Arlene Corwin Poetry

Still teenage and merely cute,

She had nothing much to say,

No expressive skills of note;

The urge to break away

Had crept in through the sex, not throat.

But there inside the head was ear,

And the gene to play with rhythm,

And a thriving drive to clear

Out something that lay hidden.

Locked inside, the need to play,

And a key, a means, a way:

Written sound, syllabic sound

That could make the clarity come ‘round.

Substitute a year, or any

Pronoun in its trail.

Gender, time are never prime

In the grammar of detail.

No, there was not much to say,

Not, when no grownup had ever

Held a single conversaytion

And un-tethered something clever.

Oh, how play-less, plaintive, painful,

Joyless, doleful, plain-drained-brain-dull!

Time: one noon, one left cocoon

Came a playce to break the rules,

Use those under-conscious tools,

Break away, begin the play,

“Swing and sway with Sammy Kaye”;

Came a day to play the fool,

Let the psyche problem solve,

Use the spelling as a tool,

Love the discipline involved.

Came a self to manifest,

The sleeping self express its best,

Awakening in loosely fitted,

Tightly worked niveaus that knitted

Eye and sound into a compound.

Things to say – appeared – appear

(Though there have been years

When impulse dryly stays away

And one has not a word to say)

And when it’s here, (as now its been)

One feels ‘forever’s’ scene

Is on the tongue and in the eye,

And that the sky’s the limit.

Then it’s time to dim the wit,

Get inside the ground ideas,

Put a bit upon the babble,

End what’s writ, put stop to scribble,

Set the switch on dimly-lit,

Become God’s modest dimwit gabble,

Wait a week, then take a peek,

Re-check the beats, re-read and polish –

Know exactly what you’ve got.

If the goulash is too rich

Start by killing the conjunction;

Re-arrange the line, all hinges,

Put a clamp on verbal binges,

Keep the article on hold,

Then re-vamp the preposition,

(Those that won’t do as they’re told).

Even commas make it holy.

Emphasis means sweating, crying,

Praying over semi-colons.

The kinetic part of trying

Means betraying semi-colons.

There’s not one thing that’s not of value

In this universe of symbol

(For that’s all it is is symbol)

Pointing inwards towards a One;

And the language and the rhythm

And the syntax are the fun.

Sometimes stunning, never cunning –

(Don’t dismiss the depth of fun).

After all is said and done

It is essentially technique

For the use of those that seek.

That means us – the strong and weak.

If you look at it that way,

There are always things to say;

And the saying and the said,

And the one who is the reader,

Or the writer, written, read:

Each is teacher, subject, leader;

All the rules all jumbled.

Writer finds himself the learner

From a mind-begotten textbook:

Time the spent, himself the earner,

Written for himself and reader

Who’s become the literal leader.

There was a time when there was nothing to say,

With no criteria to weigh

The thing, the outlet

Was romantic song: ‘corn’,

Un-experience;

Songs be-witnessing a longing

And an instinct to express

The milk potential in the breast:

Milk unformed in unformed quest

Conforming to the ABA:

Grist-for-the-mill of things to say.

Let a word suggest a theme,

As the rhyme refines the cream

Let phrase release the phase,

And phase release the phrase

Of bio-rhythmic days

When the urgent surges forth,

Giving birth to means and ways.

Though the line defines the girth,

It stands and falls on what it says.

Content is all.