Arlene Corwin Poetry

Faith Is A Chemical Dynamic

Faith is a chemical dynamic!
Affecting cells, making them fresh:
(The celestial and flesh)
Not dogma, pact, pledge or cant,
The brain engrained in wish and want,
A door awaits to open wide,
With you the bride or groom inside.

Faith sanctifies.
It unifies, systematizing without system,
Sees the thread in things uncommon,
Making fractions into one.
It always gives an added power,
Energy beyond the hour;
Puts a slant on everything,
(Which is its strength and shortcoming.)

You never go beyond its vision,
Never get beyond its zone.
No clever man or master plan
Or great endeavour pulls the lever.
It’s itself a friendly law,

Specific to your wishes,
Good, bad, mad, fictitious;
Bound, a prison or capricious;
Nothing great can be erected
Without hope and trust in something:
‘any’ one thing,
Though faith is hard-defined: a question mark,
Reach for the spark,
For faith’s a chemically dynamic monarch:
One which works.

Faith Is A Chemical Dynamic 7.17.1995/revised 7.14.2019/re-entered 3.31.2020
Nature Of & In Reality; To The Child Mystic; Circling Round Science; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

4:07a.m. Under the covers. Flashlight for light. Handwriting definitely going to look unreadably shaky tomorrow.

Slowed Motion

Slowed motion
Gives you time to feel,
Time to observe
Instead of reeling round with verve
And upset nervous systems
Setting up a curve
That lead to nemesis.

Slowed motion is a key
To subtle brilliancy and insights
On dark nights
When flights of fancy
Fake and take…

Stomach squeezed, stomach breathed;
Jiggled hips, wriggled toes;
Who knows what? Perhaps the nose;
Elbows pressed: in, out, back, down,
Leading collarbone to fast become
A flattened beauty, which in turn
Moves shoulders, both, the one
For-, backward, in- external.
Hands supporting or at rest,
Pushing so that biceps harden.
And if you are working best,
Triceps also get their job done.

Nature’s principles in push and pulls.
Burned calories, earned benefits.
Stretches, creases, pulls, releases
Worked on in their opposites.
Managed slowly, consciously,
The slowed down works to our advantage,
For the language of the mind
Likes one thing undistracted, done,
And that, alone.

Opposites attract
And that’s a fact!

Slowed Motion 3.31.2020 Circling Round Yoga II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Energy Can Never Be Destroyed

Foremost! Such a multitude of forms!
Energy can never be destroyed.
It simply, I mean simply
Changes into throngs of power.
Where does fat go when you lose some weight?
First it goes to pee and sweat,
Some to it to eyes that tear,
For x percent is water.

No energy goes nowhere,
Force never disappearing, but transformed
Moves to another sphere.

Existence carries on.

It has, it is a quantity.
Changed in its quality
But not created or destroyed,
Hanging ‘round us near or far.
Perhaps the tummy fat you lost
Has reached a star.
Charming, that!

And so, do things you ought! anNeverBeDestroyed3.302020
Send out the best you have,
Also the worst that’s left
To shift as gift to transformation,
Dissipate and go someplace
To leave what’s left a better you.

Burn up those extra calories,
The energies, which thermal, chemical,
Nuclear, electrical, elastic, plastic,
Even gravitational all have uses:
Uses and abuses (dark and light).

Use the energy of mind.
It is the powered you supreme.
It, the best that you can find to flower will.
Thinking, moving, sitting still,
Use the treasured energy:
Your measure of the whole.
EnergyCanNeverBeDestroyed3.30.2020 Nature Of & In Reality;
Arlene Nover Corwin

Why Has Everyman Turned To Beards?

It’s weird,
This shift to beard controlled appearance.
A trend it seems, not only spreading,
But which has no end.
Scratching when it kisses,
Missing out on blisses, I assure you.
Shaping face, I must admit,
(but not to everyman’s face-benefit).

If truth be told,
It must be hell to keep a chin/cheek fold all squeaky smooth.
But who in heavens want to hold, take hold
of bristles,
Or see badly shaped and prickly thistles?
Men have aped since lunar’s start.
Everyone knows that!
Fashion is contagious as the rabies from a bat.

Long, short, food-y flecked, unchecked,
Yet there is self-absorption’s admiration.
Let us hope the puppy generation
Growing up will razor up,
Shave every self-helped hair
Formed there (or anywhere.)
It grows unlimitedly wild.

Undefiled, I plead,
Wield the blade
And beauteously shear with care.
Brave new men, you are not cavemen!
Shave men!
One more time and once again –
Just shave!

Why Has Everyman Turned To Beards? 3.27.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Look what I found in my book Pure Nakedness:written first 1999.
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

Can Meditations Influence A World?

Can meditations sway the world?
Dare one respond?
One waits for answers there, unlearned
Through insight’s scene,
The mystical discerned.

A world? To have effect on? Shape through some sorts’ inspiration?
Misery, the suffering, the evil, the corruption
Where we know that all that we can do
Is purify and cure our selves: the flawed and imperfected self
Whose weakening shortcomings are so onerous to shelve.

Can little we, (and little me) alone on cushion, chair or sofa
Offer up this blemished being
To a seeing eye up in the sky
We well nigh can’t be sure of?

Breathing tricks, mantric techniques,
Sound and focussing and tweaks –
Can each ache jerk a world into a working peace?
Endeavours and experimenting reach long-term
Through reaching in and out the brain?

One hopes!
We see a world that barely copes.
Whose bleak, weak, tweeting leaders
Cheeky-cheat the bleating of the latest.

Science tries, the churches try; social-minded allies too.
But here is little you, a-seat as I am seated now,
Mulling over if and how,
Wondering if our meditations are a mediation
Of conciliatory worth,
And if they reach the big round earth
With leverage from this average me.
We’ll speculate and try, and see!

Can Meditations Influence? 3.24.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; To The Child Mystic; II The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II;Circling Round Meditation; Arlene Nover Corwin

Many Hours, Many Days

So many wonder, many ask
About the writing: task
or inspiration?
I say perspiration.
(not exactly, for there’s joy and fun
in reading what you’ve ultimately done)
Still yet,
It’s work and effort,
Spadework fundamental, elemental;
Work, but also preparation mental
for what is to follow
All the golden yellow years to come.
First a phrase, a thought, a sight,
A theme the middle of the night.
The paper, pen, computer close:
The start of slogging elbow grease.

First draft, still filled by sweat
May probably be filled with sh_t.
It doesn’t matter, for
The after-write will be to edit.

Changes, flexibility, ability to cross things out,
Delete, expunge, all but destroy…
There is a certain joy in that.
But still, it’s to exert an effort.
To create is always effort.
To excite and rouse yourself an effort always
Work, but worth it.

Here’s the send-off:
In the end and after years
It’s actually easier.
The fears that held you back have disappeared.
Ideas developed, riper.
Technique, range your own:
It’s called a style. You’ve a rone,*
A drainpipe in your brain
To carry off unwanted stuff
And carry on much wanted t-raining.

Many hours, many days in which to raise your standard.
Many years of joy and tears –
It all adds up up to guarantees and widened spheres
Of self-esteem and understanding.

*a gutter for carrying off rain from a roof:
Many Hours, Many Days 2.12.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Ideas, they come from nowhere. A poem is a kind of emblem, not a treatise. Always a projection of the universal through the personal.

A Poem Is An Emblem

A good poem is a movement well within the brain – :
Neurological and chemical,
Its sum of cells the working mind
Through growing chains of synapses –
Those tiny gaps across which pulses pass
Where day’s long lapse spells out
Its relativity.

Peculiar to each one (and me)
The time goes fast or slow,
Components shrink or grow,
The details varied with each person.

For that reason,
And to not appear too brazen,
Poetry, (my own)
Has made me sharper, keener,
Smarter, gleaner
Of ideas that come from no- and everywhere.

Thus, this simple object
Formed of alphabetic letters
In no worse or better
Than the eyes that fall upon it,
Emblematic syntax that it is.
A Poem Is An Emblem 3.17.2020 The Processes: Creative,Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Replication*

Don’t do it! Do not replicate!
We all are influenced. We duplicate.
But you are you,
Creating you anew each time you say or do:
Be true to it!
Each bit that comes from hands or mouth
Must be authentic.
Whatever else a main road to unhappiness,
Impatience, and the opposite of blessedness
(whatever that is.)

There is no other you.
A funny face, untied shoelace,
Your life anomalous
Which no one comprehends.

That’s fine! An understanding
Is not all that it’s made out to be.
We ourselves don’t grasp the each and every,
Do not take it in and don’t quite savvy…
Not everything depends on being canny.
All depends on being you,
True to the soul-whole you were born with,
Born to find, for after all we’re all born blind;
We need to spend the years becoming
When we’re meant to be,
Which freshness means originality:
O R I G
– I N A L – I T
And finally,
Big -Y.
*Replication; An exact copy of

Replication 3.19.2020 the Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Definitely Didactic II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Everything Has An End

Light waves and bends.
Comes from the sun, reaches its object.
Lo, it ends.
(its start to other aims the subject for another poem).

You know what I’m talking ‘bout.
A teeny, microscopic lout
Which at the moment rules our days –
It will not always,
But die out.
Once it’s found a final project
To project its deadly darts at.

Where things go
When they appear to disappear
We do not know,
Can only guess and speculate,
A date out of the question.

All we know is all things end:
The bending light, day, night,
Humongous, slight;
Even the alphabet, A to Z,
There still a further mystery
And further question:
Which came first, the egg or chicken,
Cause where, when
Or even why?

The keys lie in philosophy,
Material, its -ality.
And so we end with unclear hope
That we can cope until the finish;
That the crash is but a hyperbolic gnashing
Of the teeth that brandishes its blemished face
And ends.

Everything Has An End 3.16.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin