Don Quixote Didn’t Drown 1995

          Don Quixote Didn’t DrownDon Quixote Didn’t Drown 95.3.21The Processes:Creative,Thinking,Meditative;To The Child Mystic;A Sense Of The Ridiculous:Arlene Corwin

Set a picture.

Climb into it.

Do not move and hold it.

You enfold it

And the feeling that ensues;

Concentrated focus,

Mind and body in repose,

Sitting underneath a vortex.

Whirlpools, danger, vertigos,

Chasms, fears – letting go;

Pits, abysses’ inner flow

Lets self be suckled under

In the wonder tumbled-tossed.

In the jet of letting self go down

With jellied heart.

Don Quixote didn’t drown,

The maelstrom buoyant borne

Elysium.

©

Amazing Albert 2009

Amazing Albert

 Furry skull

That fits into my hand,

Fine tuned,

Brain housing an IQ for mousing.

Daily and already killing feet, legs, toes,

Crumpled paper. Figures out…God knows,

He thinks.

I plan to teach him Plato

When his needle teeth fall out,

The blunter ones come through,

He’s learned to

Use the cat door,

Spend more

Tranquil time

Upon my knees,

Because,

That brain has untapped genius.

(I have plans to teach him Mencius).

It’s that skull, each synapse honed,

An effervescence in my hand

That leaves me speechless and,

Oh yes,

He plays piano too.

 

©Amazing Albert 8.17.2009 Cat Book; Arlene Corwin

 

　

　

　

The Long, Long Sundays Facing Time 1997

                The Long, Long Sundays Facing Time

“Sundays are so long!”

It’s time again.

It’s Time again.

My mother in-law loathes that time;

Unsolvable and cloudy time;

Time shrouded in ennui so deep

She weeps; a stagnant dynamo.

Helplessness so stamped upon

Her soul that all the day is drab,

And that, no matter what the sun.

What is this time if not translation,

Reason’s weak interpretation

Straight from cell to day, the stab

At self-enjoyment and employment

Dulled to waking,

Cooking, eating, sitting making

Number one and number two;

Viewing, phoning: things to do.

The Sundays are so long,

Street that stands outside the house

Stands for six days in the week.

Families, drunks are sights that that dose

Existence bleak

With meaning that eludes her.

Mother in-law, eighty three

Could be me.

To hide from time-which-lies outside,

Which-lies-inside, not baring breast

To morning, joining ripples in the stream,

Where standing still you never feel

The river’s ripple twice the same,

Infinity within that frame,

Makes automizing the Lord’s Prayer

Bare, pale,

A jail of long, long Sundays doing time.

©The Long, Long Sundays Facing Time 97.8.24/03.11.23

Our Times, Our Culture; Special People, Special Occasions; Swedish Book;

Small Stories Book;

Arlene Corwin

 

A la Jane Austin 2002 2004 2005 2006

 A La Jane Austin

 

I understand the modern man.

I understand a la Jane Austin 

I know his concentration

Needs more snippets than long episodes,

His mental station gone awry.

I know the reason why, and I

Take heed,

Belonging to this restless breed.

I have a sense of when to stop.

Not stooping to the popular,

Since instincts tell me ‘when’,

And by the time the pen

Has filled A4,

I’d better not have one word more;

The mind-throat must be stilled.

The one-page reader won’t turn over.

Paradoxically, he’s buying longer books than ever.

The novella’s gone to hell, as well as

Rhyme and metered time.

Did I say that I understood it,

This phenomenon modern?

I’m part of it. I know that much.

I am in touch with modern mind,

The search to find a higher truth,

Ponce de Leon’s search for youth,

The need for speed as well as silence.

I am there to understand the head and tail,

The ego frail, its longing for a holy grail.

I understand the hand that writes

To finish when A4 runs out,

A discipline from doubt or drought

That comes from having modern man’s eternal heart.

 

 

 

©À la Jane Austin 02.8/04.3.16/05.11.4/2006

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Our Times, Our Culture;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          À La Jane Austin

 

 

 

I understand the modern man.

I understand

I know his concentration

Needs more snippets than long episodes,

His mental station gone awry.

I know the reason why, and I

Take heed,

Belonging to this restless breed.

I have a sense of when to stop.

Not stooping to the popular,

Since instincts tell me when,

And by the time the pen

Has filled A4,

I’d better not have one word more;

The mind-throat must be stilled.

The one-page reader won’t turn over.

Paradoxically, he’s buying longer books than ever.

The novella’s gone to hell, as well as

Rhyme and metered time.

Did I say that I understood it,

This phenomenon modern?

I’m part of it. I know that much.

I am in touch with modern mind,

The search to find a higher truth,

Ponce de Leon’s search for youth,

The need for speed as well as silence.

I am there to understand the head and tail,

The ego frail, its longing for a holy grail.

I understand the hand that writes

To finish when A4 runs out,

A discipline from doubt or drought

That comes from having modern man’s eternal heart.

 

 

 

 

 

©À la Jane Austin 02.8/04.3.16/05.11.4/2006

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Our Times, Our Culture;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

 

 

 

à la Jane Austin.

 

 

 

I understand the modern man.

Thank God Those Love Affairs Are Over 1996

       Thank God Those Love Affairs Are Over

Oh God, I’m glad those love affairs are over;

The sneaking and the open,

The Siamese twins of pain and pleasure,

Pain and passion, lashing of despair.

Oh my God, how did I stand it – them?

Them! how many dare I count

When now at last it doesn’t count?

I think I count a hundred:

Can it really be a hundred?

Well, I’m counting from age six,

So it depends on what you call,

How one depicts

Love that was there.

(Can one have had a love affair

Before there was one pubic hair?)

It all depends on what you dare

Admit, how complicated, deep,

Intense it was, they were – what type

Of joining you perceived. It’s not

A reminiscence I enjoy. Hot!

To conjure up a word

To measure love’s disturbing, stirred-

Up state, I’d say, Ephemeral! Hot! Pleasure!

Oh, I’m glad the time for love affairs

Is over and my eyes no longer search around

Like swooping prison spotlights

When an inmate’s gone to ground.

Now it’s shanti all the way. Calm

Fidelity no less intense or ardent than before.

Now andante is the day’s sweet balm;

Creative, ordered, yea, concordant.

Bye, bye, lady Casanova.

Thank God those affairs are over.

©Thank God Those Love Affairs Are Over 96.2.12

Love Relationships;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

I Wonder How Someone Writes A Novel (b) 1996

     I Wonder How Someone Writes A Novel

I wonder how you write a novel:

Long descriptions; working out the plot,

Relationships, the dialogue; devices literary: such a lot

To conjure up.

But poetry – there’s a joy to waken with the morning cup.

No characters to imitate,

No family intrigues to create.

No, only lovely verbs to drape

Some searching of the soul; to bind

Some suffering while form takes shape,

While finding what is on my mind –

Or amplifying what’s already

Seeded in the title

Or a phrase, a rhythm, an unsteady

Flash.

Why, one can crash

The noun against the verbs,

Invent a sound that sounds absurbs,

Jot down a daft idea at nightle,

Making sure it rhymes with title.

Writing novels takes so long.

And while a poem may take a week,

A novel can’t become a song,

Sustain the whole with tongue in cheek.

Not easily.

How do the Pushkins, Dostoevskys

Write their Alexander Nevskys?

How well read these men must be.

And look at Hammett, Poe and Christie:

Corpses spread around like sand;

Machinations, schemes so twisty,

I have never guessed an end.

How do people write a novel

With no couplets to rely on,

Years of preparation, research,

And the human race to spy on?

Maybe living in a hovel,

Waiting for some damned approval.

Think of all the paper and the ink

(Before computers)! Think!

Backbreaking, thorny.

On the other hand, there’s Cartland,

Filling banks with heaps of money

As she steeps a silver teaspoon

In her royal jell and honey,

While dictating reams of umpteen dreams:

Nineteen kinds of virgin.

Still, a novel; I could never face the challenge

And I haven’t got the gift.

I would rather find the rhyme to orange -

(Swifter).

While they ricochet around the skull -

Lines of thought’s unwilling cull,

Killing ego-near, dear phrases

One is loath to crop or drop,

Rhymes whose flavors ego savors:

Such is ego’s strength in art:

Pixie in the poet’s heart.

Back to how one writes a novel:

Poignant, layered, sunburst, graced -

I do not have one suggestion!

Why did Arlene ask the question

In the first place?

©I Wonder How Someone Writes A Novel 96.6.12

The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

Free To Be Free 1996

 

     Free To Be Free

Freedom, what? Not

To do a this or that,

But freedom to create

In every moment,

Unconstrained by moment’s pre-

Determinative chain;

Not a thing that wears you out

Pursuing every want and place;

Not a freedom to break rules,

Unless, of course, you’ve got the grace.

Till something gives its mute permission,

One should live as one inept.

When that happens something lives

That had no life and no volition;

Or perhaps it only slept.

When you sense that load and freight

That wore you down, now bear you up,

Then you sense in mind and non-sense

Freedom as a daily choice

Pragmatically expressing voice.

Then it’s easy.

©

Free To Be Free 96.6.21Definitely Didactic; Nature Of & In Reality;

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

Continuing The Birthday Dance 2008

    Continuing The Birthday Dance

The one and only June

When you were seven-

ty

We

Celebrated for a week,

Not only duty bound

But more because you are our friend,

And we have found

That seventy is special.

Flying on your birthday wings

The real deal

Lies somewhere where the music swings,

The wine is perfect,

And the things

That stamp us old

Turn into gold,

Continuing the birthday dance.

© Continuing The Birthday Dance 6.27.2008

Birthday Book; Special People, Special Occasions; (Barbro)

Arlene Corwin

 

 

 

I Am (Comma Or Not)

I am(,)
(Comma or not)
Sure(,)
I am
That, the what
For which there is
No more.
I am will,
The h in trust.
I don’t have to justify
Or satisfy;
For I am just.
Moreover, I am Sat.

©I Am (Comma Or Not) 60.11.31
To The Child Mystic;
Arlene Corwin

The American Way Of Life 1952

 

            The American Way Of Life

She walked along the cliff of good;

Below her was the sea of sin.

She stopped and wondered if she would,

Then swayed, and paused, and dove right in.

Her name was, well, it hardly mattered;

She looked like, well, like you

Or me, or all the other scattered

Friendless peoples in this stew.

Voltaire made bulbs and Locke made keys,

While morals were confined to fable.

Yes, she’d heard of Socrates,

But life was really mink and sable.

Poor girl!

- Please, don’t fight

-I simply had to have that hat.

-No, not Ed Sullivan tonight.

-Please dear, yes dear, oh no, not that.

-Now dear, why do you grump and gripe?

-Your bills? I know. I can’t construe it.

-Of course I’ll go and fill your pipe.

-That poor, poor girl, why did she do it?

Home was normal, (or as normal

As we think normal to be),

Life as formal or informal

As we think a life should be.

Above are words she might have heard.

Her folks were average man and wife.

Seems normal, but it lacked the girder

That holds bridges up in strife.

“That’s no problem”, you may claim.

“Bad blood, so she deserves her stigma.”

Ah, my friends, you are to blame.

With that I end this small enigma.

©

The American Way Of Life 1952Definitely Didactic; Our Times, Our Culture;

Arlene Corwin