Arlene Corwin Poetry

I started out to write a song. Instead this came out. Anybody out there wanna have a go?

 There Are So Many Xmas Songs

“You better watch out,
You better not shout;
You better not cry –
I’m telling you why.
Santa Claus is coming to town.”
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
There are so many Xmas songs
To sing along to.
Messages of cheer and legend:
Santa land and fairy land
Bonded by a band of reindeer
Flying low to clear each household,
Santa chuckling all the way,
Rounding globe the mystery.

Package giving,
Living in the coming light –
Santa driving all the night
Never disappearing or appearing.

Every year and filled with fervour
We still sing
About his coming.
Santa Claus, Saint Nicholas –
Another a term for Father Christmas.

There Are So Many Xmas Songs 11.30-2019
Our Times, Our Culture II Arlene Nover Corwin

How do I write so much?  A cup of coffee, a good breakfast and I’m off!  But really, dear Kakepop, it’s a matter of getting a phrase in my head, then letting an idea flow.

When I feel the poem has nothing more to add, I re-read it, checking for rhyme and meter, (both inner and outer) look for better, more lively substitutes.  Mark it either “to work” or if I’m satisfied “to print”.  Often, I look at it later and it’s possible that I make major changes.

  When Beauty’s Gone

When beauty goes,
The shape of ears and eyes and nose
Reworked by nature’s vagaries,
The inner thigh no longer firm,
Youth-keeping germ assassinated
By the victories of age –
Ah, me and golly, gee!

With no say and helpless,
At life’s mercy and defenceless,
All that one, you, I can do
Is sail on and tailor wit’s IQ
To buoyancy and cheer,
Happy that we’re here at all,
And have a ball!
When Beauty’s Gone 11.12.2019
Circling Round Vanities; Circling Round Ageing; Nature of & In Reality;
Arlene Nover Corwin

Always writing, these two followed one another in sequence, mind working from places that surprised and tickled.

Finding Goodness In The Most Unlikely Places

“Finding goodness in the most unlikely places”
Read this phrase and had to face
The fact that friends whose characters I took for granted
Showed and have bestowed the unexpected
Love, respect and qualities unknown and unsuspected
In the most unlikely situations,
Causing my relations with the whole darned world
To tears unfurled
the first time in my life.

Changed forever, never to return to sheer
Indifference, judgement or ill will,
Never more to stand aloof,
Just tears of gratitude to verify its proof.

Finding Goodness… 11.29.2019
Love Relationships II; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin

  I Stopped Being Envious 

I killed my envy-filled green eye
When I beheld the day to day
Recasting of both face and a_s.
That each one changes not just
Year by future year but now and here.
So, on that day, that very minute
Envy went away to stay.

Smallest waistline, glowing skin,
Intelligence so high it whitens out the sky,
The stars and universe:
Blessings all and also curse:
Best to worse the sadly likeliest.

Round twenty-ish
I was no longer jealous –
Drew each atom to a close.
IQ middling, talents too,
Each one pondered, I felt rosy,
Grati-satsfied and well-to-do.

Lost all envy when I’d learned
That all things change.
I had discerned
Release from chain.
That’s what freedom’s meant to be
For you, for me, for everybody.

There is no competition,
Only similarity and contrast.
No one else is you, and you
Will never be a someone else.
Soothed by sharing, (mostly caring),
Shutting out the envious,
It’s obvious, that you are matchless, unsurpassed –
A one and only without need to be another cast.

I Stopped Being Envious 11.30.2019
Circling Round Reality; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin

A word itself suggests idea;
An idea brings on word.
I know a person who can paint,
Design, build, decorate.
Can dredge up to the edge of art,
And yet he cannot find a way
To turn the light on in his car
When opening its door.

A hinder one could say.

Creativity has many shades –
Expression limited in untold ways.
None of us is whole, each always in a phase –
A passing on from one to one
To bring it forth to something done,
The tint of hint that gives it form,
To take it from the commonplace
To something boundless and immense.

It’s productivity that counts.

We all have minds with special charm;
Brains inclusive there to farm
With flow impossible to see or know,
Going on incessantly,
Measurable but retroactively.

And so the writer writes
Smack in the dead of night,
A childish flashlight for his light,
Delighted by the word.

Writing Under Covers 11.26.2019
The Processes: Creative,Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Nover Corwin

At the end of Grable* films,
The musicals in Technicolor
Leading ladies got the part
They thought they’d never get;
The men they disliked at film’s start
Became ‘the one’,
Love, applause and confirmation!

When I was young I thought that fame, the famous
Was and were to aim at:
Constant, stable, durable and permanent.
Never dreamed fame came and went.

illusion, fantasy, appearance, dream!
Any/all the synonym.
Yet the young are out there
Sharing all the four above.
Five years later most shoved aside,

The false dream but delusion,
Forced by fame’s real pain,
Groom, bride divorced
To glide into a normal trade.

When one is new and in-the-making,
Ipod, tv, thousand apps,
Mental processes taken over
By the ‘happenings’ competing for
This so-called glory, popularity and stardom –
Oh, my goodness, time will come
When what and who
Is young and new
Will have, like me, a ‘long ago’
To refer to. Then they’ll know.
Like me, they’ll know.

When I Was. So Long Ago 11.21.2019
Circling Round Ageing; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

*Look up Betty Grable

         Mysteries That Never Cease

There are mysteries that never cease,
Will always be:
Because of, not in spite of.
Look at progress:
Despite progress, we are more at risk than ever.
I fear, not ‘in spite of’, but ‘because of’, progress never
What it seems,
All the reams of information,
New advances, dancing in our eyes and ears
Dependant on who sees or hears,
Every positive a dormant negative
Dependent on whose hands it’s in.

Then the secrets of infinity:
What, where, how, why and when;
A mystery most definitely.
And music, art
The part that improvises and creates
Out of a place inscrutable,
Wondrous, wonderful.

To never understand?
Dependant on whose hand it’s in,
Whose talent, aptitude, inborn mind
Is interested at all to find
The answers.

Mysteries That Never Cease 11.21.2019
Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

     I’m sorry and sad that this comes out of my brain, but it does at the moment.  For among the ubiquitous money orientated TV competitions are the ever-present newscasts with their on-the-spot reporting.
As usual, I’ve worked and reworked this to produce a piece of art.

              Chaos & Teargas
Chaos and teargas once again

WhenAll that I want is to pass

The rest of my years

In a state of placidity.
How to?

I’m sure it’s an end you want too:

All of you, each of you 

Out there, wherever 

You chance to be placed.

With nearly the yearly Thanksgiving

For most of us living                                 

In places of peace,

Exposed to the chaos while sitting

In chairs or on couches –

Not crouching or fleeing, 

Pursued by a fleet of policemen or soldiers,

We miss being fodder.How lucky we are!

Yet we, suffused

With the anger and violence

While eating our turkey and cranberry sauce,

Exhausted and worried from scurrying youngsters, flurries of gangsters, burying mothers…

Smothering gases of withering fires,

And masses of dawdling, dithering leaders,

Chaos and teargas the emblem for hire.

Chaos & Teargas 11.17.2019 OurTimes, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The owner of this site requested
That each member guest
“Reply from home,
How long is it since you wrote a poem?”

Thus, I answer with this if not gem, creme de la creme,
This dime-store ode, oversimplified
In black and white:
I write both day and night,
Honing craft and new idea.
So there! My answer!

As for quiz’s rest, the answers this:
I do not read nor buy, do not compare;
All I do is write and share
With tear or cheer – sometimes despair,
Observing worlds inside and out.

I do not mind the corny couplet,
Admire, seek exciting verbs
But try to minimise the adjective;
Love conjunctions, knowing they can be a crutch;
But seek to use them not-too-much.
(they are so tempting).
So, kevin@allpoetry, in hope this bit of poesy
Is quite enough to more than amply satisfy
The little guest-test-quest.
I rest my case.
Writing Everyday 11.16.2019 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Nover Corwin

          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

             Long Gone

I read about the clubs I worked in;

New York clubs where I began.

Read their names, which throw me back 

To days of playing nine to one

Or ten to two, 45 long minutes on

And fifteen minutes off;

A long, long night to play my stuff,

Smiling, singing soul and heart, 

Playing changes I hoped smart,

And always learning and collecting songs:

Now those clubs are all long gone.

I suppose we all have places, people,

We call gone.  

Ones which spawned one’s present form;

Times we were a pawn of time

And didn’t have a clue to climes

And days to come.

I don’t look back.

It’s not my nature.

All were steps: a nomenclature,

Nothing more.

I’ve put it all to pasture,

My reality a better now.

On the other hand,

These ‘long gones’ helped me grow.

I wouldn’t be if they’d not been.

Still singing, playing ‘spite the wrinkles.

Learning tunes that make me tingle.

All that ‘long gone’ was my own,

Reminiscing just an hour of fun.

Thank you fate and karma

For the way you form the day

And what it means, meant, leads to

In completing all one’s needs. 

Long Gone 2.9.2019 Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin