A Work In Progress 2011
04 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in 2011, definitely didactic, pure nakedness, the processes II, vaguely about music
A Work In Progress
Art is that,
Poetry, piano jazz:
All works in progress.
Friends of mine know that.
I’ve never written, played a piece
I’ve not revised – at least
Each time I’ve sized it up,
Done it twice or thrice or
More, more, more….
An awkward phrase
Needs tempo, elongating, shortening,
Abbreviating – simply wrong.
I once thought, is any artwork finished… ever?’
I still think it never is.
Life perhaps?
Never finished… I would
Like to think it is.
Work-in-progress, always
Where one dares, inspired
By a change
In mind inspired by one better.
Breathing in, metabolizing
Something better
As the letter becomes yours.
Brasher in a quiet way: maybe later in the day,
Observant and articulate,
Alert to nuance new.
Always on the way…
To rainbow’s end, maybe no end,
Restrictions ever loosening,
Never ending progress
That keeps saying “No, not this,
You silly-billy.”
Not advancement but evolvement.
A Work-In-Progress 12.4.2011
The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative II; Definitely Didactic; Pure Nakedness; Vaguely About Music;
Arlene Corwin
Loss Of Vanity 2011
18 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
in 2011, circling round vanities, pure nakedness
Loss Of Vanity
Loss noticed:
Gradual and un-dramatic -
As if letting go.
It is a letting go.
No longer yearning for approval
From the neighbor; from the culture.
Free from fashion factory’s syndrome,
Factory fashions altogether.
They won’t know the why
Or even that there is no vanity.
They might say “Oh,
She’s letting herself go”,
And they’d be right. She’s undergone
A distancing,
A retrograde,
An understanding
That it doesn’t make a difference,
Self-importance an illusion.
Loss of fear – that’s what it is
That’s come at last.
Loss Of Vanity 11.18.2011
Circling Round Vanities; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin
Dry & Cheerful 2011
07 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in 2011, circling round reality, pure nakedness
Dry & Cheerful
Dry and cheerful,
Unromantic,
(tears don’t count at movie ends)
Cool, detached,
(but warm with strangers and with friends)
Acting for the circumstance,
Present-liver, un-nostalgic,
(yet sleep links itself to ‘past’
and ‘lost’ and ‘maze’)
The daze and haze of faze and phrase.
A crazy template
Of the ways exposing
The unfolding lifespan.
Dry & Cheerful 6.7.2011
Circling Round Reality; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin
Looking At My Right Arm 2011
29 May 2011 Leave a Comment
in 2011, circling round wrinkles, pure nakedness
Looking At My Right Arm
Night after night, book in hand,
I see the arm,
And I’m
Astonished and perplexed.
I cannot climb inside
The aging mind of my right arm
To find out what it’s thinking
When a wrinkling
(That did not exist the night before)
Arrests the eye.
Or am I
self-deceptive,
Non-attentive?
Muscle doesn’t waste away
Over a night.
Something’s withering,
(Lovely sound – alarming word)
Shriveling and wasting.
I remember being young,
Those crepey ladies…“how repulsive”
On my brain-tongue.
Never
in my wildest dreams… yet
Here in bed examining,
Accepting, yes, consenting!
It is me!
I like the self I am and I agree
To what I see.
Looking At My Right Arm 5.18.2011
Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Wrinkles;
Arlene Corwin
Two Husbands & A Manager 12.11.2010
29 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
in 2010, birth death & in between, pure nakedness
Two Husbands & A Manager
Three deaths this year:
The probability when getting old.
I thought that eighty was statistically
The modern seventy.
Karmic preparation detaching me
From those held dear;
Does Time do me a favor,
Taking savories away
To dull the taste buds of existence?
Preparation? Possibly.
Different roads that lead to Rome.
Correction: I meant Home.
© Two Husbands & A Manager 12.11.2010
Birth, Death & In Between; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin
Two Husbands & A Manager 2010
13 Dec 2010 Leave a Comment
in 2010, birth death & in between, pure nakedness
It isn’t often that I write directly about myself, but I am a kind of historian. I’ve noticed that. I write to record lives, insights, events – and always in poetic forms. The other day I received a mail from the wife of my onetime manager, (my profession being music) who had died on the 5th of December.
In this year 2010 two of my former husbands have passed away – and now my manager. I hadn’t seen him in years – but still, an absence is precisely that – something that was there that is no longer. and an absence of those who have been in one’s life is an absence felt in that mysterious compartment in the brain that records personal existences.
So I wrote. Partly to examine, partly to honor and partly to make sure that I remember. Poetry is my mnemonic aid par excellence.
The poem: still a little raw, parhaps.
Three deaths this year.
The probability when getting old;
I thought that eighty was statistically
The modern seventy.
Karmic preparation detaching me
From those held dear;
Does Time do me a favor,
Taking savories away
To dull the taste buds of existence?
Preparation? Possibly.
Traveling different roads
That lead to Rome,
Correction: I mean Home.
Birth, Death & In Between; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin
Nothing To Lose By Exposing 2010
21 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in 2010, definitely didactic, pure nakedness
Nothing To Lose By Exposing
I’ve nothing to lose
(I mean we all)
By telling you the whole.
Nothing not clutched at,
Reached out to
Or botched up in life.
Kill? You’ve killed roach,
Wasp and ant.
You can’t
Say you’re harmless.
Both sexes have panted,
Seen, smelled, touched -
Have felt much of much:
If not outright, in fancy,
So,
Nothing is lost
By making all known,
The unshown unshorn,
Exposed in the sharing –
It takes guts and daring, but
Nothing an ego can’t take.
© Nothing To Lose 10.20.2010
Definitely Didactic; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin
Frozen In Time 2010
12 Nov 2010 Leave a Comment
in 2010, circling round nature, circling round time, circling round vanities, circling round woman, circling round wrinkles, pure nakedness
Frozen In Time
The tendency,
The wish to be
The shiny sun of twenty-one
That looked out from
A malleable place
Inside that face
Of innocence and gullibility;
Mute kingdom
Of the ignorant.
One sees the now-jowls,
Howls,
And asks oneself
Would I prefer to be
Time frozen, young forever?
Never!
I know all about it.
I’m re-routed;
More alive than Arlene
Twenty smooth-faced Nover ever
Was.
Circling Round Wrinkles; Circling Round Nature; Pure Nakedness;
Arlene Corwin
© Frozen In Time; 5.1.2010
Sad Hours Walking Along Pitkin Avenue 2010
28 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in 2010, pure nakedness
Sad Hours Walking Along Pitkin Avenue
Who knew that Pitkin was a hawker?
Remembering sad hours walking,
Smelling, looking:
Window-shopping nylon gowns;
Nylon gauzy, vivid;
(World War Two’s post world war news -
(who’d would wear a nylon now?)
Sometimes having money for
Knishes on the corner;
Smell of kasha and potato;
Loew’s Pitkin – movie’s glamour
Brother, three -
His premier movie – Toto, Dorothy;
Hysterics when the witch flew by
He/I evicted, he still crying.
The Hebrew Educational Society, – H.E.S. -
(Was it on Hopkinson?) where Jewish children
Studied music – free. That’s me.
The long walk there and back to 1650
Sterling Place, my telephone number 31313,
Kids envied me.. Who had a number like that?
Pitkin Avenue where I fled
When mom and I had argued;
With emptiness unsatisfied and unidentified,
Yearning for some side
Of life I’d not a clue existed.
Here’s a sad one:
Birthday present for my daddy;
In a shop on Pitkin where I’d laid
A child’s wallet on the counter.
Some nice lady at my side
Disappeared, the wallet gone.
How I cried that whole way home. One
Of life’s wounds not healed. Real grief.
Poem for Pitkin Avenue,
The chums one knew,
And candy stores,
Girls and boys,
Even men, who smoked and joked there,
Some to never move from there.
Sweden:
Year two thousand ten,
Six decades later.
Who knew then?
© Sad Hours Walking along Pitkin Avenue 10.16.2010 Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin
Sad Hours Walking Along Pitkin Avenue 2010
22 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in 2010, pure nakedness
Sad Hours Walking Along Pitkin Avenue
Who knew that Pitkin was a hawker?
Remembering sad hours walking,
Smelling, looking:
Window-shopping nylon gowns;
Nylon gauzy, vivid;
(World War Two’s post world war news -
(who’d would wear a nylon now?)
Sometimes having money for
Knishes on the corner;
Smell of kasha and potato;
Loew’s Pitkin – movie’s glamour
Brother, three -
His premier movie – Toto, Dorothy;
Hysterics when the witch flew by
He/I evicted, he still crying.
The Hebrew Educational Society, – H.E.S. -
(Was it on Hopkinson?) where Jewish children
Studied music – free. That’s me.
The long walk there and back to 1650
Sterling Place, my telephone number 31313,
Kids envied me.. Who had a number like that?
Pitkin Avenue where I fled
When mom and I had argued;
With emptiness unsatisfied and unidentified,
Yearning for some side
Of life I’d not a clue existed.
Here’s a sad one:
Birthday present for my daddy;
In a shop on Pitkin where I’d laid
A child’s wallet on the counter.
Some nice lady at my side
Disappeared, the wallet gone.
How I cried that whole way home. One
Of life’s wounds not healed. Real grief.
Poem for Pitkin Avenue,
The chums one knew,
And candy stores,
Girls and boys,
Even men, who smoked and joked there,
Some to never move from there.
Sweden:
Year two thousand ten,
Six decades later.
Who knew then?
© Sad Hours Walking along Pitkin Avenue 10.16.2010 Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin
