Sunday:
Ant Pills
Bear Traps
Cobra Feet

Monday:
Dolphin Lungs
Eel Soup
Frog Limbs

Tuesday:
Gecko Suits
Horse Pie
Inchworm ***

Wednesday:
Jaguar Barbed
Koala Beer
Lynx Lynch

Thursday:
Monkey Chips
Narwhal Fashions
Otter Drugs

Friday:
Porcupine Rehab
Quail Map
Roadrunner Piano

Saturday:
Slug Party
Turkey Slop
Urchin See

Sunday:
Vulture Guns
Walrus Tongues
X No

Monday:
Yellowjacket Fever
Zebra Clowns

NonsensePoetry á la Corwin
  
    There is a legitimate genre called Nonsense Verse, a form of nonsense literature usually employing strong prosodic elements like rhythm and rhyme. It is whimsical and humorous in tone and employs some of the techniques of nonsense literature.
     Among writers in English noted for nonsense verse are Edward Lear[, Lewis Carroll, Mervyn Peake, Sukumar Ray, Edward Gorey, Colin West, Dr. Seuss, and Spike Milligan.
     I myself seldom write nonsense poetry, but a friend sent me an email with this phrase:
“Each little bench
Is amazingly French….
     I had no idea why he sent it, but was instantly engaged and inspired to write this back to him:

However, each *****
Who sits on that bench
Has a stench
That could drench
Every river and trench
But not quench
Any watery branch
Or prevent any mulching
By belching.
If you agree much,
Have an itch to get hitched*
Keep in touch!

*get hitched; marry.
Nonsense Poetry á la Corwin 8.16.2020 A Senses Of The Ridiculous II;  Arlene Nover Corwin

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

I certainly realised when I wrote "There Are Daughters…” that not everyone had children, and I don’t mean to make anyone feel sad.  When I write, (which is everyday), I simply become, shall we say, attached to a phrase or the seed of an idea; even a rhythm or a word or funny rhyme.  These can take me in any direction.  This process has led to 19 books with two more on the way.  
     It’s a kind of yoga, a mental training - and the most unexpected ideas come out - ideas which I work on and refine.  I write on anything at hand.  Just today, I found 4 scraps, one dating back to 2015.  I’ll show you.

Notes found…refined, completed.

       This Brain

This brain invades
The good, the bad:
Everything that’s done, not done.
And so I try
To purify
The brain
And turn
Invasion into
Sympathetic action.
This Brain 2.27.2020 Nature of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
      After Surgery

After surgery
One is like the princess and the pea,
Feeling every crevice
On each surface.
After surgery
One’s sore, and golly, gee,
All parts exposed or not
Are vulnerable,
Incapable
But filled with the potential
Of life ahead,
For one day you’ll get out of bed,
Participate in daily doings:
Cleaning, practicing and s(cr)ewing.
We’ll see
How afterwards can be!
After Surgery 2.27.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
      Dear Friends

Dear friends,
You’ll never know the inspiration
You have been,
And what I’ve learned
Of gratitude and giving,
And what I lacked..

You’ve helped change aims,
And I will never be the same,
Hoping I survive and have the chance
To show the learning’s knowing
Filled with just one speck
Of your munificence, unselfishness
And open-handedness.
Dear Friends 10.10.2019/2.27.2020 Arlene Nover Corwin
      I Have Become

I have become yours
To grow in your power;
Grow and flower
Over self-love’s lowest.
Wow!
How a syllable inspires.
I Have Become 10.25.2019/2.27.2020 Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
         It Sneaks Up

It sneaks up: autumn,
And Huston sings “September Song”.
A rainbow arches:
Purple, blue, green, yellow, orange.
One can’t tell because
They blend and fade.
You’re stuck there at the window,
Captivated.
It Sneaks Up 12.15.2015/2.27.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Thinking About …Jealousy

I don’t sense envy in me -
But sense jealousy
Given the right (or always wrong) occasion
Why?
The past disloyalties?
A guilt? The lies?
A deep and hidden narcissism?
Is it them that I surmise?

A sickly need to own –
To call someone my own
When I, in fact have known
That no one, nothing is my own?

Does it begin in fantasy?
One asks the question
Wherefrom, why from
Comes that special gallery
Of idle fancy?

If the simile is ‘green’ with envy,
What then color jealousy?
Red, brown, orange, pink or blue?
Perhaps there is no hue
In color’s range
To chronicle that landscape and its danger!

Thus adding one more deadly sin
To slot into the other seven:
Is it…could they be akin
To chilling, killing, love destroying jealousy?

Thinking About…Jealousy 9.18.2016
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

Qualified Abstinence

I’ve decided - though not wholly -
As of morning’s bath - to put on hold
The daily custom, habit’s viewing -
NCIS, Dr Phil - suspecting as I do
That they are doing me some harm
Engaging, charming
                                 as they are.

Mind as thought and mind as stomach,
Turn to worry, churn with fear
As states of things in world and home,
Play out the clearer,
Signs maturing in their chaos,
Ever growing, ever baiting;
Making brilliant, analytical dear Phil
Ever more mouth-watering.
Well-loved NCIS plays its part,
Portraying nations torn apart
With ever cleverer technologies
And cleverer–type baddies
Getting ‘theirs’ from even smarter good guys.

If then, strong enough to not back off,
The morning TV staying off,
Then maybe, only maybe
This old belly
Can restore its tranquil peristalsis,
Family squabbles turning babble to a kiss.
Phil, dear Phil, continue to be wise and kind!
NCIS’ cast: brave, cuddly and seasoned -
Flag unfurled, continue to engage yourselves
In world salvation!
Stationing my thoughts in action,
I must leave you both
To carry myself into truth
As cellular Arlene conceives, perceives,
Inherently achieves it.
(If, of course, l don’t fall back into the -
(crude, ill-mannered rude word)  ****!

Qualified Abstinence 7.20.2014
Pure Nakedness; Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin
arlene corwin poetry.com

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

Success & Epic Failures

A quote I got from Mr Rampton on
His twirling Tweet account.
I thought, impressed, amazed,  “A catchy phrase,
I think I’ll write it down and later write it up,
It being just my cup
                                     of tea:
‘Success and Epic Failures’,  
You and me:  
Sporadically, frequently,
Scarcely ever, almost never –
Take your pick.

Who hasn’t had them both?
Betrothed to neither,                                            
One should rise above the two -
******* ‘round with mind and ego as they do,
Never lasting, alternating
Life throughout.

I think I’ll write a song -to-be:
Avail myself of phrase as symbol:
‘Failure and Success’ et al,
With appeal universal,
With potential to sell millions,
With success and epic failures,
Which of us has never been derailed
And won
Ten-umpteen times
In life?

Success & Epic Failures 7.17.2016
Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Reality; Out Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin





Success & Epic Failures 7.17.2016
Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Reality; Out Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Another Autobiographical Anomaly✍️

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another Autobiographical Anomaly 2.11.2019 Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Unmotivated Tears

I used to criticize
The eyes
Of those I knew
Who, at
Drops of a hat
Shed tears of ardor: God-knows-what.

Ascribing it
To vitamins and lack thereof,
Past, present and/or too much ‘love’.
Too something/something out of balance;
Nothing but a prevalence
Of yin or yang
Ganging up
On both those ducts.

Uncaring and unfeelingly –  I used to be.
Now, at eighty-three it’s me.
I may need hormone therapy.
Or is it age sagacity  -
Unmotivated tears
Based on a grasp of life’s chimere
That takes in all -
An all which makes one engineered
By tears
One must defer to.

Unmotivated Tears 4.24.2018 I Is Always You Is We; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Aging; Arlene 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

She Let A Moth Drown In the Lake

She let a moth drown in the lake,
Waves taking stackars* little thing
Further than her oar could reach.
Standing on beach, cupped eye,
Squinting, trying…
Moth was gone.
Death had won.

Just so you know I do no lie,
That ‘she’ was I.
I am the wimp who hesitated.
Fear of depth, of cold, of wet.
Excuses inexcusable.

Death of moth, still flapping moth
Is just as undeserving as our own demise.
Pedestrian, prosaic, commonplace,
Disgusting,
Yet compulsively discussable.

All living things delight in life-ness.
While they move and throb the slightest,
They delight.
Who takes a life by standing by
Will also die.
It is essential, is it not, to cry,
Identify with kin?
Kin hereby meaning ‘life within’.

Left with remorse and shame
She self-condemns,
She takes the blame.
She hopes some force
That knows the individuality of moth
Shows sympathy in rebirth
In some future form that has a breath.

So be it, Om, Amen to Earth!

She Let A Moth Drown In the Lake 6.14.2020 Birth,Death & In Between II;Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II;Pure Nakedness;Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover, Corwin

*stackars; Swedish; ‘poor thing’

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

No Man is A Victim

Can it be, and do I mean it?

It’s a phrase that came to mind,

And so I looked it up.  

One harmed or killed by so-called fluke;

One duped or tricked;

One who feels helpless faced with setback:

So I  chose the last to help.



There’s truth in fate that causes earthquake,

And one’s sole concern’s escape.  

That is a victim.

Then again,

One is alive, glad to survive.

Grounds to begin

Because one can!



But what about

The ones who feel useless in the face of sense,

Interpreting all happenings

With sadness, negativity and impotence,

Downhearted from the very start?

You’ve known a few. Me too.

Perhaps it’s you,

And what to do –

The problem philosophical, pragmatic, existential.

And, if one’s inclined, then spiritual.



Start a something, anything, for life’s a skill.

Good comes from bad, calm follows ruin;

Results come from what’s had or been;

And nothing lasts forever.

One’s endeavour is to strive,

For one’s alive.  

Remember that you’re clever!



Act as if you have a choice

And make one – with your tiny voice.

Summon up your forces,

For of course, they’re many.

Do not hurry.

Lives are scurrying around you.

Do not worry,

For the ‘musts’ and ‘oughts’

Are values of society,

Not boo-choo, cry

Or future you.

No Man Is A Victim 9.30.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II;Nature In & Of Reality;Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Arlene Corwin Poetry.com

Always In Preparation #2
          (a rather long simplification)

Always in preparation for an interview:
What will I answer? Never know.
- What do I like? do things I do, the way I do?
- Write poetry, play jazz, do yoga?
Body/mind my mental window in my mental interview:
And I must justify it all.
Some germ, some theme begins the whole:
The technical; word hurdles
When I write or sing;
All challenging,
Performing, writing or just doing.

T’ween two covers it’s official;
Everything grist-for-the-mill,
I’ll likely publish ‘til I’m still.
No special motive winks or flirts,
No motive hides behind my skirts -

My ears hear musically,
It all comes naturally, substance counting most;
Not tricks, not formulae, cliché -
If there’s a Corwin idiom
It’s in the DNA.
I work out tunes, -out poetry, -out ******.
The mind works out spontaneously,
I (wherever I is to be found) give in, give form,
Substance from-and-in the frame.

In short, I paint myself into a box
And creep around  
Until some [final] satisfaction binds.
A futile paradox:
To clarify and satisfy
The interview,
But there am I,
Always in preparation.

Always In Preparation 7.6.2014
Pure Nakedness; The Processes: Creative, Thinking,Meditative II; revised 11.21.2017
Arlene Corwin

I Love The Discipline…

I love the discipline of form and meters.
Crummy, yummy twitterings
To turn a base, base/superficial
Into something interstitially aesthetic, helpful.
What it is that gives this gift I’ll never know,
But there it is – a discipline addictive;
A dictation from below;
Not just adding to an increase in IQ,
Nor the storehouse of expressing,
Nor of word when crossword puzzling;
No, a serendipity with aspects heavenly.
A guzzling from an endless well of secret knowledge,
Sacred knowledge for the few.
But earthy too.  

Anyway, as we of poet’s tree like saying,
When you find an impulse that you can’t resist,
Don’t, you hear, anti-resist,
But kissed by It
Continue till the whole caboodle* springs your noodle
And the lights go out.

I Love The Discipline…4.13.2018 The Processes; Creative, Thinking, Meditative III, Arlene Corwin

*caboodle |kəˈboōdl| (also kaboodle)
noun (in phrase the whole caboodle or the whole kit and caboodle) informal
the whole number or quantity of people or things in question.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent. (originally U.S.): perhaps from the phrase kit and boodle, in the same sense (see kit 1 , boodle ).
noodle 2
noun informal
a stupid or silly person.
• a person's head.
New Oxford American Dictionary

Bemoaning Similes & Metaphors

         (the lack thereof )


I cannot think in similes or metaphors.

I can, but it’s

An artifice.

A gift

I’ve not been left with.

Of course,

I’ve got Thesaurus –

My old pal -

To push me

In the simile

Direction.

Those

Whose

Aptitude’s

To see,

Their inner eye

Comparing parallels unconsciously –

A gift of gene and DNA –

Overwhelm me.

While I moan about my lack,

They sit with throne and luck

Expressing with an ease,

Anything they ****** well please

In metaphors and similes

I lie in bed,

This running through my head.

That’s why it’s here.



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

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

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

To the Poets of Hello, Hello!

We write, we share.
We hope there’s someone there
To read
Perhaps need
Poetry,
Precisely as we
Say it,
Hoping that they see it
As we do.
(They seldom do, but
It’s the memo
Of the heart,
Our smattering of art
That matters.)

Hello, Hello,
My fellow poets.
Ego-less
I come to you,
Admiring, commenting,
Caring for the things you dare to share.

Over simplified, naïve maybe,
Never diva we,
The weavers of profundity.
Hello, Hello to poets and to poetry,
Its crystal-gifted company
And you who take in what you see
Here.

To The Poets Of Hello, Hello! 7.4.2016
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;
Arlene Corwin

Hello Poetry; a site encouraging one and all to submit & share their oeuvre.

Our Tractor Man

Our tractor man is doing
What he really likes to do:
Clearing snow.                  
He suits my mental man-with-plow.
Trading pig and cow
For gear he likes to sit inside;
The tractor hut;
Tranquil woods to clear and saw,
Chop and cut;
Tractor wheel, forest smell,
Alone deciding what to fell.
Muddy potholes in the spring,
Flood and crud his tractor´s thing.
Nicely chubby,
Slightly tubby;
Sixty odd,
His tractor and the woods his God.

I esteem this earthy man
Dharma bound to seasoned stars
That fix the farmer life and plan
Unchangeable and stable.

Our Tractor Man passed away 2016.
                                                      
Our Tractor Man 3.4.2003 (revised 11.19.2016)
Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Time; Special People, Special Occasions; Birth. Death & In Between II;
Arlene Corwin


                                                      

our devoted tractor man who plowed our road in the winter.

In light go all the heartrendingly serious problems I've been writing about lately, I decided to write and enter another side of things.

A Lighthearted Poem For All We Scorpios♏️

This is a poem to cover
All we Scorpios alive or not.
In case you didn’t know,
We are a special lot.

‘Cover’ means:
Envelop and enfold, embody and embrace.
We are lovers
And the charming-est of ‘race’..
(of course I’m not impartial).

We are: fixed, we don’t change easily.
We must learn flexibility.
And mixed: Our colors brown and black,
Deep red/maroon;
Our rulers; Pluto, Mars, Uranus, Moon.
We’re born between:
Oct. 23 - Nov. 22
This poem’s for me, this poem’s for you.

We are the highest and the lowest:
So you ‘knowest’, we are:
Forceful and intuitive, passionate, magnetic.
Lovers,
We are great survivors.
BUT, we’re also jealous and possessive,
Wilful, secretive, compulsive and obsessive.

Make sure you choose the best;
Turn secrets to transparency…
Watch out for all the rest.

Believer in the mystic all/ material
One or the other/none of these
You are a sister, brother, father, mother
Therefore, take astrology with ease
And live with love, and how you please.

A Lighthearted Poem For All We Scorpios 10.31.2018
I Is Always We Is You; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Sitting in the bath once again, small blue pad in hand, bit of plastic as support, I write this poem.   Albert Cat demands a bit of attention and pad slides into the water.  I grab a bit of toilet paper to blot it.  That makes it worse.  So, blurred and vague, I reconstruct it, using magnifying glasses (2!) while watching the evening news.  Here it is:
             I Like Facebook

I like Facebook. I don’t know exactly why.

I like looking at the pictures,

Friends I’d never meet another way.

I like friendly messages,

Passages of verse I’d never read

If not for Facebook’s lead.

I like Likes and Comments kind,

Find in comments rich expressions.

Possibly I’m one of few - or few new millions.

I’m inspired when tired, fired up.

Even when I’ve written ‘crap’

No one’s there to trap me.

Some reviewer always sees my views,

Understands.

Someone always sends

Me praise; ends with a Like.

I’ve never had a spikey word;

Cordiality is all I’ve ever read or heard.

Commonality forever somewhere, there

Where someone wants to start a group.

Always somebody to whoop de whoop:

Somewhere folk who populate;

A troupe with common passions.

Then there are the monthly Happys:

Happy Birthdays, Christmases and Easters…

Never had one word rescinded.

Reminded gently daily:

Classmates, playmates

I’d forgotten, dovetailed,

Blazoned on the psyche;

Friends and places,

And of course, the faces -

It is Facebook, after all; the key, the glee,

A source of history.

As for weaknesses I’ve read about –

Never think to route them out,

Going ‘bout my business,

Focused on creativeness,

The lofty and the small.

I like Facebook.

Happy Facebook to you all!

I Like Facebook 3.31.2018 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Corwin

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

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

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

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

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

I promise you, you won’t go wrong.

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

Even And All The Time

God is giving out
Evenly and all the time.

Evenly and all the time
Through Law and laws,
A clout, a shout, no hanging about;
Efficient, effective and quick.

A seeming quirk that never quits:
The nature of God,
Nature of God,
An Absolute absolutely.

Even And All The Time 3.18.2017
God Book II;
Arlene Corwin
Continuation…
      For Those Who Can’t Or Won’t

For those who can’t or won’t believe…
Refusal, aptitudinal deficiency;
A lack of interest or an inability
To think it through
And come to That conclusion.
I look up to all,
Roads leading in the end to Rome,
The roaming in us all.

For Those Who Can’t Or Won’t 3.18.2017
God Book II;
Arlene Corwin

The Longest Day – Again

Oh, this time business!
Reminded with, by many signs;
Symbols that we celebrate and calibrate;
Every year the summer solstice!
Here in Sweden parties, feasting, dancing, joy,
With a thread of aggravation, kicking off annoyance -
Passing time a sign indeed!

Darkening a little earlier,
Seeds sown both in earth and past
Bloomed and harvested. Some not manifest.
Autumn on its way, and winter.
Wishfully, another spring, but now is now,
One can’t allow a sorrow.
Sun is strongest.  Night is shortest. Day is longest.
And hurrah!

The Longest Day – Again 6.21.2016
Circling Round Nature II; Birth, Death & in Between II; Nature Of & In Reality; Swedish Book;
Arlene Corwin

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

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

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

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

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

No Connection With Numbers

I have no connection with numbers.
Sixty-five or fifty-five, seventy, and suddenly
A person’s dead
And I am swayed
To thinking , “Gee, she was too young to pass,
At least these days”.
Lost track of what should, should not be,
It being all the same to me.
As teen, numbers relevant,
Forty ancient,
Frames of reference clear and few.

Digits now,
Are passcodes, pin codes, bank-cards, passcards.
As for age: eighty’s  the new forty, forty twenty;
Size eighteen is now size fourteen, thirteen now size zero;
Uni- multi- verses more and many; numbers leer,
And so unclear
That only new words suit.

Still unconnected and to boot,
It doesn’t matter – not to me, in any case.
I’m free, unfettered by the race, the chase.
In fact, it is a grace I [almost] note.
Glad I can vote,
De-vote my time to stumbling through
Without connecting numbers to
A thing
(except perhaps those few
I mentioned.)
Poems start out with one intention,
End up, well,
A tolling bell,
Telling all and nothing,
Ring! Ring!

No Connection With Numbers 6.10.2016
Numbers Book; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;
Arlene Corwin

The Many Benefits of Facebook Friends

A Facebook friend wrote meaningfully:
“Give me,
Five ways to give aid to people
Of Aleppo”
(You know where Aleppo is;
It’s on the lip(s)
                          of all the world).
A reader sent back this small clip,
A tiny snippet:
“Meditate!
Get rid of violent thoughts,
Of evil judgments that you sow
And sown,
And temper outbreaks that you’ve known.
Don’t only sit, feel sad and moan!
That is the thing this scribe can do,
Does do and plans to do.
You do it too!”

All done and said,
That was the ‘five good things’ contributed.

When he who wrote it
Noted
This.
I wrote right back and sent a kiss.
There are ten thousand like me.

The Many Benefits Of Facebook Friends 12.19.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II; War Book II;
Arlene Corwin

The Day Trump Tr-i-ump-hed

Trumpeting, he ******* and triumphed…
Did he, has he?
Thumping his way forward,
Jumping through the hoops of word and phrase,
Razing those that blocked his ways,
He dazed the lot.
Crazed, ablaze – or not.  But hot,
He took a stand,
But didn’t seem to understand (and may not still)
That energy attracts a gangland:
Thinking not that crowds could form,
Become a throbbing, clobbering or bombing mob:
A swarming army.

Young we heard,
You can’t take back the caustic word
Once in the air it’s there!
So rather than lie down
Crowds gather,
Drawing to themselves an anger,
War uncivil,
Civil war
                  once more,
And monies that he’s vowed to earn
Will burn in costs for crowd control, police patrol.  

The day that Trump was voted in
May not, in fact become a win -
For reasons manifold and sundry.

The Day Trump Tr-i-ump-hed 11.11.2016
Our Times, Our Culture II: Special People, Special Occasions,
Arlene Corwin

From Popularity…
              (comes danger)

From popularity comes hazard,
Risk of peril,
Boy or girl at danger’s call.
From anonymity comes shelter:
No one knowing you at all.

Every country loves its tourists -
Bridges, tunnels… easy access;
Weapons, drugs,
Lawbreakers, thugs:
In short, new foes;
New secret foes that no one knows.
From popularity come woes.

Self-imposed expansion low.
Moderation is the answer,
Modesty the balancer
Of friendliness
And isolation.

From Popularity 4.17.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II; Definitely Didactic;
Arlene Corwin

Morning Greeting to God

On waking I say (thinking, really)
“You’ve been here all night.
You’ll be here all the day,
Providing time, my needs,
And more abstractly, destiny.  
The trick is to be welcoming,
A trick that makes the play of pain
More comfortable,
For comfort is so comforting.

When I say pain,
I do not mean
A shoulder ache or thereabouts.
It means the pain of all around,
An ‘all around’ that’s all unbound
Which one will never have the skill to grasp,
Or power to reshape.

The day’s blank piece of paper,
Bland or stimulating,
Filled with action or quite still –
Always etude and apprenticeship.

So I ask myself (symbolically)
What can I learn?
With no idea of what’s to come,
Anticipating nothing
I accept each crumb that falls from
Shall we call it ‘heaven’s table’
(just a metaphor.)

Heaven’s table may be fable,
Morning’s greeting, fleeting phrase;
Both are ways to start the days
With positivity, an energy
To improvise with happy creativity.
What could be better?

Morning Greeting To God 9.25.2017
God Book II; Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Corwin

Words To Love: Emoji

Pictograph of sadness, cheer…
Every feeling, object, there
To show, enhance, inflate, draw near,
Define, make clear -
Oh, those Japanese - so clever!
E, a picture; Moji, character.

And I, mature, articulate,
Controlled, restrained,
Using it and them more often
When the brain’s refrain
Needs just that little extra bit
To sign and supplement
Whatever’s been expressed already
Boosting, heading
Written chunks of art (or junk)..
Emoji: hidden *****  behind it all -
A detail for the people.

Words To Love: Emoji 9.19.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin.    

whoever wants to add his or her pwn personal emoji is welcome to do so.

Everything Is Autobiography

Everything is autobiography.
And why not?
Ourselves inside
Is all we’ve got:
Ourselves, our lives,
Our unique lot –
Why let it rot?

Everything that heals is good.
Every healing means is food.
The only means that comes for free,
The has universality,
That’s there, for those with eyes, to see,
That’s there on call effortlessly
Is my peculiar history
And your autobiography.

Everything Is Autobiography10.26.1991/may be used in 2016 book)
Nature Of & In Reality; I Is Always You Is We;
Arlene Corwin

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

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.

Wiping Out A Planet

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

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

Taking Care of Body Parts

Take care of the body parts.
All the same, remember that
Most of what is going on,
Is going on inside you.

Organs, blood, I don’t-know-what,
Brain, realms therein.
All in-, invisible.
Cause encased:
To be addressed.

Take care of the body parts.
They show.
It’s nice and comfortable to know
                                   they work,
And more than that:
A pointer signal to research
The itch that doesn’t cease,
The lump or bump, the crease
Here, there or anywhere.  

Of course take care,
But find what’s there -
And not.
Fix the flub on neck and throat.
Booboo unattractive,
But beware, take care and ‘suss it out’.

Remember,
No appendage or a member
Is the issue.
It’s what’s going on inside
That describes the living you.

Taking Care Of Body Parts 3.22.2017
Circling Round Yoga; Nature of & in Reality;
Arlene Corwin


Of course!

A Problem And A Blessing

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

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

A Problem And A Blessing 5.12.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin



A cutie.

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

The Politician

Has he kept his word?

Kept to promises you heard?

Are you satisfied? Let down?

Waiting to see what comes round?

These choices voiced, unvoiced

From voters of the officers new crowned.



To those who vote by rote or call

To those who vote at all:

Has he or she distorted vows

To overpower and devour:

Double thought through double-think?



Misconstruing and misstating,

Skewed with bias filled with hating.

Stinking skills to sell and buy,

To peddle lies which sink a country –

Even if potentially –



Are the aides, incomes denied,

Who stand to profit on the sly,

Men in masks, men in power

Hidden men, men of the hour,

How will tasks now basked in

At whose call flasks, casks are drunk from:

Will affairs of state be slunk from?



This a call to politician;

Call to listen;

He or she just person

In the end.



The Politician 2.28.2017

Our Times, Our Culture II;

Arlene Corwin

After A Terror Deed
       (this time in Stockholm)

When terror deeds occur,
Him/her is wounded, killed,
Stay still.
You are in you and where you are,
Most likely far away
Watching the telly,
Shocked, the nightmare in your eyes.
You’re wise.
You stay collected.
Though connected you dismiss
The hate, the fear,
Your present now
To feel how it is in wholeness
And in peace.
The only answer.

But aware.
(Risk statistic in your favor).
Just remember,
You are always here
Inside your now.

After A Terror Deed (this time in Stockholm) 4.8.2017)
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin