Arlene Corwin Poetry

This is the opposite side of the coin to “Everything We Do” (Facebook or WordPress site)

    The Bad, The Harmful & The Worthless

The nail biting, smoking, drinking,
Mind cliches, the one that bitches –
All the zillion daily habits
Which, like rabid dogs are glitches
Which are setbacks which push back
The forward thrust of progress,
The kind of life meant for the best:
Life happiness!

Repetition may be key
To all achievement.
But like energy’s great powers;
Sources that house forces
Dour, sour on the hour;
Positive & negative;
Latent, inherent, permanent
(Reference: atoms vis á vis the bomb.
Doesn’t that just make you numb?)

Tips and hints: Pointing nose in the direction of,
You guessed it: truth and fact;
Learn to act with light and love,
Convert the covert negative
To merit, benefit and giving;
Good for all and plain overt.

The Bad, The Harmful & The Worthless;10.31.2020 Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Everything You Do

Everything accomplished needed repetition.
Repetition means rehearsal;
No reversal till you get it perfect.
Practice and continuation
Flexibly reflected, flaws corrected;
All dissected till you’ve got it right.

Playing, praying, cooking training,
You’ve a will and brain
To shape it all from large to small,
From simple to precision’s detail.

Everything needs doing over
To deliver what it’s meant to be.
Nothing’s fault-free, all agree.
But all activity has aim
Combined with spontaneity.

Repetition is an art,
Discipline a healthy part;
Continuance the dart and cart
Which thrown and borne
Brings start to what we’ve learnt
To call accomplishment.

Everything You Do 10.29.2020 Definitely Didactic II; Circling Round Experience; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

When a poem comes out from head and hand in twenty minutes, one is suspicious, almost sure it will be returned to for revision and correction - often re-creation.      

So far, thirty minutes and adjustments later this head-to-hand is still content.

    The Right Attitude

Sinatra had ‘the world on a string’.*
Some have the world on their shoulders,
Walking ‘round a wounded Atlas.
What attitude
Can turn an Atlas tuned to self essential?
One which takes the stance
That though life’s no dance,
We cannot “change the thing we can’t control”*
But view it holy in its whole,
Defined, refined by character and rectitude
Which spreads its finite wavelengths
Without damage to the soul of strength.

The Right Attitude 10.25.2020 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

*I’ve Got The World On A String Lyrics;Ted Koehler Music; Harold Arlen
**Serenity Prayer; Reinhold Niebhr (often used by Alcoholics Anonymous)

 I have been drawn many years - by instinct or some gene - to the relationship of the chemical workings in our body to the working in the body/mind.  Never having consciously thought about this, I I noticed only this morning while watching a young lady who’d written a book about admiration and its effect on the body/mind that I’d been writing about that in poetical form for perhaps 40 years.  Below, one of the latest, (yesterday, in fact) is one.


  Talking To The Brain II

I sometimes take the initiative
Taking, talking to the brain,
As if it were a representative
Of good and God, silent, present.

With no answers, no response,
I know each synapse is no dunce,
Transmitting neurons no morons
But batteried intelligence.
I’ve no solutions, but It has: Brain jazz!
And so I trust, with each new thought,
Each new idea, impulse or not
That something in the mono-ation’s conversation
Is productive, non-destructive.

With analysis, this mono-business
Is an enterprise filled with surprises;
Answers come each in their kind,
Blindly showing up in weeks, months, days
In ways I scarcely recognize:

Answers to a thought once prized,
I do not intellectualize
But go on with the one-on-one,
Knowing that it’s being processed
By some clever chemi-physic-sist
Up in-the-skies.

Talking To The Brain II 10.22.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

  Talking To The Brain

I sometimes take the initiative
Taking, talking to the brain,
As if it were a representative
Of good and God, silent, present.

With no answers, no response,
I know each synapse is no dunce,
Transmitting neurons no morons
But batteried intelligence.
I’ve no solutions, but It has: Brain jazz!
And so I trust, with each new thought,
Each new idea, impulse or not
That something in the mono-ation’s conversation
Is productive, non-destructive.

With analysis, this mono-business
Is an enterprise filled with surprises;
Answers come each in their kind,
Blindly showing up in weeks, months, days
In ways I scarcely recognize:

Answers to a thought once prized,
I do not intellectualize
But go on with the one-on-one,
Knowing that it’s being processed
By some clever chemi-physicist
Up in-the-skies.

Talking To The Brain 10.22.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

The CPS or Cordial Praise Society

We who write, responding kindly,
Are the humble members of
The Cordial Praise Society’s
Appreciation of what others say,
Each in his way, (and naturally, her way as well.)
We do not try to sell ourselves,
And if we’re liked or even loved,
Get or give approval,
We are strengthened to the depths,
Feeling whole.

With no razzmatazz,
Let’s call ourselves the CPS
The Cordial Praise Society
Who push each other to the sky.
Not asking why,
We know it is the best and only thing to do.

The CPS or Cordial Praise Society 3.21.2020 the Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I Do Not Read, I Write

I do not read, I write!
It’s like the principle of jazz:
A theme expanded single-handed
With no benefit in sight.
And with no benefit in sight
I carry on this inborn rite
With pronoun “i” seemingly right.

Not egotistical
But leaning towards the universal,
For we all are “I” behind the eye,
Its goal, the “i” up in the sky,
And what I write mid-day or night
Comes from a seeded, seeding thought
So pressing it demands first place,
Computer space
All but ignoring those who think,
Getting their peace by pen and ink.

Others do what they do do:
Jogging, menu-ing or chewing
It’s the inward pleasured domination
Pushing unavoidably
As recreation, situation notwithstanding.

Thus I write but do not read!
(i lie, but need to boast)
Of course I read the most I can,
Loving the words of child and man)

It’s just that sitting in this sun,
Pen, paper handy, gives one
Stimulation, motivation, means and – fun.

I Do Not Read, I Write 10.18.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Whole Trinity

We are a brain that has a body,
And a soul that has a brain:
A trinity, foreordained; pre-destined
With design and specificity, tendency
Both dark and light.
What a mixtur-ed mystery!

The most of fixtures:
Cells like batteries,
Organs, hormones, anti-bodies,
Arteries and veins through which red liquid runs
To carry precious oxygen to all the tissues in the body.

What a list to get the gist of!
So encyclopaedic, google doesn’t stand a chance.

Even synapses connecting all the billion bits of detail:
Nerve cells with a tiny gap where particles can mingle.

We are a brain that has a body,
And a soul that has and is the whole,
Examining which you’’ll
Comprehend.

The Whole Trinity 10.18.2020 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

     Just Plain Old Words

No metaphors, just plain old words:
A bunch to delve, dive into
For contentment’s sake,
Rummaging for further knowledge,
Contemplating, taking
Into cells which in themselves
Have not a gauge
But are a gauge in which to
Fit a language
Which, by some unworldly process,
Influences what we are, what we become
As hours pass,
Floundering and pondering;
Wond’ring at their wondrousness.

Metaphors and other symbols;
Explicating parables;
Simple, concrete; toys to play with,
Stay with day to day
Until their meanings stick.

The mystery
Is how the words,
Compiled, piled up and side by side
Get to be our poetry.
Inscrutably a mystery,
Verily!

It’s easy to believe, receive,
The starting point was Word,
A sound whose purpose was to spread,
Promote, communicate with,
Circulate mankind.

That he’s not always kind
Is yet another theme
For other times
In other poems
With words in herds
Or one or two
From folk like me to folk like you.

Just Plain Old Words10.17.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditating II; Arlene Nover Corwin

You’re Not Alone

You’re down.
Unhappy as a clown
With painted mouth and painted eyes:
A main disguise.
Inside you’re isolated, insulated,
Loveproof, heatproof and cocooned,
Marooned. Then poof,
The roof falls in, you’re introduced.
From being ‘down’
You’re not alone.
Propped up and bolstered,
Heartened, fortified and reassured;

I need not say what, where or how.
Certainly not even who.
The thing of import is the ‘that’.
‘That’ you, besotted, mad about
A club, a hobby, a religion. Stuck
On something you can shout out loud about.
You’ve learned, have known
One need not be alone, not great, not clever.
There is always some one thing to focus on:
Aloneness gone.
Forever.

You’re Not Alone 10.15.2020 Love Relationships II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin