Arlene Corwin Poetry

    Experience 

Each day so filed with detail
We ignore or get derailed,
To suffer needlessly,
Heedlessly.

So important
That we learn from our encounters,
From each circumstance –
Taken as a glimpse, a glance,
The dance of life.

Life skill, empirical,
Exposure to, involvement in:
Plain practical
Yet philosophical.

‘Experience’ itself a word whose origin
Is Latin,’meaning ‘try’, as in
‘Experiment’ and ‘expert’.
Life is short and full of incident.

The commonplace events
All adding up to trials and tests,
Those ordeals vested in
The media or in the flesh.
All’s come before – nothing’s fresh.

So, each encounter
Ought be met as life’s adventure,
Each a contact with the now,
To burn for, turn or not return to
Learn and earn from each – somehow.
Experience 9.28.2022 I Is Always We Is You; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

It’s Amazing: What’s Amazing?

That a body which we take for granted
Changes in a minute’s second.
Nose, ear, heart;
Parts identifiable or not;
Unseen parts that smart,
Which of a sudden,
Ligament and vein unreckoned,
Each condition, known, unknown to body’s self
We stand amazed;
We cave, amazed and fazed,
No weapons there to freeze the state –
A phase, we hope.
The scope of nature limitless.
We watch in expectation, dazed,
Because we thought we’d always be
The same unchanged and youthful me.
From G. B. Shaw, his mind and tongue
Who understood life’s short and long, life’s evensong
‘…Youth is wasted on the young’.
A pity.
It’s Amazing 9.29.2021/9.27.2022 Circling Round Ageing; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

  Dictators   

Let us start with opposites:
Peace and love’s benevolence;
Needing not to take from others;
Desiring not to take but serve,
Deepened by thought’s wholesome nerve
Nourished by the food of love.

Thought and peace of mind combined;
To see humanity as one big unit,
Feelings being what they ought when brought
Into this world at planet’s start:
The needfulness of sharing practical,
More beneficial, more worthwhile and fruitful.
Than the opposition’s rival
Of dictatorship.

Let’s now look at dictators:
Useless, unpropitious and perverse in every sphere;
Ultimately detrimental and destructive;
Hurtful in all areas.

Who would choose a ruler with complete control?
Who would be the fool to do it?
Tyrant, despot, someone who oppresses
As a right that he or she possesses.
Dictatorship: a ship that must
In due course, sink from lack of trust.

Dic-take-orships must always rust,
And dictators turn into dust.
Dictators 9.26.2022 Our Times, Our Culture II; War Book; Arlene Nover Corwin

5783 the Jewish New Year

Think of this:
There was a time before the year
Called twenty hundred twenty-two,
(the Christian era.)
Thirty-six hundred seventy one:
The Jewish people’s origin:
A Jewish people had begun.

So, in twenty twenty-two
September twenty-five to you,
We think about what happened then,
In reflection, our tradition,
Families of compassion,
Joy and thankfulness
That one is blessed
To be a Jew.

With no Yiddish in my language gear,
(No Hebrew either)
I wish you all a glad new year:
A happy Rosh Hashanah!
5783:Jewish New Year 9.25.2022 Arlene Nover Corwin

 Transparency #1

Learned: so very much about the self – my own;
And still so far to go.
So many nuances I did not know
Which now I do.

Memory, what’s paid attention to,
What is, and then ignored.
The things we hold unto ourselves;
What things make us uproared.

Gobs and mountains, droves and swarms,
Stacks, heaps, slang: a shitload
Multitudes of problems
Involving and invoking deity and intellect
To solve, resolve by filling in synapses that disconnect
Or weaken soon or late.

You may name fate as culprit.
Call it karma’s cause/effect.
Whatever, there is much to learn
To earn the medal of detection.
And the cures for your defection.

Since the keynote thesis of this tune –
First violin to take the melody
Is actually: Transparency,
Albeit leitmotif, but high up in the register;
Transparency recurring theme song
In the long, long days belonging to our essences.
Transparency#1 9.23.2022 I Is Always You Is We; Vaguely About Music; Arlene Nover Corwin

         Transparency #2 

Learned: so very much about the self – my own;
And still so far to go.
So many nuances not known –
Which few, I now do know.

Memory, what’s paid attention to,
What is, ignored,
The things we hold unto ourselves,
What things make us uproared.

Gobs of, mountains, droves and swarms,
Stacks, heaps, slang: a shitload
Multitude
Of problems
All involving and invoking
Deity and intellect
To solve, re-solve (by filling in)
Synapses that do disconnect
Or weaken soon or late:

Name it fate as culprit.
Call it karma’s cause/effect,
There is much to learn
To earn the medal of detection.
And the cures for its defection.

Since the keynote of this tune
Is actually ‘transparency’,
Its leitmotif transparency’s recurring strain,
As the refrain,
Take it, make it one of life’s blessed opportunities.
Transparency 9.23.2022 I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

  Greed & Self-Interest: Synonyms

Generous to charities, perhaps,
But still self-aimed.
Lapses of men’s empathies
Are never without sympathies,
The nuance subtle, ill-defined;
That’s the tragedy.

Compassionate is not the same as passionate.
Forgiving not the same as giving.
Humane, human, cupid* and cupidity**
Need and greed… correlative.

So I say, observe yourself
And serve yourself —
But with the right ambition.
Live and love,
But with fruition
Aiming with the right direction.

Greed and interest in the self
Must never be self-interest
In the pelf.***
Greed&Self-Interest: Synonyms 9.20.2022 Circling Round Existence;Definitely Didactic; Arlene Nover Corwin
*Cupid: the god of love.
**Cupidity: greed for money or possessions. late Middle English: from Old French cupidite or Latin cupiditas, from cupidus ‘desirous’, from cupere ‘to desire’. Compare with covet.
***pelf money, (especially when gained in a dishonest or dishonourable way):

                Examining the Inner #1 (to be added to, no doubt)

 Sometimes friends ask why I have limited eating meat to the most minimal I’m capable of (at the moment),  and I reply, because every living being loves to live.  It is the first law of existence: who wants to die an unnatural death?  Every living being, intellect, no intellect, big brain, little brain - if it is conscious, loves life.
 Sometimes I think about the most logical conclusions regarding ‘soul’, “the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal.”*
 My thought are:  a) there is such a thing b) it is eternal) c) therefore, considering the laws of evolution, it must come back to achieve a betterment and finally, perfection, perhaps no longer needing to take a body in which to work out the weaknesses & flaws of past mistakes, timed tendencies in the genes, all energies having equal & opposite properties positive&negative, good/bad, etc.  
 Knowledge, being always partial is not the same as wisdom, being things onto themselves, though united.  
 Truth, more total and complete than ‘knowledge’  comes to one all of a sudden, by insight or directness: revelation, something in the synapses making connections not seen or connected before.   
 Religion comes into the philosophic picture then, with God and gods being different names for one and the same  ‘-Ness of Being' and its inherent, incessant powers.  “Truth is one, sages call it by various names.”  
 There is no such thing as divine retribution**only cause and effect - bad causes producing bad effects, good causes producing good effects, mixed causes producing mixed effects.9.18.2022

soul: spirit, psyche, (inner) self, innermost self, (inner) ego, inner being, true being, essential nature, animating principle, life force, vital force, inner man/woman; persona, identity, personality, individuality, make-up, subconscious; technical anima, pneuma; in ancient Egypt ka; Hinduism atman.
** (punishment inflicted on someone as vengeance for a wrong or criminal act:)

  The Case For Rebirth

Our neighbor Bengt has passed away
With things of life still left undone.
When one’s passed on,
With life not won
From smoking much and drinking much,
Advice not touched,
What happens then?
Where, how and when does he survive
To live and gain what he has lost?
Why was his mind tossed out the window
To the winds of boundless time?

If you believe in soul,
The destiny of providence
To well, provide
Would life then hide itself eternally?
Life continues in a form
With cause to have one more effect
Endlessly, but friend-fully.

Flowers go back in the fall
To reproduce themselves in spring.
All the more so with each being,
Whether malformation or its sting
Looked bad in one existence,
No pretence ever in nature.

Seeds go back, are formed and grow,
Re-formed but still the same in flow.
Neighbor Bengt has gone, we know;
But where he’ll go,
Which family new
He’ll come to as a babe,
Will be one where he may evolve – may be.

Dear neighbor Bengt,
We’ll light a candle
As tradition’s handle to your dying.
Your dying leaves us trying
Ever harder.
The Case For Rebirth 9.17.2022 Birth,Death&InBetweenIII; Arlene Nover Corwin

 The Seriousness Of Verse

We know that poetry is read by few,
But be assured, not for the few;
It is for you
To read of essences, the universe’s
Inmost soul
With each one global I.e. noble.

That is why I write in verse;
Talent, aptitude not shrewd,
But looking in the murky muds
To see the clear, the flow’ring buds.

And so, dear reader,
Truth is there
To read about, write it out, (get it out)
Shed light
On knowledge there in part
To quash corruption of the heart,
Reminding us
That seven deadly sins are sins
Indeed –
And deadly,
Numbing minds and steadily
Destroying…Thus,
Let us
Support all verse
As ultimately serious.
The Seriousness Of Verse 9.16.2022 Processes: Creative, Thinking. Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin

  You Can Write About Anything #2

With roots ‘down to your boots’;
To hints of red tints farthest away.*
Themes have essences, nascences:
Theses coming into being
With potential and emergence:
Non-existent yet existent.

With signs of future, links to past.
Every theme a non-thing that may last forever;
Everything a something that was never.

Paradox, anomaly,
That smudge may be at once
The only thing that has an ounce
Or ring of being and continuance.

Never mind how bright or pallid –
It’s all valid,
If you think it, write it!

With the right to be expressed.
Make this right your crest,
Your emblem, crown,
The light that you reach up & down for.

Write about the things you’ve known,
Thoughts that groan, words on loan
All of which from which you’ve grown.

You write about
No matter what,
With no peculiar quirk ruled out.
Good or bad,
There’s nothing more that I can add.
You Can Write About Anything 8.21.2022 Circling Round Existence; Circling Round Everything; Arlene Nover Corwin
*the furthest light in space we see has a red tint.
**(especially of a process ) just coming into existence and beginning to display signs of future potential: the nascent (early 17th century: from Latin nascent- ‘being born’, from the verb nasci).