Arlene Corwin Poetry

    More Than Pet

Albert Cat lies at my side.
Pressed up against my thigh he sleeps.
He’s slurped some yogurt from my thumb;
Not much, for he’s not hungry –
Took a whiff, showed interest;
I appreciate his interest, his intelligence;
It shows we’re equals:
Pals.
His senses know my tones of voice.
I try my best to sense his choices:
Moods, foods, evidences he evinces through the day;
His likes, dislikes, what’s good, what’s play.
He’s whimsical and unpredictable;
I’m conversational, respectful;
Relationship reciprocal,
I am the more responsible,
And that’s okay with me;
The mutuality enriching each.
Time tells me,
So does he.

More than Pet 4.30.2021 Cat Book II; Circling round Experience; Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Taking it from my previous poems: from the sublime to the ridiculous

  A Picture Of The Whole
  (a sense of the ridiculous)

It all makes sense when you can see
A picture of the whole.
One can use a camera or computer…
Any little digital –
Things designed to make things clearer.
Daughter tries to make things heard:
This goes here and why and where…
She is an expert and a nerd.

Nothing sticks
Until one day
I get my kicks because
It clicks!
I’ve had a flash of that or this.
Nothing big, but nothing beats
What you can sink your teeth into.
Quelle relief!
A bit of grief is gone and folded
Once you’ve gotten hold of concepts old and true,
But finally and wholly new
To former ignoramus you.

A Picture Of The Whole 4.29.2021 A Sense Of The Ridiculous II; Arlene Corwin Nover

A New Phase Of Awareness
(Bared For All To View)

I am conscious;
See and hear and all the rest.
I am aware, newly aware
The I am consciousness.
That’s huge!
Not only senses but
The sense behind the senses,
I am sense-ness.
Consciousness.

As soon as you add suffix -ness
A noun becomes the all-embracing;
Something in itself.

No longer parts divided and connected
But a unitary abstract quite un-nameable;
Sustainable — an ‘it’.
Not’ only ‘quite’, but It.

Oh, the limits of the word!
It is absurd that what you are
Is in reality an It:
Alive, eternal, undivided.
Some deny it, but it’s true.
Consciousness is you.

A New Phase Of Awareness 4.27.2021 I Is Always You Is We;Circling Round Experience;Arlene Nover Corwin

       No One Reads Poetry

That’s what they tell me:
Verse doesn’t sell

• Nobody reads…
  No one will buy…
  Poetry!
  Well-meaning kin,
  Publishers who make it known,
  Who jerk you around
  When you send in your soundest work:
  Who say,
  “Do not send us works of verse!”

Self-trust torn a-sunder
One starts to wonder,
“Is it me that’s mediocre?”

Let me tell you reader dear,
Thousands out there read each stanza, each cadenza
Meant to catch, attach, draw, touch the heart.
Thousands care!

Ingenuity, fertility, a universe in unity;
Intensity and lyric beauty:
Wholly, utterly and unreservedly
Unique!
The peak of truth and culture, muse and genius!
“No on reads…”
Ridiculous!

No One Reads Poetry 4.27.2021 Circling Round Everything II: Arlene Nover Corwin

The Most Wonderful Theory Ever Had;
(and most important poem I’ve ever written)

There is a prefix: ‘pan-‘ whose meaning is,
The all-inclusive.
As opposed to exclusivity: –
A word and world in which we live
Continuously,
Mostly wired to omission, opposition.
All we do and all we see.

Ah, but no!
A model mathematical
Backed up by physics theoretical
Is “panpsychism”.*

In the knowledge and the wisdom
Of existing men and women
Is the doctrine and belief that all material,
However small,
Has element (or elements) of individual
Awareness, consciousness, alertness,
Sensitivity to goings on…ad infinitum.
I’m in heaven!

You and me, us and we
Connected by vibrations deep, deep, deep
Within all brains;
Small, small tubules in the neurons
And the structure of all space:
The cosmos, matter, galaxies…
Implications way beyond the mathematic.
I’m ecstatic!

Connections inter-, intra-; info-
Shared at the most basic level;
Integrated consciousness.
I’m in bliss!

Nothing separate, uninfluenced, un-influencing.
If you knew down to the bone
How very much you’re not alone
How would you hone your ‘now’ decisions
Woven into every structure of existence!

*the doctrine or belief that everything material, however small, has an element of individual consciousness.

The Most Wonderful Theory Ever Had 4.27.2021 Circling Round EverythingII; Arlene Nover Corwin

 I’ve Only Ever Known Jazz

Of singers who lay claim to jazz,
I only hear a copied trend:
Styles, arrangements, timbre, sound
Make their populistic rounds.

Then I sing; hear harmonies,
Voicings, bass lines, every chord;
No schmaltz, no crotch, no gestured show,
Knowing I’m a jazz-rich throat,
Each note sung on the spot,
Improvised creatively right from the start.

Do I have a heart? Sure, but
I never will be Bassey – more a Sassy
Jazz-directed to my toes;
God knows how it begins and shows.
My instrument the ears and what they hear,
Voice right or wrong Informed by song.

Monk-like clusters mustered up by choice and taste;
Diatonic or laconic, unexpectedly chromatic:
Product of the 50’s ‘cool’.
Schooled by Ella, Vaughan, Tormé,
Miles, Gillespie, Chet, Monk, Christy,
Frishberg’s, Dorough’s’’s Blossom’s spunk,
Mose, Matt Dennis; Hendricks, Hancock,
Hundreds more…great tunes galore:
Some you haven’t heard before!
These my first and opened door.

Whereas some others have their glaze,
I’ve only ever known cool jazz –
Spontaneous, each choice unfazed.
That my music’s cool soul’s razzmatazz.

I’ve Only Ever Known Jazz 4.24.2021 Vaguely About Music II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Believe me, I don’t start the day with intention of writing. And then it happens, a moving phrase read, extrapolated and boom, the synapses light up in connection.
I’m not a nerd, not especially informed, but something inside is always on the lookout and knows more that I do.

Many Small Acts Of Indifference

They pile up one by one.
The largest iceberg melting, crumbling. falling slowly:
Then, ‘all gone’!

What could be truer –
People neither bad- nor good-er:
Just indifferent;
Never seeing unconcern
Till forests burn.
Therein the problem.

Mostly, one can’t lay a blame.
There is no name, no exclamation:
Maybe something thin and lame like, “Damn!”
To call this sad phenomenon.

It’s all of us;
Our routine habits that are cause;
Unoriginal, derivative. monotonous…
For where the planet stands today, we’re breaking laws
Set down by nature.
(This planet ‘ doesn’t ‘stand’ it goes,
But where it’s going no one knows);
Round and round or down and down:
It’s all a terrifying puzzle.
We, the powerless and muzzled.*

Anyhow, the very slowness gives one hope.
You and I, the dopiest
Can change this moment.
Coral, porpoise, whale dies; gases rise;
Oceans foam, the whole fomenting
Sentiment and action:
Thanks to worldwide inter- nets:
Information at its best.

Beware indifference’ shrugging off,
Bent, trump-ian off-sloughing of the evidences.
It’s you and me, kid,
Who can rid the damage done,
The inner mental situation
Of those small indifferences.

Many Acts Of Small Indifference 4.23.2021 Our Times, Our CultureII; Definitely Didactic II; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

• Pandemic-wise

Sometimes poetry is story telling, sometimes didactic teaching, sometimes a combination of both.

A Letting Go & Letting In

A ‘ballsy’ lady I know well,
Who doesn’t hesitate to tell
Those she considers foes, to ‘go to hell’
Considers meditation
Self-deception and delusion,
Which ‘dislike’ inspired me to re-define
In easy terms,
A practice I consider firm.

Meditation, as I find it, see it, use it
Is a mind full, filled by focus, plus,
A letting go and letting in
A ‘thing’ you can’t put finger on.
All these three are meditation.
These, a brain that’s working on
A different plane or several planes.

I admire her for her ‘balls’
But sympathize a mind the sees life as a
Nothing worthy or an all.
She may be missing what’s behind –
Which may be spirit or a soul;
Some non-something behind the earth
Contactable by non-thing faith.
No meter there to measure pleasure;
Or to calculate its treasure.

A Letting Go & Letting In 4.23.2021 To The Child Mystic II; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

Today’s Lovely Word: Justice

Such a weighty concept: justice.
Simple Latin meaning ‘right’,
And nice to rhyme with ‘trust’,
No single ‘must’ in sight.

Doing what is right
Is to include what’s fair.
But there’s the snag, and there’s the hinder;
Born with ego as we are,
Temperaments and character,
Leanings that go far too far,
It isn’t fair!
But nor are we.
There it is, the needed discipline
Oft’ hard to learn, to start, to do,
Continuing the whole life through.

Of seven deadly lust-filled sins, wrath is in.
What is not ‘in’ is prejudice and bias.
(Bible didn’t have those words.)
Of course, the “love your neighbour as yourself”
Is not far off the gist and thrust
Of training to become all-just.

Today’s Lovely Word:Justice 4.23.2021 Our Times, OurCulture II; Circling Round Experience; Circling Round Everything II; Arlene Nover Corwin

   Lumps & Bumps

Wrinkles, lines, ache this, pain that;
Then the lumps, perplexing bumps
From nowhere, showing, growing,
Coming and not going.
Bother!
You think cancer, other
Causes: worry, costs and doctors,
Signs and trends!
Brother!
Will they never end?
Changes down there:
Sour, cowardly –
Unsightly forms informing us
Of beauty’s loss, of songs unsung,
Boss death and wretched other wrongs.
Lumps and bumps which must mean something;
Nature’s drowsing, rousing, – dousing.
Sousing us with vinegar.

Lumps & Bumps 5.29.2016/revised 5.11.2020/re-revised4.21.2021
Circling Round Ageing; Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Nover Corwin