Arlene Corwin Poetry

What do you think?

The Tick-Tock Of My Inner Clock

An avid, friendly reader asked,
“What makes you tick?
Not slick but humbly put,
She said,
“Easy flow… delivery;
Great content, such high calibre;
Well thought-out,
Immaculately crafted…
Who are you? What makes you tick?”
Such compliment itself poetic!

I had to think.
With modest spunk and ego shrunk
I owed it to my inner mind
And to this person to define and find
The best and truest answer.

‘Who I am has many sides:
The person who decides
The now-est of the now,
The actions, choices; voices
Which should be as should,
But are not always the most good.

‘Who I am’ supplies each verse
For better/worse, to my surprise
Pea-brained or wise –
Each thought and phrase without disguise.

What I’m trying hard to say is this:
Spontaneity, plus care and work
Is how and that my inner clock
Is always jerking me around
In efforts to not be profound, confound,
But be instinctive and instructive,
Making art and gift productive,

Clear and effortless in reading;
Writing what the mind kneading,
Never fomenting unrest,
Striving at my best
To search and write from ‘in the moment’;.
Obedient to every fragment, every pigment,
Every vibrant, potent treatment
Defrocking any poppycock:
The tick-tock of my inner clock.
The Tick-Tock Of My Inner Clock 6.30.2022 Pure Nakedness II; The Processes:Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

 Often  I write a poem and fully satisfied, print it, send it out to Facebook, friends and then, a week later catch a glimpse and see weaknesses I'd never have thought of or recognised as being poetic deficiencies.  This being the case, I offer you my just-now revised version of Euphoria.

      Euphoria II 

We’re looking for euphoria!
Why, for what, and how?
(Hence, drugs & speed & alcohol)
To help in living in the now,

Focussed on the moment’s movement,
Never knowing longterm outcome
But affecting points in time,
Guiding, shaping what comes next:
The central message of this text.

How much sway we have on any day,
We cannot say.
How much mastery is in our hands,
We cannot know or understand.

We want to win continuance,
The longterm dance,
Gratified, fulfilled and happy.
This we know instinctively.

Thus, euphoria:
Modifier, magnifier, amplifier, purifier,
Summing up the qualities
Which ease life’s pleasure in the highest;
Joy, delight, life play and sport;
Even rapture which transports.
‘Seventh heaven’ and ‘cloud nine’ –
Euphemisms for the finest of the fine.
Euphoria’s exhilaration
Is the jubilation we were born to own.
Euphoria 6.28.2019/revised 6.28.2022 Nature Of & In Reality; To the Child Mystic II; ; Arlene Nover Corwin

     Ogling A Frog

Sitting on the lawn
Fawning over a sweet frog.
Sitting long,
Though she is not concerned with me;.
( I have a feeling she’s in pregnancy)
Quite still, eyes closed, I wonder,
Should I move her to the lake?
Should I let her nature do its take
And let her rest, not interfere?
I’m here, about to google
What it is I ogle.

Humans, (me) with best intentions
Meant to help a process,
Often hindering the access
To the things it misses –
Jaunty frog a case I point.
We meddle, tamper, intervene,
Mess with, getting in between
What’s meant and our intent.

And so, I’ll leave this poem for now
And google what and how
To treat the sweet and pregnant(?) frog
I’m goggling at.
Ogling a Frog 6.28.2022 Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Nature II; Arlene Nover Corwin

I guess this is always on my mind, one way or another.

Change & Alteration

When one is young
One never thinks of alteration.
Then time’s bridge becomes the altar
On which offering makes its demands.
Those tattoos and signs we thought
Belonged to beauty,
Decay, deform – duty done,
Gone the charm,
Informing us that time is king, queen, prince,
Taking at their will, the price.

Change not only superficial, no, oh, no.
Growing inside, growing out
Skin, bones, organs, brain the root
Branded by the lifetime ride.
All the stuff inside
With alterations of their own;
Things you’ve known no longer there,
God knows where
(perhaps a planet of a star)
A joke, but nonetheless
Bleached, fewer, yes,
They’re less.

To summarise:
Stuff will rise or disappear.
Yet, the most important is:
There’s you in there;
To praise, to keep,
Still useful, reaping the rewards
Of age through wisdom:

There is no hanging on to past.
Past week, past year – the last, past minute.
You’re not in it.
You are now.
New contentment, self-restraint the holy cow.
Wow!
Change is only reconstruction, variation,
Evolution, adaptation.
Fate’s parade not to be ‘fraid of.
Even possibly to love.
Time will show long as you live.
Change&Alteration 6.27.2022 Circling Round Almost Everything; Arlene Corwin Nover

Everybody Needs A Philosophy II

If you are absorbed in living,
Even interested in dying,
And you want a piece of peace,
What’s needed is a philosophy
Which doesn’t call for a big P,
Doesn’t happen overnight
But is a learning over time;
Which feels comfortable,
Works well with common sense,
And doesn’t need five pence to feed it.

Everybody needs a backdrop
To the choices of your voice,
And a voice to daily choices
Never coming to a stop.

How to get there?
How to find out what is fitting;
Find what lifts the soul of you
Down to your shoe.

You might just find a book,
Or without expecting, meet a bloke,
Hear a joke, learn a rule
In, out of school
Wherein you do not make
The same mistake
Over, over.

Everybody needs a mentor
To give thoughts a broader shoulder;
Down-to-earth yet spiritual,
Practical, empirical,
Not cynical or lyrical
But real: the real deal.
A wielder of the future.
Everybody Needs A Philosophy 6.21.2018/6.26.2022 Revelations Big & Small; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin

One Day After Midsummer, Sweden June 25, 2022

One day after.
Celebrated to the rafters:
A first fest since twenty-nineteen,
A pandemic in between.

Pot luck party with the neighbours
Strawberries up to our ears
Drinks (wink, wink) of every sort;
Dancing round the summer birch,
The pole
Stuck into beach lawn hole,
All decorated – glorious!

Oh, if you all could have seen
What we had done
To make the most for those who came…
To say“fun”
Would play down all the play
Of this great, first midsummer day.

It’s downhill now from this day onward.
By July the days will shorten,
Forward to and toward December twenty-one
When light will start to show again.
As for now, this Swedish day
Is heavenly,
One Day After Midsummer 6,25,2922 Circling Round Nature II;Arlene Nover Corwin

           Writing Junkie

What started out as impulse, unpredictable
Has turned into a habit,
Irresistible, I addict
As predictable as addicts are.

I need my hour
To prescribe what’s in my mind:
Anything from A to Z
Setting off the ‘high’ of writing.
Brain has a dependency
On me, and I dependency on it.
What’s writ
Is co-dependency,
Each needing t’other for support.
It’s but to keep them heathy,
Bodily and psychologically.

Together they make me
And gosh darn poetry:
Harmless, educational, informative,
Funny or ridiculous but never pointless
Even when one’s out of joint.**
Most of all, when verse is done,
It is, has been
The pinnacle, the apex and the peak
of fun.
Writing Junkie 6.23.2022 Te Proscesses; Creatvey, thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

*out of joint
(of a joint of the body) out of position; dislocated: he put his hip out of joint.

• * in a state of disorder or disorientation: time was thrown completely out of joint.

noun; the state of being infatuated.  
foolish or all-absorbing passion or an instance of this: a mere infatuation that will not last.
the object of a person’s infatuation: When I was a kid, my infatuation was stamp collecting
The first records of the word infatuation come from the mid-1600s. It ultimately comes from the Latin verb infatuāre, from fatuus, meaning “fatuous” or “foolish.” When it’s used in the context of a romantic interest, an infatuation is often like an intense crush—one that consumes your every thought.
Infatuation Definition & Meaning – Dictionary.com
https://www.dictionary.com › browse › infatuation

         Infatuated 

Oh, how I used to fall in love.
But oh, how quickly I got bored.
Lord, how quickly I got bored!
I was in my teens,
And in between I missed the feeling;
Something in my very genes
Dictating, kneeling
To the gods of love.

I got used to waiting, dating,
Meeting boys,
Innocently, no plan or ploys;
Enjoyed myself but knew amour
Was what I longed for.

Waited, dated, parried*, married;
Rushing, pushing, worried: Never!
Ever pure in instinct’s goal:
Ever sure,
Patient for
The One to enter
Make me whole.

It took five decades.
The it came,
And life has never been the same.
Calm. fulfilled, longing killed,
Enjoying every day since then
When love without outside temptation
Superglued its combination.
Infatuated 6.23.2022 Circling Round Experience; Love Relationships II; Arlene Nover Corwin
*parry; late 17th century: probably representing French parez! ‘ward off!’, imperative of parer, from Italian parare ‘ward off’.
Dedicated to Ulf Magnusson, my Swedish friend who didn’t know the meaning of the word infatuation.

The Mysteries Of Body Change We Call Ageing

A sphincter muscle hard to close;
A cataract with eye that clouds;
A bone that changes shape or size;
Dizziness that comes a-reeling;
Much occurring without feeling.
Taste and smell whose disappearance
Is a subtle interference.
Strange, the changes we call ageing;
Silent, constant rearranging.
An ‘I’ that’s always moving, thinking
Even while the rest is shrinking;
Ligament and muscle weaken., –
Up to down, out to in,

All these processes a message.
Yet through messes
We are striving for energies renewable,
Every slowing a refusal
To depart from this fine world;
Creatures large and small.
The smallest cells included;)
Scheduled in specific ways,
Fueled and ruled by chemistry,
Their very selves a mystery
Continued and renewed.
The Mysteries Of Body Change We Call Ageing 6.21.2022 Circling Round Experience; Birth, Death & In Between III; Arlene Nover Corwin