Arlene Corwin Poetry

In 1999 I was 65 years old. Now at 85 this poem seems naive, passé, and so I’ve got a second chance — not to alter time but to refine the poem.

Who Or What Cares?

We’re having a race, my thighs and me.
A pace that alternates between
The zealous and the slovenly,
Exercise and enterprise.

As often as I think of it,
Or when I’m in the pink of it.
These limbs keep at the job of ageing,
Jellifying jollily*,
The two of them against poor me;
Staging war, as if engaging in crossfire,
They’re at it every time I’m not,
Wobblifying till presumably they rot –
My outer self a dinosaur,
Atrophying then extinct.

Still I’m trying – yes I am,
Squatting on an ageing ‘gam’**,
Playing out a deep-knee bend,
The splits, a hand- or headstand:
Plain old-fashioned stretches.

There’s a race, don’t ask the score –
Who-gets-where first, what’s to win,
Time’s wrinkling skin that pricks at pore,
A flaccid jaw and scraggy neck
Are but a speck, an ego fleck
Upon the face, the flow, the flux of time;
Time which doesn’t care a bit,
Give a sh_t, so uninvolved, not caring as it
does.
*poetic licence
**gam; U.S. slang for leg
Who Cares, What Cares? 9.14.1999/Revised 5.10.2020 Circling Round Woman; Circling Round Time; I Is Always You Is We;Circling round Experience;
Arlene Nover Corwin

On Looking For A Gig

I discovered it today:
Vanity and expectations – disappointment when
The expectations come and go,
Do not show up at all.
I suddenly came to a truth that I can only call,
“Why not walk in and say to one an all –
Accept me! Love me! Take my gift cause here I am!
I give a lift and here’s my name!”
If no one cares, no one’s to blame.
I ought to feel it’s all the same.

I don’t. I fuss. Today I cussed.
I don’t know why I thought they’d say
“Of course you get the job. Come by
Tomorrow. Start at once.”
I didn’t get to see the chief, and forced away without a fief,
I stalked way like some old thief.
They say they’ll call. They seldom do.
That slap says, “Who the hell are you?”

And here I’m always thinking that my presence is enhancing.
Jobs few, money low. I’m either doing something wrong
Or God is stopping this whole show for my protection.
He is saying, “Screw the song!
There are hundreds, thousands more equipped,
More talented, more single-minded. Shut your lip!
You’re ordinary. That’s your fate!
Stay at home! Develop! Wait!”

Don’t overestimate position, Something’s phoney ‘bout position.
It is not a fixed condition; no condition ever is.
Throw away the sword, its thrust for world reward.
Never fixed, things swinging twixt between
The past and now. You ordinary, silly cow,
Cook your meals! Stay at home! Write your ordinary poem!
Be happy because it feels nice sitting at your beans and rice,
Not judging, striving, in the race thankful that you’re still alive.
Thanking God that you survive.

This summer day. You saw a hare –
A baby, eating on the lawn.
You saw a mist-fair dawn descend upon the lake outside.
Stay home, create and hide!
Take in you may be ordinary
As if it were lotion on your ageing skin.
You’re not a star,
You’re just the creature that you are
Amid the facts and happenings around.
Go to ground, eat up, get fat!
Go and buy a summer hat!

On Looking For A Gig 6.8.1994/revised 5.22.2020
Vaguely About Music; Circling Round Vanities; God Book; Arlene Corwin

Old Is Old

One phenomenon weighs me down:
Humans killing humans –
It a thing that never ages,
Being at the top of the sinful wages.

Ebb and tide does not die out,
But we too soon glide from this planet
When we ought to all live out our days
Until the very final phase
Of nature’s meaning
As was meant in Eden.

Oblivion, as Shakespeare says
Arrives anon. In any case,
Sooner or late, fate has its voice,
The thing we call free choice erased.

Old is old.
We cannot scold the unpreventable;
Determined and unshakeable,
Regimented by laws born
In every momentary bubble.

Old is simply to observe.
Old is simply to accept.
The script all tightly written.

Old Is Old 5.24.2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

To All The Criminals In The World

What will you do with all the money that you steal?
Such frivolous ambition, shallow drive!
Feel more alive? A fancy meal?
Believe me there are better things to make life real.
Designer clothes, a fancy house?
Lots of sex to prove that you
Are more than mouse?
What’s wrong with you?
You’re gonna die. We all just do!

What in heaven’s name or hell…?
Greed makes lucre small and smell,
The whole ambition yellow.

Gluttony, and hunger, all those drives for more:
There more is less, they’re glamor-less!
Not to speak of pains you cause:
The drain of pain,I’m such dunce! I mailed ‘onions’ to the wrong Erik. I got an email back – “What onions?” Not only had I mailed to the wrong Erik, but I had spelled “onions” wrong. Oh, God!

Anyway, dear Erik, when you have the time, the largest, (cheapest) package of onions would be most appreciated. It’s obvious we use A LOT of onions.

Arlene
The chain of pains you deign to cause.

What can I say?
You betray what being human’s meant to be:
Nice, kind, generosity in idea, actuality,
Energy, all conduct and activity.

To all the thieves and villains,
All the gangsters, burglars, miscreants,
You’re not the fancy pants you think you are or aim to be.
So I repeat, believe you me,
It’s all so hare-brained. Wait and see!
You will wake up one day agreeing.

To All The Criminals In The World 5.16.2017/revised 5.24.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Our Time, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

How Can I Resist You?
(based on a true story – as they say in films)

“How can I resist you?
Says the husband to the wife.
You are the treasure of my life.
I can’t desist.”
“How can I ignore the body next to me?
A body that I love to watch and love to see,”
Says the husband tenderly.
After many years of nights together,
Days deciding whether such and such is right;
For him the very sight of her
Excites his eagerness to please,
Put her at ease
In any way he can.
There is no plan,
Just following the fancy of the moment.
“Will it be potatoes, eggs or rice?!
Without thinking twice,
The meal a catalyst
Anything can taste as nice
When fancy’s fantasy takes part,
The mind and heart allied.
For both of them, no whim or hunger is denied,
Including pride in what the other realizes and attains.

How Can I Resist You? 5.23.2020 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Words To Loathe: -Ism, Dogma

Time and again I wrote of -ism.
(Criticism, witticism doesn’t count)
Coming at the ends of words
-Ism turns to hardened turds,
To be followed by the herds
Who seldom understand a thing
In its entirety.

-Ism makes a word into its specialty.
Takes a system or philosophy
And breaks it down to dogma’s ideology.
There’s always something wrong with dogma.

Dogma says “i’m right, you’re wrong.”
A hackneyed song.
Dogma takes opinion,
Makes it fact, actively
Turning people into minions,
Underlings and servile
To the prominent, the dominant and vile,
Screaming all the while,
Each gosh darned night
“You’re wrong, we’re right!”

Guidance to the prudent:
Don’t become a rodent.
You are you with views original,
Authentic, actual, primordial.
Conventional or not, they are,
And you, an individual –
Undivided and your own.
There is no need to ban or loan,
Prohibit others or exclude.
It’s downright rude, crude,
Not to say, misleading and deluding.

Words to shy away from, fly from:
Words omitting possibility,
Emitting sheer hostility, dishonour and discredit…
Words that say,”We’ve got the secret.”
All those words that separate
The small from great.
Who is to say what’s small, what’s great?
That’s it, the last and little bit!🙋‍♀️

Words To Loathe: -Ism, Dogma 5.21.2020 Words To Love; Arlene Nover Corwin

One idea can lead almost directly to another – although a day apart, as in this case:

Sometimes the deepest questions elicit the easiest truths. Because it is rather sillily written this ‘truth’ below is slated to go into a collection called “A Sense Of the Ridiculous #II, A Sense Of The Ridiculous #I already published. (see Amazon or Barnes & Noble, I think )…and more, I’m sure.

Simplistic, Black & White But True🤪

Teddy Roosevelt, the President,
Said, “Where you are, with what you have, do what you can”.
Do it, do, do, do”, said
Ted,
The President!

And I concur with Teddy’s view
For reader, do
You have a better, more complete
Solution?

Complex issues
May have layers,
Many sayers,
But sometimes there are no clearer
Answers than one thin as tissues.
Simplistic, Black & White But True 5.20.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Elixir

If there ever was a magic potion
Inbuilt in an earthly notion,
One to change the habits old
Into a new and lifelong gold;
Outside all tricks,
The negatively nix;
A lotion of refreshment
Portioned out, the perfect servant,
Ocean of vitality and vibrancy
And most of all, not fancy,

It is doing what you can
With what you have
Wherever you may find yourself,
Tools always in your hand
Or foot, or leg or mind,
Its wangling angling,
Its instinct, intuition, reasoning.

Right there in existence
And your presence
Is the feature and the fixture:
The elixir.
Elixir 5.21.2020. Words To Love; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Elixir; (also elixir of life) a preparation supposedly able to prolong life indefinitely:

I hope this isn’t too terribly abstruse. These things come into my head and I can’t let go: Words To Love

Karma:
What a charmer!
A main player by design
Being hard-defined,
A simple overlap of layers
Is this karma’s nature.

Karma:
Panoramic drama;
Kernel of the daily
And eternal of the kernel;
Methods, messages and meanings
Both external and internal.

Anyone who ’s told of it,
Grabs the bit, takes hold of it,
Doesn’t quit, yearning to learn more of it,
Is one, who burning, benefits.

Karma:
One, two, three: Cause, effect and destiny.
Four and five: Work and motive.
Pure intentions lead to good,
Flawed intentions lead to bad.
What you do in moments
Is a fragment of the morrow
And a judgement of the future.

Karma is the deed, the work, the action.
It’s both principle and law.
It says, actions make a difference,
Every feature of significance
With outcome and reverberation.

Karma is the causal chain
Encapsulated in your very own
Synaptic brain.

Words To Love 5.18.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

What else can one say, but …

When This Is Over

When this is over
You’ll still have your character
To deal with.
Times will alter,
But there never is an after.
That’s to say, there is,
But business
Is the thing: merely continuing:
Busyness and nothing more.

And there you are,
Left with character,
Its strength and flaw,
To grow, evolve, refine, define
Through change and understanding,
Standing under with humility,
God, destiny, not pining
From mistakes, goals missed
And all the things ones’s pis___ed away from ignorance.

We’ve talents, gifts
To sift through, filter out;
Finding what we’re all about
To work and use
Amusing us and fusing them
To worlds around,
To bond and bind societies;
Bid welcome to the mishy-mashy miscellany,
Watch the mind: it’s shifty, tricky;
Thus, the one security
Is to be found in in purity!
Work on it!

When This Is Over 5.17.2020 Definitely Didactic II; Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is long, but go through it. It’s worth it. it was originally called “Words That Changed Our Lives”, being inspired by the connection between pandemonium and pandemic.

Pandemonium

Words that show lives but a tribe:
There to scribe, describe our lives.
Words that come from health or sickness: mind and body:
Prowess, fearless, speechless, endless;
Dangerousness, selfishness, childishness – nothing escapes;
Sowing seeds of mental shapes
That come from mind-to-mouth.

Now’s come the time to learn some new:
Epidemic and Pandemic,
Plus another word to view: Endemic.
Just a few, but whew!
Hoping that it’s not titanic – the Titanic!
Let me help you.

First came epidemics:
Measles, smallpox, influenzas…
How to conquer, name and aim,
How could and could we control the sum?
Sometimes. Some.
Coming back to hit us all the same,
But vanquished? Germs and viruses not dumb –
Survive anti-biotically (the foe of symbiotically).

Year twenty-twenty,
Epidemic now pandemic,
Plentiful and more than plenty;
Too, too many – far too many.

Struck by the invisible;
Questionable, susceptible,
Humans daring not to touch,
Wondering, asking when will it become too much?
And thus we come to the last word:
Endemic: background sound
Though underground many a year
Alive and well and waiting for…
Pandemonium 5. 14. 2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin

pandemonium
wild and noisy disorder or confusion; uproar: there was complete pandemonium—everyone just panicked.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: modern Latin (denoting the place of all demons, in Milton’s Paradise Lost), from pan- ‘all’ + Greek daimōn ‘demon’.
pandemic
(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.
an outbreak of a pandemic disease: the results may have been skewed by an influenza pandemic.
ORIGIN mid 17th century: from Greek pandēmos (from pan ‘all’ + dēmos ‘people’) + -ic
endemic
1 (of a disease or condition) regularly found among particular people or in a certain area: complacency is endemic in industry today.
[attributive] (of an area) in which a particular disease is regularly found: the persistence of infection on pastures in endemic areas.
epidemic
1 an epidemic of typhoid: outbreak, plague, scourge, infestation; widespread illness/disease; Medicine pandemic, epizootic; formal recrudescence, boutade.
2 he’s a victim of the county’s joyriding epidemic: spate, rash, wave, explosion, eruption, outbreak, outburst, flare-up, craze; flood, torrent, burst, blaze, flurry; upsurge, upswing, upturn, increase, growth, rise, mushrooming; rare ebullition, boutade.
adjective
a widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time: a flu epidemic.
• a sudden, widespread occurrence of an undesirable phenomenon: an epidemic of violent crime.