Arlene Corwin Poetry

With no idea whether this had the nucleus of validity, I wrote it anyway. The phrase was just too inviting and carried on, on its own.

 It’s Hard Not To Worry
 (that’s what they say)

It’s hard not to worry
When watching TV…
Not to be anxious, sitting on tenterhooks.
Books on the subject of war and corruption
A comfort non-permanent,
Brief, evanescent.

One is pragmatic,
But subject to ‘truths’ that are lies.
Yes, one is objective,
But ‘truths’ are for ‘always’,
Or else they’re not ‘couth’.

Neurotic, simplistic,
Perhaps, maybe, probably –
Worry gets nowhere.
Not just a bother,
But fluster, a lather;
A burden, a bane
And a cause for concern.

Restlessness, nervousness,
Fearfulness, sheer distress;
Worry is fruitless;
Worry is dangerous.

Mind longs for peace;
The least of the least.
Restful tranquility, insight and sense.

Premature death,
The worst of the worst,
Worry that’s causally fatal to breath.

Trust, hope and faith – words for a future.
Blind, but they suture the future to now.
They sound airy-fairy, vague, unrealistic;
Idealistic, but all we can sow
To make worry go ‘way.

Fleeting and hostile,
Fragile but agile, worry is futile,
Short-lived but febrile –
Obstinate but not impossible.
(That’s what they say).
It’s Hard Not To Worry 10.10.2022 Circling Round Experience; Definitely Didactic II;Arlene Nover Corwin

Dedicated to the very gifted Kent who’s been reluctant to sing because he does’t like the sound.

  As Long As it’s Musical

Tone gruff,
Not quite enough
To make it lyrical;
What counts Is, is it musical?
Bobby Dorough,
Stewart, Rod
Armstrong, Louis in his niche
(though I have read he had a sense
Of perfect pitch)

No matter.
With a voice like lumpy pancake batter,
People listen. They admire
The attire of musicality.

With age the singing, (even speaking) voice
Grows coarse and rough.
A little cough,
Hoarse and raspy – throaty stuff
No longer mellow – shallow, hollow.
‘Used to be’s’
No longer pleasing
To the singer but
An audience is there to cheer,
The proof being the pudding.

As talent grows
It shows right through.
With musicality the main reality
Goodness knows,
It’s subtle sensitivity
That hits, imparts
Its movement to all hearts.

Hot or cool,
The fuel will always lie
In musicality.
And so, musicians all,
Be not afraid or shy.
Follow your call
And get your high
From merely being musical.
As Long As It’s Musical 10.9.2022 Vaguely About Music II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Beauty

Everything has it, not everybody sees it.
I, not first to think that thought,
Confucius thought it. brought
From times primeordial, but
Viewed inherently and quietly.
What is it that one means to say?

Beauty, and our duty to believe it
If not see it.
As I grow (and i mean older)
Beauty rests upon my shoulder.
Not the smoulder, solder glue of passion,
Nor the chains of fashion
But the cool observance
Of just looking and enjoying.
That’s the lesson.

Everywhere in everyone.
Limitless the zone;
The crooked nose, the limping guy,
The crosseyed eye…whatever.
Perhaps beauty sees as beauty is,
And if you see the charm in this
Then you are seeing beauty too –
Somehow.
Beauty 10.8.2022 Pure Nakedness II; I Is Always You Is We We Arlene Nover Corwin

Title suggested by my clever neighbor Veronica.

    Suspicious Minds

What a tragedy,
No, pity!
We’ve become suspicious,
Cheating going on and growing
So it seems,
Our dreams
Gone up in smoke,
Each crime a shock,
As if not contemplated or
Anticipated, been prepared for.

“Who’s that at the door?”
“My email’s blocked”
“They’ve taken money from my bank –
The blankety, blank, blank…
Blank, _ blank!

And so we hesitate,
Manipulated setbacks read about,
Each lout arrested, each that’s not;
We, suspicious, wary,
The most ordinary businesses unsavoury.

Coupled with the climate devastation,
Pandemic’s infestation,
P’s belligerence,
His blitz war lacking one small bit of sense,
We are suspicious, frightened.
Grappling with our troubled minds,
Our sad, cowed, coward minds.

Are there no keys?
Several ways to inner peace?
If you’ve got one, two, or countless many,
Contact Arlene Corwin, please.
Suspicious Minds 10.7.2022 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

i, I, I, I…

It has long been thought,
Indeed been taught
That you don’t use the pronoun ‘i’,
God knows why –
To not use I when wr-I-ting.

I have found that all one does,
No matter guise,
No matter form form,
Is based on/in projection.
Which means you is always we, is I.

The psyche dominates –
Or rather sublimates,
A transfer and reflection of the self
Into the works –
Whatever form it takes.

I maintain
There is no shame
In writing and admitting
There is ‘I’ in everything.
Though reaching you (as it is meant to)
The Universal you baked in each thing produced.

i, I, I, I…
Ay, ay, ay, ay, …and vanity,
Yes,
I confess:
Humility and modesty and vanity!

So what!
It is the ‘all’ that makes
The truth in-baked –
So don’t refuse it.
Use it!
I, I, I, I…10.6.2022 Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

Found this and revised the whole. Had more to say about it.

    Pain Is Such A ‘Pain’

Besides discomfort, pain’s a pest.
A nuisance, bother – at its worst or best
A hurt that quashes thinking’s process:
On the list of stress’s’ highest nuisances.

Common idioms in use:
‘Pain the neck’ ‘pain in the ass’.
Vulgar yes, but graphic!
To be optimistic,
Usually, it takes a rest.
Not long, perhaps, but any pause
Is better than no pause at all,
The standstill most appreciated.

I myself do many things.
Focus on it, climb into it,
Plain ignore it, wearing yoga as a toga…

If it’s un-retreating still,
Un-vacating, un-evacuatable,
Make a vehicle that’s readable
And write!
Pen or pencil –
Anything that tells the ‘hell’
To level out or redirect its target.
Pain Is Such A Pain 4.14.2021/revised 10.4.2022 I Is always You Is We; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

This was written to a Swedish friend who ‘skips’ my poetry asking, telling, instructing me to write prose instead.
To Ulf: Poetry vs Prose
(from a poet who loves rhyme* & meter)

To Ulf ,
To whom the gulf between the poem and prose
Is too enormous,
So that antics are ignored or missed,
Cannot be read and understood.
Almost rude
To art and mood of rhyme and meter
And the writer.
So, I say, ((keeping the meter)
Poetry Is categorically
Higher than the poise and pose
Of much of prose,
Because it needs a thinking
On so many levels:
Devils, Berlioz, shovels, bevels*…

Poetry, dear Ulf
Will always be the shelf on which
Anti- readers
Lean deaf ears,
Imagining each line
To end in somewhat corny time,
Worn out rhyme –
which it does not,
Because the poet,
Is herself mosaic
Both poetic and prosaic.

Give this poetry a try.
After, you will laugh or cry.
Enjoy!! (Unless I die)
There are hundreds yet to come.

To Ulf: Poetry vs Prose 10.1.30.2022 the Processes:: Creative, Thinking, Meditative ii;Arlene Nover Corwin
*Rhymes are underlined. To show that they can lie anywhere and require much reflecting and selecting.
*bevels; angles. Always keep a dictionary on hand.
Meant to start a dialogue. I know that English can and may be an obstacle.

    Experience 

Each day so filed with detail
We ignore or get derailed,
To suffer needlessly,
Heedlessly.

So important
That we learn from our encounters,
From each circumstance –
Taken as a glimpse, a glance,
The dance of life.

Life skill, empirical,
Exposure to, involvement in:
Plain practical
Yet philosophical.

‘Experience’ itself a word whose origin
Is Latin,’meaning ‘try’, as in
‘Experiment’ and ‘expert’.
Life is short and full of incident.

The commonplace events
All adding up to trials and tests,
Those ordeals vested in
The media or in the flesh.
All’s come before – nothing’s fresh.

So, each encounter
Ought be met as life’s adventure,
Each a contact with the now,
To burn for, turn or not return to
Learn and earn from each – somehow.
Experience 9.28.2022 I Is Always We Is You; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s Amazing: What’s Amazing?

That a body which we take for granted
Changes in a minute’s second.
Nose, ear, heart;
Parts identifiable or not;
Unseen parts that smart,
Which of a sudden,
Ligament and vein unreckoned,
Each condition, known, unknown to body’s self
We stand amazed;
We cave, amazed and fazed,
No weapons there to freeze the state –
A phase, we hope.
The scope of nature limitless.
We watch in expectation, dazed,
Because we thought we’d always be
The same unchanged and youthful me.
From G. B. Shaw, his mind and tongue
Who understood life’s short and long, life’s evensong
‘…Youth is wasted on the young’.
A pity.
It’s Amazing 9.29.2021/9.27.2022 Circling Round Ageing; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

  Dictators   

Let us start with opposites:
Peace and love’s benevolence;
Needing not to take from others;
Desiring not to take but serve,
Deepened by thought’s wholesome nerve
Nourished by the food of love.

Thought and peace of mind combined;
To see humanity as one big unit,
Feelings being what they ought when brought
Into this world at planet’s start:
The needfulness of sharing practical,
More beneficial, more worthwhile and fruitful.
Than the opposition’s rival
Of dictatorship.

Let’s now look at dictators:
Useless, unpropitious and perverse in every sphere;
Ultimately detrimental and destructive;
Hurtful in all areas.

Who would choose a ruler with complete control?
Who would be the fool to do it?
Tyrant, despot, someone who oppresses
As a right that he or she possesses.
Dictatorship: a ship that must
In due course, sink from lack of trust.

Dic-take-orships must always rust,
And dictators turn into dust.
Dictators 9.26.2022 Our Times, Our Culture II; War Book; Arlene Nover Corwin