Sometimes I write a poem and fully satisfied I print it, send it out to Facebook friends and then, a week later catch a glimpse and see weaknesses I'd never have thought of or recognised as being poetic deficiencies.  This being the case, I offer you my just-now revised version of Euphoria.✍️

          Euphoria

Passing On Experience

Passing through as in a cloud;
Passing on to all the crowd
By passing out free tickets
Transferred, shared;
Life intention, sentience,
And the Law of - well, Experience.

Passing On Experience 4.6.2021 Life, Death & In Between III; 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

The Word Is So Inspiring #2

The word is so inspiring ‘cause
The world is so…inspiring, yes!
So connected word and world, that
Whether reading, hearing, speaking,
One cannot hold out against,
So hard resisted -
World/word every inch insistent.

Adjectives are what it needs:
All kinds of namings and descriptions.
Verbs to give the state an action,
One’s reaction heightened, strengthened.

What would mortal being be,
Idea too - without a word
To give a world to;
Love or hate, brake, dominate…
The catalyst to cause a chain
Without sustaining change itself; yet mate
We cannot do without.

World and word.  Add or drop the letter L
And you make a hell of heaven, heaven hell:
Reach the soul of being’s kernel.

Don’t we all adore the word,
Forming terms to upgrade, downgrade, add to, shade;
inescapable, a tool
To make us stronger, nicer, if you will
For we are partly in control.

In other words, don’t hesitate
To spread the word, but waste no words
And keep your word;
Express yourself in ways untiring,
Heart and head both unified
In spoken or the written word inspired
And inspiring.

The Word Is So Inspiring #2 1.19.2020  Definitely Didactic #2;  Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

I watch and read and, and and...shocked and horrified and helpless.
             World On Fire

Right Time, Right Place

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My beloved Kent is 83 today. Here's what I wrote to him:

     Saying Goodbye To Eighty-Two
We're lying here. It’s nine p.m.  Nine p.m. exactly!
Three more hours to eighty-three.
Do you feel different?
Much less ignorant than yesterday?
Feel that years have run away?
Or maybe you don’t mind
The wrinkles that you find?
Don’t care that hair is thinner
Or that whether it is there
Or not.
Three more hours.
In the morning I’ll give you a poem I’ve framed.
I’ll let you come and give me breakfast.
Everything will be the same
Except that you are one year older.
Once again, we are
Three years, three months apart.
Dear heart,
A happy wish for years to give
You health and vigour.
Years to live twenty years longer -
Maybe twenty-four years more.
Say goodbye to eighty-two
And I will say, “Sweet dreams” to you.
You’re tired and I’m inspired
So I’ll wait until tomorrow
Till you read this.
Here’s a goodnight kiss:
(****, ****)

*
"****, ****" means kisses in Swedish
  Happy, Happy Eighty-Third
Are you really eighty-three today?
In weighing time, the climb of time
It seems a fancy fantasy.  
As if not many moments past have passed,
And last year I was forty-eight or so,
You forty-four or five, the glow
Of youth still in our faces,
Space of time not closed.
Who knows how long the years are likely?
Time’s been good to you and me:
incredibly, we live like royalty
And lovingly, to boot.
We’ve rooted out the key to what
A  good relationship should be.
You’ve made me happy,
And so, in return, I wish you too,
This final word:
A HAPPY, HAPPY EIGHTY-THIRD!
Happy,Happy Eighty-Third 2.8.2021BirthdayBook; LoveRelationships; ArleneNover Corwi

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

Another one of those days on a roll.  Wait until you see the next poem coming up. I Like To Wash The Dishes.  

      Finding Out The Truth

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

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

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

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

To quote my dear Swedish Kent “A less abstract”... poem.  I like that, because I suppose I have two aims when writing: one is to write a poem the reader can identify with - something both concrete and universal and two, to write a poem of quality.  As an example, this simple, some might say simplistic "From Wakeful Night To Active Day" took roughly a day and a half or 6 hours to write from idea to end.  And you never know, it may not be the finished product yet.

       From Wakeful Night To Active Day

I lay awake.
I no longer take
                      for granted
Night long sleep.
That’s quite alright.  
I wind, unwind my yogic limbs,
Find things to do
While torso twists & screws,
The mind at ease,
Positions so brand new,
No book has yet to catch or photo.
There I lie with things to do.

There is a ‘me’ that does not choose;
A something that already knows;
Some inner cleverness that goes
From limb to limb, joint to joint,
Anointing every cartilage, each ligament
With blessed flexibility,
Accessibility,
Facile ability:
Yoga session moving forward
To a most advanced degree.

It isn’t fun to lay awake,
But when it’s done,
One falls asleep.
Perhaps not Rem or deep,
But it’s enough.
A cup of coffee
                       does the trick.
Awake and quickened,
Competent to not delay
But go the whole way
In a stream from recent dream
To active day.

Mysterious this nighttime cycle;
Structural, visceral, mental, spinal,
Hormonal, remindful?
Grateful and humble,
Glad to report that it was not final.
From Wakeful Night To Active Day 1.26.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin



ARLENE CORWIN
ArleneCorwinPoetry.com
Facebook/hellopoetry.com/jerryjazzmusician/
Cyberwit.net/Amazon.com/Barnes6Noble.com/allpoetry.com

Thoughts On A Sunday Morning After Coffee

Ducks Came Onto The Grass Today

It is divine. A day in June,
A paradise.
As here we sit and chat a bit
‘Bout that and this, this and that.

Paper plates of summer food.
Some tête á tête:
The world seems good.
Unparalleled.
Who could want more,
The summer air our succour.

Our new clipped lawn
Down to a our boathouse
Housing table, chair
For guests who come there.
Little rowing boat with motor
All prepared to spawn small trips
For tiny ships
Onto the relatively little waters.

Speaking of our lakefront syrup,
Ducks came up onto the grass.
They hadn’t asked,
They visited, so used to bread
Were they..  Then suddenly,
Five more waded ashore,
Ready for a bready
                           exploration.

Eight pm, sun still high,
Ducks swum away, good TV waiting
Sauntering, we left our haven
For the secondary heaven
Of our home some steps above.
A sort of, kind of
Paradis-ical true love.
What a day!

Ducks Came Onto The Grass Today 6.25.2020 Circling Round Nature II; Circling Round Experience;

I’ve been thinking about the phenomenon of marketing for a long time now, and how, to be successful in the modern sense, using the words to mean ‘life of ease, comfort, the good life, wealth, riches, fortune opulence. luxury triumph, bestseller-ism, box-office, sell-out, celebrity, stardom, super-stardom, big name, household name, VIP, leading light, and such,  I see the up sides and I see the down sides: the demands, the touring,  all the followup pressures and the exploitation   The transience of it all.  
What to do?  How to view it?

           Marketing

Do I sound too radical?  too old fashioned?  Too silly to make the case for abstinence?

One of those not-so-often reflections.
    
When joy leaves, what steps in?
Nature doesn’t love a vacuum -
Almost never leaves a vacuum.
When joy leaves
Rampant listlessness of mind takes over
And a person by the name of Nover is observer.
Paucity so strange and foreign
Doesn’t doesn’t really want that thing - that joyless thing
To put the mind, spine, neck to swing
(As in the concept ‘noose’’).
When shorn or torn from mind-set,
Sleeplessness replacing it,
The active peace hard to get back
Unless one has provided self
With some kind of a silent frame
With any kind of name, (though lame) for comfort -
Times when happiness has left its home inside your heart,
It’s but to wait it out,
To find again the peaceful state
With gentle and unsentimental will
To stillness.

When Joy Leaves 4.9.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin
rempant listlessness; an oxymoron

The Absolute & Greatest Mystery

If there is a force that is
A force that has no force behind it;
One that is and only is,
It must be
Absolute and absolutely
The most prized uncertainty
To solve, get close to, pierce and know,
For at this moment being only
Trust and hope.

There have existed, even now
Both women, men, child uncommon
Who, through chain of fate and gene
Have felt first-hand,
The mystic Hand, the magic wand
Of coming face to face with Law.
In other words, who saw
The force dubbed Lord, God, Word;
The lauded way and means Supreme,
Giving rise to loud esteem or wordless awe.

Thus, and but, and hence, and so,  
The question with the loudest clang:
The Bang behind the first Big Bang! ⚡️💥🌟💨

The Absolute & Greatest Mystery 4.3.2020 God Book; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; ToThe Child Mystic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is an interesting one.

Do you ever feel like or identify with so and so?  

Sometimes Like Whitman✍️

Like Whitman, I love women, men,
Children, cats, dogs, birds, ants, even
Flies, bees, wasps - the things that bite
By day or night -
That come and go
As in the ego
Rlsing like a queen –
Pushy, domineering,
And between a humble nun.
Ego’s power’s a sneaky one;
Self-ness changing hour by hour,
Self-less self-ness into -ish-ness.
Sometimes I’m like Whitman:
Full of fullness or
A structure frail and faulty.

Sometimes Like Whitman 3.18.2015 revised 3.18.2019 Pure Nakedness; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Corwin Nover

This poem is dedicated to Bhaghirath Choudhary, a kind and generous Facebook friend who sends admiring and encouraging notes regarding my poetry.

Although I wrote this with my own performances in mind, there was Andre Previn who, they say actually quit his job conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony because it was like throwing pearls before swine - people coughing, being there for the wrong reasons etc.  All experienced musicians and artists, I’m sure, have experienced the same!

    Pearls Before Swine.  

Once More I Watch

Yup or nope?

When Laila Smiles  

When Laila smiles, white wagging tail,
All around her smile too.
Her happiness comes rolling through.
Running, jumping,
Even when she humps a doll which she can pull onto the floor,
She is adorable.

Smile contagious, doggie-gorgeous,
Lively Laila, lovely smile, canine fine
Is most divine!

And when at night she goes to bed
There’s nothing more that need be said,
Except “Goodnight,
You dog delight!” 🐶

When Laila Smiles 6.11.2020 Love Relationships II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Best Thing  I Know

The best thing I know
Is to scribble down longings, life’s wrongings,
Love’s singing,  its stinging…
By letting the mind re-examine itself;
Watching world going by while in bed,
At its head, sitting silently gathering info
On news fact and mail,
Nailing knowledge on some tricky wiki- or so.

Christmas will be here in only some days,
A new year announcing a new phase
Of conflicts world-wide and world round;
Science will stumble upon some new ground
It has searched for for years,  
Praised and surprised, encircled by cheers.                                    
Fashions and trends, starts and ends will go on.
I will write into night seeking thoughts to dig into;
Unknown and new, cued by visualisation:
Thoughts to set words (not set worlds) afire,
Freed from the mire
                             of frazzled cliche.

The best thing I know
Is to grow through an intellect
Coupled
With Mac so fair,
Happy it’s there.
We’re a pair.
The Best Thing I Know 12.19.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative  II; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s Always A Long Road

It has been said,
It is a long, long road ahead
To where you want the road to lead,
The bed you lie in’s one you’ve made.

Not glad to be pedestrian,
Let’s hope that what you want is of significance,
The highest of your competence.

How easily we’re pleased with less;
The choice that leads from bad to worse.
Tychism’s doctrine* has its flaws;
Life not just chance and not just chaos.
Things have causes and effects
Projecting further cause/effects.

With little place for accidental luck
Or good/bad providential fluke.
It’s what you do with what’s been given
That’s the recipe for living.

In the visibly explicable,
Choice is faintly recognizable.
The road will never fail to be a trail
That defies portrayal.

It’s Always A Long Road 2.5.2020 Circling Round Experience; Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

*Tychism: the doctrine that account must be taken of the element of chance in reasoning or explanation of the universe

To all my friends, American and otherwise:

      Two Days Of Biding One’s Time

One Day Before A New Man Comes Through The Door

I was just  wondering:
Where are the children Trump detained
In nineteen hundred seventeen,
Or eighteen/nineteen...?  
Do they still remain
On floors and mattresses  both here and there?  
Oh, where, oh where, are they today?
Back home in Mexico to live, laugh, play?
Or here alone in ye olde demos- USA?
One Day Before A New Man Comes Through The Door 1.17.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

      The Installation

Will and can he knit a nation?
Help to heal a land’s relations?
Power shift has taken place,
Donald Trump has lost the race,
Truly, fairly.
Biden/ Harris -
Such a pair as
Never opened White House door
And sat in duo chairs before
This small voter welcomes them;
Trusting that this ethical and moral team
Has destiny  on both their sides
To override the unsound side
Always found in humankind;
The un-kind sides that hide from fact;
Act in favour of an ego free
Of prejudice and ‘me, me, me’.
Installation/consecration: we will see.
The Installation 1.20.2021Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I’m still in nature mode.

         The Daffodils Are Out

.   Mister Moon Looking Through The Window
                    

You Need Someone Who Believes In You✍️

You've all heard of "A Space Odyssey".   This could be called "A Space Hypothesis".

The Great Communicator
             (self confidence, low self-esteem)

He eats the cake, the bread home baked;
He never asks or comments.
Eats in silence.

There are men with little interest,
Curiosity, desire to know;
Silent husbands
With repeated jokes, repeated patterns;
Showing growth, but oh, so slowly.
Holy moly!.
Passive in aggression, but aggression there.
Defensive, self-protective;
Inner stuff that doesn’t dare,
Except in dreams when he is violent.
Mostly silent,
He observes the weather, future seasons.
He can reason, have his reasons
Sometimes faulty, sometimes right.
Doesn’t recognise a compliment - can’t take it in.
Apologize? It doesn’t happen.
And those violent jerks at night!
Reveal a healing that has never taken place:
The chases, villainous and shadowed faces, traces of what nowadays
Is called low self-esteem.
It’s natural one wants to scream, become a fem-
                                                                             inist.
It’s so unnerving!
Serving no one in particular.
Who needs a ‘great communicator’
Like the one who wants no insight.

exclamation US dated or humorous
used to express surprise or dismay: holy moly, this is exciting news!
ORIGIN
late 19th century: alteration of holy Moses, popularized in the 1940s by the character Captain Marvel in DC Comics' comic book of the same name.
The Great Communicator 2.17.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

To grandmas everywhere:

             Today’s Grandma

The Ability To Cope✍️

Serious stuff.

Just thinking…

More Bits Of The Puzzle

Words Are ‘In’

When I was young I lacked the means
To speak my thoughts, ideas or longings.
(though aware of rights and gladnesses and wrongings).
I lacked words: shades of utterance and indication.
Reactions, yes, linguistic thinking - I think not.

Around the age of twenty,
University degree behind me,
Marriage, baby,
Books, experience exposures new,
Movements calling for articulation:
Music, writing, word expression:
Understanding! Wow!  
A very non-linguistic Wow!

Now it’s now
And I expect, respect
Each precious aspect
Only word contains;
Retains through thick and thin.
Words are ‘in’.
Words Are’In’ 3.9.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

No Protective Language or, A Call To Arms
(found this in my email just now. I never remember what I've written, writing as much and as often as I do, and this seemed particularly appealing at the moment. I found myself thinking, "Gosh, that's good!")

I’d been thinking about this a long, long time.

   Wondering What Would Happen

Not a futurist, apocalyptic pessimist,
But I’ve fantasised,
Imagined what it would be like
If by some fluke, some evil act,
Some karmic sequence of events,
The lights lost power:
Hour when the sky grew dark
We had no lightbulb to turn on,
No stove or oven,
Instant water from a valve
Wired heater there to to solve,
No recourse to the digital:
No things at all
For comfort and convenience  
We’ve grown used to.

Me, I’d have to write in pencil or
What ink or lead was there.
I’d have to learn to grow -
Cultivate and plough to live;
Contrive a greenhouse to survive.
Learn where, how to find the carbs,
The protein, fat…  
What to have  and where they sat.

That’s only me;  No family
To feed with nutrients they’d need.
I have someone who chops the  wood.
For goodness’ sake, I have the woods!
Dependency on things electric
Is approximately half of the world
(hurling out a random number)
Members of the global race
Seem to be laced with ruination…
Nation after ruined nation.

Answers lie not in religion,
Not in -ism,
But in thoughtful and reflective -ation:
Contemplation, meditation;
Intellect and heart and action.
Wondering what would, could happen
But a step.

Wondering What Would Happen 2.10.2021 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Easier to read than the first:

Storm Michael: One More Symbolic Sign

Circling Round Everything #2
                  2018

Paradise Lost (Can’t Let It Go)

I'm becoming quite, quite addicted to sharing with all of you out there.  It's elating!  I thank you all for being there.
              Another Realization

I wrote this in 2002, revised and renewed it in 2004.  It is the kind of subject that has no ending for all that is still wrong and all that is yet to be done.  It is now 2019.  My former doctor has it framed and on the wall.  

To The Doctor Who Examines Me

Older ******

Love life can smoulder still
When you get older, till
The gasp and sigh die out,
Expiring total.

Where tenderness lives
Carnal knowledge survives.
Where love and affection survive,
A good love life will thrive.

The union of two
That is moving and true
Has a life of its own,
Not on loan but a power of staying,
Of carrying on.
Tenderness leaves out the hinder of ending.

While there are pauses and fadings away,
Touchings and strokings are blessings
That not only grow and develop, but stay
Till the ecstasy in its finality must die away.

Older ****** 10.1.2020 Circling Round Eros II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

By the way, I'm Arlene Corwin Poetry.com also.

      I Get These Offers✍️

Approaching Eighty-Four

The Case For Upper Case

I am traditional.
Each line I write
Starts with a capital.

I’ve gotten slurs,
Have had to plead my case
Give reasons for…
Well, can’t say more:
It looks right, feels right, lights my fire.
Capitals inspire!

Upper case to start a line
Seems to define a poem
As does a rhyme and meter.
And it seems to me, a writer/reader
That the message is delivered stronger,
More aesthetically and stylishly
Than when composed and written out
In form that’s free
Of commas, brackets, sentences,
Spelling, colons (and the semi-…)
All the marks that clarify,  
Unifying all and any…

Upper case in verse
Is not a race or contest
To see who is best.
Upper case is, in this case
A quest for knowledge,
Autobiographic collage:
Search and synthesising:
To  two eyes that just may realise
A Self and what’s behind:
The mind and whatsoever else I find.
(Or should I say whoever else…).
But never mind,
I face the upper case dissent
With quiet acquiescence,
And perpetuate, to celebrate
Tradition.

The Case For Upper Case 1.12.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin