s block?
Washed some ******, cooked a meal,
Had thoughts to think, much to thank.
Thought about success, illusions,
Dreams, delusions,
Mediocrity,
Folk who do things differently,
Acceptance of diversity:
Aspects of reality
(Which seem
To be my constant theme.)

Look, a poem is out!
In spite
Of not
A thing to cite or write
About.

It Was The 1st Of May Today 5.1.2021 A Sense Of the Ridiculous; Arlene Nover Corwin

I Used To Be
(an ageing jazz pianist/singer observes)

I’ve Forgotten…
(Entitlement to those forgotten)

I’ve forgotten
All the people I’ve been guided by
Whose I had impact.
I would say it was an army -
Some to venerate, to honor
Just for being who they were.

Teachers who reached out –
Or not.
Friend who sat in seat in front:
Third grade, long braid – precisely what
I longed for.
Comic friend, a hundred two this year.
Men who loved me;
Thinkers high above me;
Authors by the hundreds,
Women, men of all professions;
Holy ones…
My goodness, memories gone
And here I sit, result of all
That stands and stood to break the wall
Of ignorance.
They were my chance
And I’ve forgotten more than many.
I would gladly pay a penny to remember mem’ry
Unremembered, out of mind,
Left behind and unobserved,
Consigned to god-knows-where
Out there in limbo.

Tricky this!
I’d like to put a name or give some fame
To those who made me tried and true,
Who said, some way, that “You are you”,
Who gave or formed my values.
Give their due
To those who
Gave me mine.

I’ve Forgetten8.2.2016
Pure Nakedness; Special People, Special Occasions;
Arlene Corwin

I’ve Had Many Names

Arlene
Faith
Nover
Corwin,
Palmer,
Council,
Andersson:
All­
Syllables
Two
But the last
Which was the last,
Which is the last.

Still, one is fastened
To the first -
The very first
One got at birth.

Now that this life is all but over,
Though one might rove some twenty more,
(Ending in you-know-what,
Though you do not think about it)
Arlene Faith Nover,
Has had many names.

I’ve Had Many Names 10.16.2016
Pure Nakedness; Love Relationships II; Birth, Death & In Between II; Birthday Book;
Arlene Corwin

I’ve Only Ever Known Jazz

Of singers who lay claim to jazz,
I only hear a copied trend:
Styles, arrangements, timbre, sound
Make their populistic rounds.

Then I sing; hear harmonies,
Voicings, bass lines, every chord;
No schmaltz, no crotch, no gestured show,
Knowing I’m a jazz-rich throat,
Each note sung on the spot,
Improvised creatively right from the start.

Do I have a heart? Sure, but
I never will be Bassey - more a Sassy
Jazz-directed to my toes;
God knows how it begins and shows.
My instrument the ears and what they hear,
Voice right or wrong Informed by song.

Monk-like clusters mustered up by choice and taste;
Diatonic or laconic, unexpectedly chromatic:
Product of the 50’s ‘cool’.
Schooled by Ella, Vaughan, Tormé,
Miles, Gillespie, Chet, Monk, Christy,
Frishberg’s, Dorough’s’’s Blossom’s *****,
Mose, Matt Dennis; Hendricks, Hancock,
Hundreds more…great tunes galore:
Some you haven’t heard before!
These my first and opened door.

Whereas some others have their glaze,
I’ve only ever known cool jazz -
Spontaneous, each choice unfazed.
That my music’s cool soul’s razzmatazz.

I’ve Only Ever Known Jazz 4.24.2021 Vaguely About Music II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Look what I found in my book Pure Nakedness:written first 1999 (and one more)
      I Was Saying Silly Things

I was saying silly things, so I took a rest.
I took a rest from saying silly things.
I’d lost the knack of cracking codes,
Of penetrating life in odes
Without the accent on the four.
As you can see, the rest I sought I didn’t take,
A restless longing overtaking pause,
And still compelled to put it down,
Write phrase and clause;
However frail,
To infiltrate beyond the pale
Of ordinary vanity  -the other six-
The devil and his vice-y tricks.
There’s much to sigh or cry about,
For as I sit,
My husband’s daughter’s former husband
And his father too, are lying
(One is dying)
In a hospital nearby.
Things can happen overnight.
(As I write or as God will.)
We choose to have our children
But God chooses when they die;
I refuse the lie
That lets me call things mine and my.)

I was saying silly things, bad construction in the line.
Maybe it’s come back: the depth, the poetry,
The right to write it down again,
The pondering and wondering,
The observations of the changes
Showing up and lying under
Pain, enchanted moments, joy.
Last night I saw a five-week boy,
Exquisite from his head to toe.
From day to day I go around observing change.
All I can say is, life is strange;
That underneath one must believe
(There is no way one can perceive)
That pattern’s shawl of ritual
Has truth behind each metaphor custodial,
Each myth and tale,
Each truth behind a Holy Grail:
Life’s quest, life’s life, life’s eye, life’s trail…
And I wind up saying
Rather silly things that matter, after all.

I Was Saying Silly Things 10.30.1999/revised 7.14.2014/revised again/3.26.2020
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; God Book;
Arlene Corwin

I Was Thinking About… *******

I was thinking well,
That ****** is just ******:
That and only that.
So what
Is all the fuss about?
It’s over when it’s over.
Then it’s over.
What is wrong with us?
Making all that fuss?
At eighty-three,
Experiential, observationally  
I know.
I knew that many years ago.
And so, I thought I’d share this piece of wisdom: wisdom’s peace.

I don’t imagine any creatures
In the world of nature
Go around with fantasies.
They’re made to do it upside down and right side up
Sideways, frontways; ways that burp and slurp and cup;
After courting, both exhausted,
Nothing forced, small joust completed,
There’s an end.
Splendid seconds or whatever,
He goes his way, never thinking back with fever.
Neutral fact, passing act,
Overrated,
We fixated.
Org-astic yes, fantastic –
But at best, an instant.

I Was Thinking About ****** 12.6.2017 Circling Round Eros II; Arlene Corwin
* ****** |ˈôrˌgazəm|
noun
a ****** of ****** excitement, characterized by feelings of pleasure centered in the genitals and (in men) experienced as an accompaniment to *******.

I Went To A Funeral Today

Simplistic in its way to say, but
I went to a funeral today.
Our ‘tractor man’ laid in the ground;
I wrote about him year two thousand.

Taking care of all he owned,
Scraping stony muddy snow;
Driving round his tracts of land;
Doing turns that only tractors can
And which, our tractor man was bound to, born to.

Not to milk a tale said once,
Finance, romance, weakness, strength
But tale of more significance
Than in those years when I gave him, his circumstance
No jot,
Well, not a lot of thought,
To make up for it, for I too am démodé,
It’s all-important that I say:

Surreal-ly dreamlike is this life
With time’s phenomenon in strife
With peace we aim for,
Always on the move, at war, divisive.
With no inside proof.  It’s tough.  Life’s rough.

Death, funerals banal,
My skull a barrel of confusion,
Is it all a grand illusion?
Peer groups going,
I here, with no chance of knowing
What’s in store, no more,
Except to hope that time and fate will favor
Generations, generating
As all beauty queens declare,
“World peace with no death anywhere.”

All this from the lain to rest
Of neighbor passed occasionally,
Known to me but casually.
Respectfully I went to honor
Just to find myself a more intent participator.

I Went To A Funeral Today 11.30.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

It’s so important to record these things.  For whom?  God knows.  As art, as etude, as a meditation?  As a way to think through and clarify for one’s own benefit daily eventualities.  God knows – all of those.

          I Went To A Funeral Today

Simplistic in its way to say, but
I went to a funeral today.
Our ‘tractor man’ laid in the ground;
I wrote about him year two thousand.

Taking care of all he owned,
Scraping stony muddy snow;
Driving round his tracts of land;
Doing turns that only tractors can
And which, our tractor man was bound to.

Not to milk a tale said once,
Finance, romance, weakness, strength
But tale of more significance
Than in those years when I gave him, his circumstance
No jot,
Well, not a lot of thought,
To make up for it, for I now too am démodé,
And it’s important that I say:

Surreal-ly dreamlike is this life
With time’s phenomenon in strife
With peace we aim for,
Always on the move, at war, divisive;
With no inside proof, it’s tough.  Life’s rough.

Death, funerals banal,
My skull a barrel of confusion,
Is it all a grand illusion?
Peer groups going,
I here, with no chance of knowing
What’s in store, no more
Except to hope that time and fate will favor
Generations, generating
As all beauty queens declare,
“World peace with no death anywhere.”

All this from the lain to rest
Of neighbor passed occasionally -
Known to me but casually.
Respectfully I went to honor
Just to find myself a more intent participator.

I Went To A Funeral Today 11.30.2016
Birth, Death & In Between II; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

I Would Never Be Impolite On The Internet

I would never be impolite
On the Internet.
(Is that big or little i?)
If one’s the chance to get
In touch with planet earth
And everyone upon it
One should view it as an honor,
Rare, beyond compare.

I would never let myself be rude
(Or ****)
To people I have never met –
The Internet or not.

At times I have opinions, views
About the news, news
Being what it is – not positive.
Yet I’m constructive and well-mannered,
Having no desire to hammer
Anyone or anything to powder.
I have no desire for power.
I can say,
Convey
My thoughts and notions
Without oceans of sarcasm.
There are chasms, schisms
Separating –isms,
But I don’t take part,
My heart not filled with hate.

On that account
I never would be impolite
To anyone on Internet –
Big or little I).

I Would Never Be Impolite On The Internet 7.25.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

“And here I was, thinking that the poems were too much of a burden for some! Thank you and bless you all! I write to be read. I write to share. I write from some magic, mysterious force and source”

Jennifer My Metaphor #2

Jennifer, my metaphor
For daughter love, fidelity from up above;
A model for all wombmanhood:
Clear thinking, understanding and compassionate
Well spoken and all that;
A caretaker of injured cat
And any four-legged creature
In or out the door.
And now her fifty-seventh year is here.
A HAPPY BIRTHDAY Jenny dear!
No person could be nicer
Than a Jennifer,
My metaphor for Good.

JenniferMy Metaphor 2.2.2021 Birthday Book; Arlene Corwin Corwin

Joy, Love, Truth

What do you think your brain is doing
When you’re sad, depressed or *******?
Lots!  When sad or in a mood
Amygdala and hippocampus glued
To memory’s emotions tied,
Sensations not forgot!
When you’ve got the hots for someone
And that one is non-responsive
Do not let depression in.
Turn a sadness into gladness
And remember, hippocampus
And amygdala are slingshots into hindrance,
Solving blocks impediments;
A cross to bear you do not want to wear
Life through.

To continue:
Are you full of cheer?
Do you like people
All around whomever and wherever
You come into contact?
Do you strive for truths and stick to fact?

My advice is but to focus!
Deal with body/mind detail.
When you hit resistance, stop
The movement in the middle;
When you hit insistent pain,
Plain sense and yogic counsel
Is to halt smack in the middle of its riddle.
You will soon feel feel well - or well-er
Than the hell before.

When feeling low, illusionary concepts flowing
Going into brain, mind, soul,
Into the feel of wholeness
Is to know the stealing big fat lie:
Illusion passing for reality.

Through the trick of nothing’s nowness
(you could never start with less)
You secure the greatest motivation
To escort you to salvation.

Fortune, fame; misnomer’s lame and empty crown  
Ties you up and ties you down -
When you see the sin of daily longings, basic wrongings,
Throngs with faith in spectre choices,
From profession to the newsy voices,
Know these are not real truths
But grounded themes on schemes and dreams
To lead one far from happiness to emptiness and being fooled.

Let your  ‘down-ness’ be your tool
To push and lead to real seeing,
No more robot in your thinking, but a being
Meant for more.
Joy, Love, Truth 2.6.2019 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

All the years before the Corona pandemic, my Swedish neighbours from across the lake used to celebrate the 4th of July with a party,  having themselves spent 32 years in the United States.  To them I dedicate this poem.

  July 4th, 2020 🇺🇸

It is the fourth of July.
A day we usually
Fill with joy:
Fireworks, parades and games
Its names:
Fourth of July:
Independence Day.

United, free;
No more a colony;
A formal declaration
Made of five brave men
And Thomas Jefferson,
Making history, and
The beginnings of a USA.

So, Americans,
My dear, dear Swedish friends
And any there may be elsewhere,
Let us wear the day
In camaraderie and play.
Most all in harmony.
Happy, Happy 4th July! 🇺🇸

July 4th, 2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

And so it is...

   July Gone By…Focus August

Just Another Day…(Or Not?)

Just One More Anomaly

Memory, how is it working?
Reconstructing what it will,
No matter how one wills it.
Using tricks or keeping still,
It goes downhill sulking, lurking,
Modifying all the while.

Date, event - assumed, imagined;
Recipe for roasted chicken, how and what the vitamin,
Where one laid the just used pen;
Truths about what might have been:
One is not amused or gladdened!

One reads histamine boosts memory.
Where to start: ear, nose or eye?
The husband tells a story,
But the story and the history refashion
Into joke or smoke, or expectation.
An honest man, he reconstructs time’s long bygone.
What and is there a solution?

How to boost the falsifying, garbled brain,
Train away the stigma and enigma?
Food: The marvel is the good it does, in spite
Of junk consumed both day and night,
Those lovely cells of memory;
Losing neurons constantly.

Interests, hobbies:
Training. learning, instrument…
Any bent, life but experiment;
Each callisthenic ‘heaven sent’.

A poem one way to speak,
Renewing bits new and archaic;
One in which a syllable will stick,
Inspired to get a kick out of the rhythmic lyric
Born in life.

Just One More Anomaly 5.29.2020  (formerly Another Autobiographical Anomaly 2.11.2019/Recomposed 5.29.2020) Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Anomaly: oddity, peculiarity, abnormality, irregularity, inconsistency, incongruity, deviation, aberration, quirk, freak, exception, departure, divergence, variation; rarity, eccentricity.

Just Peachy

Sitting in the bath eating a peach,
Out of reach shampoo and things.
I use my fingers.
Conditioner smushed * into hair,
I wait for gunk to work.
Head dunked an inch below the water
And still chewing, crunch intensified a thousand fold.
Damp pad and all,  I hold the pad in front of me and write.
That’s what I call exciting!

I get dafter by the day –
Soldier-bolder,
Hanging-from-the-rafters thing
I fling all trivia aside.
Riding time on high.
I’m ridin’ high* on time;
Strategies unplanned.

smush; my own word, meaning a mixture of smash/knead/crush/massage/rub/knead
**See Cole Porter

Just Peachy 9.18.2017
A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Baths II;
Arlene Corwin

Just Plain Old Words

No metaphors, just plain old words:
A bunch to delve, dive into
For contentment’s sake,
Rummaging for further knowledge,
Contemplating, taking
Into cells which in themselves
Have not a gauge
But are a gauge in which to
Fit a language
Which, by some unworldly process,
Influences what we are, what we become
As hours pass,
Floundering and pondering;
Wond’ring at their wondrousness.

Metaphors and other symbols;
Explicating parables;
Simple, concrete; toys to play with,
Stay with day to day
Until their meanings stick.

The mystery
Is how the words,
Compiled, piled up and side by side
Get to be our poetry.
Inscrutably a mystery,
Verily!

It’s easy to believe, receive,
The starting point was Word,
A sound  whose purpose was to spread,
Promote, communicate with,
Circulate mankind.

That he’s not always kind
Is yet another theme
For other times
In other poems
With words in herds
Or one or two
From folk like me to folk like you.

Just Plain Old Words 10.17.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditating II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I’ve written about doctor care before - two or three poems.  My back is hurting and I don’t know why.  I’ll try once more to find a reason and/or treatment.  

      Just Thinking

Such doubts
About
So many things -
Shadows, bags, those awful rings;
Answers one seems to not get
Concerning age’s yet debated issues,
Thrown around like used up tissues.

Falling hair, backbone hurting -
Here and there uncertainty.
Is it a kidney?  Old or recent?
Every enquiry to be decided
While one feels derailed, derided.

Lots of, loads of telephoning,
Steps before one
                           reaches someone;
No one seems to own or loan a way to ask.
You’re in a casket prematurely,
(which means much too, MUCH TOO soon).

What’s this? Substance and significance?
What, the chances of a cure?
“I’m not sure”, one sometimes hears.
“It’s not my specialty.” The doctor bears
No blame, no shame.
C’est domage!  
The damage does not have a name.

One knows that doctors have great stress.
That they say “Yes, I’ll help”, and try.
Meanwhile one winces, yelps or cries
When pains unknown are thrown up, shown up
To be borne with courage,
Taking age as it will come.
** hum, just thinking.
JustThinking 2.11.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Keeping Up

You’ve heard the phrase
“to keep up with the Jones”,
But have you not yet heard of
‘Keeping up with new smart phones’?

Every time I see an ad
There seems to be another fad,
Another model, new technique.
You take a peek.
There’s more finesse, more flourishes,
The whole thing polished…gosh, oh gosh!

Technology, the things I see
Are running way ahead of me
Completely and confusingly.
One’s hazy in the fog of it,
Queasy at the sight of it,
The height of keeping up’’ a drain
On the most brainy of consumers -
For there’s coin involved,
Revolved around.  Who knows?
Consumers - that is us,
Gobbling up and keeping up.

Technology is self-propelling.
Experts telling, sales folk selling.
Where the dickens is this heading?
How far up can ‘up’ go up?
Electronics smaller, stronger,
Slimmed until the skin
Contains the smart phone fitted in,
One more component in the whole.
Will computers gain a soul?

Just a pup
Who can’t keep up.
That’s me.  

Keep up: keep pace, keep abreast, be aware (of developments).

Keeping Up 8.13.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous ll; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Knocking On The Doorway Of Eternity

I’m a mystic out and out.
I never shout it out,
But I’m a little ‘high’ right now
(the morning coffee works – and how!)
Simple prayers, requests and hope,
A little child-like – a puppy.
Yet coming by small feedbacks in small ways;
Minutes, hours or days -
It can’t be just coincidence.
It could be basic innocence.
In any case,
Face flushed with happiness -
Muted or giggly.
No great gesture,
Just a cherished jest
‘Tween the divine and me.
A mystic always knocking on the entrance
To eternity.

Knocking On The Doorway To Eternity 4.2.2018 To The Child Mystic II; Arlene Corwin

Last Of The Season

So trifling –
Going out and berry-picking.
Then at once your eyes pick out
What mind does not.
Fruits few, and you’ve
A doubled effort,
Legs now filled with lactic acid
For the berries are so separate, so far apart
And so far spread that you’ve a stretch
To pick one cluster
And an equal mental strength
To muster.

Berries big but water-filled,
You fill your pail with ease and skill
Glad that you own much ground
And have such land to walk around.
You know that you have filed your last
Holes, hills and hindrances regardless.

Stumbling – but it’s spongy,
Falling – but it’s mossy,
You’ve succeeded,
Your success half-litered and not needed;
You’ve already liters lidded.

Temperature about to drop
Already showing signs of dipping,
Wind is up
And there is no conclusive feeling;
Berries that are season’s last!

You hope you’ll be alive and kicking
Next year when it’s time for picking,
Now that picking time seems past.

Last Of The Season 9.2.2016
Circling Round Nature II; Birth, Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin

Lazy Love

They wake –well, ‘wake’ is not the word.
Lids refusing opening, muscles slack,
Wakefulness alone marking awareness.
Arm reaching left, remote device bedside,
Sliding, a mere automaton
Reaching near, she presses On;
Lo, light, sound and the television.
Still, the eyes are shut,
Yet something’s wakened.
Lying still, an arm embraces;
Bodies in slow motion snake-en.
Unidentifiable, un-nameable, encased
In one another’s arms, things happen -
Young, fresh, hippy Happening
Straight from the ‘Swinging Sixties’.
Here’s a pair way past their 60’s
Rising high above the years,
Skies above their years
Entranced, in love, enlivened,
Eyes blinked open where
The mini-moans of pleasure bear
Some mini-tears of joy.

Lazy Love 7.23.2016
Circling round Eros II; Love Relationships II;
Arlene Corwin

This is a true confessional, part nonsense (as in the genre ‘nonsense poetry) part didactic, meant for those like myself.  🤭😇😅😘🤪 😣 - these emojis representing various aspect pf me, the last called ‘perevering face’.  What fun!

      Learning To Shut Up

How often do you interrupt
Before the other finishes his sentence?
How well do you listen,
Taking in or recollecting
Details and/or essence
Of the other’s presence?
Mea culpa!
That sin mine, wherein
The ego governs;
Two ears  deafened
How embarrassing!
I’m confessing,
But I’m learning,
Earning points in listener’s heaven.
Like a silly pup,
Learning to well,
Shut the h__l up.

Learning To Shut Up 11.11.2020 Circling Round Experience; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Arlene Nover Corwin

Just wrote this:  You know how these little revelation-***-thought-***-wish-hope...come.
    Let Me See [Y]our Plans Completed

I used to pray each morning,
God, please plan my day.”
Now, it’s morn,
And I’ve matured (it seems) since then.
What occurred to me as root,
Not You, non-absolute,
An Ignorance of what comes next,
But - as I do - surmising that it all began,
Was planned at the beginning, and
That all occurs in Law determining
A chain of cause/effect the thing -
Then cause original must bring,
Determined from the very start,
An end, an end to each event,
To each and every incident.

There is no fluke, no bit of luck,
No happenstance, no accidents;
All provide-nce.
Therefore I pray, to start the day
And just to get my head on straight.
(Already planned and known beforehand).

So I say, for my head’s sake,
“Let me see our plans completed”
Though I know it’s all been planned,
One might say programmed
From the start:
The very start,
Of which I am a nano- part.

Let Me See Your Plans Completed 3.3.2018 God Book II; To The Child Mystic II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Corwin

It is November 5, 2020, 3 days after the presidential election.  This is perhaps the most unfamiliar poem I’ve ever been impelled to write.

         Let’s Face It or Perhaps He’ll Never See The Point

Let’s face it,
People do not like the Prez.
When I say ‘prez’
I don’t mean Lester (Young).
It’s hard to give support
With head and heart
To one who seems so nar-
                                         cissistic.

Even weak political emotions
Set in motion bitter potions
Of the toxic kind,
Taken over by a mind aggressive:
One usually meek and pleasant.

But this present president
Evokes an ire
Wired by a man who fits the classic liar.
It’s pathetic one’s own character
Is challenged thus;
Burning like infectious pus,
The psyche’s plus turned to a minus.

Here’s a man who wields great power.
Here is we, who yield to anger
Like a stranger in a field of danger
With our only weapon
Ethics, thought, determination.
Hope born of conviction.

Let’s FaceIt 11.5.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I expect this will get some strong anti-comments, the very mention of G_d often being a source of contention and vexation for some.  We'll see.  
    Letter To God🧘‍♀️

Dear God,
I asked you to control my day
Take over whatsoever comes my way,
Well aware, for goodness sake
It’s you who have supremacy.
(You or That or It - who cares?)
Energy directive, prime and rare).

It is a bit embarrassing because I know,
At least discern
A well few poets who convey
A God-ie language publicly.
It isn’t ‘in’.

I’m not religious, not fanatic,
But to go inside the attic of the mind and find out more,
Then write it down, I have to take the chance of boring
All the others who have not  
The need to say, pray, meditate or concentrate,
Think, question all the bigger contemplative questions
                                               of existence:
For example how we…who we… where we go:
Birth, breath, life, death:, seeds to sow.

And so the first thing in the day
I meditate or pray
Using words or saying nothing.
It’s a process with authority.
That seems to guide, hold sway
And influence behaviour,
Healing slumps, the ‘dumps’, grumpiness and moping -
Maybe not concealing’s right: a good thing.

I’d no intention of divulging
This inaudible, non-public action.
But there’s nothing wrong with making known
This ‘sort of’ godly telephone
And inmost conversation.

Anyway, I’m in the mood, the neighborhood
And as I said prosaically,
Perhaps it will do someone good.

Letter To God 1.19.2020 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative.Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Letter To Those Who Take Life ✍️ ☮️

Those who take life have no understanding of the prize:
The measure, treasure, pleasure of existence’ meaning.
Those who take life too grow older,
Too regret if they are wise,
Realising one day everybody dies,
Including they themselves.

Life’s triangle from the first indrawing breath -
Birth and death
                         and all between,                            
One meaning being to prolong
One’s own and creatures weak and strong;
To NOT take but care for each form,
Our fellow humans the first norm.

Life, birth, death and all in between -
What comes thereafter to be seen,
The how, when to be left for then;
Is ever speculation.

Now has beauty, and our duty
Is to see and cherish every blemish,
Not diminishing the self or others.

Love and caring, action sharing;
All you need to make life better
Is this creed and poem, a letter
Aimed at those who dare
                                        take life.
Letter To Those Who Take Life 6.23.2019 Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin✍️

Letting Go

First of June,
Which he’ll recall many a moon.
He, jazz pianist, pensive, listener,
Chanced to hear a fellow player.
As can happen
A conveyer, lightening-like
Strikes home and he’s a freer man!
The improvisor
Comes out wiser.
Something in the sound’s approach,
It simplified but still cohesive,
Has adhered, become adhesive
And a coach.

“Listen here!”, and sitting down,
The chord an old but fresher sound;
Change but subtle
There is no need for a rebuttal.
He’s been transformed. It, simply so,
By listening to the radio!.

Was it the tune or was it he
On the brink of some new potency?
Synchronicity?
Serendipity?
Gift from heaven, as they say?
Anyway, he’s found the sound by letting go.
With years ahead to work through to…we never know.

Yes, never know exactly how
The whole will play out.

Letting Go 6.1.2020 Vaguely About Music; Arlene Nover Corwin

Life Is A Corned Beef Hash
          (A metaphor)

Life is a corned beef hash -
Or chicken, pork or any stash
Of edibles you have at hand.
If you are clever
You will use the cleaver
To make dishes
So delicious
Guests will never understand
With formulaic words
How to make the bouquet of accolades
Big enough.
(Wow!  That was pufferific!)

All you have to do is focus,
Be a tiny bit courageous,
Use a quantity of hocus pocus
So your genius
Can shine,
Your mine of treasure
The impromptu measure
                           of the moment.

Life Is A Corned Beef Hash 8.12.2017
A Sense Of the Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin
puffery – in case you didn’t know: exaggerated  praise; hyperbole.

Limited Vocabulary

With my limited vocabulary,
Back pain, tendency to sloth and other frailties,
I still have much to say
And say it,
It arriving daily
As a post from nowhere, sender
Totally unknown,
No stamp or postmark on it.
Limit:
One can only work within it,
Trust that what’s within
Is valid, potent and convincing.

Limited Vocabulary 6.6.2016
The Processes: Creative, thinking Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Living With Three Fingers

You become:
More concentrated,
Slower,
Focussed, isolating body parts
As act demands.

One might maintain
IQ is raised, synapses sewn;
New cells in charge,
Not barging in
But chemically presenting selves
With means, new paths that swath
New clumsiness
In cloths of velvet.

Life imagined as a hell
Is well behaved instead,
The head collected,
Body following its lead.

Underneath,
And one can only speculate,
There is a will -
Quite silent, still,
But still a powered character its own.

Achievements shown, talents done
Through ‘fingers three,’
You still are you - will always be.
And from this moment, ‘finger free’.

Living With Three Fingers 6.4.2020 Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I was reading Jazz Wax (a great site written by Marc Myers: highly recommended) where he was telling me that two of the ‘famous’ clubs I worked in in New York were ‘long gone’. I thought ‘long gone’ was a perfect title and so set immediately to work. This may not be the best of poetry. It only took me 20 minutes or so. But I like it anyway.

LONG GONE

I was reading Jazz Wax (a great site written by Marc Myers: highly recommended) where he was telling me that two of the ‘famous’ clubs I worked in in New York were ‘long gone’. I thought ‘long gone’ was a perfect title and so set immediately to work.  This may not be the best of poetry.  It only took me 20 minutes or so.  But I like it anyway.

             LONG GONE

“ After decades of measurements and debate, we are now confident that the overwhelming majority of our universe’s matter – about 84 percent – is not made up of atoms, or of any other known substance. Although we can feel the gravitational pull of this other matter, and clearly tell that it’s there, we simply do not know what it is. This mysterious stuff is invisible, or at least nearly so. For lack of a better name, we call it “dark matter.” But naming something is very different from understanding it.  Over the past 15 years, for example, experiments designed to detect individual particles of dark matter have become a million times more sensitive, and yet no signs of these elusive particles have appeared. And although the Large Hadron Collider has by all technical standards performed beautifully, with the exception of the Higgs boson, no new particles or other phenomena have been discovered.”
Dan Hooper, Associate Scientist in Theoretical Astrophysics at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago.
I am indebted to EarthSkyNews and its writers and editor Deborah Byrd for their inspirational articles that set an imagination afire.

                           Looking For God
                  (a personal interpretation)

Oh, my goodness, Halloween.
Secular as we’ve become we search between
The stars for something we can’t find -
Something way, way, way behind
(or maybe not), for calculations more than hint
At something there.  Something here
And all around,
Something we can measure,
Possibly a ground of being -
Universe the metaphor -
Or should one say ‘universes’?

Utterly enchanting this research,
For ‘re’- means ‘one more time’, afresh, again;
We’re looking all the time and then some.
‘Search’, its origin in Latin’s ‘circle’
We are going ‘round in circles
To complete a circle, time and time again.
Looking for design and pattern
Palpable, its charm disarming
And perhaps alarming,
If we ever find it.

Looking For God 10.31.2017
Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; God Book II;
Arlene Corwin
I am indebted to EarthSkyNews and its writers and editor Deborah Byrd for their inspirational articles that set an imagination afire.

I was watching my beloved Kent sanding a lamppost he'd just put up outside.  The day was warm, the light was just right and there I sat noticing what a fine head he had...      

                 Love

Seldom examined.      

               LOVER AND BELOVED✍️

Lower/Higher

Even the eyebrows lower;
It shows in the darned mirror:
Life changes constantly,
A going downward mostly –
At least physically,
For I, the inner I invisible
Am rising high,
Am rising high.
And so to hell with vanity
And negativity.
Life’s outer is a liar,
For I, I rise still higher.  

Lower/Higher 8.20.2016
Circling Round Vanities II; Circling Round Aging; Circling Round Wrinkles;
Arlene Corwin

I woke up thinking about this.

         A Thought About Loyalty

I’ve been thinking about loyalty:
A many-sided world of nuances,
The subtle differences.
We all know it means faithfulness,
A sticking-to devotedly.
Unfurled it shows its nasty sides,
The negatives that worry me:
Allegiance and adherence -
-Ism’s steel prepared to go to war
Against all criticizers,
-Isms’ others
Carving up the brotherhood
Of man.
Not for nothing
That a missile system drawn
To sense and intercept an enemy:
Is named the Patriot:
A system to annihilate.

I worry ‘bout obedience,
Compliance and submissiveness.
I like reliability, dependability,
Dedication if it’s not perverted
Duty, if it leads to thought,
A moral sense,
An ethic that agrees with life;
Loyalty without the strife.
Loyalty to think about.

A Thought About Loyalty 9.10.2017
Nature In & Of Reality; Out Times, Out Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

It isn't often I write wholly optimist poetry, BUT today was one!
        Lucky Days

Lumps & Bumps

Wrinkles, lines, ache this, pain that;
Then the lumps, perplexing bumps
From nowhere, showing, growing,
Coming and not going.
Bother!
You think cancer, other
Causes: worry, costs and doctors,
Signs and trends!
Brother!
Will they never end?
Changes down there:
Sour, cowardly -
Unsightly forms informing us
Of beauty’s loss, of songs unsung,
Boss death and wretched other wrongs.
Lumps  and bumps which must mean something;
Nature's drowsing, rousing, - dousing.
Sousing us with vinegar.

Lumps & Bumps 5.29.2016/revised 5.11.2020/re-revised4.21.2021
Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Lumps & Bumps

There are wrinkles, lines,
Osteo- this, osteo- that,
And then the bumps -
Perplexing lumps
From nowhere,
Showing up and growing,
Coming and not going.
Bother!
You think cancer, other
Causes and annoyances:
Worry, costs and doctors.
Signs and trends!
Oh, brother,
Will they never end -
These changes downward foul and fetid,
Sour, dour, cowardly?
Unsightly forms
Informing us
Of beauty’s loss, songs unsung,
Boss death and wretched other wrongs?

Lumps & Bumps 5.29.2016
Circling Round Aging; Birth, Death & In Between II; 5.29.2016
Arlene Corwin

Lumps & Bumps

Wrinkles, lines, ache this, pain that;
And then the lumps, perplexing bumps
From nowhere, showing, growing,
Coming and not going.
Bother!
You think cancer, other
Causes: worry, costs and doctors,
Signs and trends!
Brother!
Will they never end?
These changes downward,
Foul, sour, dour, cowardly?
Unsightly forms informing us
Of beauty’s loss, of songs unsung,
Boss death and wretched other wrongs?
Lumps  and bumps which must mean something;
Nature's drowsing rousing.

Lumps & Bumps 5.29.2016/revised 5.11.2020
Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Lying In Bed In Truth

I lie in bed.
I look down at this body.
Mine.
Not very interesting.
I wish to feel the single this.
Aloneness.
Thingness.
Separated and detached,
No past which wants to show itself;
Just now.
Alone but not a lonely I,
For as a Buber labeled it,
An I and Thou,
All others also I and Thou
Surrounding and surrounded by…
Monads all.
Single souls.
Working on and out the hole
And whole of this existence.
Fingers typing,
Eyes a-skyping
Mind hard to describe
Where is it?
What’s it doing?
All and nothing.  
What’s it want?
A knowing all integrally,
Organically,
Unseparate yet separated.
This is mysticism underrated
In a nutshell.

Lying In Bed In Truth 3.12.2018 Nature of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; To The Child Mystic II; Arlene Corwin