The 'I' Form

Some like it, some do not.
Some avoid it, voiding it
Into the well of meekness, weakness;
Too confessional to speak.
I was one of them,
Sometimes still am.
The ego’s always there with shame.

If the theme is terribly self-biographic,
Graphic, ******…
Then ‘’i’ becomes ’one’, ‘he’ or ‘she’.
Usually, I don’t need privacy
But like to share a message
Writ as poetry,
Assumption being ‘we’
Is always you and me -
Same experiences,
Feelings, senses…
All that differs is the tongue.
Behind it all, one song that’s sung,
Pearls of life strung on one string,
The common gong of simply being.
Let us share the ‘I’ form bravely!
I is always you is we.

The ‘I’ Form 4.4.2021 I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

One Can’t Keep Brooding…

One can’t keep brooding over gravity:
The drooping, dropping mushy *****;* -
Hormone’s programmed mystery
Which summons all and wins.
One’s tired of mirrors,
Made up terrors,
Looking in at thinning skin.
The time spent on the pimpled chin:
Hours that spoil.

Loyal friends disinterested,
Strangers with the least concern;
Who has time to burn
On affectation and facade,
The cavalcade of vanities
That seize the eye?
One can’t protest
What which is useless.

****** is the warmly affectionate  Yiddish  word for ‘***’’ or ‘bottom’
or ‘rear end\’, none which has the tender expressiveness of ‘*****’.

I Can’t Keep Brooding 5.8.2008/re-composed 4.4.2021
Circling Round Ageing;Circling Round Woman;Circling Round Nature;Circling Round Vanities;
Arlene Corwin

Happy Easter

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

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

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

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

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God

The atheist soldier or sailor who, drowning,
Calling for mama, God or simple help,
Have mind-sets identical yelping for help.
Secular, temporal,
Pious and scriptural,  
Chemistry’s at the mysterious base,
Influenced neither by race or by grace.
The mind/brain’s the same when conditions are right,
The fact is that truth is the same, day or night.
Only the names are dissimilar.

Faith is a standpoint, dependent on hope,
Not on piety, dogma, nor doctrinal dope.
Everyone has wishes in one form or other;
Money or status, -isms or power.
Most neither useful nor lasting: a feather!

Faith is invisible, chemical: personal.
Often irrational but somehow functional.
No one knows how, why it works, but it does.
Therefore, it pays to have something to trust;
Something to go to when all’s a big bust.

Grown and mature, you see through illusions,
Knowing the platitudes, maxims and truisms.
Tired and seeing, you seek what is true:
Principles governing metamorphosis -
You’re seeking its purpose.
Change doesn’t fade.  No thing has ‘stayed’.
Sometimes one needs to believe in a God
That can house all of this.

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God 4.1.2019/re-composed 4.1.2021 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Reality; Circling Rond Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Newly re-discovered and re-written with the eye and mind of an 86 year old.

             Gone

It isn’t that I was a beauty -
Ravishing or stunning,
But the young have assets winning
In the limber and the nimble,
In the willowy and flexible;
Ligament and cartilage,
New formed partnerships.
Skipping grace, the ageing seeps into the
Shortened, lengthened, thickened heaps.
Creamy, glossy, high cheekbone
Erased and gone,
Replaced by pressing lines that frown.

Not loss but changes [to the]
Self, our peers, - our generation disappearing.
Knowledge which, though understanding
Is no restful, cheering peace
But fear that meets us with a tear,
With answers which may ne’er come near
But carry on their jeering.
        
It isn’t that I was a beauty.
Looking-glass and date remind me
How much beauty’s in the supple,
“You’re the apple of my eye”, says nature.
Ageing’s wit and not an answer!
Muscle mass, the well-formed ***,
Ratio of nose/lips, waist/hips;,
Elasticity an aching stiffness;
Movement showing signs of stress.
Hostile drooping chin through to neck…
Heck, hopefully, the wick of beauty really comes
When youthful beauty shrinks and runs.

Gone 10.23.2008/110.29.2008/re-written 3.39.2021 Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

Coping

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

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

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

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

Coping 3.28.2021 Circling round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

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

We Who Keep Writing

I listen, read and look,
The world around a book.
This simple observation
Stimulation.
To one linguistically inclined,
As Swedes say,
“It lies ‘in the spine” *
Another way of saying,
In the gene or DNA.

This Facebook thing,
The many, many sites that ring,
Communicating, reaching out
To those of us who think and write
In words
Are worlds of benefit and benediction.
So-so intellect and talent
Notwithstanding.

We who carry on,
Persist, keep on
By virtue of some motivation
Indivisible, invisible,
Yet Siamese twin
Are blessed without, blessed from within.
This tiny verse took 15 minutes.

We who Keep Writing 3.28.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
* (for I live in Sweden)