Kiss From Invisibility

The Living Game: Variations On A Theme 1997

 

      The Living Game: Variations On A Theme

I’ve written about everything:

Politics, the politic,

Religion, creativity,

Love, the mind’s activity,

Music, art, the self as critic,

Life and death and birth and age,

The accidents of war and rage,

Nature: mushrooms, dogs and cats,

Local mice, the local rats,

Local duck and local lake;

Cheesecake, earthquake, heartache, mistake.

I have even written that

I‘ve written about everything –

And what is the conclusion?

All one’s done is change the name.

Underneath it’s all the same.

If you understand the rule

Of commonness, difference,

Varied theme and cadence,

Then you’ve life within a capsule

And you’ve won the living game.

©

 

The Living Game: Variations On A Theme 97.10.17Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; The Processes:Creative,Thinking, Meditative;

Pure Nakedness; Revelations Big & Small;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

Serendipity And Synchronicity 2009

Serendipity And Synchronicity

 My code, my motto;

Inlet into

Every earthly thing held dear.

Not concrete;

Tricky, yet

Perceivable –

Every meeting one and/or;

The leader synchronicity

The all down here,

Who knows,

Perhaps up there and out?

Serendipity –

Well, logically

If synchronicity is law,

They are

Fraternal twins you don’t deserve,

Can’t wheedle forth,

Can’t pray for, get.

A ‘freebee’, so it seems,

Let’s say a seamless

Marvel.

 

© Serendipity & Synchronicity 6.7.2009Circling Round Energy; Nature Of & In Reality;Arlene Corwin

 

　

More Lessons 2009

                        More Lessons

My poet peers are pronoun- and conjunction-free,

Often preposition, adjectival free.

They’re spare.

Leaving one to cogitate –

What do they mean there?

 

Passing on to other things:

I’ve learned from plants

That if a hint of life is slight,

It’s worth the effort of reviving.

Dear pepper plant I nursed is wasting,

Leaves, a virtuality:

Aphids sticky, sucking, stubborn.

Yet small leaflets

That I’ve starved or drowned

(but brushed – each one)

Crushed aphids swept down

Onto soil – exist,

Persisting

Through the thousand blunders.

I have learned that every sign of life

Deserves attention – and my wonder.

© More Lessons 3.3.2009

Nature Of & In Reality; Revelations Big & Small;

Arlene Corwin

　

　

　

 

The Product 2009

         The Product

If I’m to end my wishes,

You will have to bring them to me.

Born with not much energy

                                                 to go and do,

Content to sit and work for You –

[But quietly and passively]

If I’m to get wishes through

So I can leave them,

You will have to, as I said,

Complete them,

For I wasn’t born with energy,

But talents that ought not to hide.

I’ll meet you half way.

You decide

The details,

I’ll provide

The product.

© The Product 1.11.2009

To The Child Mystic; God Book;

Arlene Corwin

Struggling With Our Souls 2009

Struggling With Our Souls

 The call,

The soul

We struggle with;

Ordinary in the days,

(But) struggling in dreams

With chaos,

Anger, fright and helplessness.

A search, a fight; the dross

(Like emptying a garbage pail

With a spoon).

Impassive, impassioned, impaled,

No one’s exempt.

And just today,

Some new plane reached,

Dimensions opening and broadening

Again.

I feel it as compassion.

Mr. President, Miss Movie Star

Both in the fray,

Their pain more mine than ‘fore,

A pain that’s always fair

(It’s cosmic law)

But isn’t fun,

Struggling, as we are

Each one

Of us.

 

© Struggling With Our Souls 5.22.2009

I Is Always You Is; We; Nature Of & In Reality;

Arlene Corwin

 

　

　

　

　

　

No System Works 2009

No System Works

 No system works.

Democracy too democratic,

Monarchy too emblematic.

Anarchy all too chaotic;

I hear Lebanon elects this year:

Rivals bribed to leave the stage;

Tribe and clan vote for their sage;

Airplane tickets, paid hotels provided for

The out-of-landers

Voting for some candidate, (A,B or C –

They’ve knocked out D).

Promises of school equipment.

Egypt kicks in with billions

Just to work against Iran.

Syria and Lebanon:

Former enemies turned friend –

Political ideas a haze.

How I hate to sound sermonic, but

Self-interest, being what

It is,

Allows

No system.

 

© No System Works 5.24.2009

Our Times, Our Culture;

Arlene Corwin

 

　

My Alcoholic Friend part 2 2009

             My Alcoholic Friend part 2

He hasn’t started questioning.

At sixty-five he clings

To daily wine and cigarettes -

Something I refuse to ‘get’ (as in ‘I get it!’).

Dreams, unseemly worries,

Appetite-less –

Hunger that he doesn’t miss –

The pleasing, pleasured luxuries of taste

Not there, he’s not aware

That they’re not there.

He doesn’t care.

 

If acceptance is a virtue,

Does his have a use?

Passivity, or more a vice

Around his head, heart, lungs and liver?

I prefer

To think he’s still asleep and that

He hasn’t started questioning as yet,

And that a time will come –

‘Fore he’s found dead upon his mattress –

That essential matters start to matter.

Stranger things have happened.

© My Alcoholic Friend 5.18.2009

Special People, Special Occasions; Definitely Didactic; Small Stories Book;

Arlene Corwin

 

　

　

Living Here For Fifteen Years 2009

Living Here For Fifteen Years

 Living here for fifteen years

And never noticed

Insects that I notice now.

Is it s sign? Compassion new?

It’s May,

The garden full of miss-mash shades

And hues and textured heights.

A spider – cute

Adorable, minute;

Purple gr-ellow butterflies

I cannot differentiate

From petals.

Small, thick, fat, flat beetles,

Black-brown or iridescent:

Purple this year’s fashion.

Ants so busy

I am forced to dance to walk.

Small ones harmless, big ones menace,

Coming, going in their rows (so orderly).

What are they doing?

Is the world of insects working,

Birthing, screwing?

Flies have started landing

In the dishwater, where

I am forced to scoop and rescue,

Spontaneous resource a spoon.

Sad each time I miss or fail.

One second late, and flailing ceases.

Insect-sadness, doesn’t last.

I cannot let it.

This year reels around,

Feels much more insect-live

And still it’s May.

 

© Living Here For Fifteen Years 5.24.2009

Circling Round Nature;

Arlene Corwin

 

　

 

Like Anybody Else 2009

          Like Anybody Else

Like anybody else,

He has his breakfast,

Takes his phone calls,

Listens to his programs,

Needs orgasms.

Needs, behaviors – he’s like others,

Even though he’s famous as the Lord,

His name on everybody’s lips.

Free will is the absentee,

Will there – hardly free,

He is biology

And destiny,

Like everybody else.

© Like Anybody Else 5.18.2009

Circling Round Reality; Nature Of & In Reality;

Arlene Corwin

If I Were God 2009

If I Were God

It’s vantage point –

A matter of the vantage point,

And vantage point produces versions,

Renderings, elucidation:

Vantage craves interpretation.

Matter changes, has its laws,

Matter’s patterns, formulae;

Truths there, here, everywhere:

Action-forms; this path and that.

Making claims, but

Underneath & outside in a kinship,

Sameness.

 

If I were… I’d know it all.

I’d know the chains,

I’d know before

And certainly I’d know the after.

Concentration’s core,

I’d be so concentrated that

I wouldn’t move.

So small I wouldn’t take up space,

My face as tiny as a mite, a point, a speck.

And yet I’d know,

In fact, I’d be the end of knowledge.

 

Not a want in all the worlds, and yet I’d like a friend…

This is where all language falls –

Where symbols take the job.

 I’d need a Nature;

Something to convert my knowledge into force –

Matter governed. Matter nice.

Matter not chaotic. Laws.

I’d have no need of Time,

So matter could evolve in eons.

Nothing hurrying, no aim;

Nothing that I’m reaching for;

I’d let my nature work.

 

So, genius and the prodigy

Are not too far away from me-

Not luckier, not happier, not freer.

(now I’ve jumped and skipped some),

If Arlene were God, I wouldn’t write a poem.

 

© If I Were God 5.11.2009 Circling Round Reality; God Book; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

 

　

　

　

　

　

　

If I Were God

 It’s vantage point –

A matter of the vantage point,

And vantage point produces versions,

Renderings, elucidation:

Vantage craves interpretation.

Matter changes, has its laws,

Matter’s patterns, formulae;

Truths there, here, everywhere:

Action-forms; this path and that.

Making claims, but

Underneath & outside in a kinship,

Sameness.

 

If I were… I’d know it all.

I’d know the chains,

I’d know before

And certainly I’d know the after.

Concentration’s core,

I’d be so concentrated that

I wouldn’t move.

So small I wouldn’t take up space,

My face as tiny as a mite, a point, a speck.

And yet I’d know,

In fact, I’d be the end of knowledge.

 

Not a want in all the worlds, and yet I’d like a friend…

This is where all language falls –

Where symbols take the job.

 

I’d need a Nature;

Something to convert my knowledge into force –

Matter governed. Matter nice.

Matter not chaotic. Laws.

I’d have no need of Time,

So matter could evolve in eons.

Nothing hurrying, no aim;

Nothing that I’m reaching for;

I’d let my nature work.

 

So, genius and the prodigy

Are not too far away from me-

Not luckier, not happier, not freer.

(now I’ve jumped and skipped some),

If Arlene were God, I wouldn’t write a poem.

 

© If I Were God 5.11.2009

Circling Round Reality; God Book; To The Child Mystic;

 

　

　

I Call You You 2009

I Call You You

 I call you You

Because I have and need to,

You are not a You

But It,

And yet,

I am not ready for

A God non-living

And must think of you as loving.

With a light that’s always on

I ought to let you in.

I’m not prepared,

The Highest much too far away

And threatening,

And scary.

 

 

 

 

 

© I Call You You 5.23.2009

God Book; To The Child Mystic;

Arlene Corwin