Arlene Corwin Poetry

Influence

You have much more an influence than
You have an idea you have.
So much weight and leverage on thing and man;
So much impact by simply being.
So beware,
Become aware
That you control and are
A role,
An inspiration and example
On behaviour.

You, your goodness and your faults
Shape norms and shapes,
For mankind apes –
And that’s a fact.

So, do remember that it’s you, through choices
Who make trends,
Starts, ends…your voices
Ringing loud without a sound.
For what comes round one can’t predict,
Outcomes more complex than that.

Do not forget
You have an impact.
Don’t ignore your inner store
Of power
Which goes out by minute
And by hour.

Be an ever growing you.
You sow the seeds by what you do.
And what you do is what you think,
So sink your life in wisdom-ed virtue.

Influence 1.28.2020 Pure Nakedness II; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover 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.

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/
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Here are two video clips. One is a three fingered version of “Sweet Lorraine”, the other is a reading of several new poems. Bear with me, and I hope they are of some use and enjoyment.
Love,
Arlene

https://youtu.be/GExi-4XUK5c reading a few new poems.

https://youtu.be/tifqtEyKPXE Playing “Sweet Lorraine”

Look under Arlene Corwin 20 January 2020.

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

The Plan: A Mantra

There is a Plan:
Inherent since the start of man,
Cause and effect, effect and cause;
Always was, works through laws,
And never, ever stops to pause.

And so I bind the whole of me,
To knowing That before I die.
If death means ‘bye’,
I want to learn, absorb the why.
If it does not,
I’ve got to understand the rest,
Scan and perceive first hand
What’s best,
Or life seems all but meaningless.

Instinct longs for happiness.
An ignoramus longs for this.
So in pursuit of bliss’ nearest,
My pursuit is Daddy Dearest,
Universes far from me,
Known to the soul implicitly.

I must believe before I leave
In plans and laws and forces good,
Something which makes all it should
And something which controls it all.

The Plan: A Mantra 1.17.2020
Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

*mantra; a word or sound repeated to aid concentration in meditation: a mantra is given to a trainee meditator when his teacher initiates him.

Clearing up and out I came upon this, “The Personal Joys Og Ageing from 2016. Now totally rewritten.

I enjoy not being steered by ardour’s horny drive,
The appetite for lots of food and varied such:
I enjoy not wanting much of much
Which qualities all counteract, exacerbate
The facts of fate.

It’s late.
I cannot sleep
But revel in the hours I keep.
Awake at night,
It is a most creative time to write.

In younger days there was so much I’d have denied,
Tried to get out of, lied about,
Taboos and mores* certifying,
Classifying wrong and right.

Sleep, food, sex vacate the drives,
Each space replaced by something fitter.
Without daily nose dives
Life is definitely better.

Say, dear reader
What you’re free from.
I would love to hear from
Any reader sitting there.

The Personal Joys Of Ageing 12.6.2016/rewritten 1.16.2020
Circling Round Eros II; Nature Of Reality; Circling Round Ageing; Arlene Nover Corwin

*mores (pronounced morays) customs, conventions, ways, way of life, way of doing things, traditions, practices, custom and practice, procedures, habits, usages; formal praxis.

Earth, Dust, Atoms, Particles… The Spanish painter Tapies was, in one of his artistic stages taken with Buddhistic philosophy: When I Googled him, I was reminded of a poem I first wrote in 1994, revised in 2018 and again today in 2020. You may recognise the Vedanta philosophy in me, a philosophy that grabbed me in the early 50’s and has never really let go. Both earthy and spiritual, it has always suited my person and personality.
Arlene

The particles of God are falling on my head.
They’re falling on the living, probably the dead;
On believers, non-believers; equal particles they fall –
They’re always falling on and in and through the body wall.

God is particles of oneness. There are parallels galore.
When the atom showed its kernel and revealed there was more
To meet the eye, a kind of onion-layered door
Was opened there inside the mind as just the metaphor
For simpletons like me. God energy,

With big or little G;
Living, knowing particles that have no personality
But which, if I’d clean up my act,
Would mystically reveal the fact
That they, the particles and I, have one identity.

I’m trying to arrange and rearrange my head instead,
Make it more receptive than a means for daily bread –
A conscious sponge, a large receptor,
Image-making faculty a particle collector.

Each impulse must be pure, for
We’re in areas of karmic justice and reward;
And particles with qualities inherent in our race:
Areas of mercy, all the virtues, love and grace –
I’d rather not involve them – just assume that they exist.
It’s the God without the person that this poem has gently kissed:
Ever-present particles that are the living’s gist.

The Particles Of God 3.26.1994 /10.4.2018/1.14.2020To The Child Mystic; God Book; Arlene Corwin

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

Thinking about advantages…

There is no benefit
That doesn’t have its drawback;
Not one plus without its minus,
Flaw and blemish built tightly in.
No disadvantage sans advantage
Rooted deep, the origin.

Brain pervading all I do,
I try
To purify
My brain
And turn
Invasion into
Harmony, camaraderie
Down- to upside, now an ally
Fixing me
To purify
An admixed me.
Downside/Upside 1.9.2020
Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

 As much as one hates to use the pronoun “I”, writing or speaking, there are times when ‘I’ is the middle point and of the essence.

Now & Then, How I Miss…

I practice living the Now.
But now and then
I miss the old Arlene
Who had ten
fingers;
Who could play arpeggios
With ease:
Adagios, capriccios,
Effortlessly
Trouble-free.

Un-nostalgic, chanced to see
And old Youtube of Arlene-me
Singing, playing“All God’s Chillun” speedily,
Gleeful, musical and jazzy.
Wound up teary-eyed.

With just three left to play with:
Thumb and index on the left, only lonely thumb the right,
Filled with weakness
I can play a swinging bass
With Monk-like dissonance between,
The right thumb not at all a small dumb finger.

The trick will be to sow creativeness anew.,
Augment, stretch, grow and not go into
Any other place than Now
(if Now at all can be referred to
as a ‘place’.
I rather think of it as space).

In any case,
I was a little sad today;
The old Arlene who cannot play
The way she used to,
Caused by nature’s vagary.

Dear reader, please forget
This sentimental, reminiscent “…How I Miss…”
A useless business at the very least.*
Now &Then, How I Miss…1.6.2020 Vaguely About Music; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Nover Corwin

*Arlene Corwin collapsed on August 3rd, 2019. In a coma for a month, when she awoke, there were 4 fingers missing on the right hand, 3 half fingers on the left, and two catheters in one kidney The cause: Blood poisoning or sepsis (from the Greek ‘sepin’ make rotten). After two months she was home. Muscles shrunken, walking with help she began a regime of sit-ups, pushups, yoga…and using every object inI the house as tool now is fully flexible and growing stronger with each day.
But the hands, those hands…We’ll see what happens.