Arlene Corwin Poetry

 It’s not yet tomorrow, the 8th November. But like a child I’m already celebrating it with anticipation.  I’ve no real emotion, rather a quiet gratitude and awareness of life itself.  My eyes see nature differently, I hear and put together sounds in a newly discovered way.  The whole picture of what and who makes up life has taken on a new significance and hue. 

Happy Birthday To Myself

Happy Birthday To Myself!
My outer self, my inner Self!
The body me, the mind-full me.
The trillion cells
That keep me well.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO IT ALL!

Happy Birthday to the mood
That helps to make me feel good.
To fates that brought me where I am;
The virtues, gifts, the blames I claim.

Happy Birthday to the tricks
I’ve learned to use at this
My new day’s eighty sixth;
Tricks and tips, clues, hints to share,
(One is ever part aware)

And so I send myself this mail
Literally as I am able.
Satisfied that I’ve not died.
With years that morphed
Into an age where I can sing this song:
Happy Birthday To Myself! 🎶
Toodle-loo and Cheers! So long! 💕

Happy Birthday To Myself 11.8.2020 Birthday Book; Arlene Nover Corwin

At this time, Wednesday, November 4th, 2020 5pm Swedish time, still glued to the TV, not knowing yet who’s in! This was written in October.

           Self-Doubt

I sometimes wonder, try to picture
Men like Mr Trump, sitting on the ‘loo’ or ‘john’*
For really, he is one
of us – just human,
Doing what we humans do.

I wonder if he’s ever plain unsure,
Plain insecure.
I wonder if he has self-doubt.
Skeptical about ideas that come to mind,
Understanding that the mind can find
The craziest of thoughts to think.

Myself, I waver, do not savour every Corwin blink.

And here we have men of the hour,
Men with power
Posturing with face, hand, fingers
Giving out their unsound signals;
Accusations unconditional;
Wholesale and total.
Do they never have self-doubt
When I, the lowly writing poet
Try to deepen virtues that I am without?
I, who analyse and question sides unseen?
Seeking ways to harmonise the pieces and the one,
Smooth out the rougher parts
While at the same time being soft at heart,
Broad, kind and well defined,
Wise and well-informed in mind?

Self-confidence dissolves self-doubt.
To recognize, discern the two Is good to do,
Good for you, of value to your future
And by definition,
Everyone’s.

*loo, john are English slang for toilet.
Self-Doubt 10.2.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

On Facebook

Gladdened and astonished
At the countries that are reached
By writing simple verse;
That old and young
Whose native tongue
Is manifestly not the English one,
One’s filled with admiration.

We should all be grateful
If, by easy clicks we set a ball a-rolling,
Sharing, seeing commonality
In all humanity.
My tears, fears theirs or bared,
My hopes, the insights, all I’ve earned
Shared, learned by all the yearning, scared globality.

Wars come and go.
But flows of longing, kindness, information
Are the highest trophies reaching nation
After nation
From this windy, rainy Swedish morn.

Inspired, un-tired and breakfasted,
Looking forward to the Mac,
Face-booking, and the fact
That there will be somebody out there
Somewhere in Antarctica, Australia, Africa or Papua…
Who will be made the happier by stanza,
Or plain utterance .

On Facebook 11.2.2020 Our Times, Our Culture II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

 Maturity

What was one thinking then?
What was one thinking when
One did the darnedest things
Ringing of naivité.
Or did not do things of substance;
Choices based on ignorance
And make-up’s many-sidedness.

Looking back today
They seemed so brainless,
Some foolhardy, irresponsible and thoughtless.
“How could I?” And why, you sigh –
Tear-filled eyes the only prize.

Sizing up with clearer powers,
Time has passed, transgressions paid.
New sown flowers replaced errors.
Karma’s laws have laid the end
With just results: some good, some pained.

That’s what growth is all about –
With rings on trees the perfect symbol;
Narrow, wide, but growing still;
Even now (the adjective)
In silence and tranquility (the noun)

The coming of maturity,
The blossoming sagacity.
One hopes and prays
It comes and stays
Through lasting days
of wine and roses.

Maturity 11.1.2020 Circling Round Ageing; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

This is the opposite side of the coin to “Everything We Do” (Facebook or WordPress site)

    The Bad, The Harmful & The Worthless

The nail biting, smoking, drinking,
Mind cliches, the one that bitches –
All the zillion daily habits
Which, like rabid dogs are glitches
Which are setbacks which push back
The forward thrust of progress,
The kind of life meant for the best:
Life happiness!

Repetition may be key
To all achievement.
But like energy’s great powers;
Sources that house forces
Dour, sour on the hour;
Positive & negative;
Latent, inherent, permanent
(Reference: atoms vis á vis the bomb.
Doesn’t that just make you numb?)

Tips and hints: Pointing nose in the direction of,
You guessed it: truth and fact;
Learn to act with light and love,
Convert the covert negative
To merit, benefit and giving;
Good for all and plain overt.

The Bad, The Harmful & The Worthless;10.31.2020 Circling Round Reality; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

Everything You Do

Everything accomplished needed repetition.
Repetition means rehearsal;
No reversal till you get it perfect.
Practice and continuation
Flexibly reflected, flaws corrected;
All dissected till you’ve got it right.

Playing, praying, cooking training,
You’ve a will and brain
To shape it all from large to small,
From simple to precision’s detail.

Everything needs doing over
To deliver what it’s meant to be.
Nothing’s fault-free, all agree.
But all activity has aim
Combined with spontaneity.

Repetition is an art,
Discipline a healthy part;
Continuance the dart and cart
Which thrown and borne
Brings start to what we’ve learnt
To call accomplishment.

Everything You Do 10.29.2020 Definitely Didactic II; Circling Round Experience; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin

When a poem comes out from head and hand in twenty minutes, one is suspicious, almost sure it will be returned to for revision and correction - often re-creation.      

So far, thirty minutes and adjustments later this head-to-hand is still content.

    The Right Attitude

Sinatra had ‘the world on a string’.*
Some have the world on their shoulders,
Walking ‘round a wounded Atlas.
What attitude
Can turn an Atlas tuned to self essential?
One which takes the stance
That though life’s no dance,
We cannot “change the thing we can’t control”*
But view it holy in its whole,
Defined, refined by character and rectitude
Which spreads its finite wavelengths
Without damage to the soul of strength.

The Right Attitude 10.25.2020 Circling Round Reality; Arlene Nover Corwin

*I’ve Got The World On A String Lyrics;Ted Koehler Music; Harold Arlen
**Serenity Prayer; Reinhold Niebhr (often used by Alcoholics Anonymous)

 I have been drawn many years - by instinct or some gene - to the relationship of the chemical workings in our body to the working in the body/mind.  Never having consciously thought about this, I I noticed only this morning while watching a young lady who’d written a book about admiration and its effect on the body/mind that I’d been writing about that in poetical form for perhaps 40 years.  Below, one of the latest, (yesterday, in fact) is one.


  Talking To The Brain II

I sometimes take the initiative
Taking, talking to the brain,
As if it were a representative
Of good and God, silent, present.

With no answers, no response,
I know each synapse is no dunce,
Transmitting neurons no morons
But batteried intelligence.
I’ve no solutions, but It has: Brain jazz!
And so I trust, with each new thought,
Each new idea, impulse or not
That something in the mono-ation’s conversation
Is productive, non-destructive.

With analysis, this mono-business
Is an enterprise filled with surprises;
Answers come each in their kind,
Blindly showing up in weeks, months, days
In ways I scarcely recognize:

Answers to a thought once prized,
I do not intellectualize
But go on with the one-on-one,
Knowing that it’s being processed
By some clever chemi-physic-sist
Up in-the-skies.

Talking To The Brain II 10.22.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

  Talking To The Brain

I sometimes take the initiative
Taking, talking to the brain,
As if it were a representative
Of good and God, silent, present.

With no answers, no response,
I know each synapse is no dunce,
Transmitting neurons no morons
But batteried intelligence.
I’ve no solutions, but It has: Brain jazz!
And so I trust, with each new thought,
Each new idea, impulse or not
That something in the mono-ation’s conversation
Is productive, non-destructive.

With analysis, this mono-business
Is an enterprise filled with surprises;
Answers come each in their kind,
Blindly showing up in weeks, months, days
In ways I scarcely recognize:

Answers to a thought once prized,
I do not intellectualize
But go on with the one-on-one,
Knowing that it’s being processed
By some clever chemi-physicist
Up in-the-skies.

Talking To The Brain 10.22.2020 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Circling Round Experience; Arlene Nover Corwin

The CPS or Cordial Praise Society

We who write, responding kindly,
Are the humble members of
The Cordial Praise Society’s
Appreciation of what others say,
Each in his way, (and naturally, her way as well.)
We do not try to sell ourselves,
And if we’re liked or even loved,
Get or give approval,
We are strengthened to the depths,
Feeling whole.

With no razzmatazz,
Let’s call ourselves the CPS
The Cordial Praise Society
Who push each other to the sky.
Not asking why,
We know it is the best and only thing to do.

The CPS or Cordial Praise Society 3.21.2020 the Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Arlene Nover Corwin