Arlene Corwin Poetry

Sublime But Subtle

Truths that seem most obvious,
Like being kind and generous
Are more demanding than you’d think: androgynous
As any double sided thing can be.
The most divine suggestions
Simplest in theory, hardest to employ.
Virtues and their energy:
Goodness as integrity, nobility and purity –
So easy to define, the list goes on
With honesty of spirit the essential function.

‘Sublimity’ means such a high degree of excellence
It cannot be surpassed,
The question being, how does one
Get the sublime once reached, to last?
Or how does one identify sublimity at all?
How not be a puppet at another being’s call?
Lies and infidelity, intrigue, hanky-panky:
Also easy to define and place
But signs as veiled and as delicate as lace.

Life’s facets, their intentions subtle, fragile, clever:
Truths which often sidestep mind of doer and observer.
The question of existence
Boils down to more than happiness –
Its happenings confused in ways,
With no advice but laws whose source
Is cause/effect, pauses that pass on
To more and more of same.
“so subtle are the signs”, ***
*** “so subtle are the signs” – Corwin:To The Child Mystic 2010 Arlene Corwin

Sublime But Subtle 2.28.2021 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

Involved in Self

No one is more involved in self than
Self, for self is everyman
And every self a constancy,
The constancy ubiquitous.
Once you have a grasp of this
And use it thus,
You know all that there is to know
About this large and growing human race.

Some dispute the truth that is.
Ergo, the key — one of the keys
Is letting go the ego to please
Ego’s needs,
Which ego feeds self-interest,
(Not always the best of interests.)
Nonetheless,
No one is more concerned with self
Than self – oneself.
If one can land in understanding
By the broadest of acceptances,
One’s earned and learned the keys
To standing inside happiness
Outside of loneliness.

Involved In Self 2.27.2021 Circling Round Experience; Pure Nakedness II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Universe’s Interplay

How I love, wondering about
And pondering over
All the interplay and how
it happens —
That it happens overall!
“Over all”… short words
Encompassing the worlds all over.

Startling, terrifying;
All about life forms & dying
But awakening enquiry as well.
Awe is that.
Hence, the suffix -some and -ful.

When something takes your breath away –
So stunning and spectacular
You cannot get a sound out —
When something is phenomenal,
Its primal rhyme the word ‘sublime’,
Its sight suggestive of cohesiveness
The prefix aw-
Becomes and Aww!

One plays with “interplay”;
The way in which things have effect
On each and other.
Maybe Hubble will, one day
See magic cables able to connect it all;
Strings and cords that lead
Where all is joined in one big ball
Of energy, so powerful but small
It is invisible.

Universe’s Interplay 2.27.2021 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Everyone Must Do What They Were Born To Do

Everyone must do what they were born to do,
Obeying inner tendencies.
Laws of good and bad in mind,
The chore will always be
To go beneath the impulse
To beyond the false
To true —
Perhaps the new
Inside of you.

The doctor who
Was born to be a farmer,
Who through courses of
Bad choices
Chooses what he does not love
Will always feel dissatisfied
And not know why.

Vocation notwithstanding,
Rules of karma and pure luck,
Without the will to chuck the choice,
The small, small voice that tells you
Who and what you love to do — well, you
Had better listen.
The essential you lies there.

Everyone Must Do What They Were Born To Do 2.25.2021 Revelations Big & Small Arlene Nover Corwin

    Today I Was Accused…

Today I was accused
Of using too much rhyme;

Of bruising Keats and Shelley…

Is it that my rhymes are smelly – 

Pressed by some unconscious vanity?

Straightforwardly the way I think,
My rhyme in sync-
With evolution and enlargement of unformed idea,
My rhyme an incubus
In intercourse
With lover genius?
Nover’s genie?

Taking no offense
I had no other license,
Than to search my mind,
Which is like using wind
To cook a meal.

All that I want’s the real deal.
With rhyme my not-so-secret weapon,
One I lean on,
So be it!
There’’ll be no rhyme cremation
Of this norm and form creation.

Today I Was Accused…11.15.2019/revised 2.24.2021 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Nover Corwin

Function of rhyming words: I don’t remember where I read this, but I surely read it somewhere and took the thought to heart.

“Rhyme partly seems to be enjoyed simply as a repeating pattern that is pleasant to hear. It also serves as a powerful mnemonic device, facilitating memorization. The regular use of tail rhyme helps to mark off the ends of lines, thus clarifying the metrical structure for the listener. As with other poetic techniques, poets use it to suit their own purposes; for example William Shakespeare often used a rhyming couplet to mark off the end of a scene in a play.”

 Can It Be?

Can it be
That when you die
Your atoms go into eternity,
Come back collectively,
Attracted by
A law of magnetism and attraction –
A cycle and a miracle;
After all,
They’ve always been
A You since time began.

Can It Be? 2.24.2021Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin

The things I wonder about are things I write about. The things I write about I wind up by exploring, for one does not know how much one knows until one starts to write.

          Ambition

I’m never certain
How I feel about ambition.
I suspect a ‘pro and con’
Existing one inside the other;

A doubtful aim,
Passive as a dream that may be
Based on what’s illusory.
Or like a hurricane
That drives though friendships, kith and kin –
Anything that blocks the way
To his or her supremacy.

A triumph or a trump**?
Does it falsify what ought to be
In inner you and inner me:
Peaceful and in harmony?

Ambition’s song feels somehow wrong;
The canvas of acceptance torn.
One’s always read
One should be lead
By what goes on right now;
The loving of the here and now
The road that leads where you should go.

Ambition spends its time on what can be;
Wasted energies too in a rush
To reach objectives preached eons long gone
Standing for patience, modesty and reason.
I’m not certain how I feel about ambition.

Ambition 2.23.2021 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

**.trump: a verb which means: outshine, outclass, eclipse, surpass, leave standing, concoct, fake, falsify…”
2..ambition: “from the Latin/French ‘ambire’ to go round soliciting, drumming up…A

You may have to use a dictionary for this one.

            Word

What is the word?
Sound, vocalisation to be read,
Seen, heard;
Give meaning to intention?
One might guess
The first invention of creation
Carried forth – an innovation
Was the utterance of word –
Coming from a throat.
To ask, command, demand, emote
Shades of devotion;
No threat of drought or running out,
Expressing in the subtlest ways –
Revealing hidden selves from what
We think we are to what we are
In psyche’s inmost core;
Things sure of and unsure
That may, may not be posturing.
The word is there!
To gird up courage, bind the herd
Of common folk to common world.

If anything can be called sacred;
Venerated and respected,
Even purified and cleansed
By honesty in its intention
It is word; the word;
Well meant and tied
To goodness, curiosity and knowledge.

Word 2.21.2021 Definitely Didactic II;The Processes:Creative,Thinking,Meditative II; arlene Nover Corwin

Sometimes it’s better to look at a writing years after.

 Holding On To Empty Spaces

This body is a scandal.
Hidden clocks we cannot handle:
Agings, dyings out;
Impossible to rise above.
Easy prey for ego-love;
Body, with its rotting ways,
Craving undue notice.

Power-loving beast of burden
Following illusion’s burgeons,
Chasing visions leading nowhere
But to temporary shelters:
Time’s ordeal the ‘real deal’.

Sweltering in breathing shells
That lose their health and too soon fall
From superficial aim & goal
And shrugging off the inner graces,
Chasing after outer-places:
Holding on to empty spaces.

Holding On To Empty Spaces 10.30.2003Birth, Death & In Between; Circling Round Time;
Re-composed 2.20.2021 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

  It Never Lasts

TV ad:
A girl with gorgeous legs
Steps from a gorgeous car,
The gorgeous car the star.

The gorgeous car will rust one day;
The gorgeous leg change, decay,
The shifting muscles waste away.
It never lasts.
The leg, the car.
The gorgeous things we long for.

But bad things too –
They go also, so
Don’t despair.
The hair that falls from top of head
Will start to sprout from parts instead.
The rusty car – the modern-est
Will sadly or indifferently turn into rust,
Crushed, turned into plate,
To use, become a roller-skate.
Jaguar, Rolls, Mercedes Benz,
Converted, crushed, a concentrate
Become the answer to a cancer.

Nothing lasts. It simply changes
As each atoms strangely dances
To a different tune.
Loony as it sounds,
To quote a song I’ve often sung,
“It all goes round and round.”

It Never Lasts 2.19.2021A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Our Times, Our Culture II; Arlene Nover Corwin