Arlene Corwin Poetry

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God🧘‍♀️

The atheist soldier or sailor who, drowning,
Calling for mama, God or plain help,
Have mind-sets identical:
Secular, temporal, wholly the same
As the pious and scriptural.

Chemistry is the mysterious base,
Influenced as it is, neither by race
Or intelligence,
Talent or grace.

Character, temperament, circumstance, background,
The mind/brain the same when conditions are right.
The fact is that Truths are the same, day or night.
Only the names are dissimilar.

Faith is a standpoint dependent on hope.
Not piety, dogma, nor doctrinal dope.
Everyone has it in some form or other –
Some more illusion than this that, the other:
Money or status, or -isms or power.

Faith is invisible, chemical, personal.
In some strange way, though irrational, functional.

No one knows why, how it works, but it does.
It pays to have something in which you have trust.
Something to go to when all’s a big bust.
Or just because you can see through life’s illusion,
Which may be the reason you seek something true:
A some thing or one thing to go to because
Life has hinted at laws.
A something or someone that just doesn’t fade.
Sometimes one needs to believe in one God.

Sometimes One Needs A Personal God 4.1.2019 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Once again, sitting in the bathtub cogitating. 🧘‍♀️⏳

    OH, GEORGE, YOU WERE SO RIGHT*

Oh George, you were so right:
“What a pity youth is wasted on the young”-
Their nights, their days a blight of
Vanities and phases strung
On strings assumed will never sunder.
Youth’s generation gets things wrong,
Believing life will never end,
The smooth, smooth skin will never bend
And all the birthday years a pleasure without measure.
George, you found out youth’s a fool
Ruled by their times, tools of fate and character;
Reckless, immature –
Which some discover late. Though clever,
Some few (find out) almost never.

Oh George, You Were So Right 3.28.2019 I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin
*George Bernard Shaw, of course.

I was watching a reportage about the strong possibility of a war between Iraq and Kurdistani Kirkuk. I don’t consider myself a political person, neither politically aware nor politically active. But sometimes, I’m moved on a deep level at the futility of and process leading up to war. This is one of those moments. I went directly to the computer.
March 27, 2019 Just ‘found’ this -‘found’ in the broadest sense since it’s been on Facebook all this time. It seemed weaker than it must have felt when I wrote it in 2017. I’ve tinkered and re-written – with hopes that it’s stronger.
You Can’t Have A War🌎😣😪💀💪🏦🔫⚔️⚖️
🛢️
You can’t have a war unless you have weapons;
You can’t have those weapons unless you have industries;
Can’t have an industry earning no money –
And money means profit, for who runs an industry
That doesn’t profit? Profit’s the carrot.

Weapons-to-profit:
The distance is multi- or many small instances
Building the one upon other, passed over
Or turned a blind eye to.

Oil or real estate, access to labor,
Coasts, mines and power,
Their use and abuse
And war is the certainty.

It’s thoroughly sad, this fighting for terra;
A sickening error
Pretending it’s doctrine or canon or righteousness.
Overruled: conscience.

You can’t have a war, you cannot restrain it,
Unless there’s this chain of re-action,
With everyone playing his part.
It’s breaking my heart.
Ain’t it yours?
You Can’t Have A War 10.14.2017 War Book II; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Corwin

The title is self explanatory – except that I’ve expanded its meaning a little.
Love,
Arlene Corwin

   I Like Jazz 🎹🎼🎶

I like jazz, no, love it!
Like to improvise, like changing chords,
Like turning errors to rewards;
Spontaneous and in-the-moment:
In and out.
So gratifying.

I like treating life like jazz;
Mistakes that colour
Brighten up an old worn theme;
Augment esteem
And in some way,
Too mesmerising to portray
In chords or words,
Humbly proffer sweetest curds
Of love.

I’m lucky.
I can play the stuff,
Playing ’round, say, off the cuff.
Where fears are fluff and disappear.
What could be better?

I might show up one day playing
With my nose
Or on my elbows.
Who knows
How far improvising goes?

As my life grows shorter,
As my jazz gets freer
All the waters of my melodies find power
That I never knew were there.

Who knows where these ideas come from?
When they come or how they come,
No end of gushing’s sum,
The hum of thinking factory and factor
A continuum of energy
To enhance my jazz and me.
I Like Jazz 3.23.2019 Vaguely About Music II; The Processes Creative, Thinking, Meditative III; Arlene Nover Corwin

Just thinking…🧘‍♀️

HOW DO YOU DEFINE HAPPINESS?

Is it cheerfulness or merriment?
Exhilaration, ecstasy?
Jubilation, feeling high,
Well-nigh euphoria?
And do you ever think about it?

I myself think it is a quiet;
And a state of non-expecting;
Acting out of one’s own nature
Without stature in our sites.

Restfulness on such a level
That no matter what the action or pursuit
There is well-being free of evil and upheaval,
Not one tendency to cavil.*
Un-bedeviled by claimed rivals:
Made-up or contrived.

Are you happy?
Do you fit the happy pattern?
Or do days feel rotten,
Best forgotten, flat or flattened.

Always worth a word or two
Through verse and to
Each one of you.
Happiness is twice as nice
As un- or not-
And worth the aim
Of talking ‘bout.

How Do You Define Happiness? 3.20.2019 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Everything Again; Arlene Nover Corwin
*cavil: make petty or unnecessary objections: complain; grumble; find fault with;

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 was inspired by my friend Ulf who takes umbrage at my predisposition for rhyme and meter   which he interprets as weakness.  You ought to write prose, says he.       

  The Meaning Of It All: a race that is no race

                      (a poet speaks)

I may never be ‘streamed’,

(the modern stamp of popularity)

No theme alike in all I write,

For all I write is as diverse as hours in the day,

The changes taking place within the mind

With just one cup of of coffee 

Or the viewing of a tragedy

On a ubiquitous TV.

Yet, with eyes to see

There is consistency, 

A constant that is, let us say, a me,

A thread of personality,

Of pity for the way of, shall we say, humanity.

A love for the reality of life,

A search for its illusions,

And when seeing them,  

A reaching for the answers.  

And then the need to write them out;

A kind of scientific paper never absolute per se, 

But sure there is a key

Even to death’s mystery

Which still eludes the me.

Wherefrom come this need to share?

Not fame, not name

Though they are protons in the atom’s lair.

No, the need lies deeper than the gene or cell.

A part of creativity and tendency to feel well.

A part of love that satisfies the giver

Just as much as it might satisfy receiver.

Desire’s hope gets in the way.

A hinder to analysis and objectivity.

Hope’s desire is the night to day.

Thus verse instead of prose.

One bouquet instead of one sweet aromatic rose.

Thus a freedom formed from discipline, revision;

Tiring and emptying until a moment’s inspiration 

Jostles for first place:

A race that’s is no race.

The Meaning Of It All: a race that is no race 3.17.2019 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

 Once again I’m sending this out to a) friends I’m seldom in touch with, b)  people I only meet on my email site who I suspect are interested or touched by this topic, c) friends who don’t have Facebook or never look at my site Arlene Corwin Poetry both .com and net, d) people I’m fond of who have Facebook but who anyway, I like to keep in personal touch with.  In other words,  all kinds of relationships I want to stay in reach out to.  
  As for the poem, I love it.  (You now how it is with a new baby).  That’s why I’m sending it at all.  Besides which, vanity, facial makeup or not, affects us all, and we shouldn’t be fooled by it.  It’s not a good thing.

TRYING TO MANIPULATE VANITY🧘‍♀️💋💄

When putting on my makeup, which I like to do each day,
I dedicate it all to You so far away yet here to stay.
Knowing, hoping, speculating on this abstract energy –
A complicated thing to clarify.
I’ll try:
There it sits, this ego-my;
Nothing good or bad – just my.

When it turns into a vanity
It sets illusionary dreams to task,
Asking them
If facial beauty
Has a value or a duty.
Part of me says “No, of course not.
Facial looks will die and rot
Just like the rest of you”.

And still I do not view
The process with disdain,
But daily put on liner, lipstick,
Every stroke and trick
A sense of look and balance;
Not too thin and absolutely not too thick,
Playing ‘round with all that paint
As if I had an artist’s talent.

In the end with all that mastery,
Dedicating it to You (a What or Who I cannot govern),
I define it as a means to grow into
A person who likes beauty for the sake of beauty;
Trying to manipulate a quality
Which at worst’s a waste, at best’s a fancy.

Trying To Manipulate Vanity 3.16.2019 Circling Round Vanities II; Found On Scraps; Arlene Nover Corwin