Arlene Corwin Poetry

 Although it may look as if I’m carrying on a one-woman campaign, writing poetry about amputation as I occasionally do, I just want to say that as a recent amputee, having gotten a mysterious sepsis (blood poisoning) and going from a ten fingered person to a three whole, three half fingered person, certain situations that I find myself in set off quirky observations which, as a poet I simply cannot resist setting to meter and rhyme.  

        Shampooing 

To those of you who’ve never known
An amputee of any sort –
A few bones short,
Shampooing is, well, interesting,
Challenging, to say the least!
The warming bath with bended knees
The bottle squeezed, the soaping in,
The tender skin on scalp and crown,
Just sitting down!
Each step to get those darned hairs clean.

It takes awhile to go that mile,
But afterwards it’s worth it;
A warming and uplifting gift,
The escapade engaging brain:
A training on a very basic yogic plane.

Shampooing 11.20.2020 A Sense Of the Ridiculous II;

 It’s Your Decision

It’s your decision, right or wrong.
You go along without dimensions of an understanding,
Ever standing under instinct.
Moment’s instinct driven by and based in sync-
With genes, upbringing, circumstance:
All of these the dance of life
That will forever lead and follow.

Your decision, every moment.
Your voice, your choice,
You the instrument but not the cause.
Who knows what the sources are?
“It’s in the stars”, as often said.
And yet, what’s in your head
Is there,
The leader/seer,
Atmosphere and backdrop notwithstanding.

It’s your decision, yes and no.
You can decide to let it go
If time is wrong or intuition’s song
Is sensing that the time is wrong.
Impulse in life’s small complexities
Paradoxes.

Is the will free as a bird – or burden?
You decide!

It’s Your Decision 11.29.2020 Nature in & Of Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

 Worth The Reading Time

Much of what one reads about
Is love ignited, unrequited…
Plight, excite, delight: all adjectives that end in -ite,
Narratives that never land;
Unfulfilled and ne’er full-ended.
Searching for someone to love;
Searching for the one true love.

For those inclined to love Divine –
The kind of love a union
With the One its aim and function;
That suffices as the gold; the mine
Of all the gemstones in the world.

Tomes we seek, themes that speak
Of higher things than lips and lust,
That never tire or expire,
But encrusted with a gem unchanging
Are worth the reading time forever.

Worth the Reading Time 11.28.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Eros; Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

         What Takes Time

(when fingers have been amputated)

Buttoning and chopping onions.
(you don’t button onions, natch!)
Throwing balls and playing catch;
Diverse actions needing oneness:
Three note chord, arpeggio
(If, of course you’ve played piano)
Wiping bum with just a thumb,
Zipping up,
Applying make-up.
Writing with a pen or pencil,
Lifting any large utensil;
Twists of wrists, techniques and muscles
While you’re rustling something up –
Things take time. You learn to cope,
And so,
You learn to take things slowly,
Much more slowly than you used to
When you ab- and mis-used time
By buzzing, cruising ‘round
Quite inexcusably.

Now focussed and enthused,
A strange new way infused,
The will to live renewed,
Things viewed as ordinary now extraordinary.
What takes time with digit gone
May have more than one compensation.
We shall see in years to come.

What Takes Time 11.24..2020 Birth, Death & In Between III; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

     Eva, Eva

Eva, Eva,
Who it feels we’ve known forever!
Just a girl
Who loved to whirl around in high heeled shoes,
Choosing music that amused
Her sensitive, artistic soul.

Energy one seldom sees,
Making everything she does
A breeze.
Eva, Eva, clever Eva!

Generosity of time and service.
Not the least bit nervous
About taking on new projects.
She projects the finest and the funniest
With fräkisar.

With you as friend one feels secure:
Vis á vis dear Eleanor.
Du svävar utan vingar!
Eva, Eva,
Have a happy, HAPPY BIRTHDAY
With our love that flies your way!
Eva, Eva 11. 25.2020 Birthday Book; Arlene Nover Corwin

The World’s Best Lovers

Musing on a thing I know,
A thing I know a thing about,
The trick is not to mention names.
Think: name unknown – the names anon.
The traits are what illuminate;
When it becomes an education:
Theory to academic and didactic;
Not the least bit pornographic
(even graphic, for that matter.)

Mr X climbs into bed with Ms XY.
No sly ardor but good will,
They lie quite still.
A good beginning and an intro.
No big ego runs the show.
Start is slow, no expectations.
With no goal, the bod’ awakens.
One is passive, one is not.

Cool and hot, yin and yang,
One receiver, one with spring.
This can vary in the doing,
Cupid’s arrows, sightless, blind,
Innocence and eros blend.
The tactile governs.
Thigh to thigh, hand on hand,
Eye to eye, and, and, and…and

A motion, whispered groan;
Skin on skin, the moans begin.
Step by step and far from finished,
Visual, olfactory, the beating heart,
The swelling heat, the two best lovers taking part,
A start, an end, two friends united in
Spontaneous combustion
(which they say cannot be found,
but silent causes can resound.)
In any case, all ceased and feasted,
Lovers rise. A second breakfast.
Lovers who have had the most –
Juice and oatmeal, buttered toast…

The World’s Best Lovers 11.21.2020 Circling Round Eros; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

         Tidbits         

Rhyme/meter girl, that’s what I am.
No special gambit in my plan.
Perhaps the meter’s in my head,
Incomprehensible to those who read,
Well, tough! I cannot dwarf the need.
The inner ear just hears it.
Musician too,
Writing from an inner camera, as I do.
Rhyme penchant – chant, cant
Non-sensical or intellectual,
Its pleasured high is oh, so actual,

Why would someone take the time
To write in meter, write in rhyme,
Shape on paper tidbits entering the literary?
Every poet minus, plus
Has some kind of a genius.
What kind of call…why write at all?
Writing is not fighting, it’s exploring,
Learning more within
From references without.
Stimulation of the highest sort;
A sport, perhaps.
Technique and skill with criticising,
Sizing up, refining word, defining order.

Was not poet. Now I am.
The metered rhyme, the aging face
Has given something like a grace,
A grazing grace which feeds on honesty and peace.
Though fears and doubts still hang about,
There is a will to simple thought ,
Abstract conjecture made concrete.
Teeny, tiny, tidbits sweet.

Tidbits 11.19.2020 Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I woke this morning, watched my morning TV, ate breakfast, and outcame this: having been worked on 3-4- hours; refined, more clearly defined, even as I write for sending.

 A New Awakening

For me, each day’s become
A new awakening.
I don’t remember yesterday,
(that, almost literally).
Each day I feel a newly born
Who hasn’t had a day before;
For him or her,
Each day’s events, the weekly sequence that lacks reference:
Wholly fresh and unprocessed.
No programmed habits in the way,

The learned unnecessary.
Every breakfast, lunch and dinner
Informing and a finding
With the force of creativity
Touched by serotonin, dopamine
And filled with oxytocin, which means
Happiness, and with that -ness invention.

Ageing has its benefits.
The days untied, untried,
Duties less a press;
To the better in the dwindling senses, subtle changes;
Fun in what was obligation:
Cooking, laundry, scrubbing, dusting –
All the ordinary musts amusing,
Yesteryear’s mad fusses fusing!
An awakening!
A new sense-action and a prize
Of unadulterated size!

A New Awakening 11.17.2020 Circling Round Ageing; Pure Nakedness II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

The Things We Take For Granted

The tastes and that we taste,
The smell and that we smell.
The sight and sights themselves;
The fact of silence, how it feels.
And touch?
Is velvet like our bristly toothbrush?
How asleep we are
Though eyes are open.
Who is it, that real person
Inside you?
And who is you?

The Things We Take for Granted 11.15.2020 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Note: I could have called this “Some Things We Take For Granted”, for I well understand the limitless extent of what we do not think about or notice. But as one who has lost the sense of taste and smell, who has had fingers amputated due to sepsis, I know and am beginning to deeply understand the before and after of what it means to ‘take for granted’.