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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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’

WHY MOURNING

Do you know anyone who doesn’t die?

Who hasn’t died?

Who will not die?

Not I.



How to accept?

Not mourn?

Think through to not have pain,

(For pain seems fruitless), for

To not accept

Is like rejecting sun and moon,

Existence, proven, measured, seen.

Do I lament when atoms split?

Grieve, regret,

Have sadness that I can’t get over.

Nover

Doesn’t.



Pain [we have] when others die –

That ‘other’ human, cow or dragonfly.

The local forester sawed down a fir

Which was for sure,

A hundred fifty years or more.

I mourned,

Stump and its rings all it passed down.



Is it absence or remembrance?

Is it longing for a something now a non-thing non-existing?

Is it clinging to a someone

Over whom we have no power,

Never had? Could it be wrong-er?

Fate and destiny his, hers or its

Through all of time and history.



I cannot think of one good reason

Vindicating mourning.

Were we meant for suffering?

Though I [clearly] cannot clarify,

We’re seeing wrongly,

Thinking strongly wrongly,

Wrought of ego’s braggadocio,

The hallowed hoaxer of emotions.



Nover: me, born Arlene Faith Nover

Why Mourning 11.4.2017

Birth, Death & In Between III; Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small; Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Egos;

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

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

An Eighty-Third

Ego there, but something’s going;
Some things gone –
Both nice and nice’s antonym.
Prefix Nov- linguistics’ whim -
What does it stand for?
One cares less and dares much more.
Nov means nine but mine’s eleven:
8th November, month eleven.
November eighth; November, Nover.
Arlene Faith "is now in clover"*.

Still, one has reached an eighty-three, (one being me)
We’ll see
What life has left at all…
Life being so irrational.
Et al.

*written by my 6th grade teacher Mr Martin when I graduated from public school

An Eighty-Third 11.8.2017
Birthday Book; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Nover 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.

What Would I Do Without You?
(Or Scribbling in the Car)

What would I do without you, lexicon?
What would I do without you, dear thesaurus?
Rhyming book to rhyme with -saurus: chorus, porous, e’en papyrus if it fits?
Wiki’s storehouse ‘cyclopedia?
Little things that make me big and ‘pigg:
Languages that set agog
The richness of the word?

So much I would  not do without;
And isn’t that what life’s about!

Mind so connected to the word,
I would think
Without a varied herd of word
T’would shrink.
T’would atrophy,
T’would wear away,
Become cliché
As cliché wears away the play
From boredom’s lack of stimulation.

So connected is the action of the word
To all the wisdom, the absurd
in all the minds in all the world
Of minds and hearts unaired, impaired…
Is mind to word.

pigg is Swedish for lively, spirited
What Would I Do Without You…Mind So Connected To The Word 7.19.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Amputation (the final word)

Who thought…?  Who knew?
Now it’s you
And fingers gone
To amputation.

You’ve seen programs. Said, “How brave!”
Thought about limbs saved and strengthened.  
Training every second hour,
Power growing,
Phantom aches and pains still gnawing:
They’re a marvel!

Now you know!
For that’s the way the cookie crumbles,
And it humbles one, for sure.
There’s no cure for amputation.
Something gone is gone.

The answer is to go on
Taking pleasure, having fun,
Taking sun and making merry ‘fore the sun goes down,
The gone-ness mostly in the brain.

Strong and proud:
Join the crowd!

Amputation 6.6.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Amputate; To cut off (a limb) by surgical operation.
Origin: mid 16th century: from Latin amputat- ‘lopped off’, from amputare, from am- (for amb- ‘about’) + putare ‘to prune’.

Note: “Amputation” was aimed at anyone who is amputated and happens to read it.  It’s not aimed at the world.  I saw this impressive  documentary about a group of men and women sorely handicapped in one other way, taking a group trip to and through Vietnam, and was so moved I just had to write something.
They went through rivers, caves, highways, narrow wooden bridges, taking turns at driving, some never having driven,  trusting one another, exhorting one another...
That’s what inspired this poem.

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

The CPS or Cordial Praise  Society

We who write, responding kindly,
Are the humble members of
The Cordial Praise Society’s
Appreciation of what others say,
Each in his way, (and naturally, her way as well.)
We do not try to sell ourselves,
And if we’re liked or even loved,
Get or give approval,
We are strengthened to the depths,
Feeling whole.

With no razzmatazz,
Let’s call ourselves the CPS
The Cordial Praise Society
Who push each other to the sky.
Not asking why,
We know it is the best and only thing to do.

The CPS or Cordial Praise Society 10.21.2020 the Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is long, but go through it.  It’s worth it.      it was originally called "Words That Changed Our Lives", being inspired by the  connection between pandemonium and pandemic.  

           Pandemonium

Words that show lives but a tribe:
There to scribe, describe our lives.
Words that come from health or sickness: mind and body:
Prowess, fearless, speechless, endless;
Dangerousness, selfishness, childishness - nothing escapes;
Sowing seeds of mental shapes
That come from mind-to-mouth.

Now’s come the time to learn some new:
Epidemic and Pandemic,
Plus another word to view: Endemic.
Just a few, but whew!
Hoping that it’s not titanic - the Titanic!
Let me help you.

First came epidemics:
Measles, smallpox, influenzas…
How to conquer, name and aim,
How could and could we control the sum?  
Sometimes.  Some.
Coming back to hit us all the same,
But vanquished?  Germs and viruses not dumb -
Survive  anti-biotically (the foe of symbiotically).

Year twenty-twenty,
Epidemic now pandemic,
Plentiful and more than plenty;
Too, too many - far too many.

Struck by the invisible;
Questionable, susceptible,
Humans daring not to touch,
Wondering, asking when will it become too much?
And thus we come to the last word:
Endemic: background sound
Though underground many a year
Alive and well and waiting for…
Pandemonium 5. 14. 2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

pandemonium | ˌpandɪˈməʊnɪəm |
wild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar: there was complete pandemonium—everyone just panicked.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: modern Latin (denoting the place of all demons, in Milton's Paradise Lost), from pan- ‘all’ + Greek daimōn ‘demon’.
pandemic
(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.
an outbreak of a pandemic disease: the results may have been skewed by an influenza pandemic.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Greek pandēmos (from pan ‘all’ + dēmos ‘people’) + -ic
endemic
1 (of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area: complacency is endemic in industry today.
[attributive] (of an area) in which a particular disease is regularly found: the persistence of infection on pastures in endemic areas.
epidemic
1 an epidemic of typhoid: outbreak, plague, scourge, infestation; widespread illness/disease; Medicine pandemic, epizootic; formal recrudescence, boutade.
2 he's a victim of the county's joyriding epidemic: spate, rash, wave, explosion, eruption, outbreak, outburst, flare-up, craze; flood, torrent, burst, blaze, flurry; upsurge, upswing, upturn, increase, growth, rise, mushrooming; rare ebullition, boutade.
adjective
a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time: a flu epidemic.
• a sudden, widespread occurrence of an undesirable phenomenon: an epidemic of violent crime.

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

On my way to teaching my lovely yoga class this paradoxical poem:✍️
       We Die When We’re Supposed To

We die when we’re supposed to,
Karma chained in cause/effect.
One eve I lay there,
Sorry, sad and full of fear
When of a sudden, shocked, aware,
The snare of truth, as clear as day,
Told me that we pass away
From causes self-created
From our characters, our choices,
Gene pushed, situation fated…

You know, when you get these flashes,
(call them insights, revelations, mind disclosures)
You can sense veracity’s exposures crashing in
And you’ve no choice
But to believe
What mind and thought receive,
In this case this:
Death comes when it will,
And it is up
To us to give this hidden ‘reasoning’ a whirl
And take the pill
However bad the taste.

We Die When We’re Supposed To 9.18.2012/8.16.2018 Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin

It Never Lasts

TV ad:
A girl with gorgeous legs
Steps from a gorgeous car,
The gorgeous car the star.

The gorgeous car will rust one day;
The gorgeous leg change, decay,
The shifting muscles waste away.
It never lasts.
The leg, the car.
The gorgeous things we long for.

But bad things too -
They go also, so
Don’t despair.
The hair that falls from top of head
Will start to sprout from parts instead.
The rusty car - the modern-est
Will sadly or indifferently turn into rust,
Crushed, turned into plate,
To use, become a roller-skate.
Jaguar, Rolls, Mercedes Benz,
Converted, crushed, a concentrate
Become the answer to a cancer.

Nothing lasts.  It simply changes
As each atoms strangely dances  
To a different tune.
Loony as it sounds,
To quote a song I’ve often sung,
“It all goes round and round.”

It Never Lasts 2.19.2021A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Eccentricity Isn’t Craziness, It’s Daring

Eccentricity isn ‘t craziness, it’s daring
To the -enth degree:
A caring not what they decree,
Not caring what they think of me.
The unconventional disarming,
Often charming -
What is normal?
Living life like all the rest,
I guess accepting colorlessness.

Planets are eccentric
And the sun’s just doing fine.
It shines on planetary quirks,              
Sustains the quirk so that it works.  
So,
We too can be a sun;
No planet going round,
No moon, but one
Unusual, bright son-of-a gun                            
Who does his ‘thing’ because it is
The only thing that makes things run,
The only thing that makes life fun

The misfit may not be a genius,
May be middling or bizarre.
Having said that, I give honor
To the one who does his thing
Since he sees through
The illusion, the delusion, the chimère .            
Eccentricity Isn’t Craziness…9.3.2015 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; revised/ 9.30.2018 Arlene Nover Corwin

Dear Death,

Stop calling me.
I gave you multiple chances, and there's a time when we must realize that something is unhealthy for us, so that we can cut it out of our lives.
I am sorry.
Maybe under the right circumstances I could have loved you forever.
But those circumstances are not ours.
Rotten luck.

Have a nice lif- err, have a nice day.

Sincerely,
Your (Former) Love Interest




Sincerely...you have nothing left to say, don't say anything else don't say that there's nothing left to say even, don't even think about the creeping corners of memory storage in which there might be a few grains of substance at the bottom of a seemingly empty box. There is nothing left to say. And you know it. So don't.

Nothing never nover nether 'mother netting noting nothing.

******* lamps. Not a great hobby.


Shadow shanty.

Singing a song of the Sea.
Wringing the throngs of the clergy.
Stinging the Dongs of the ******
Clinging to poems of the clergymen.

Shadow shanty.

I tried to take a look in the direction of the sun. And what I got was a whole face full of God's good redemption. So I clambered on until I found the dirt, and I dug straight down into the earth until I hit rock. And I smashed my head on that rock until I could hear again. And I listened my way out of the hole that I dug when I decided to hold on for one more second when I didn't really feel like holding on. When I waited around to be changed instead of changing. And when I was holding on for just one more second because I felt if I didn't hold on I would just hang up. And my whole theme song is just elevator music, we're going up and up and up and the air pressure's decreasing the ringing in my ears can't wait for it to just POP and clear and let me out of here, cuz the hole that I dug was a million stories deep, and I've not even told a fraction of them yet.
Which is why I remain.

In the light, nothing can be wrong or right.
In the light, I can makeup for deafness with sight.
In the long light of the day I can withhold many words.
In the longest nights, I can free myself. Finally.

Shade Chant

It's comfortable here. Let me never leave.
It's comfortable here. Let me never leave.
It's mighty nice here. OH please, oh please.
Please never let me be free.

It's time to dig my final grave.
It's time to dig the final grave.
It's time to dig that final grave.
That final grave into the sky.

My soul I send, into the waves.
My soul I send, into the waves.
My soul I send, all into the waves.
Goodbye soul I don't need ya no more.

Shade Chant. A ***** spiritual. From the black, black heart. Of a white supremacist.




This week I will bury you.
I will never see you again.
You will never help me through.
Never push me past fear.
Never guide me to love myself again.
Never remind me of the innocence I never lost.
I will bury you this week.
And it won't be me.
I'll watch it happen from above in the trees.
As I bury my sense of self alongside.
I will bury you.
Since you dug me out of the grave.

THE PAIN THAT IS HEAVY ON MY HEART IS THE PAIN OF A LOST SOUL WITH EVERY INCH RIP FROM ONE END TO ANTHER.
THE FEELING OF THIS PAIN WITH TEARS OF SADNESS THAT NO WORDS COULD EVEN WXPAINED.
MY WORRIES AND MY GIVING OF LOVE THAT I HAD AND STILL HAVE FOR YO IS BROKEN TO PEACES THAT IS SHOULD NOT HAVE TO TRY TO PUT BACK HLE AGAIN. THEREE ARE SO MANY THINGS THAT WAS TO STILL BE DONE MANY HOURS OFB TIMES THAT WE SHOULD BE RUNNING. THE WHEELS OFF THIS ROAD THAT U NOW HAAVE PASSED WITH OUT ME ARE BLOCKED BECAUSE YOU LEFT ME TO FAST AND TO SOON. THERE I FIND MY SELF FRONT OF THE WINDOW WITH RAIN DROPS OF SADNESS AND PAIN ASKING WHY? MY GOD WHY? NOT  KNOWING WHAT TO DO NOW THAT YOUR ARE NO LONGER HEAR MY FRIEND. NOT ABLE TO BREATH BECAUSE YOU STOP BREATHING ON ME. HOLDING IT ALL IN WHERE INJUST WANT TO LET IT ALL OUT AND WAKE UPO FROM THIS NIGHT MARE OF MINE.FOR ME MY FRIEND YOU WHERE THE BEST FRIEND ANY ONE COULD HAVE. YOUR HEART WAS FULL WITH SO MUCH LOVE THAT YOU COULD ALWAYS BSEE THE LOVE THAT YOU GAVE TO THOSE THAT JUST NEEDED A HELPING HAND YOU NEVER SAID NO. THE MADNESS THAT ONCE WAS WITH IN YOU GOT NOVER COME BY BEING MY FRIEND AND LETTING ME IN YOUR LIFE. NOT ONLY YOU SHOWED ME AND HELP ME YOU LET ME HELP YOU AS WLL. I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT ALL THE TIMES WE HAD FROM DAY ONE WHERE THE BEST TIMES OF MY LIFE THAT I WISH YOU WHERE HEAR FOR MANY MORE... I FIND IT SO HAED TO LET GO OF SOME ONE SO SWEET AND LOVING AND CARING AS YO FOREVERB AND EVER YOU WILL HAVE A BIG PART OF MY HEART I WILL NEVER LET ANY ONE TAKE THAT FROM  ME. I FIND IT SO HARD TO BREATH ANY MORE AND NEVER WANTING TO LET U GO. I LOVE U ALWAYS AND FOREVER YOU MY BESTFRIEND BOSS AND SO MUCH MORE MY DEAR LOVE  ABEL TOVAR REST WITH ME IN PEACE IN HEAVEN WE SOME DAY SOON WILL MEET.

The Funniest Word: Sesquipedalian: Long-Winded

I just learned the strangest word:
An adjective ne’er seen or heard.
Sesquipedalian.
Sesqui-pedal-ian:
Are we the aliens depicted?
Is it us the word has painted?
Latin for a foot plus half**
Which makes me laugh.
“Polysyllabic or long-winded”.
If there ever was a winding
Longish ended word, it is sesquipedalian.
You have to laugh
At something that’s a ‘foot plus half’
That uses fourteen signs to say it.
‘Sesquipedalian names, or prose’
God only knows how long is wrong,
And even, what is wrong with ‘long’!
Eighteen inches, fourteen letters.
Something in the letters fetters.

Words are born from situations:
Every nuance. each emotion.
How they come about’s the question.
Are we so observant, we,
Disposed to live linguistically?
I’ve no idea,
But it sure is
****** funny.
18 inches or 45.72 centimeters.
The Funniest Word: Sesquipedalian 9.27.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

sesquipedalian | ˌsɛskwɪpɪˈdeɪlɪən |
adjective formal
(of a word) polysyllabic; long: sesquipedalian surnames.
• characterized by long words; long-winded: the sesquipedalian prose of scientific journals.
ORIGIN
mid 17th century: from Latin sesquipedalis ‘a foot and a half long’, from sesqui- (see sesqui-) + pes, ped- ‘foot’.

One idea can lead almost directly to another  - although a day apart, as in this case:

     Sometimes the deepest questions elicit the easiest truths.  Because it is rather sillily written this ‘truth’ below is slated to go into a collection called “A Sense Of the Ridiculous #II,  A Sense Of The Ridiculous #I  already published.  (see Amazon or Barnes & Noble, I think )…and more, I’m sure.
      Simplistic, Black & White But True🤪

Teddy Roosevelt, the President,
Said, “Where you are, with what you have, do what you can”.
Do it, do, do, do”, said
Ted,
The President!

And I concur with Teddy's view,
For reader, do
You have a better, more complete
Solution?

Complex issues
May have layers,
Many sayers,
But sometimes there are no clearer
Answers than one thin as tissues.

Simplistic, Black & White But True 5.20.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

         The Elixir

If there ever was a magic potion
Inbuilt in an earthly notion,
One to change the habits old
Into a new and lifelong gold;
Outside all tricks,
The negatively nix;
A lotion of refreshment
Portioned out, the perfect servant,
Ocean of vitality and vibrancy
And most of all, not fancy,

It is doing what you can
With what you have
Wherever you may find yourself,
Tools always in your hand
Or foot, or leg or mind,
Its wangling angling,
Its instinct, intuition, reasoning.

Right there in existence
And your presence
Is the feature and the fixture:
The elixir.
Elixir 5.21.2020. Words To Love; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Elixir; (also elixir of life) a preparation supposedly able to prolong life indefinitely:

Sifting Through The Dross

Fire, flood,
War and blood -
It is no wonder I can’t stand
The papers and TV,
Those apps aimed right at me,
The dearth of quality,
The deprivation, loss of lives,
The angst it gives.

Preferring comedy,
Cartoons by Disney…
Am I cowardly?  
Maybe.

Fixated on the negative but well aware
Of heroes all around each day, each year,
Deeds of goodness and devotion,
Yet, there is this bleak emotion, yucky fear.

Another factor is the greed:
The pressured need for growth and profit.
Prophets sow salvation’s seeds.
Many listening, few that heed.
With much to win and much to lose,
One mostly feels the costly loss.
But sifting through the dross with trust,
Stably doing what one must,
One gets a glimpse of tunnel’s light,
Decides it’s worth a willing fight
And pushes on through restive night.

Sifting Through The Dross 11.15.2019
Our Times, Our Culture 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

A Meditative Attempt At Comforting

You are my synapses,
My consciousness,
My chemistry  
And everyone’s.
I have no ‘my’,
I have no say.
We are combined and mixed as one.
We are a kind of moon and sun.
That being so,
One has to rest and be at ease
In seeming ****** catastrophes:
Ageing’s ills and strains unbidden.
Youth’s robustness to bed-ridden
Impotence that needs to ask for each and every  
Life’s dependency.
This, for a friend ‘who sees an end,
And for another with the bother
Of a herniated rupture.
This, a meditative scripture
On attempts to see things are they are;
As they really, really are,
Have been and will be ever.

A Meditative Attempt At Comforting 9.4.2018 God Book II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Can It Be?

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

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

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

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


Coney Island 5.1.2017
Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin

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

Living in Sweden, as I do, I’ve often noticed that some idioms seem to capture an essence, are more powerful in Swedish than in my own tongue English and vice versa. Therefore, I’ve begun to take the liberty of borrowing the occasional Swedish idiom for use in my poetry.

I  Grund Och Botten (är vi lika)*
A Swedish idiom meaning At The Bottom Of Things (we are alike)

At the bottom of things: basically,
First and foremost and primarily
We are alike.
Our temperament, our gifts, our faults
May differ, and they do.
But you,
You are the same as me.
I is always you is we!
We are a race: a human race.
But should we race, erase the commonality
That binds us all? Of course not!
We are one in essence, which we got
At birth, perhaps before;
Sympathy, empathy, the virtues, vices;
All the aims a blend of spices
From self-sacrifice to merchandise;
Imprecise, but there at bottom
From the ******* to the sputum.
All your systems are but symptoms.
At their end a blend of like-ness and uniqueness,
And one race.

I Grund Och Botten 5.31.2018 Swedish Book; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

Saying Political Things

I suddenly find myself
Saying political things.
A president who has a name
That pumps out rhymes that rhyme with stump and thump and clump
So numerous, so humorous you try in vain
To stifle sniggering, giggling, trying to abstain
That is, when you are not afraid of what comes next,
(What, whose head will come undone on any pretext.)
I, who never had opinions of significance inside my head,
Find that I am sitting up in bed
Watching the news,
The countless views,
And find I’ve got some too!
The boohoo, ***** you kind, and views about:
Is North Korea bad or mad?
Why is the crime rate rising?
Is it rising?
Not the least surprised
If it goes either way.
And so I say,
It’s unexpected to discover
Arlene Corwin (former Nover)
Faltering and altering, but taking stance,
Dancing around matters of importance,
Though they may be comical to you,
Positing her new-found thoughts political.

Saying Political Things 5.29.2017
Our Times, Our Culture II;
Arlene Corwin

Given the popularity of tattoos, beards, shaven heads, holes in the body...et al,  I'm enclosing this highly relevant observation written first in 2002, revised in 2004 and now again in 2018.  
            People Get Tattoos

People get tattoos because

They think that there’s no change,

Because they’re vain, in love:

They think they choose, because

They’ve no idea at all

The rain in Spain lies mainly

In the plain,

That muscle turns

And what was breast or chest and firm,

De-firms, deforms

With budding bicep rose

Becoming wrinkled, wilted posy of-the-elbows.



I suppose it’s all to do

With time and how we throw

Away our energies, with time

Outgrowing side- and peepshow

We all worshipped once with gusto.



Oh, tattoo, you are a symbol

Of myopia and youth,

A cockeyed view of truth

That lets us down.



Still, people will demand tattoos,

Refusing all discussion

Until gusto gets to be disgust.

Nothing one can do

Except boo-hoo

This triste refrain to all who’ll listen;

Self abstain , and be a witness.

People Get Tattoos 1.18.2004 revised from 6.17.2002  re-revised 5.22.2018 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II;; Definitely Didactic; Arlene  Nover Corwin

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

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

                          Bliss

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words To Love: Interconnection

Crisis after crisis: interconnected.
Deeds apparent or invisible: connected.
Phases, patterns unalike, yet linked and ‘synched’*
With Laws pertaining.
Do not question, and be certain:
Every force contains its obverse.
Things expand and then contract -
Bodies, flowers - all its contacts…

Interacting constantly, the powers of reality;
Related somehow, here and now.
And so, we reconstruct, re-form;
Nature forming forms forever.

Adapting and accommodating,
Interacting and connecting,
Thus, collecting and correcting
Continent by continent.
Intra-, inter- without end.

short for synchronised

Words to Love: Interconnection 4.18.2021 Circling Round Reality;Circling Round Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

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

Strangely, “After Coffee" was written after I’d woken and written “Bored with Myself”, which simply confirms my theory that we are more chemically driven than we think.
     I’d had a pneumonia vaccine shot yesterday afternoon, and during the night experienced symptoms I’d never had before - all during a night’s intended sleep: hip or sciatic pain, sharp and nagging, 2 bouts of dizziness, general joint pain.  Nag, nag, nag1. Awful.  And when I woke from this ‘awful’ night’s sleep, I was unmotivated, unable to connect with my inner self.  Awful.
     I could suddenly sympathise with the poor souls who take drugs or those who have chronic depression.  
     :
    After Coffee

After coffee energy!
Phenomenal!
A marvel, really!
Creativity, originality come forth
From south and north,
East and west,
As if the brain knew best
What stretches under.
What a wonder!

After coffee clarity!
A sharpness present
Where transparency is formed
And shown by honesty, directness,
Plain outspokenness,
A kind of innocence and guilessness.

After coffee: not for all.
For those who benefit -
Well, have a ball!
It might release a core essential.
Finer than you ever knew.

After Coffee 8.20.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin  

       Bored With Myself

Thoughts, ideas repetitive:
They all feel done and writ;
Not un-creative, yet,
Should one continue writing
Poetry or prose-try, the same old set-up,
Corwin’s format?

It feels as if I’ve said it all,
Ahead of all,
The tragedy and beauty
Side by side,
Observing changes far and wide
Outside, inside this body, brain.
I feel drained.
Yet now, this minute and this moment,
Are what is, one has (“one” being me).

I wait and see,
Functioning as seconds tick,
For tucked away is optimism.
What an oxymoron!

Nothing to say,
But writing anyway

Bored With Myself 8.20.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; (new collection) Circling Round The Universal; Arlene Nover Corwin

Summer Hugs

Summer hugs and Arlene tries to rescue bugs
On windowpane, in sinks and tubs;
Wasps and bees, creepy crawlies
And the flies.
And while she tries
To save from drowning
Insects downed, in need,
The floating few, the struggling all,
She does not (sadly) oft’ succeed.
Wings stick to hand or tool, whichever…
Wings the godly weaver
Curved, swerved so impressively.

Summer green and flowery,
Life narrowly escaping death;
Ant on the road,
Frog and toad…
When sun’s been hot
And not predicted;
Storm and thunder
Under destiny’s unnerving hand.
Is it any wonder
That the wandering gypsy caravan
Had wheels?

Summer Hugs 5.30.2018 Circling Round Nature II; Swedish Book; Birth, Death & In Between II; Nature Of & in Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

I wash the brain with peace,
Synapse to sleepy synapse.
Themes may change from day to day,
The mind and will working that way.  Today,
It’s peace – a motif that I never ‘got’.
I’m one step nearer, sensing it.
Behavior freer, talk a bit…
I’m more polite, considerate.
Something’s taking ‘way the ****
That usually rolls around as chaos;
Something near to paradise’s
Innermost best aspect peace, is
Uppermost. I use this basis
For my practice,
Imaging, imagining, examining,
Pretending, willing…
All that matters is the stilling
Followed by activity that does some good.
(What I wish is that it would).
Meanwhile, I am smiling more and more.
This ‘peace wash’ must be working.

Washing Over /My Newest Trick) 2.23.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Nover Corwin

Abstinence

Not pain exactly
But a longing, plain for me to see;
A need that has no outward symptom -
None.  Not one.
Brain tristesse invisible and humdrum.
What to do? Is one a freak?
That hour, that day, that week one speaks,
One acts, attends to facts;
A seeking through an abstract dance -
Dependence through aloneness.

Publicity? More company?
Eternity perpetuated through some poetry?
Anyway and somehow, one puts pen to paper.
One, two, three, four hours later,
Crossings out, Webster shouting all the time,
Searching for meaning,
Meaning’s teaching, fetching rhyme:
Through growing phrase and sentence.
Abstinence finds absence.

Writing in that playful way,
One knows one’s had a lot to say.
The silence that gave abstinence;
Was abstinence from muteness.
Abstinence 12.18.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Bass Deluxe: Ron Mathewson

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

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

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

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

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

Involved in Self

No one is more involved in self than
Self, for self is everyman  
And every self a constancy,
The constancy ubiquitous.
Once you have a grasp of this  
And use it thus,
You know all that there is to know
About this large and growing human race.

Some dispute the truth that is.
Ergo, the key — one of the keys
Is letting go the ego to please
Ego’s needs,
Which ego feeds self-interest,
(Not always the best of interests.)  
Nonetheless,  
No one is more concerned with self
Than self - oneself.
If one can land in understanding
By the  broadest of acceptances,  
One’s earned and learned the keys
To standing inside happiness
Outside of loneliness.

Involved In Self 2.27.2021 Circling Round  Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin