Love Relationships e5r33

Love Relationships

Arlene Corwin

Copyright © 2013 by Arlene Corwin.

Front cover art by Kent Anderson Photo by Ulf Magnusson

ISBN:

Softcover Ebook

978-1-4836-2088-6 978-1-4836-2089-3

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 04/16/2013

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Contents

A Hint Of Autumn

A Man Is A Man Is A Man

A Mother’s Death

A Mother’s Dying

A Mother’s ing

A Private Shout Of Love

A Real Note

A Woman Involved

A Woman Paralyzed In Love

Advice To A Beleaguered Mother

Advice To Wives Who Wait At Home

Advice To Women Who Have Boyfriends Twelve Years Younger

After Sixteen years, Even After

Afternoon Seduction

Ah, Love #1

Ah, Love #2

Ah, Love #3

Ah, Love #4

Ah, Love #5

Ah, Love #6

All Trees

Almost Erotic

Always In Love

An Affair Is A Harrowing Thing #1

An Affair Is A Harrowing Thing #2

And Yet She Lived

Anniversary Screw

Are We Reading The Same Newspaper?

Are You Bored Yet My Dear?

Aridity

August Fifteen

Awakening of Affection for People Past

Bath Contemplation

Behind The Windows

Birthday Kent

Boyfriend/Girlfriend

But Not The Rest

But Did She Take Their Souls?

Cat Desertion Is Cat Fidelity

Cat Scan

Childhood Friend

Christmas Love Song

Christmas Morning Hand-Knit Socks

Cindy’s Gone

Coming Together Sooner Or Later

Communication

Cousin Roz

Cremated

Cries Of Wailing Mothers

Dancing In The Bed

Daughters & Sons

Dead Jewish Mothers

Did You Think I’d Leave You When I Left?

Don’t Bother Me I’m Working Out My Own Salvation

Drinking Wine At Eva’s

End Of Cat Book

Everything We Do Is for Each Other

Examination Of Guilt Over A Dead Mother

Family Party

Family Treasures

Finished

For Love of Food

Friendship

From Nothing Something

Get It Out Of Your System

Getting A Name

Getting Re-inspired

Getting It Out Of My System

Gift for Loving (a contrapuntal poem)

Going Back

Guess What?

Hairy Leg

Half A Cup

Happy Birthday Anyway

Happy Birthday, Daddy

Happy Birthday Sixty-Four

He Hears What He Wants To Hear

Hint Of Autumn

His Bad Dreams

Hologram

Husband, Lover, Friend And Mate

I Am An Excellent Little Boy

I Cannot Stand To See You There: A Temporary Aberration

Haven’t Sent A Valentine

I Live With A Man Who Doesn’t Believe In Reincarnation

I Look At You With Mixed Eyes

I Looked In The Veggie Bin

I Think A Lot About You

I Want You

If I Were Dying

I’m In The Market For A Love Affair

Imagine, Twelve Years!

In Our Time

In The Lover’s Eye

In The Space Of A Dream

Ironies & Paradox #1

Ironies & Paradox #2

It Sounds Like Preaching

It’s His Choice

It’s His Journey

It’s Readiness

Just Out Of Love

Justified

K. Reads My Poetry

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

Legacy

Life Companion

Life Is So Fragile

Little Inaccuracies Of The Mouth

Look There! My Love!

Love Can Find You Anywhere

Love Gesture

Love Hologram

Making Love Without Blankets

Missing

Mister Moon Looking In The Window

Mother In-law

My Three Loves: Silly Reflections Of A Serious Mind

New Start

New Year Morning 2000

No Words

Not-A-Poem To You, My Dear

Not Often Dear, But When

Not On The Same Wavelength

One Evening In June

Our Sex Life Is Changing

Out There #1

Out There #2

ing Thoughts Of A Bridesmaid Come From A Wedding

Putting Flowers On A Grave

Reflections On A Solitary Mother

Re-inspired

ing Mothers and Others

Respect Utmost

Revised View Of My Parents

Rock Star, Star Rock

Route 66

Rows of Nows

Secret Pride

Seen / Unseen

Separate Bedrooms

Serendipity

Shining Together #2

Shining Together #1

Sister In-Law

Sister In-Law II

Svägerskan II

Somebody’s Second Husband

Something I Must Say, My Friend

Somewhere In Your Prideful Life

Spring Tipsy

Subsidizing It

Suffering For Society

Sven Wollter Gets Sick

Taking Care Of Mother

Testosterone

Thank God Those Love Affairs Are Over

The Beauty’s Gone

The Child Mystic

The Crystal Room

The Finger Moves (a little erotic poem)

The Great Kitchen Roll

The -ish Of The Jewish

The Kind Called You And Me

The Leaver & Leftee

The Leisure of Chastity

The Longest Lasting Apology

The Marital ‘We’

The Mate

The Mating Frogs

The Morning Screw

Morgon Kärlek

The Nature Of Labor (Is Invisible)

The Nicer Sides Of Being Ignored

The No. 1 Question

The Pair

The Point Being…

The Quality Of Mercy #1

The Quality Of Mercy #2

The Quarrel

The Question Of Two

The Small Things That Kill Love

The Specialist

Total Balm

The Weeder And The Planter

The Womb

Something I Must Say, My Friend

Things Must Be Left To Ripen

Things Run In Families #1

Things Run In Families #2

Things Run In Families #3

Things Are Happening In Every Family

Three Years, Three Months

To Dream

To Jonathan #1

To Jonathan #2

To My Daughter’s Daughter Aged Nine

To Obedience

To The Brother I Never Really Got To Know

Tomorrow Is His Birthday

Tomorrow Is His Birthday

Too Much Coffee

Transparent Parent

Trees All

Turning The Thing Around

Unaroused

Uninsulated

Valentine’s Day 2010

We Feed Each Other

Welcome Home

What Could Have Been So Nice #1

What Could Have Been So Nice #2

What I Got From My Husbands

What Works

What’s Good For Me Is Good For You

When Light Bulbs Blow

When Loved Ones Die

When We Argue

When You’re Not At Home

Why Do We Need To Reveal Ourselves?

Why I Left You

Why Pine?

Will You Come Home To Me?

Without Him I’m Nothing

Without Love

Words I Love

Write Me A Love Song Or Something

Yes, My Love And Always Yes

You Can’t Be In Two Places At Once

You Can’t Fool Your Friends

You Told Me A Story

You Won’t Eat Spaghetti And I’m Tired Of Potatoes

Zapping Accusations, Issues, Priorities

Before & Afterthoughts

A Hint Of Autumn

A hint of autumn, yet it’s August, Lingonberry/heather mixed, Our anniversary, a—five or six, Depending upon which we choose— Piano grooved, or when I moved Into your life, your land, the interweave. “I love you still” “Time flies” fit best, And yes, to us A Happy Anniversary”.

A Hint Of Autumn 8.31.2009 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

A Man Is A Man Is A Man

Verse: There are girls who think that cause a guy’s got dough, He’s got added charm, but I don’t think that’ so. Why, the only thing his dough improves Is what he wears and how he move In upper bracket circles of society. There are also girls who idolize good looks; Love men who only read the latest books. But all I the same I do dissent, By saying that a gent’s a gent, And that they’re all alike in what they represent.

Chorus: A man is a man is a man. A necessary evil in your plan. A man is a man is a man. Be he beggar, thief or king, he’s still a man. A man is a man is a man.

It reveals itself superbly in his pan. A man is a man is a man. With him you play the game catch as catch can.

Dear old Gertie Stein set out with wrong intent. When she said a rose, she should have meant the gentleman. A man is a man is a man. And the one thing Boston doesn’t dare to ban. We ignore him adore him—the brute— Cause we haven’t found a better substitute. Each one thinks he’s nature’s gift to humanity, And we women know it’s naught but pure insanity;

So until he’s replaced, I maintain, Be he handsome, be he small, Be he anything at all, Be he poor or be he rich, Own a bank or dig a ditch; Be he tall, short, fat or slim, Be he slow or full of vim, There’s no understanding him, but he’s a man: And a man is a man is a man.

Little addition: A guy is a guy is a guy. Like the onion he can make a woman cry. Of course, the onion’s excuse is the peel, While the guy’s excuse is just that he’s a heel. They do feats of bold and they explore the earth, While we girls sit back and laugh in quiet mirth. We allow them to think that they’re kings, While, like puppet masters we pull all the strings. (Go back to ‘Until he’s replaced’—end) with title.

A Man Is A Man Is A Man 3.1954 Lyrics; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

A Mother’s Death

All that talent laid to rest. She should have been the mayoress; Some kind of leader where she bossed, Could delegate and still not delegate, But relegate all those who crossed, To someplace in her mind Where she was always right. All that talent Laid to rest. One has faith it’s for the best, Though she did not go to that night With ease or willing equipoise, The dying filled with bronchial noise And spasmed arm And open eyes— And finally a quiet. All that talent unexpressed And laid to rest

From time.

A Mother’s Death 11.17.2000 Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

A Mother’s Dying

As I sit here, her body’s slowly Shutting down. Mine is alive, Hormones, organs working— But it too prepares its dive. Nothing one can do but think. The doing sits in thinking’s crown; A layer,—vague, unsettling—hovers, Covering, like chloral shroud. Eat’s not eating, joke’s not joking; Death-awareness, like the shifting, Smoking of a cloud. One feels the shortness of her breath, The pain in bone, the morphined high; Encased, enclosed; nursed, but alone In dying’s drying, spurning drone.

I cry. I eat. Do something now,

For now always presents a how, And maybe in the how a why, And satisfaction slightly sweet.

A Mother’s Dying 10.21.2000 Pure Nakedness; Love Relationships; Birth, Death & In Between; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

A Mother’s ing

The feelings come; nothing forced. Uncertain sadnesses of love; Disappointed angers crossed With wonderings; the freedom Of an island in the middle of the sea. That’s her. That’s me.

No longer bored, heart sore, afraid; The peace of space And chances yet un-played. Is that not wondrous in itself?

The family’s handled everything— From hospital to burying. While I, a half a globe away Re-live the dying play by play: Death throe, Death blow.

Sides of mourning come to stay And have their way with me.

But grief’s unstable as a flavoring— Metaphor for shifting thought within the hour. Unholdable, ungrabbable, Feelings flung from wall to wall With thought’s attempt to take control.

The light outside’s exquisite. Someone’s at the door to visit. As the Swedes are fond of saying: Life goes further.

A Mother’s ing 6.10.2001 Love Relationships; Birth, Death & In Between; Pure Nakedness; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

A Private Shout Of Love

A private poem; A private vanity; A private shout Of love.

He looks at her breasts As she does Yoga. “Beautiful”, says he. She looks at his penis As he climbs out of the bathtub. “That is the most magnificent, the manliest, The finest in the land”, And they Enjoy a private vanity, A private act, A privately perceived, As one might say, ‘fact’ Seen from the beholder’s eye

Of love.

A Private Shout Of Love 7.25.2006 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Eros II; Arlene Corwin

A Real Note

Please, if you would, Wait up for me. I don’t know what time I’ll be in But I’ll be with certainty. Try not to sleep without me there, And I’ll take care to To keep myself for you. I have the door keys, One request more; please Leave on the hall light Or leave any small light on. Wait up.

A Real Note 4.17.1962 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

A Woman Involved

You were a woman involved. You thought the search was past, Long out of reach: behind at last. A woman of and in the world; A woman never more a girl; A woman in the timeless zone, Where all you think and all you own Belong to it, the giant It! The one relation’s ship To carry you out of the pit Of background pain. Wrong again! This wasn’t It; just one more stone. One cobble, hobble, stumble-stone Between the times alone you dread. You dread the times alone:

We’re born alone. We die alone.

Alone is basic. Why bemoan The times between? Men show up eventually. The world consists of only two: Fifty percent men and you. Not to worry. Either you’re alone (That’s good) and occupied with sittings still, Or toning up, honing the skill Of picking out the real one. It’s just to live in love, and wait. You never know the future-fate. You were involved. You will be once again.

A Woman Involved 4.11.1996 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; (A,B,E) Arlene Corwin

A Woman Paralyzed In Love

A couple rhymed in couplets! He, Half of a married pair, She, lamentably aware; Being seen his manic fear, Their meetings like a quick chimere. A car, a room—always sex: The law of their dynamics. ion’s prison, hidden thorns; Drawn, repelled, love/rage in turns. Weatherworn and yet stillborn: A love that can go nowhere. Those small intervals, that hour, Tiny arguments that sour; Not available, his soul. Married. Will he leave at all? Few the brave who face frontiers. Who leaves after thirty years? It nags away, the outlook gray;

She’s soft, Afraid to make demands of love he can’t fulfill, Each tryst a suffering: He can’t, she will. He drives off to a sheltering chat, Refuge wife, fine books and cat. She goes home to a solitude: Seven rooms in which to brood. Fifty-two and fifty-eight. In my opinion, it’s too late! He’ll never leave his routine wife To start a life rooted in her; Never leave his rooted life To bed a wife routined in her. I tend to think, I like to think That this is just a glap, a glip, A hiccup in a life that’s meant For better.

A Woman Paralyzed In Love 7.10.2003 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

Advice To A Beleaguered Mother

Two girls. Both teens. You’re working for their means. Two jobs: in, out. You seldom shout. You buy yourself that longed-for dress; Expensive perfume from Dior; Borrowed by your teen princess, Dress on the floor, The perfume used by both the girls. What’s left for you, your mother’s pearls? What is this mother thing at all? Is it to suffer, be a nun While finishing the half-begun For pimply girls who want their fun?

I recommend you build a bomb, Mom! Wire the bedrooms, take the key,

Say, “If you’re not nice to me It all goes up in smithereens.— Come back when you have left your teens And have two children of your own. Now give me back the telephone!”

Moms of teenage girls unite! You have the right To so much more Than children who walk in the door, Throw down their things, demand some food, Then go into their rooms to brood (Or do whatever thing they do)— Anything but helping you. I know it doesn’t sound too nice, (The bomb and smithereens advice) But on the other hand…

Advice To A Beleaguered Mother 96.6.16.1996 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Advice To Wives Who Wait At Home

When you’re worried And existence circles ’round the worry, It’s the worrier that’s weak— It’s the weakness in your streak. When you’re sitting home Expecting him to come for lunch, He doesn’t come And you become a bunch of nerves, You start to munch, which only serves The weakness that has turned to anger, Hunger, which is unresolved. You play, determined not to delve Into delay. “He is a grownup man”, you say. ‘If he’s not home, it’s no one’s fault’, ing your folk’s assault When you came home at half past two And nothing you could say was true.

“When he comes home I’ll be The perfect model of decorum.” Then you sit and eat the cheesecake That you’d make especially for’m. You have reached neglect and widowhood, You’re out of food, The house is sold and you are old, Your friends and children far away.

Your worry? Where you’ll stay that day. You plan ahead, For after all, your husband’s dead— Or run away with a colleague; You’ve conjured up intrigue, Convinced that what you’ve bred, Your secret dread, Has come to . Good God, the old familiar chassis Driving up the road. He’s home! Go kiss him. Not a word. No histrionics now he’s come. Go in lovebirds, Not a word that he was late, Not a word about the waiting And the idiotic state.

When you’re worried And existence circles ’round the worry It’s the worrier that’s weak.

It’s the weakness in your streak That you look at, sever, bury.

Advice To Wives Who Wait At Home 11.11.1997 Circling Round Woman: Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Advice To Women Who Have Boyfriends Twelve Years Younger

Never marry someone twelve years younger. It’s a number between rumba and a waltz, Between gin and soda malts. There’s a common era missing, And despite the hugs and kissing, You’ve the odds too stacked against you; Reference points so darned immense, you Feel condensed, incensed, dispensed with When the bed-first lusts dissolve. Then a time will come to shelve (When the magic number’s twelve) The lost affair.

Advice To Women Who Have Boyfriends Twelve Years Younger 3.11.2002 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Arlene Corwin

After Sixteen years, Even After

“I missed you”, he said. He’d lain listless and wan These past weeks sick in bed Because flu is a drama Of sheer lethargy. Then today on the couch, One step closer to health We started to touch With that dear energy Of the healthy in love. “I missed you”, he flushed, And I blushed.

After Sixteen Years, Even After 3.28.2000 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Afternoon Seduction

(A Romance for the over-seventies)

He lies there on the June warm porch, A kidney stone somewhere inside him. She beside him, background birches blow. He’s wearing shorts. They’re joking About something vague While birds prepare for evening’s shade. She concentrates on some long hair within his brow That’s growing north, While all the others, white and coarse, Go east. The beast is wakened.

¤

Open porch—a lake:

He takes her. When the sofa proves too hard He takes her— Upstairs, on a bed, Dropping what small clothes they wear Behind them on the stair: A 40’s film. The ante-room. ion’s perfume. If that’s not frenzy, What is, then?

Afternoon Seduction 6.10.2006 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Ah, Love #1

Ah, love, how fine you are for me. Your ways incline a higher me. Conditioned in a hundred ways, Before you, uninspired I lay— Adjusting here, adjusting there, Each man an orb in ion’s sphere. If self-control can rule me now I yet may reap what I would sow: A union free of ‘you are mine’— The earthly view of love divine. Self-control, I beg you stay. To live without you day by day Is suffering mute, a suffering huge— Not at all what God intended. Live within till all is mended— Flood me with your dry deluge!

Ah Love #1 1961

Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

Ah, Love #2

To rise with you When you awake, And sleep with you When you would sleep; To wash you down When soiled feet Have work-day turned You home to me; Ah, love itself, How sweet you are To visit thus, And dwell within as Stoker, coal and breath.

Ah, Love #2 1.16.1960 Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

Ah, Love #3

You may say My works are good But I may not, For if I should, Outrage outsize In sweet, sweet sounds Breaks waves of fear Crested with tearFilled eyes and brings Me to my knees Toute suite; moreover, You my love Are no more happy Than you were Before. Yes, you Are right, another Paradox in sight.

Ah, Love #3 1.16.1960 Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

Ah, Love #4

You deceive And I believe. I believe You do deceive. Still, by will I listen still, Sharpening un-skill, Until I twist with the path; And desisting from wrath, Not resisting the lie, As you speak, so hear I.

And each sprinkle of truth Has the tinkle of bells. If you knew how each sprinkle Or truth has the tinkle Of bells, it would be Only tinkling truth you

Would tell.

Ah, Love #4 1.16.1960 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Ah, Love #5

In thee, I will great fault not find: I could, but would not still a mind That is my own When I must tone My own brain first.

Perfect sees as perfect is; And frail sees what too is his.

I will not find great fault in thee; The time consumed thus doth fast flee. As fault by fault is gleaned and tried, Not a strength is classified; For your disgruntle, my dismay Such waste of crime does not to pay.

Great fault I will not find in thee Because I am not blind to me;

And love should choose itself to serve, Or cut itself off nerve by nerve.

Should I erase Each grace by grace, And built a vault Thick walled with fault, This heart must brace, (Steeled walls replace Each trace of play With lead) and lead The dead critique away.

Ah, Love, #5 1961 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Ah, Love #6

Ah, Love! May I address you as a friend? Which who is most in all the world? Do you float up and blend in, Are you conjured up within, then hurled Without? When love ends, who comes first, you, me? Friend, tell me how I may ascend To heights one lives in love’s glad company? Ah, Love! May I address you as a friend? Are you so distanced, as to send Me back to my own selfdom’s snare? You ulti-mate bait, is that why you’re there?

Ah, Love 1962 Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

All Trees

I think or know, (I don’t know which) At base and bottom of each twitch Is just one person in us all Adjusted by the ratio Of lust and fall: A bit of this, a lot of that— Depending upon who gets what. And so I write with confidence, Without the fence called you and me I am a universal tree And what I write I give for free Because I understand you.

All Trees 3.31.1998 Love Relationships; I Is Always You Is We; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

Almost Erotic

Almost erectile, Almost erogenous in it eruption: An era gone by, But not quite.

Almost escapism, Almost an escapade, Almost espousing the sex for sex’ sake, Eschewing reality’s end— But not quite.

Almost an essay into the essential— The essence esthetic, The almost quixotic, The not-quite erotic Hypnotic mosaic That gives it its bite. Quite!

Almost Erotic 6.18.2006 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Always In Love

I hope he doesn’t mind— My friend, the priest, The man of God. He doesn’t sleep with women. He has managed sublimation— A sublime sublimation, Rare and sweet; A harmlessness I most ire. He always loves; Regularly, constantly. “. . . in love” always.

In silly secularity I asked, “Don’t you miss love?” He said, “I’m always in…” Always in love? Which one of us can utter,

‘. . . always’ Such capacity! Regretfully, not one I know. (In case you think I’m crowing, I must tell you, Not me Either).

Always In Love 9.24.2010 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

An Affair Is A Harrowing Thing #1

A harrowing thing: A burdensome, maddening, narrowing thing. Like jumbled things in bags of string; Like a wife or a girlfriend that shouldn’t be there. Do you want this plight, Not knowing what’s wrong, yet knowing what’s right? Affairs! A wonder, a blunder: Thundering orgasms, Longings and spasms, And torment. What doesn’t torment When commitment is tentative? People were meant to be paired-off and pure. People feel sure and secure when they’re two. Two who commit, commit no crime at all. Enter commitment and ‘poof’ goes the wall: The threat of just waiting,

Not knowing what’s coming besides a good fuck, (And sometimes your luck is so bad That it’s not even that. Then the prank is on you. The so-called affair’s more a chat Than a screw)

It ought to be both—a permanent thing, Not a bag made of string, A tangle of knots Where the ‘hots’ have their meaning in sin: An affair is a start not an end. Itself not an end, in itself not a friend. You can tell yourself, “We have so many values in common”. ‘I feel so at home with him, as if we always Have known one another.” Sometime or other You must stay together, Or destiny’s logic (that seems just a quirk) Will lurch you apart;

The heart has a mind that is searching for peace. Behind what it thinks, It would rather possess Peace without ion, calm, single success.

Anger and sex,

Sting after sting, Affairs are a hex, A harrowing thing:

An Affair Is A Harrowing Thing #2

Narrowing thing: harrowing thing. Jumbled thing, bag of string: Mates that shouldn’t be there. The internal fight of knowing what’s right But not knowing what’s wrong. Orgasms, spasms of longing and torment. (What doesn’t torment When commitment is tentative?) Look at the paired-off, The sure and secure who commit. Commit no crime at all. Enter commitment and poof goes the wall Of not knowing what’s coming besides a good fuck. (And sometimes your luck is so bad That it’s not even that. More a chat than a screw.) The prank is on you, Where ‘hots’ have their meaning in missing the point:

Panting, implanting an ace in the hole— tly anointing the sex with a vestment. Affair is the start, not an end, not a friend. You tell yourself, “We have our values in common… As if we have known one another forever.” But sometime or other you must stay together, Or destiny’s logic will lurch you apart. Church unessential, the heart Has a mind that is searching for sense: ionless single success over turbulence. Anger and sex, sting after sting, Affairs are a hex, and a harrowing thing.

An Affair Is A Harrowing Thing.8.18.1995; Love Relationships; Definitely Didactic; Circling Round Woman; I Is Always You Is We; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

And Yet She Lived

At least she lived to eighty-nine, Eleven months and nineteen days; Alert and clear through her decline. She wasn’t murdered, didn’t drown— Died when nature shut her down, Surviving echoed surgeries: A breast, a hysterectomy, A tumor resting on the brain, A broken arm and mis-set wrist, Addictions from the pharmacist: Tablets to relieve the pain, Tablets to reverse weight gain. Highs and lows she couldn’t feign With side effects turned into main: A suicide attempt, a coma; Smokers cough, a lung in trauma; Legs that struck and ceased to walk; Talk: ‘Can’t’, ‘don’t’, ‘won’t’.

And yet she lived to eighty-nine. A miracle benign, divine From God she never sought nor found; From God who’s taken her to ground And possibly to heaven.

And Yet She Lived 11.24.2000 Pure Nakedness; Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Anniversary Screw

You look into my room this morning. Half-awake I nod and smile. You creep into my bed this morning. Half-asleep we doze awhile. You lay your kindly hand upon Some body part. So undemanding. Never do I feel a press, (It feels fresh) And slowly I awake to you Welcoming as if it’s new. Fifteen years tomorrow morn. Fifteen last day Augusts gone.. I don’t know what’s to come Or if we’ll come and I don’t care. You’re there without one complex hair: Love easily and lightly made. Thank you Lord, For this particular reward

We’re still allowed to share In bed.

Anniversary Screw.8.30.1998 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Are We Reading The Same Newspaper?

I come to you at night and say, -There’s been a breakthrough! -Guess who died? -Horoscope. -Food to be tried. -Who’s wedded who; -Who’s bedded who; -Who’s left to sorrow. -Vitamins on sale tomorrow. Then again, I must say that You never ask— And never tell The latest score, Whose team is through, A tax that’s new, Letters to the editor That speak to you.

I’m never sure we’re reading the same paper; That the print imprinted on your brain Is what’s been stamped on mine. I’m not complaining, mind, It’s just a curiosity.

Are We Reading The Same Newspaper? 5.10.2001 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Are You Bored Yet My Dear?

Are you bored yet my dear? A new poem every year To honor your day In the corniest way. It is better than ‘roses are red… ‘ What does one want to say? I’ve not got it all out— What one wants is to shout, I’m so glad you were born! So glad that Linnea got you as a son, That Pia and Ann have your genes as a base, That fate so mysterious, showed me your face And brought me to someplace You happened to be. I am glad for soul’s twin. So uncork the champagne While I croon to my swain Happy Birthday again.

Are You Bored Yet My Dear? 2.1.1996 Special People, Special Occasions; Love Relationships; Birthday Book; Arlene Corwin

Aridity

Where did you go in your flight from my side? Cosmo, alight from your sphere And at least visit near. I was cocky when I was your bride— Now I’ve no questions— Not really, not really; No yearning, not really, No memory, really— Just fading, returning impressions.

Peculiarly garbed: In pursuit sans ambition, a wire un-barbed; The dress of a votive With guileless motive. Your short embrace turning the sought to besoughter Has left me, and left me Three flowers to water: Devotion;

There’s not more than you one should ever desire, Not a thing more than you left to acquire. Acceptance: Since nothing excels you, Then all things are less. Thus, nothing repels me Not luring by dress. Humility: Oh, this is hardest, Since nothing is mine; To supple myself Till your self pours like wine.

Where did you go in your flight from my side? Cosmo, alight and re-enter you bride.

Aridity 10.15.1963 Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

August Fifteen

Incomprehensible, The mystery Of why I Think Each August fifteenth Of my parent’s anniversary. It must show The child’s love That layer’s memory In parts That stand for long lost time. It makes me sad Where sadness has no feeling. Background depths Unreachable And, as I said, Incomprehensible.

Why try?

August Fifteen 8.15.2008 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

Awakening of Affection for People Past

It could be love. Suddenly, aged something I’ve the urge, the longing To connect to worlds I’ve met; Renew old s, Seeing anyone who’s ever been In my existence: Puzzling, even to me. Perhaps it’s death-come-nearer. Living, dead, they’re in my head.

Believing things are happening Just as they should, I ought to have no longings. People come and go the way it’s planned. I should have faith enough to understand And let it happen, let them go. But something has awakened,

Gnawing every now and then, The longing nonsense, Hence, non-sense In any case.

An Awakening of Affection for People Past 4.24.2010 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Birth, Death & In Between; Arlene Corwin

Bath Contemplation

I was thinking, “I have written mean and angry things About my mother.” I had reasons. Yet, here in the bath, Re-working wrath (One of the seven sins) I find a word: communication. Buddha, Jesus, Ramakrishna Might have found a way. I didn’t. Is it readiness, mine, hers? Receptiveness, hers, mine— And not about a way at all? When simile has failed, Would seers, like the ones above, Not say a word, sit silent, smile Or walk away? Communication may not be The A and Z.

at all.

Bath Contemplation 3.26.2009 Circling Round Baths; Mother Book; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Behind The Windows

We bring to the thing the thing we are— Not less, not more. So as I fetch the post And look across at Sonny’s house, His pregnant wife, How goes it with their married life Behind the windows private, closed? How is my neighbor Ralph, his fru*— Their love life—life when day is through? I’m not perverse or curious— Quite the reverse, I’m pure, lust’s seed All gone. My love life carries on, Affection at the base, But struck by what’s behind the lace, The permutations, variations on a theme, The sex a symbol of a dream.

Behind the windows are my friends,

Committed to their common ends. The daily twos I meet When we have something nice to eat, Trade visits, pleasant talk.

Behind the window do they balk At tender touching, joke-filled groping? Has the sex fulfilled the hoping? Do the hopes go hand-in-hand With the candled mealtimes? Something’s going on. Is what is lost more than was won? One never sees the times back of the blinds. That why a blind is called a blind: The outside never sees behind, Never knows the couple’s minds— I speculate on ghosts and costs, And springs and frosts, And wonder, as I fetch the post and look across, What loves are won and what is lost?

*fru; Swedish for wife

Behind The Windows 7.7.1997 Love Relationships; On The Way To The Post;

Arlene Corwin

Birthday Kent

A corny line—but if you knew How it has been to live with you You’d know I celebrate This February date with joy, The day Linnea had a boy. Full of life and drive, Who’s reached the figures five five, Calm, dear Kent, Dear heart so true, Just think, you play piano too!

Birthday Kent 2.8.1993 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions;(K) Birthday Book; Arlene Corwin

Boyfriend/Girlfriend

She loves his shyness, Hesitation, stuttering and innocence. He loves her sureness, Verbal quickness, Sexual adventurousness. What will it be like When they’ve been married for a time? Will stuttered charm still hold her? Will she be indifferent, scold him? Will he want his nights out with the boys, Her voice a noise and nothing else? Will there be a turnaround?

Boyfriend/Girlfriend 4.12.2009 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

But Not The Rest

She liked: The traveling, small villages, Restaurants cheap and plentiful, The local churches, Pleasant chats while on the road— But not the rest. She loved the child they’d produced, The watching and the taking part— Yet so much other time was pained, That days went into overload, And much was lost or couldn’t start. There was no rest. There was no peace. He was so hard to please.

She liked him also at the start— He’s found a way into her heart. She liked his interests, his mind:

He seemed so generous and kind. She liked the people he brought home, The books he read, his skill at sport, The friends they made, their trips to Rome Greece, Lebanon. Not least, She liked his efforts to His little brood, In short, when he was sane and good— But not, when he was rude, Book-wise, thin skinned, thick skinned With hidden boasts that soon wore thin— (All those we knew saw through those specks). Persistent nightly in his sex,

That was the rest.

But Not The Rest 10.28.1996 Love Relationships Arlene Corwin

But Did She Take Their Souls?

When she divorced she left the money. Never took a thing each time. A question nags because a question Picks away ad nauseum: Did she take their souls? There was Bob and Rob and Jim, Did she have to wed each him? Eve her friend, who says bright things Offered this advice on wings: Never be a bride again! Though you fall in love with one, Two, three or ten. Be a lover, be a pal— Give up being femme fatale. It is wear and tear, this path to wisdom— Full of pain and martyrdom; One may leave with noble goals But don’t you always take their souls?

But Did She Take Their Souls? 7.2.2000 (4.30.1993) Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Cat Desertion Is Cat Fidelity

He creeps beneath the cover, Curls his form behind my knees, Goes to sleep. I like his fur And never wonder about fleas. Though his body heat is high He insists on heat inside, Craving coziness that I provide. I hear him sigh a comfort sigh. It’s flattering. I don’t know why. Scratching gently at the quilt He looks for me to nod or tilt For, as a rule, he’s on my chest, Breathing belly on a breast. Thirty minutes: there are limits. It’s to warm down there to stay. Minutes, and his whim is Through, as if he’s never courted, Hopping down and making off,

Forgetting how he flirted. Clearly, I’ve just been a fling, A sometime thing, My lover has deserted. A case of cat fidelity.

Cat Desertion Is Cat Fidelity 1.18.2000 Love Relationships; Circling Round Nature; Cat Book; Arlene Corwin

Cat Scan

Tonight I took my nightly prowl, Checked a hedgehog, saw and owl. The owl swooped down in full moonshine And caught a mouse meant to be mine. I almost jumped a snake: an adder. I’ve a past and I knew better. It being March I saw a cat Wandering round the place I live at; Screeching, moaning for a mate. I squalled back, but only ’cause My homestead here’s already slated. As for mating, I’m castrated. Dawdling down familiar roads, I stepped around familiar toads. They don’t taste good. They’re not to hunt. And they’re no fun, nothing to taunt. I found a lizard, tail bitten. Realized I’d outgrown my kitten-

Favorite pastime. Yawn! It’s getting to be light and dawn. Ducks and geese are in the reeds. It truth be known, they’re not my needs. They scare the pants off me, those geese. I can’t get near to scare or tease. I end up scuttling up the trees. But if I wait until July, I get the ducklings on the sly. Delicious! I’ve examined all the boxes In the trees; the cracks in rockses. Thank the Lord; I’ve seen no foxes. Let’s see, what’s there left to do? Silently slip through my flap, Eat my food and take a nap?

Boring. I hear father snoring. On the other hand, my mother lets Me sleep or creep on feet or chest. She’s a pushover. She thinks I’ve been all quiet and still— And on the bed all night. That kills me. Scuttling up the pines and birch, Scaling Everest-high firs, Searching lovingly for birds Clandestine in a cloistered bush, Watching, waiting for one rush Of movement—ooh, I’m such a villain— Doin’ lots and lots of killin’. Still, she thinks that I’m an angel, Furry child of the household. What I’m thinking, as I stare Out of the window, is which mousehold I will use tonight, which bite. I’ve got my sight: cat-hode ray sight,

My seven lives, (I’ve used up two), My claws like knives, Whiskers, just in case I need to feel what’s ’round my face. I’m all equipped. I know my woods. Now all I need to find’s the goods. Through smell, through sight, through ear and feel I rather feel invincibeel. I won’t conceal that I quite like The two I live with. When they hike I hike along, behind, ahead.

I jump out from a dead log. When they jog I leap and scare them to the skies. They can’t disguise their fright; They jump and laugh, then walk on While I seek out my next war zone. Black—I’ve seen my own reflection. I’m the master of detection. Since I cannot have erection I’m not handicapped by sex. That’s luck! When I examine Cats I’ve seen, I’m left with pictures of obscene Behavior. Never mine! My affection’s polished, fine. Take, for instance, no, today: Mother has her breakfast tray Arranged, her coffee on the left, Her pads and pencils on the right. I’ve placed myself inside the cleft

Between her chin and tray. Her sight Is clear, her hand left free. I know her needs instinctively. I’m filled with gentle delicacy. Purr, of course, but cloyingly? No, never. I’m detached and warm and clever. And when dad pretends to kick me, I pretend to let him lick me— He’s my dad and she’s my mom. I’m their child. This is my home.

At two months somebody tapes me. All that came before escapes me. They’re my family, my pride. Now it’s time to go outside; Inspect for mice and voles, and guard My ever-widening backyard; Make my marks along the way: (Oh yes, I’ve taught myself to spray!) Wait without a care for time, Think about the things that I’m Concerned with; make no plan; Catch only as cats can. There’s a moment in each day I’m allowed my bestest play— I get to walk in, sniff Each closet, just as if I was Sam Spade out on a case. I’m sure that mice once ruled this place. Then I’m called. The door is shut And I strut out—a cat content.

My name is Sootis Anderson; My mom’s Arlene. My dad is Kent.

Cat Scan 8.4.1995 Circling Round Nature; Love Relationships; Cat Book; Arlene Corwin

Childhood Friend

He’s dead, my childhood Brooklyn playmate. Took me on a date—my first. He got so pissed I had to drive him home to drop him At his mother’s on the corner Where he lived a block from me. How old was I? Sixteen, maybe. (I couldn’t drive—the shift was automatic.)

Nature energetic, Voted ‘the most likely to succeed’, We went our separated ways When life makes path and road decisions.

Marijuana, Amsterdam, Rajneesh, Tibet, A PR man par excellence. Idea froth in effervescence, Lithium his destined lot. Then came the tumor—

“I’ve smoked endless years of pot”. He found Israeli roots at sixty. Childhood friend, Who wrote he loved me Till the end. Died with a pleasant morphine drip— I hope.

Childhood Friend 4.10.2009 Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

Christmas Love Song

(written on behalf of Per who could not express his love for Rebecca)

A bit too simple, maybe. Those who’ve loved will understand, No matter in whose hand it’s written— Message not the least bit grand, Rhymes not fancy: Love, in short, to you from me. Rebecca dear, Dear faraway love wanted near, It’s been a year [in six months two] And wishing for a century with you, All summers, autumns, winters, springs Nothing ever could grow boring; You, the gift for every season. And my every reason for a celebration, For, you are my celebration—

For I love you.

Christmas Love Song 12.16.2007 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

Christmas Morning Hand-Knit Socks

We made love this morning Listening to the radio. Two things going on, Both giving pleasure, neither one Distracting from the other. ion, sensitivity; Sometimes coming, sometimes not. This Christmas morning in your pair Of rainbow-colored, hand-knit socks: Radio and hand-knit socks And sex That rocks. *Anna, who made them.

Christmas Morning Hand-Knit Socks 12.26.2008 Circling Round Eros; Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

Cindy’s Gone

(An exercise using a made-up phrase)

Cindy’s gone. You don’t know what to do. You allowed her to open the mind that was you. She ran through your head unconfined, then she flew. What gardens, what unions, pre-Cind-; Botanical triflings of scorch, scorn and scoring Relationships stifled by boredom and whoring, You one by one would rescind. You weren’t prepared to have such a woman; You ought not have dared to love such a woman, A woman like that must be free—dependently. You had to learn how to love right. To love is to not, I said not hold on tight, For it frightens the child who is loving and mild Into going quite wild Looking for a playmate, a runaway mate. Cindy’s gone to a man-child again;

See her duty to him (love she must), Sow the beauty in him, leave. Mere dust. When emotion reluctantly goes back to sleep, And the flush of her cheek is an ocean of past, The crush of emotion goes back to the deep, Rushing rush, streaking streak: gentle motion at last. You uncover a leak in the dyke, And discover a notion or two that you like. You laugh, for your guests are no more than bequests Of the frank, groping selfish un-nameable child-girl; The grit-sting, oh oyster, is now undefiled pearl.

There’s love; there’s pain. It’s plain How and that you did sip From a wine taster’s draught of relationship— Vintage year. Cindy’s gone. You know how to react. It was part of the pact that you’d tactfully pack And face up to the fact that she’s gone. Epilogue: Can form, can grace, Can air, can space, Can any fair face In the human or animal race Be called mine?

Cindy’s Gone 1954 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Note: This really was an exercise. I never knew a Cindy. (I don’t even like the name. It sounds a bit slick.) I had nothing of importance to say. I was probably

exploring what little I saw in myself and understood of my limited life/love experience. I don’t . All I knew was that I had to write. That’s the most interesting part of this poem for me. 06.9.6

Coming Together Sooner Or Later

We’re sitting on the beach lawn Leading different lives. I’m on the dock Feeding ducks; Water glistening, sun low, Listening to radio: Doctor Glass, Superbly acted one-man show. My other half’s been out to row, To say a word or two To Sven across the lake, and now He’s firing up the grill: A primitive arrangement; Metal netting laid on rocks. Busy fussing, forcing fire— Campfire sparks A metaphor. We’ll come together soon Like courting ducks,

Our meeting in the heat Of sausages and bun. Spicy sweet.

Coming Together Sooner Or Later 6.9.2007 Love Relationships; Small Stories Book; Swedish Book; Arlene Corwin

Communication

We seldom share one wavelength: How we think the day should shape up, Food should taste, A word be used. Yet we’re meant to cast Our breads upon the waters, Laying groundwork for the future, Daring to be misconstrued.

Communication 1.27.1998 Definitely Didactic; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Cousin Roz

Milk of kindness. One may find less In a hallowed, haloed being. Aiming at a Jesus meekness Through an untied Hallelujah, Singing untried Hallelujahs, Loosing tongue-tied Hallelujahs, From the role of silence To a holy song of praise.

Stalker of the holy ways Where she’d ranged from grief to sadness, To emerge a holy walker, Gladness’ charity The clarity of motivation. Roz’ pact with God-in-action: Daily miracles made plain Solving problems, solving pain. One can feel the devil shame,

Cousin buzzing heaven’s name.

Cousin Roz 10.4.1990 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Cremated

She died on Sunday. Now it’s Wednesday. She’s already gone: cremated. Ash is left. Is all. Is she? Well, Riddle, question, mystery: Is she… is she… is she… ? We are In tears. Tears little matter. Disappeared and scattered; Where? What sphere? Not here. Cremated. The memorial (who for?) Is Friday.

Atoms shatter. In these clatter-days of peacelessness, The waters of belief, One’s faith in ever-changing,

Never dying form Is of the essence. Out of harm’s infernal ways Is the essential matter. Atheists say, “gone is gone”. It’s thornier for faithful ones, For faith is blind—like love. Cremated, but above, She is.

Cremated 10.24.2012/3.5.3013 Birth, Death & In Between I, II; Special People, Special Occasions; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

For Marilyn

Cries Of Wailing Mothers

A ‘nay’sayer, which when once asserted, Left “yes” melting in your hell; You learned to act alone, Be alone—and were alone, Shunning sharing, Distanced from a form of caring. She was Scorpio and secret, Complex and peculiar— A woman in a stupor, Staring somewhere and/or nowhere. Sharp remarks were biting sharks, Uninformed but targeted: The open drawer, the lidless jar, The lace untied. Mistrustful, cynical; she cried. Charging bull and know-it-all, Also ive animal. Smile rare, raw laughter nil:

Where Is the M Who doesn’t stare Into a space That’s one inch from your face?

Cries Of Wailing Mothers.12.7-2005 Love Relationships; I Is Always You Is We; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Dancing In The Bed

It’s 8:15 a.m. I’m still Asleep when you come in the room. The radio’s been on since five. You modestly and unassumingly Creep in. I slowly come alive. My neck is slightly sore, the symptom Of a migraine. You massage it. Then because the body needs it And you’re sensitive, your fragrant hand, Like a corsage, begins to find, Explore my spine. There’s music in the background and, Before we know it, there we are Moving, dancing in the bed. Lovely and exciting rhythms Form our future memoir. Up and down, the rose bedspread Awry, we minuet and smile,

Closely dancing all the while. And, oh, how we enjoy the time Willingly exploited, using Hands and even feet to prime The other’s total health, the boozing, Bruising done by others non-existent. How we’ve laughed! Now I’m awake. I feel like a griddlecake. Or eggs and steak? The dance in bed not inconsistent With the need to eat, The music’s beat Now slow, now fast, the background broadcast Perfect prologue to a breakfast.

Dancing In The Bed 5.5.1996 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Daughters & Sons

I’m so sad for the mother That never became what she ought as a woman: A person to gladden. Never became what you faintly could call Happy creature, the features Of happiness missing in full. So sad, The features of zest an alloy, And I don’t fully tumble to layered grief why. Is it that she will die, her future a flyby Without any chance on this planet for joy? That some of her blood runs inside of my veins, And gene-derived thoughts in my brain Are connected to some of her pains?

Of all the denatured, the tortured, The unfulfilled lovelies and lonelies, there’s one. I feel a sadness directed at one. Is it guilt?

Is there something I just haven’t done— That I ought? How much mother’s keeper Are daughters and sons? I’m so sad.

Daughters & Sons 1.1.1998 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Dead Jewish Mothers

Her trouble lay In expectations, Never re-examining Expectations fixed—and doomed. Never flowing with the times, Failure unacceptable.

Primed by hard opinions, Shrunken views, Talents had she never used; Promise, drive, Never to embrace the niceness Of the different. Doomed. Such thought exotic.

Gone now into silence, Free from planning;

Stillness; Maybe now accepting change, Enjoying blowing in the wind.

Dead Jewish Mothers 6.22.2004 I Is Always You Is We; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Birth, Death & In Between; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Did You Think I’d Leave You When I Left?

Did you think I’d leave you when I left? Friendship rounded and unbounded With the gift of fondness present; Earth’s circumference that’s grounded In a belt of never-ending. Did you think my leaving was a theft Of a companionship new founded? Like the kneecap and the nail, Like the elbow and small death That’s exhaled every breath, I’m here. So what is friendship? Palsy-walsy, well-disposed, Neighborly and kind? It is guileless and unclosed, Praising other’s soul and mind, Caring for the other’s goal, And thinking that the other’s great; Loving one step less than mate.

Did you think I’d leave you to decay? We decay, but anyway, It is today and here I am. I’m gone because I couldn’t stay. Yet here I am with thoughts of you. I never left you when I flew Without a screw or boo hoo-hoo. Did you think I’d gone forever? Not a bit of it! No, never.

Did You Think I’d Leave You When I Left 4.22.1997 / 7.13.2005 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Don’t Bother Me I’m Working Out My Own Salvation

Mother in the hospital; the relatives come milling round. Matchless that they find, take, give, have, use the time To pound the corridors Or stand and chat with one another, Looking in on patient mother. Exhausted by the daily trip, The cheerful quip, Devoted family’s daily bond, There should be someone there to send Them home to soak their hammer toes Because, God knows, There’s only o much succor Bedded patient can sustain While feeling that she’s holding court And trying not to show the pain. But God bless family anyway, And God bless every calling friend. It\s just that after seven days

It’s they who must need time to mend.

Don’t Bother Me I’m Working Out My Own Salvation 1.3.1997 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Drinking Wine At Eva’s

You honored me By sharing wine I knew was rare. I honored you By drinking it—I, who Decline the most. We made a toast. It was exquisite, as you said: The taste, the look, the tint, the scent Went to my senses (and my head). I relished it, aware That you were sharing Wine intended for a few (Possibly just you) And I, I was included.

Drinking Wine Eva’s 5.31.2008 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions;(eva) Arlene Corwin

End Of Cat Book

A book mostly about one cat: Sootis. Not purposely, but purposeful? Time tells. Yesterday was his last day. He seemed to represent Cat-dom; Characteristics out of Africa And Egypt. He was Cat, Inspiring to look at— Certainly to watch.

In our garden now, A big translucent quartz his headstone— Daffodils to come.

I prepared for days— Seventeen, to be exact. But on the eighteenth,

Finding him, Still warm But absolutely gone A stream That sometimes gushes, sometimes runs Betrays such preparation. I Don’t think I’ll ever write About Felines again, Need gone.

End Of Cat Book 4.23.2008 Birth, Death & In Between; Cat Book; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Everything We Do Is for Each Other

I started out with me for me, Went on to thinking you and me. Then later it was us and me, And finally to Everything we do Is for each other. . Echoes. Duty and activity Are beauty Once the things we do Are for each other Somewhere in the consciousness.

Everything We Do Is For Each Other 1.15.2001 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Examination Of Guilt Over A Dead Mother

My foible? Feeble failure? Her cast flawed, demanding, needy? Or was I self-centered, greedy? The dynamics make me think I didn’t love enough; That flaws should not have hindered The expression on my brow.

Using God as standard— Parent unconditioned, forcing nothing, Giving out the best in kind— If this is paradigm, it hints at view Born of indifference or dislike One ought not have a right to.

Then, why must this God be love? Why not a love that’s neutral— I not favored, you not favored: Love not flavored.

Love ideal?

I’ve observed the secret search; The longing first, the discontent, The running after content. Life as book of changes, Always urging on the good, and yet, The question weighs somehow.

Examination Of Guilt Over A Dead Mother 6.29.2004 Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Family Party

As I stand beside my bed, There—alone inside my head— I stand undressing, guessing at What feels so pressing. Not just I the paradox, Alone, an island, mono-vox, But I who stand a twin To all and sundry. I fit in— And then I don’t. Fitting in then slipping out: The need to stand apart. Witness to my kith and kin’s Weekend excess, Wrong-valued, reckless; There I sit while mirth controls them. Drink, song, schmaltz— It rocks and rolls them. There I sit, and there I’m split—

Helpless.

Knowing each creates his fate I smile, nod and meditate. Time is short. I sense it scared. If all my own sins were declared They’d fill the paper in small print And so I sprint with all the rest. Trying not to beat my chest, But self-possessed, Ask to be a channel blessed.

Family Party 6.17.1991 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Family Treasures

There comes a time when all the things That gave affection to the soul And busy-ness to body Have to go to someone else: Other hands, other places, Other shelves, other cases— All the things you chose and loved, And took such care of: Blue I Ching, ruby ring, Books with margin notes and drips, Needlework, beaded work Loved by eye and fingertips. All enjoyed, All employed. Time es and the family treasures disappear Into the market of the flea, Or to cousin Guinevere With no advice, no loving plea

To make the gift more worthy Or recipient mature. No demands on mode of care, As if the object ended there. And isn’t that the pity?

Family Treasures 9.28.1998 Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; Circling Round Time; Arlene Corwin

Finished

I’m absolutely through with sex— Until the time you woo me next.

Finished 8.14.1997 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros II; Arlene Corwin

For Love of Food

I looked in books for love of food, For foods of love, and I conclude The books of love lie in my head. I should look there for love instead. To eat, to taste, To learn the art Of not to waste; To use the elements with care, To eat aware, To love the needs of tongue and teeth All those I feed And think, through truth that’s based on food And equal to the highest good— From oyster sensuality, Champagne and egg’s fertility, To love vitamins A,C,E, Pure meat, vegetables poison-free; (Using the silver cutlery,

The crystal bowl With flowers, candles forming all) Of love and food, of family friends, Of food and love, the lover’s ends. It’s there— And all connected.

For Love Of Food 2.23.2002 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Friendship

We’ll keep on telling one another “You look well today and/or “How sweet, how kind you are!” Even when the hair is thinning, Lips already thinned, Lines pinned your beauty To the floor Until the count of three— Still, We will say sincerely “You look handsome!” “You look lovely!” Friendship.

Friendship 2.1.2009 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

From Nothing Something

You come into my room. You climb into my bed. You scratch my back— You know the place. Then light massage and I’ve turned over Just to take hold of your shoulder— I know your shoulder needs it. Squeeze, massage, a bit more scratch, Then from the gradual, the sudden; Sudden graduality— Intensity— And pressure. Pleasure. (That’s been growing all along.) Pleasure’s song Is being sung: Portrait of a golden age When something comes from nothing.

From Nothing Something 12.23.2003 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Get It Out Of Your System

Not a bad idea, and if you must, Then sleep around and have your lovers, Dress that mound with lacy covers: Scanty panties, stockings black— It is permitted to be tacky. Not a bad idea the panty; Just be wary of the ante: Smoking, drinking, getting high— Years go by and then you die. So watch! Observe each puff, each lay. Be prepared to stop one day. Years go by, they do go by And then you die; you really die. Weariness—when it does come— Is more intense than when you do; A screw is always just a screw. And variations on a smoke— Like salmon, pot—

Are limited and not a lot; Variations on a joke Not more than ninety-one or two; On food, on love, About the same as the above.

Burn both ends; but one thing’s sure: Nature wants you to be purely Not too much and not too little. Nature wants you in the middle. ‘Waste’ is not a word in time; The skill sublime Is in the grasping Sow those oats if that’s your way, But watch—to live another day.

Get It Out of Your System 1.17.2000 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Getting A Name

I got it wrong— I wasn’t feeling guilt, I was feeling comion, And didn’t know it, For I didn’t have a name. Finding, getting, Getting hold of same, I found it and I understood. The guilt was gone. I’d got it wrong: A comfort and relief.

Getting A Name 7.4.2004 Love Relationships; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Arlene Corwin

Getting Re-inspired

It’s been days: Stagnant pen, Vacant paper. Quiet hand, then I : Ha! Your birthday; One plus seventy! Again we’ll Go to lunch, Perhaps to town, a walk around.

There’s not much change. Are we still changing? Are we brand New every morning As we should be, As we ought to be?

We’ll eat out lunch With more discrimination. Munch by munch, Crunch by crunch, With quiet familiarity Again. We’ll celebrate.

This year it’s one and seventy: A number only.

Re-inspired 2.6.2009 Birthday Book; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Getting It Out Of My System

How can she hope to get a man, keep a man? She talks too much. Opinions, views, pretended or Half-knowledge About all. And more… She will attract the mild, unsure Or boorish, dumb, With whom she’ll have no words in common Which, [relationship] can last awhile, But she, who has to have control, Step in, decide, know what is right In every situation; She, who needs to dominate Without the insight That she needs All in the name of, “. . . all I want to do is help” Will always lose her man And never understand the steps

To why. “I was speaking!” “Listen here!” Confrontational each visit, it Makes everyone around Disturbed, distressed, totally ‘down’ Long hours after: But that’s my option. Freely chosen.

Getting It Out Of My System 12.26.2011 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Gift for Loving (a contrapuntal poem)

Vain, vain Love don’t strain Don’t complain: ll But break the chain. If you must wail, then Miss the train, Don’t explain. And twain are slain. One, my only, Blood-brown stain, It is plain Or coffee grain… That pain is gain Can you see, love? When brain’s insane. Vain, more vain.

Refrain: Plain Jane, Don’t complain. Abel was, And died by Cain. The moon that grows Still loves the wane. Love, loves love, Despite love’s drain. Da Capo

Gift For Loving 5.10.1960 (found 2.5.2010) A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Circling Round Vanities; Revelations Big&Small; Arlene Corwin

Going Back

It always warms and cheers the heart When couples that have been apart Go back. One wonders what it is They’ve done, which one Has given in and whyTo reconcile and rectify; How much acceptance, new and fresh, Without an awful pound of flesh Snatched in the act of compromise. The wise know that to harmonize Turns each day’s detail into art— The time relaxed, The timing, when to start And end, exquisite, accurate. Always a blessing to unite, A double one to reunite. It’s clear that neither black nor white Can fabricate a standing truce;

Standing peace, no word-abuse. At the core, the means is love: Not ion’s love, but common care. Going back is to be humble, Biting tongue when you get riledStaying mild you you’d get wild, Staying close each time you stumble. Yes, it warms the heart When couples that have been apart Go back.*

Going Back 3.14.1998 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin *Bosse &Gunilla

Guess What?

Guess what? I nearly Quite forgot The special day, This darling spot, So I’ll just say In not The smartest Way or fine, You are my yearly Dearest heart. (which makes a perfect 14 line poem Valentines Day, 14 February).

Guess What? 2.14.2007 Love Relationships; Special People Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

Hairy Leg

Hairy leg, oh hairy leg, I like it when you share my bed. Warm and furry, Never currying for favor, Simply savoring mine too. I think that this must be love true.

Hairy Leg 8.19.1993 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros II; Arlene Corwin

Half A Cup

I like a full cup, he a halfHe is kind and wants to please me So he makes and brings me coffee Up in bed—half a cup. Likewise, when I take his up On flowered tray with fold-down legs It’s to the top. Even with the best intentions He and I cannot escape The selves we are.

I sip his half—with praises, Slip downstairs to warm up more When he has gone. He drinks mine and comments That I must have starved in lives Cro-Magnon (Overfill I saucer-spill His most defining sign).

Laugh and praise the half— The whole is all that counts.

Half A Cup 2.9.2005 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Happy Birthday Anyway

Seventy at last! Was it something you looked forward to? Modest you. No parties, presents you insist. Besides, it’s February cold. You want to put your date on hold Till June and summer. (I have a strong suspicion you don’t care If, how, what, when or where).

We talked about accomplishment. In fact, we talk about it constantly: Our verbal key. All our closest friends want travel, Theatre, concerts; but we Talk about accomplishing Our special thing. You’re seventy. Your springboards:

Music, technique, singing, Possibly recording. Growing through the meditative. Prayerful, playful you Is through With custom for the sake of custom. You don’t need the confirmation Others seem to need. You get it from inside. And yet you are affirmed. Everybody loves you.

Happy Birthday, anyway. In spite of your requests. In spite of all your protests. Happy Birthday to a party That will not have any guests. Happy Birthday for your balance Both expressed and unexpressed. Happy birthday, anyway. And Happy all the rests… !

Happy Birthday, Anyway 1.20.2008 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Birthday Book; Arlene Corwin

Happy Birthday, Daddy

You’re a hundred today In a realm of some sort, Far away, Invisible, for I can’t make you out, but Your are there, Working out things you couldn’t here.

There’s not much I When I think about you as a father. But I recollect some precious things That made you daddy. It’s attachment. It’s a mystery. It’s love that has no feelings— But it’s love. Daddy without sentiment; Karmic plan to make me what I am.

The only dad I’d ever have—or had. I’m glad. Be happy! Happy birthday!

Happy Birthday, Daddy 4.15.2008 Birth, Death & In Between; Birthday Book; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Happy Birthday Sixty-Four

It’s speeding up, the days to June: Of sleeping late and waking to Your very own retired tune, Though not yet here It’s coming soon. What’s near Is February eight, Two thousand two, An ordinary Friday to you; Sixty-four, And just one more To sixty-five When you will feel more alive Than ever. Now or never: Take care of the mind and health, Bank a different kind of wealth, Walk a broader avenue

(Which helps me too.) Broader, freer you expressed: In the shadows ‘duty-stress’. March through May let’s celebrate And together take a breather From the classes that have ruled each day Since you were seventeen.

Time’s prepared for everything Your secret heart has ever wanted. Happy birthday sixty-four. Time for music counterpointed And much more, much more.

Happy Birthday Sixty-Four 2.6.2002 Special People Special Occasions; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

He Hears What He Wants To Hear

We’re at a table in the sun. I start to say, “This ice cream x is better than The ice cream y…” and There he is with “Yes, I see your point… I feel the same… and I agree. Y’s ice cream is the one for me, The one I’ve always liked” And I give up.

He Hears What He Wants To Hear 6.4.2006 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Hint Of Autumn

A hint of autumn, yet it’s August, Lingonberry/heather mixed, Our anniversary, a—five or—six, Depending upon which we choose— Piano grooved, or when I moved Into your life, your land, the interweave. ‘I love you still’ ‘time flies’ fit best, And yes, to us A Happy Anniversary”.

Hint Of Autumn 8.31.2009 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

His Bad Dreams

Attacked in dreams By demons he denies. In dreams he fights and screams. Angers in his psyche, angers hidden Coming out When argument opposes. Short of hating He attempts degrading Verbally. With barbs, thrusts, parries He does not know he is angry. Does not know he can change. His unconscious foxy, Deaf, unyielding, There is no appealing to his logic. Then he laughs: His final weapon.

His Bad Dreams 7.10.2009 Special People, Special Occasions; Love Relationships; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Nature In & Of Reality; Arlene Corwin

Hologram

Forms exist ad nauseum; Programmed flimflam, Matrix of a hologram; Illusion super-layered Drive on drive, The outer drive erotic, Inner drive the search for love; Flamed, abiding: Love in common.

Hologram 10.22.1996 Love Relationships; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Husband, Lover, Friend And Mate

Husband, lover, friend and mate, All I ask is that you wait— Ever watchful and involved, As your problems drop off—solved.

Husband, Love, Friend And Mate 8.1962 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

I Am An Excellent Little Boy

I am an excellent little boy. I always give the people I am with Extraordinary joy. I know that I am very sweet. I’ve got a smile that can’t be beat. And all my elders claim I knock them off their feet. I am an excellent little lad. I never drive the people I am with exceptionally mad. I know just what to say and when. Of course I faux pas now and then; But then I smile and I am excellent again. To kittens I am very kind, I don’t have any schisms. The only thing that’s on my mind Is polysyllabisms. I am an excellent little boy. I’m sure because my mommy always tells me so. And in consideration of the things I do,

Wouldn’t you say that I was excellent too?

I Am An Excellent Little Boy 12.1956 Lyrics; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

I Cannot Stand To See You There: A Temporary Aberration

I cannot stand to see you there. I cannot stand to see your face. A person always in despair Is hard to bear, so hard to bear. And scarcely easier the space: The place you take of pasty waste. I cannot stand to hear your voice— Opinionated New York voice: That mass of uninformed ideas Expressed unasked; that mass of fears And vulgar views; contempt, disdain For other views, and plainly Those with godly hues. I cannot stand to hear you speak. Each talk demands one turn one’s cheek. You turn all conversation round To talk about yourself instead. You run all sound ideas to ground:

You’ve never read a book. And drag about that sad, filled brain. You’re seldom cheerful. You complain. You alternate complain/demand/ Complaint again, your days like sand. Your stays in bed are days in bed. You lie about, get up to pee. You think your thoughts in secrecy. There’s nothing in you to agree. Black’s always white. Simplicity Has left you. Stiff, probably A long, long time ago there was A flexible persona there; A dare I say it, vulnerable child bare.

But now the openness is less. How silly of me to suggest An open word like openness. It’s angst to see you at the door, And dull to fix your meals, for There’s no appreciation seen, Just an indifference to what’s been. A candle or a flower wasted, Fine, brewed coffee hardly tasted. Instant is as good to you. Why bother, when it’s all the same? A stew, a brew—just change the name. As for dinner conversation: Cynical and silly words, Repeated, hackneyed little turds; Dogmatic, slanted, un-thought through; Self-centered clichés only you Can see. If only you could trust in folk. You simply can-, will not agree

With him or her, or them or me About the slightest, lightest joke. You never get the point! Each issue, like a tissue crumpled, Torn de-valued, thrown away. Where the hell’s your sense of play? Contentious always, and yet yellow, Formula for living hell, you Make our dining times an effort, Pleasant conversation, indigestible sensation. When it comes to giving credit, You have done it, seen it, said it. Since your every word gives pain, I can’t stand you near again.

If only you’d hold in those good Suggestions: food, Ideas, including portions I should cook, How the size itself should look. I think, until the day we die, I will try and cry and sigh. You’ll vie. Have all those meaningless days’ “Why?” And I’ll just have to learn to try That bit more to interpret Your behavior as a debt That I must pay in order that this small disted, Small dis-joy-nted soul gets whole. But God, it’s hard to be a loving, peaceful child To one whose conflicts drive me wild, Whose every statement gets me riled, Whose thinking circles around ‘me’. Blindness or stupidity? You interrupt and never listen, Never shift from a position. Whether stated or negated

Every tiny point’s negated, Almost hated, never sated. Worst of all, one feels so sorry For a woman of some charm. Still, I’d like to break your arm For marching, army-like upon Your daughter and your murdered son. You never hesitate, you tank! How I’d love a mom to thank.

How I’d love to thank you but To be quite frank, I can’t. The hurt Is much too much twixt twisted you And direct me. A blindness or stupidity? An eg-or-eccentricity? Writing it, is therapy, A never-ending poetry. I’ll have to fight to not re-write (Which could go on indefinitely) Playing the sage, Expressing innocent and guilty rage. This poem has got to stop, Attention turning to my pop, My dear Alzheimer losing dad, The dad who’s losing all he had. Besides, the anger’s petered out, So why more meter? Of course, there are some signs of change, The range minute and bound to teeter. Any change is better

Than that set, depressive crater. Dare I say, it’s bound to be Resolved one day, In poetry Or not.

I Cannot Stand To See You There 6.20.1993/12.21.1990 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Haven’t Sent A Valentine

I haven’t sent a valentine In all our eighteen years. Perhaps it’s time To scribble feeling rhyme, And without ceiling, Feeling love And feeling cheer Remind myself how much I care, How glad I am that you are there— So, happy Valentine’s my dear.

I Haven’t Sent A Valentine 2.14.2002 Special People Special Occasions; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

*K.

I Live With A Man Who Doesn’t Believe In Reincarnation

I live with a man Who doesn’t believe In reincarnation: A thoughtful man, A man with faith, Whose feet are planted On the earth; Whose doll-blue eyes Can fill with tears; Who slays each cell Of sloth and fears; Who goes inside himself with ease And see the way a seer sees. Yet, he can’t get into his head The concept that though body’s dead It leaves its energy intact To carry on in life and fact, Each failure past to rise again—

Rehearsal’s fate, it tries again To reach a self from God-knows-when. He understands cause and effect, Accepts an absolute as being And a Being absolute. Yet, there is something in his seeing That his being can’t detect. Is it gene with some defect That cleans away what can be seen By those of us who have the gene?

The notion’s light as day to me; We’re born to reproduce, to sluice Into eternity. Whey can’t it reach his intellect And teach the gene to un-defect, Speed up his fate, and mine as well? I can’t, can I? Can’t change what is, what has to be, What’s destined from a time pre-pre.

I’d love to clout that lout of doubt To cancel out the gout of doubt, To tout a truth I know exists. Yet reason says: “Be still! Behave as if you have free will! And even though you have no choice, Behave as if you have a voice, Cause that’s the choice you have.

I Live With A Man Who Doesn’t Believe In Reincarnation 10.30.1991

Love Relationships; Circling Round Reality; Arlene Corwin

I Look At You With Mixed Eyes

I look at you with mixed eyes, Blended eyes—and hear the cries Of those you killed— Are killing still. Looking at you lying there, Leaning near, Cuddling close, I feel nonplussed. You creep beneath my coverlet And whisper sounds affectionate. Your whiskers itch a little bit. It’s too much for my bitty brain, This chain of love and death, Death and love; and either You’re a Jekyll/Hyde, Or I don’t understand the ways Of nature, destiny and God.

I Look At You With Mixed Eyes 10.1.2000 Circling Round Nature; Love Relationships; Cat Book; Arlene Corwin

I Looked In The Veggie Bin

Because you shop without me, Buying what you think we need, There will be carrot cake for tea, Carrot soup and stew to feed Us both ’til we turn orange; Carrot pancakes, carrot juice, Carrot based until we cringe. My dear, you know how much I love you— How I hate to whinge, But my skin’s already yellow And I’m looking rather strange. If a shopping list would help, my dear, Perhaps it’s time for change.

I Looked In The Veggie Bin 8.13.1999 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

I Think A Lot About You

I think a lot about you. First, because I’m angry, Second, for the pity that I feel, Third, to learn the lessons of what not to do For fear of turning into you. You cannot walk (you say a stroke— You never walked, you drove). A joke. You starved yourself, you left out salt, You ate white bread, white noodles— White, white, white,—no milk. You overdid and then complained When cells broke down and body pained. You cried and cried for years and years: A simple lack of vitamins. But you preferred the tears. Such tears. No piece of info kindly given Had a chance. You are self-driven. Now I think about you often.

When we speak I see that you’ve begun to soften— Just a little. But you’re eighty-three and bed-bound. Fighting cancer; still a riddle That I’ll think about for years and years (Just like your tears). But I’ve no tears, Just blended feelings at the loss: Lost time, lost talent, energy; Lost money, lost economy; Lost health, lost joy, Loss of ability to thrive, To love, have peace, Have kin who care to have you there. You drank two quarts of juice a day Because your nephew did.

No salt, two quarts of juice: No inkling of what they’d produce: Too much potassium, no salt: Your face no longer you; the fault Is always someone else’s. Six hundred calories your goal, White bread and nothing brown or whole, This may take a long reflection. Thoughts may bubble up for years. (Just like those tears). Facts will grate—spoil recollection, Leaving me to wonder why You spent your life in self-protection. I’ve the burden of forgiving, Living in a wood seclusion, Yet I’m thinking of you quite a lot, Linking up with special waves. Is that not love? I cannot save you, Cannot see how you behave In your aloneness. Are you brave?

Do you feel guilty—have regrets? Understand where you’ve gone wrong? Do you even want to change? You always said, ‘I can’t start now, I’m too old now to re-arrange My way of life.” You’ve power In that will! At forty-five You said it. You were sixty, and you said it. Seventy, still saying it.

What are you saying now that’s new? That you are waiting for your death? It’s much too late? It isn’t— Long as you’ve got breath. But who can tell you when you scold And hold that you’re much too old? I cannot counter that one. Must I leave the thing to God? To a coming incarnation? I feel something of a clod. It’s a no-win situation. I may win if I stop whining About thoughts that stir me up; Saboteurs that blur my feeling For the summer’s buttercup. I may win if I don’t brood, No longer need the brooder’s food Of puzzling out, thinking about… Collecting clues experienced as wrong, Want self-correcting to not take that long—

And should I think about you.

I Think A Lot About You 6.14,1996 Pure Nakedness; Love Relationships; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

I Want You

I want to feel your moist mouth on mine. I want to touch each lithe liquid line. I want to feel one pulse where there had been two: I want you. I want our breaths to meet in the air. I want to know each wave of your hair. I want a perfect fusion of two: I want you. I want to hear you voice And know how you talk. I want to see you move, Know how you walk. I want to know what depths you can reach, What heights you can climb. And after years when wanting has waned, That perfect union will have remained, Because I got what I wanted in you.

I Want You 3. 3.1954* Lyrics; Love Relationships Arlene Corwin

*Notice the date. It could have been called Immature and Uninexperienced.

If I Were Dying

If I were dying, Looked at you And felt I loved you In the last, I would not feel or suffer Dying’s angst. The brain can never simultaneously Feel two things at once. Love would rule out panic.

If I Were Dying 11.13.2008 Love Relationships; Birth, Death & In Between II; Arlene Corwin

I’m In The Market For A Love Affair

Verse: My analyst can explain it, And I can explain it to him. It’s getting so I can go for months Not feeling the need to feed this whim. Can’t plan, for it’s back before I count to ten. Knocked flat on my back I scan the world of men. Oh, bud-like, flower-like man eating plant, Go peddle you seed elsewhere. I swear I wear myself out, In this losing shadow box bout. Cherchez les homes, Here I come.

Chorus: I’m In The Market For A Love Affair. I go around just looking for a love affair. I need the making of a love affair,

To keep myself aware of living. I need the take of giving— That’s the snare. My life is one big pink rejection slip— I may flip!

I know, but still I go around looking, looking, Finding, finding, Having, having, Making, breaking affairs. I’m In The Market For A Love Affair. I go around just looking for a love affair. I get so bored creating love-inducing situations. Though my creations are a practiced art, The value they impart Only frees me— Temporarily. How long will youthful blush sustain the strain of time? The pattern shows, The cycle flows, The need still grows, Love comes and goes away. Alone I’m left to play the market for a love affair.

I’m In The Market For A Love Affair 1960 Love Relationships; Lyrics;

Arlene Corwin

Imagine, Twelve Years!

Twelve years ago we met, And every year I wish you Happy birthday, but have never said I’m sorry for the things ill-meant: The wounding, slighting words that come From under-conscious, unaware. Not often—you and I know that They don’t come often. Sometimes when The moon is full, they’re simply there, A werewolf, baiting, snarling, snaring. Scary, alright. Then it’s over: Arlene back and all in clover.

Once again it’s birthday time— I’m-glad-you’re-on-this-earthday time. Your nature is complex, but kind. My nature is complex, but kind. You’re trying hard to conquer mind.

I’m trying hard to conquer mind. We both find art a giant fund Of untapped waters.

Start the show, Untap the flow, Let out the music— Send it to A better year, a freer year, A year to spear the notes we want, A year to steer the hand that can’t! A year to hear the chords not yet Expressed, to press ahead and get The ideas living in our both heads Said.

Imagine, Twelve Years! 1.1.1995 Love Relationships; Special People Special Occasions; Birthday Book; Arlene Corwin

In Our Time

Daughters in-law Cheerless in their marriages, Are splitting up. Miscarriages Of marriages; Barren women, men and children, Humanity, civilization— The world over. What’s the answer?

In Our Time 6.3.2010 Our Times, Our Culture; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

In The Lover’s Eye

It’s a miracle, a wonder. He sees beauty in my body. He says, “You look just the same as when we met.”

Inner thigh part jellified; rounder Stomach in relief, recast By nature; lower breast; waist Anchored in an ancestry Of Jewish peasants.

The illusion in the lover’s eye— Love’s eye God’s windfall.

The Lover’s Eye 3.31.2009 Circling Round Eros; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

In The Space Of A Dream

In the space of a dream you appeared to me. In the face of a dream, you altered the course of my cloud, All it took was a glance. In the space of a dream life steered freely, Losing trace of the scheme of the faltering force of the crowd. Just one look, then romance. First our eyes met; something found. Then our lips: not a sound. Then our minds, and we were bound By eternity. In the space of a dream life had cleared a path, And in place of a dream there was you.

In The Space Of A Dream 12.1954 Lyrics; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Ironies & Paradox #1

Sometimes, never always, I’m dissatisfied, Regretful of decisions made. Still loving life, The will that made them— Will that willed but had no choice: A Calvinistic voice that said: “Do what you will— You’re galvanized by choice pre-made. Prepared, pre-made predictable. So though behaving like a goose, I choose To like the wins of loss, Decisions made from youth or greed, Misinterpretations of the plot— They’re the only ones I got Given moon and God-knows-what. Sometimes, dissatisfied or not, I love, accepting all.

Ironies & Paradox #2

Sometimes, Never always, I’m dissatisfied, Regretful Of decisions made— Still loving life, The will that made them; Will that willed But had no choice: A Calvinistic voice that says: “Do what you will— You’re galvanized by choice pre-made. So in this pre-made choice I choose To kind of like the wins of loss: Decisions made from youth or greed Or misinterpretations of the plot— They’re the only ones I got,

Given the moon, and God-knows what! Sometimes, Dissatisfied or not, I love, accepting all.

Ironies & Paradox 2.5.2004 I Is Always You Is We; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

It Sounds Like Preaching

I hate to preach, I do, But of the ways to talk to you This is the quickest—

Vulgar rhymes And oft’times nonsense, Ideas festive and suggestive, As if home was up above And speaking from a self in love And sharing. Born with gifts that shift and turn, Thought to phrase, Crazy, But not stoppable.

Preach, teach, Speech, reach, Church, search:

Mystery. Source, force, course: Connections Do you see what I see?

Seed that grows inside a mind Where silent energy resides And brain cells fire up their kind With nothing provable but me to take From where it hides The secret hint And share it.

It Sounds Like Preaching 12.28.2004(12.28.1999) Definitely Didactic; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

It’s His Choice

He hisses when he does the dishes; Hisses when he drives. It’s tension. Breathing in through tightened lips Or mouth—I don’t know which. Observing it, I’ve mentioned it. Not harped or criticized—just mention. “No, I’m not. I don’t. And if I do, it doesn’t mean a thing. Why are you watching me!” If it were I, I’d think. I might say thank you. He dreams monsters, men attacking, Knives, catastrophes. guns, enemies; Moans and kicks the wall while sleeping. “Dreams don’t mean a thing!” Pain in his chest that has no explanation. ‘Neuro-muscular”, they think. The heart is fine.

He doesn’t see a link. It is bewildering. He’s balanced otherwise. The insight in my ego says it is his choice. Hurt leaves, I neutralize. Detached. It is his choice.

It’s His Choice 12.19.2008 Circling Round Vanities; I Is Always You Is We; Small Stories Book; Love Relationships; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Corwin

It’s His Journey

Let’s comfort her. Let’s set aside her crassest fears; When someone loved is overdue, The food is cold and she’s in tears, Angst takes hold, he’s lying somewhere in a ditch, Lying, dying, undiscovered— It’s no matter which: Her mind sees clearly Loss, debt, child to rear— Thoughts so queer, They’re mad. Comfort lies in what the wise have said: He’s on a journey. So is she: The ways invisible to see. His roads are his, hers hers— If roads should cross, The gloss of choice With noose of ownership

Is fake. There is no loss that she can’t take. No victim tossed in seas of chance. When what she felt was hers is lost There was no chance, no—ship to own. Effect and cause: A blend, a loan. Let her achieve relief in that. There is no chance, But no injustice either.

It’s His Journey 8.24.1999 Definitely Didactic; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

It’s Readiness

Sometimes you want to tell your kids You’re not the mom they think you are: But who can justify a life? Who can siphon out A language? Mothering is style, gift. The scorpion, bohemian, musician— The mommy me without a plan To fix the day— Well, that’s my yogic, dharmic way. But underneath, the children: World of riches I can’t count; Riches that make mountains mount And angels weep for joy. My girl, my boy Are woman, man: Servants of their master plan.— Not mine at all.

So I don’t try To justify Accepting that We all know when we’re ready.

It’s Readiness 02.9.17/1999/11.10.2005 Pure Nakedness; Love Relationships; Mother Book; Circling Round Woman; Arlene Corwin

Just Out Of Love

Just out of love He grabs my breast. Just out of love I touch his balls or dick or chest. Just out of love there is no sex, No heat, no ion, ecstasy, Just ing touches, Grabbings mild, Biggles giggles Childish-smiled; Unplanned; A frilly Wonderland. His hand, my hand allowed a freedom Without fear or looking forward: No anxiety untoward: no -I’ve a headache, dear. -I’ve got to come. -Too fast.

-Go slow. -Right there. -No here. None of the forcing, so exhausting, Stress producing Taking, Faking, Digging into time above, Not necessarily from love above.

When out of love I squeeze his thigh, There’s nothing that I want. It’s milk; it’s silk. It makes me high—this ing by. It is a statement made from joy. This is a loving built on liking, Built on leisure, Equal to the nicest pleasure; This is the fine, sunshine of body.

Just Out Of Love 11.28.1998

Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Justified

It took eighteen years to leave you, But I’d left you long before. When, as I sit in sunshine On the step outside the kitchen, Reproaching self with muzzy guilt, I force myself to summon up (Not reminisce, just summon up) The reasons I pulled out, Re-tracing and re-routing lines of fault, And I feel better.

Justified 9.17.2004 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

K. Reads My Poetry

My husband says it’s word play. I say “You don’t understand.” If he accuses me of playing words Like puzzles, I’ll say You don’t understand.” But still, I like it when he reads. It feeds me.

K. Reads My Poetry 10.6.2008 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

My husband brings me morning coffee In a cup, A large, large cup Which I’m supposed to finish up Because he is so kind. Of course he doesn’t mind, He doesn’t care at all If I should drink up half, Throw out the rest— The sink can drink the half that’s best. It wouldn’t matter one small bit. But there I sit And drink the whole, The coffee bowl A symbol of my greediness, The need for more instead of less. It is my test and I have failed, Jailed

Inside my weakness. So dear God, I come in meekness With a child’s sincerity: Can you not not place a greedy me Into temptation In the first place?

Lead Me Not Into Temptation.8.19.2001 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; To The Child Mystic; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Legacy

Maybe not world class: the poem: So what! Something for the children and their children. Less a strain than sharing out The silver, jewelry and cupDividing it in equal shares. Then, how it’s taken up: The fun and limitations theirs.

A ruby ring to one grandchild Won’t stop him/her from running wild Or smoking dope, But hope, ah, hope lies in the pen. Not Pope or Donne, But what the children can on From soul to soul, To keep the family whole For jeweled generations.

Legacy 8.8.1999 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; I Is Always You Is We; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Corwin

Life Companion

He’s worthy of biography. For I Have prized The many outsized Talents. No biography, But absolutely Worth a sketch in fits and jerks Drawn from his quirks, Improvisations, plays, His imitations, things he says, The jazz, The ‘made up’ on the spot (To make a point you make up plot) The house designed and built by hand, Rooms refined, all white and grand, The real grand—the grand piano Also white and pure and clean;

Furnishings: white, rose and green; The mind-formed garden: lawn, The wildly sown, the overgrown (But paths hoe-edged) All holding beauty’s balance In the hedge Of talents: Talents for attentiveness, Sentiment-free courtesy With ion that’s reserved for me.

So if he doesn’t like spaghetti, Fried tomatoes, my own bread, So what! He’s ionate in bed. His heart and head screwed on just right, He scans my verse late in the night, Despite an early start Tomorrow.

Counting ways and out of numbers, Paper humbles Through a limited and mini—prism. Mischief’s spiritual within him. Ladylove to turtledove: All the words in my employ: Manly pleasure, fun and joy. Are you.

Life Companion 8.31.2001 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Life Is So Fragile

It only takes a hurtful, hate or hot relationship To break the mold, Renew the tendencies of old One worked so hard to bend. Where is the tender mother— Tender all the time? Selfless sender of the tender, Ego-less true mother Who would rather die than smother Child’s will? Who always Gives off warmth and trust? Life is so fragile.

Life Is So Fragile 11.22.1990 Love Relationships; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Little Inaccuracies Of The Mouth

I ask you if you’ve burned the food. “No”, you say with ‘attitude’— While the house is stinking scorch: Nonchalance with platitude The evening’s torch. You make your mother ninety When she’s early eighty-nine. You round things out, As if the ninety had more clout. When the fib is glib Is something not the matter, Even if and when it’s small? Small vanities and flatteries, Small strains of ego, other lies; In the ethics of small actions, Small infractions, In the scheme of things so small, Of hardly any worth at all,

And yet A tres That estranges.

Little Inaccuracies Of The Mouth 3.13.2003 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

Look There! My Love!

Look there! My love! On him—the stage— Is directive divine; A duel-dutied cage To deflect and define.

Tiny fashioned space reflects— On any given day—absorption And impression: truths that maya took Uncounted years to proffer forth.

With eyes to swallow Lives the mouth. In complement Is love transposed To sound and speech.

Infinitely subtle—this.

The tempered, blended face that Must react, collect, kiss, Release Again in endless trust, The endless task turned easy.©

Look There! My Love! 9.5.1960 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Love Can Find You Anywhere

Verse: You can look for love and never find it. It’s been done a million times or more. Looking for it, you many never find it. Till it comes a-knocking at your door.

Chorus: Love can find you anywhere; Beneath a moon-lit sky Or in the dark of the night. Love can break your heart to pieces, Can make tears flow like wine— Make lips that must be kissed. Music reminisced. I know that love can find you anywhere; When sun comes up at dawn, And when the clouds are all gone. When you meet it, you will know it;

You will see right there, That love can find you any, anywhere.

Love Can Find You Anywhere 1949 Lyrics; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Love Gesture

At the sink, Sunk deep in suds, The husband-stud Comes up behind, A hug around the waist; the kind That presses hard-ish. Giggles girlish, Lifted dress, Hands caressing Everywhere, and then it’s over, Fervor Quietened. A loving Affirmation Lovely. Lovely.

Love Gesture 7.4.2006

Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Love Hologram

Superimposed, drive on drive, The outer drive erotic, Inner drive the search for love: Blue-flamed, lasting love-in-common; Adultery they call it with its nasty smell, Making holes in family life— Society’s as well. And yet, There are the few Who need the one bedfellowFriend-companion-cum-coquette. You? Perhaps not. You may be content with someone Chosen by your parents—proper background, job— Content to love hob-nobbing ‘right’. The others, searching blindly, Often fail, but often find The thing they seek,

Reaching the goal through no-control (Or so it seems). Hologram. Illusion all.

Love Hologram 10.22.1996/12.11.2004 I Is Always You Is We; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Making Love Without Blankets

June in Sweden. Morning warm; Window open; Radio, Morning low. In this bed Lies sleepyhead; Then quiet touching, Quiet banter, Goal-less smooching, Then you enter, And revival, The arrival, Transmutation Of the unconcerned Familiar Into Young volcano.

Making Love Without Blankets 6.21.2005 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Missing

When you’re at work I know you’re coming back, And still I miss you. Why? Is it a real missing or defect in my make-up? I Could think it’s both. Your presence is enriching, also stopping As all presences are stoppers. You’re creative and you’re funny, And I like it that we talk a lot. You say so much that hits the mark— Like woman, you’re intuitive, Like sage full of ideas. You’re soft and sympathetic. You like Animals and flowers. Not Especially brought down by slush, But tender and nostalgic. Flaw? Is that a flaw? All heroes need a flaw. So is it you I really miss,

Or a cheering company? Is it shortage in my make-up That demands you be around me? All inside our heads are we, And when we’re feeling top of well, It’s then and there we sense we dwell— So is the missing need for you, Or is it more for me? Is missing love or frailty, A fondness or deficiency? Next time you are away at work, And I know you’ll be safely back, I’ll take advantage of the slack By looking very carefully Inside, where missing longings lurk. I’ll stop the tears and question why, Look the missing in the eye And act.

Missing 7.4.1996 Love Relationships;

Arlene Corwin

Mister Moon Looking In The Window

Looking in the window, Angle forty five degrees or so, Minutes before midnight, TV show still going strong, I, inspired by his song— Who woos from distances I cannot reach, Who, tempting me with valley eyes and mountain nose, River mouth, a face that shows The whole of him for one sweet night; A peachy ball, An all that sees. I´m watching and he´s watching Yet there´s nothing he can give Except the tides, the tears, Moon madness´fears— From where I sit He looks a little lost in space, That still, still face

Accepting clouds that shroud; Black veils erasing, chasing, Placing his enigma high-up On the list where from and why. The window´s creamy moonglow. He and I, embracing from a sky Unmoved, a courtship undeniably Absurd, Unheard in silence.

Mister Moon Looking In The Window 5.16.2003 Love Releationships; Circling Round Nature; Arlene Corwin

Mother In-law

Has it been twenty-four Daughter in-law years? She was plump then— Face a rosy, Swedish skin. Always prone to valleyed hills, One of the first to lean on pills, She raised her four. The best of mothers: Giving and uncritical. Ninety-three. One holds back tears As time/space feeling disappears— When time and home and neighborhood, Recounting conversations, mood Was always of the essence. Twenty-four short years before Her plumpness ran across the streets, up stairs, Saw nature’s beauty everywhere,

Bleached, washed and cleaned each corner… One is left a mourner, Mourning, like Siddhartha For the rounds of life.

Mother In-law 4.10.2007 Love Relationships; Special People Special Occasions; Birth, Death & In Between; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

My Three Loves: Silly Reflections Of A Serious Mind

Three loves: one human, two machines. Two nameless helpmates And one named. (I’m so ashamed. I hope that in a pinch I do which is which). My dear who breathes but isn’t here To see these words, I do so love you. Feel secure. You’re number one. But number two These days, sits here Before my eyes, Upon my thighs, Relation intimate. Number three: Entirety in music, With its limitation only me, Sits waiting, to be turned on

When I’m hot. My keyboard and my laptop are not You, But they’ve become my heart, A part Of art, A channel for the good and true, Reflecting phases in the ways-es Human beings cannot do. (Just so You know That you’re not forsaken.)

My Three Loves… 7.15.2007 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Circling Round Computers; Vaguely About Music; Arlene Corwin

New Start

To lie in bed with a new man, Brand new lover who, in sleep Locks arms around me rather than Maroon me from his deepest wants; A grand new man whom I adore, And orchestrating feeling for The time with you (which time you blew), Un-cowed, I think now How I teetered on breath’s brink And begged to stay, and how you brayed “I love you too, but feelings fray, So go!” How like flawed clay, I cracked, and packed in disbelief, To leave shocked, shabby, shamed in grief.

These days I know it was for best, Now, as I rest with a new man; With my new man, each one undressed,

Each one the other’s ‘also ran’. I press my body in his And lapse into unconsciousness.

New Start 7.1962 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

New Year Morning 2000

Why is it that I’m still surprised, Still warmed and roused When, like a prince, he lies beside Me, He still potent, I, infused With something like a smile erotic On my lips both up and down, The crown of love Still there?

New Year Morning 1.1.2000 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

No Words

No words can describe what I feel for you, For words are but symbols that say and cannot do. No sounds can describe what occurs when you are near; For sound merely draws all attention to the ear. Just eyes embracing are enough: We kiss with our minds, Thought intertwines, This is the stuff of which dreams are. No words can re-kindle the light that warms the sum; For words only stop our souls from becoming one. And now we’ll say no more, for no more need be said. The road to love is straight ahead.

No Words 1954 or 1956 Love Relationships; Lyrics; Arlene Corwin

Not-A-Poem To You, My Dear

There’ll be no birthday poem this year, No tired verse you’re forced to hear, No birthday gifting, No uplifting party, Guest or seemly gesture. We’ll share lunch— My hunch I is that you’ll choose Chinese. Well now, you’re sixty-one; No named disease, no cavities, Two youthful testes, Unforced feces— Who could ask for more? Three hundred sixty four More days till you reach sixty-two. Amazing! You can talk about retiring. How inspiring!

This year will go fruitfully. You’ve got the love of colleagues, me. Good grief, this poem is lost from sight. You’re sixty-three. Not yet retired, but freer Than you were when I set out to write In February ninety-nine, And it’s two thousand one— And not your birthday. Happy lifeday anyway, Kent mine.

Not-A-Poem-To-You, My Dear 2.11.2001 Special People Special Occasions (K); Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Not Often Dear, But When

“Was it good?” he asked. A second source of sweet orgasm And a way to share. “A real explosion! Wonderful! Wonderful!” She basked. No eloquence, but basic words. They are, in after-moments. During-time is concentrated, Silent, focused, permeated… Inundated. Who can utter words of bliss While love is going on? The kiss, The gasp, the sigh do what they can, But can he ever know for sure? Asking makes the time secure. And so, to nail the point she knows He’ll really understand, she says, “Not often dear, but when, but when…

Not often dear, but when… !”

Not Often Dear, But When 5.1.2001 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Not On The Same Wavelength

To the couples of the world: We seldom share a wavelength. Don’t be miffed, Frustrated if Your insight, Downright Revelation Come from God’s own tongue through you, Is seldom shared or understood; No matter how profound and good, Hardly ever, Mostly never Do we share one wavelength: From the way a food should taste, Chair be placed, Word be used, What’s amusing. Duet groundwork for the future,

Cast your bread upon the water, Seeing what comes out.

Not On The Same Wavelength 1.30.1998/revised.7.29.2005 Definitely Didactic; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

One Evening In June

One moon, croon, tune Even-ing In June Is we that never was. We, A festival of feelings, Celebration of the pagan. Venus high, Comfortable with one another, On our backs, The insecurities relaxed, Relieved in rest, Our recreation our vacation. One June moon sphinx Benign, An atmospheric secret box Holding our futures.

One Evening In June 6.28.2008 Circling Round Eros; I Is Always You Is We; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Our Sex Life Is Changing

Our sex life is changing— But not for the worse. Seventy. Ageing. The first time it’s happened: Not coming but comfortable Communication— Perfect. You need the sense not to knock yourself out. Noticing not interfering Doesn’t touch touching, Whispers, declaring, ionate, intimate Eros approved. Our sex life if changing In tune with the ripening Gradual growth.

Our Sex Life Is Changing 11.3.2005

Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Woman; Circling Round Eros; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Time; Arlene Corwin

Out There #1

While not the most original And talented the world has ever seen, There must, however, live serene Someone out there Who thinks I’m queen, All dipthong clean: My moans, groans Consonant pristine, Cacuminal— A seminal praline.

Out There 02.3.28.2002(see 2004) Love Relationships; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Corwin

Out There #2

Out there, someone Reads your writing, Hears your song; Understands, Attracted and in sympathy; Someone out there: Never all. Someone on your wavelength— Who has depth; your kind, Your shade of mind, Your mental colors; There, a cover for each pot; There the few to love you: So don’t care if planet’s not Your Camelot. You only need the few.

Out There 1.30.2004 (see 2002)

Love Relationships; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Corwin

ing Thoughts Of A Bridesmaid Come From A Wedding

She looked so charmingly blushéd and Everything and every way a bride should Look. He, strong and comforting. Everything and every way a groom could Look without seeming quite as if He wasn’t sure it was really worth stiff Collar, tie and hat, “Dahling, you look…” chat. Reception was, to say the least, A success, and the feast One of succulence. Bride Danced with all of the gifting guests. Groom tried his best to hide From nests of guests Which kept bride at bay—bride away. So, With the party de-parted Without delay, Couple exchanged a glance. Started

Off. Oh, what a day! What to do with that bouquet Of roses? It’s ten P.M. now. He and she must be… nineteen years old. I should probably… but there’s the sorrow? Perhaps not, but… this bed is cold.

ing Thoughts Of A Bridesmaid Come From A Wedding 3.1954 rev 8.12.2007 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Special People Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

Putting Flowers On A Grave

Sister in-law, Putting flowers on a grave; Celebrating anniversaries departed, Giving meaning’s fullness To a life She hasn’t found inside. I used to not Give credence to what I considered lack of Freedom. Now, Today, I give my heart to Sister in-law whose bond is tied To putting flowers On a grave.

Putting Flowers On A Grave 11.27.2007 Love Relationships; Birth, Death & In Between; Our Times, Our Culture; Revelations Big & Small;

Arlene Corwin

Reflections On A Solitary Mother

Everyone has a self to go into. Why make a thing of being alone? Why feel such pities for those that grow old If inside is gold: Abandonment’s gold, Living concealed a wellspring un-sensed. A treasure, pleasure black-holed independence.

Everyone has a self to go into. Self is a space, the space-ship and crew Using the thing we call time as a frame, Using a body that self has to tame, Using the mind that gives every self name: Everyone’s self an Olympiad flame.

A self to go into: People distract. Gossiping comfort, crying the blues,

Seeing the family and reading the news. The telephone company there to pretend Most unsuccessfully, it’s your best friend.

Everyone has a self to go into: Self the best friend, end and kin. Joy in that lobby, Self the self’s hobby. The longer the sojourn, the more time goes by— Quality time, not pie-in-the-sky; Conditioning time; true cosmic college; Actively living, enforcing real knowledge. Self is the company everyone misses.

It’s easy to feel abandoned in kisses. Alone in a crowd… they dwell in apartments, In every big city’s island compartments Without ever getting the feeling of staying inside, Where the staying and praying and saying Become an emulsion of patience And love— Where comfort is what days consist of: The self they go into.

Reflections On A Solitary Mother 8.17.1992

Love Relationships; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Re-inspired

A stagnant pen, Vacant paper. Quiet hand, then I : Ha! Your birthday; Ah, your birthday! One plus seventy! Lunch, Then town, A walk around. Not much change, But new each morning, As it should be. We’ll eat lunch With more discrimination. Munch by munch, Crunch by crunch A cool familiarity.

We’ll celebrate. One and seventy: A number only.

Re-inspired 2.6.2009 Birthday Book; Love Relationships; Birth, Death & In Between; Numbers Book Arlene Corwin

ing Mothers and Others

As I move through space In the smallest units of my clock, There’s you and me, I and Thou— Nothing more. And all the blocks Of thoughts of those I’ve loved and known, Remembrances I’ve thrown out onto heaven’s dome Are simply wishes in disguise: Illusions yearning for a home. So how, you ask, to reconcile The need for , instinct-thought, The sense that they are near, When in your faithful but perceptive heart There’s only you here, Reconciling distance you can never close With different shades of missing? One would hope that all the lives With whom you ever came together Will resolve themselves in weather

Somewhere, void of reminiscing, But still kissing-close.

ing Mothers & Others 1.12.2004/11.12.2002 Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; Special People Special Occasions; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Respect Utmost

We never ask each other What and how we’re praying— But we’re praying: both of us. Meditating, praying— Call it what you will; Each in our heads, Alone in beds One wall apart We pray. We love, like it that way. I think it’s splendid.

Respect Utmost 1.27.2007 Love Relationships; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Corwin

Revised View Of My Parents

A shorthand that I understand, Essential for my peace of mind: No more at war with mother’s dark, illogic mind, No more preferring daddy’s kind But weak, artistic presence, pleasantries. Now, today, with daddy clearly On his way, and mother nearly mad with sadness, Locked in bed and impotent to run and help, She eighty-four, he eighty-seven—at death’s door, Three thousand miles away, derangement his finale. Now that I know Arlene a bit, The strengths and tendencies that show, And some that don’t, I wish to forfeit All the old complaints and sufferings, Replacing them with grateful yea’s For useful gifts and graceful traits, (The freebees that I took for granted Or assumed were shaped by ways

Of don’t know what.)

I know now never could have been If mother had not been exactly Who she was, and dad the same— And that does not include my name. View revised, not over-, undersized, I’ve re-evaluated mom and dad. It’s time now to apologize For thoughts unkind: thoughts just plain bad, Too analytical and double bound— A blind unquestioning and double-binding paradox That locks the brain into the box in which it runs around; To reach the point where one no longer Alternates between the ive and aggressive To feel briefly stronger… Gone to error’s happy land, left free of frenzied cleft. Since the honeycomb of home is love, And all roads lead to Rome, It is love’s inauguration that has changed my view. My children, will you need that too? I do expect you will.

Revised View Of My Parents 8.27.1996 revised 4.6.2007 Love Relationships; Mother Book; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

Rock Star, Star Rock

My husband sits and waits; He lies and waits; he waits. A kidney stone is on its way, The doctors say. They mean well, and that’s something. Sixth day in the sack— Nice morphine when his back Becomes unbearable. (There are some compensations). Its not come. The newest plan is “Bomb it out!” Six days of waiting. We can estimate The universe’s age, fly to the moon, ’round asteroids, Examine, analyze… from space. Meanwhile, my husband waits. They don’t know what it’s made of, Or its shape.

(The camera’s not that accurate). They speculate. The can go in and operate. It’s just a mess, this mystery. Why can’t they magically Come up with a dissolvent that you swallow. As it es through, The stone gives up the its place To, well, to space! I want my rock star back.

Rock Star, Star Rock 4.19.2006 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Circling Round Nature; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Route 66

It’s getting harder with each year… What? The day to day? Romance’s bouquet? Taking in the drives that steer? Inspiring and creative urge? No, just harder to find words That don’t sound hackneyed. For the years, your looks Are better than, And better than… And don’t stop growing better than… And I’ve grown shy for fear Of sounding insincere. Happy Birthday, handsome!

Route 66 2.7.2004 Love Relationships, Special People Special Occasions (K) Arlene Corwin

Rows of Nows

He had a woman— Had a gem. Didn’t know the secret code Of love’s esteem, And so she left.

It is the chain That follows Which [results] show Futures right or wrong: An old, old song.

Hindsight is a key But not the Only. Wisdom Lets you in on Codes beforehand.

Rows of Nows 7.20.2007 Love Relationships; Nature Of & In Reality; Arlene Corwin

Secret Pride

There is the sin of secret pride— My husband has it, never saying “Sorry”. When he’s goofed or done a wrong; He sings his middle ‘Svensson’ song, “It’s over, isn’t it?” Ho hum. He never throws a crumb That says, “I’m sorry, that was dumb Or silly… words to that effect. I don’t want him to genuflect, But yielding built on self-respect Is brave and morally correct. Defending what you’ve done With stock clichés you learned When you were young Is lack of love, an intellect Prepared for introspection. My sin is that I’m furious. It’s so unjust,—the timeworn phrases

Walking words around in mazes. Where does secret pride reside, The fear of saying “oops”? It’s cowardly to answer back with slick retorts. It is a lack of self-effacement: Is, in fact a dark attack. One small sorry as replacement, Might replace my urge to pack.

Secret Pride 10.18.1997 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Seen / Unseen

Whom do I speak to, Speak for? All the others Chatter, Gather round and up Their children while I watch and feel— A little envious that mine May lose, Yet sure that it is not for me, this Sea of conflicts I observe, Sure-certain that with motive pure, The action will leave love And lovely Treasures in its wake.

Seen/Unseen 10.27.2003 Love Relationships

Arlene Corwin

Separate Bedrooms

Let me start by saying We have separate bedrooms: Lazy, comfortable and freeing Creativity and Eros. Like the hero-knight he is, he knocks, Creeps in to sleeping body For good morning or good night, Sootis slipping in between us: Cat-us interrupt-us. Separate rooms where I can be a vamp, Leave on the lamp, A program—radio, TV; Hang my leg out off the side, And should I find my eyes are wide And time is three, drink tea On puffed up pillows. He, the knight, can snore or fart, Play Tatum to his Tatum heart,

Peruse his view of lawn on lake, while I Have view of wood and sky. Concert hall or library, Tantra’s cloistered gateway, Let me end by saying We’re apart collectively. It works for him, and as you see, For me.

Separate Bedrooms 11.15.2006 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Serendipity

Last hour of The last night of A month-long gig in distant Sweden; You walk in and listen, focused. You’re not flirting, gambling, smoking— You just like the songs and jazz. In the break I take your number. To this day I don’t know why. In my slumber took your number; Night I thought my lullaby. Four months into late December Agent rings ’cause someone’s cancelled— Someone’s hassled, sick or dead. Toting number back to Sweden— Foreign climate, foreign tongue, Knowing somewhere song’s unsung Telephone the focused one. Forty-nine, and starting over—

Arlene Corwin neé Faith Nover, Dipped in serendipity: Love’s ship, friendship funny, sexy Twenty-three years later Still.

Serendipity 12.18.2006 Love Relationships; Birthday Book; Swedish Book; Arlene Corwin

Shining Together #2

They read to each other: The weather cues; music reviews; They talk about distorted news, Corruption, power; Hour by hour ‘together’: Birds will flock if they’re one feather.

That said, when there is bias, Sounding pious, Stores of stories, Youth-days’ glories, Traffic fury, potpourri Of family fetes Where the same member dominates, Starts fights or cries— Then rubbing feet watching TV, Each at one end of the settee Mollifies

The day that’s been a long one.

Shining Together 10.11.1996 re-written 12.11.2004

Shining Together #1

They read to each other: The weather report, the music reviews; They talk about how ‘they’ distort, Lie and smother the news; Corruption and power— And hour by hour They shine together: Because birds of a feather Can flock—if they’re cool, Drawing back when there’s bias, When either sounds pious, When one starts to pule The thing is to laugh, joke or tease— To lighten the air and put loved one at ease. A quiet solution, A quiet ablution. For best become the worst of friends If lightness ends.

That said, together is no tether— More a test and/or reward. If you can weather Jokes, old stories, youth-days’ glories Now seraphic, Rage in traffic, Family fetes, Shine permeates. While sharing the sofa watching TV, Legs up in harmony, He rubbing her feet and her rubbing his: Complete. The treatise.

Shining Together #1 10.11.1996 (original version) Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Sister In-Law

Caretaker her quality: Mother ninety-three, grand-daughter three, Two sons and husband, ailing aunt now gone And on and on. I don’t know two like that: born To wash an aging skin, Break in baby to existence; What comes out at either end— There’s no repulsion, care her essence. There to do whatever… What is needed, when it’s needed, Feeding tired souls and bodies. I’m inspired. She, all simple goodness, And I’m lucky to be witness.

Sister In-Law.4.10.2007 Special People Special Occasions; Love Relationships;

Mother Book; Swedish Book; Arlene Corwin

Sister In-Law II

Her kittens wrestling, Sister in-law on the steps, Watching With the gratitude For simple things She is endowed with.

Sister In-Law 8.13.2008 Cat Book; Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

Svägerskan II

Hennes kattungar leker Svägerskan på farstu kvist, Ser med glädje De små tingen Hon känner för.

Translated into Swedish by Kent Anderson

Somebody’s Second Husband

Ssh, it’s secret—something between you and who. A second husband’s died. The obit does not talk about the man she knew, The archetypal macho who, When they were out walked steps ahead So that she never could catch up with him. Writing style eloquent, script feminine, Expressing what he never said (or could not say): He’s gone away. He’s dead.

He told her once he wanted freedom— Freedom to live out libido. Would she leave (he’d kicked her out). She did. He’s died. You’d think she’d gloat. She doesn’t. When he’d ‘freed . . .’ enough, he pleaded, “Marry me! Come back”. She did.

Except for bed—his tender side of macho-.ness, She never felt a tenderness: He did love dogs. His weakness. Well,

She left one morn. He carried on libidinously filming porn. It’s forty-eight years late and later. What to say? He’s ed away. Obituary? He, the revolutionary, Went right wing, (ing Bush.) Bizarre! A pillar of his town, He’s gone beyond. God’s waves His magic wand, And though she doesn’t, God knows where.

Somebody’s Second Husband 9.18 2010 Circling Round Eros; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Birth, Death & In Between; Arlene Corwin

Something I Must Say, My Friend

There’s something I must say, my friend. To help keep pain at bay, my friend. Specific issues, such as: You are fifty two, He eighteen years your junior. You with temper that keeps sending him away Each second day, And he still coming ’round and begging Your forgiveness, yet not giving Up the woman he resides with, egging On still further tantrums, sorrows.

Wild love on bed and floor, Which only makes you want him more, Binds you both, intense orgasms Notwithstanding, giant chasms Isolating, Love a box of tissues:

Fragile, separate and frail. What stale tomorrows lie in store?

Specific issues: Universal scope and belly. So I’m dressing them in hope, Undressing and addressing problems In the name of sexes all, Yours not a small And airy-fairy love affair.

The particular Directs the universal.

Love shared, extra-curricular, his need; Her needs: the patterns set before.

Don’t take offense, Here is a chance To make you think again— Help inward—turn towards god-knows—when To lead acumen to the surface.

Something I Must Say, My Friend 3.26.1997 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Somewhere In Your Prideful Life

Somewhere in your life you learned The best defense is offense: Cut and thrust, false humor, an aggressive speed. Somewhere in your life you said, Nobody will attack my choices. No attack without my mocking, Slamming back. Protect-by-disrespect, A bullet mouth, And yet I know you are afraid.

Somewhere In Your Prideful Life 8.17.2006 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Spring Tipsy

It’s not me—it’s my husband. He’s the one, who notices, Breathes in, reacts. I sit on the verandah, slow, Relaxing to the radio. Energized to ‘max’ he’s scorched the grass, Set boat in lake, screamed “Look the geese!” Beyond himself, in tipsy bliss Rowed out a bit, come back and started something else. I guess he’s raked the un-scorched bit. I rise from verandah couch, make lunch Which [lunch] I balance on a tray, Bearing it the steep way down, where Mesmerized by something there, Stock-still as in a trance, he stands. Then activated once again: inspired, infused He’s trance-ferred three small junipers To take the place of firs blown down.

Since nightfall’s late—now April’s come— He’s stayed outside till eight, Ecstatic and creative. When he finally comes in, I am upstairs at the computer, So much cuter when the champagne he’s brought up to me With “Cheers to spring’s phenomenon!” Then we became spring tipsy.

Spring Tipsy.4.1.2007 Circling Round Nature; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Subsidizing It

Pet you get Is born and dies. He is wise Who buys another; Helps to keep the life that is; Re-directs the mourning biz By subsidizing It.

Subsidizing It 11.4.2003 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Birth, Death & InBetween II; Arlene Corwin

Suffering For Society

Jesus did it. So do I. He did it better, his a calling, Mine still craft. On re-perusing my old stuff, Full-hearted tries, The well-worked draft, That comes from cries Of suffering societies—the words seems weightless. Strong and tough, a pepp’ry snuff Is what I mean When piercing problems that I glean From what I see and read and hear, Recording insights that may come, Donating tear, Plumbing for nuance, chasing crumb Of sister feeling, brother pain, And suffering the suffering For all and Cain:

I am my brother’s keeper (Although weak and tainted,) Classifying, Counter spying— Just not all the time. For if I lived each crime I’d not do any good, for There are those who suffer better. My lot Is to suffer through the letter, And in that sense question not— Like Jesus.

Suffering For Society 4.30.2002 Our Times, Our Culture; Love Relationships: Arlene Corwin

Sven Wollter Gets Sick

A man I hardly know is sick— Cancer in the stomach. I heard about it on TV; It was a shock, I don’t know why. I hardly know this famous guy. I wrote a note in sympathy; Composed it almost instantly, But didn’t send it. Did I think a note could end it? Does one play the fan or sage? I only met in once: backstage. The deepest wishes, words of strength; I wrote them down, the length Of three short paragraphs; And even then was forced to shorten, cut and slash, Erase all hint of brash instruction Jumbled up in sympathy:

For that is my flawed tendency. The line between the sycophant— The slimy, slippery, fawning—and The genuine potential friend, Hard to walk. I balk At sending my small note. Perhaps I will, perhaps I won’t. It’s still not clear how undemanding Words of cheer should be— And can one tell what is a helping hand And not? No matter what I think or will, Perhaps it’s better I keep still: Not friend, not nurse, The thoughts the ‘oughts’ Serve best when justified as verse.

Sven Wolllter Gets Sick 1.28.1998 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

Taking Care Of Mother

See it as a phase. See it as ‘this too shall ’, Duration not an always… See it as a ing whose appearance Is a going on while standing still, With feelings sandwiched in between. See the phone call in the night When dream holds tight in culmination, As an early morning outing, Where you have to feed the kids and dog, And get away; A little bit of robot With your points of view, emotions too, Tucked tidily inside your shoebox. Taking care of mother days Is action not on your behalf, but hers.

Taking Care Of Mother 1.8.2007

Love Relationships; Mother Book; Birth, Death & In Between; Arlene Corwin

Testosterone

A man needs a woman for the mornings. We know, of course, His stallion horse Can raise itself whenever… Mornings, though, A ticklish time. A fickle time; A feckless, fecund, febrile time Of need and greed and seed. Mornings; Woman; Sleepy, Deeply elsewhere, Yet for love of man entire Senses, lets arousal’s glow Let body flow In sympathetic sensuality Declared then shared,

Then over. Time for breakfast.

Testosterone 7.24.1999 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

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 ion, 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 it, how complicated, deep, Intense it was, they were—what type

Of ing you perceived. It’s not A reminiscence I enjoy. Hot! To conjure up a word To measure love’s disturbing, stirredUp 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 2.12.1996 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

The Beauty’s Gone

(A mature schlager)*

The beauty’s gone, The clothes kept on, The bellybutton housed discreetly. Is the loving any less? Heat is there. The beat is there. Why make love exclusive? Pop and rock’s “I want you baby” Is a baby when compared To dancing gracefully in bed. No false gyrating ego-ride To flaunt a body full of pride. The beauty may be lined and wan, But love and sex live on.

The Beauty’s Gone (a mature schlager) 6.10.2004

Vaguely About Music (lyric);Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

*a schlager is a popular song hit (Swedish; probably German in origin)

The Child Mystic

How honored I was to hear you say I love you, in your secret way; And though I sense a birthright, I can’t help but think it might Be vanity, Illusory. Here I sit, a silenced servant, Filled with energy more fervent Than all energy I’ve known— At a moment’s glance Prepared to dance your way And stay with you forever. Here I sit, the whiff of you Still fragrant in my nostrils. But I’m cowardly And do not plunge into your net, Waiting for I-know-not-what To push me toward you.

Do I still fear worldly things, Whose substance has ho substance? Here I sit composed—not ready, Burning with a love so steady That I, wick and wax, one day May simply senseless burn away.

To The Child Mystic 1961/2004 Love Relationships; To The child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

The Crystal Room

(A) We were lovers, And as lovers live, We lived as lovers In a crystal room. Like the room we shone With a brilliance like the sun, And we blinded everyone Who dared approach. (B)Yes, lovers and as lovers give, We gave as lovers in our bridal womb; Without questioning, Or challenging or doubt, Without turning feelings inside out. (C) Our crystal room was just like us: Exquisite, fragile, Turning light this way, So that light could look like day. (D)Lovers in a crystal room,

Too precious and too easily shattered— Out of reach, we were as scattered As the sand, With no one to believe the beach Was once a room of crystal Housing lovers.

The Crystal Room 1961 new: part B. 4.15.1996 music: Kent Anderson 1988 Lyrics; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Finger Moves (a little erotic poem)

The finger moves from side to side. The finger knows it wants to hide. The finger knows itself the bride. The finger moves from side to side. The finger moves inside the thigh. The finger moves from low to high. The mouth it makes a little cry. The finger moves from side to side It uses instinct as its guide. The finger knows it has no pride. The finger moves from side to side. It doesn’t think. It isn’t wise. It’s just a link and never lies. It keeps away from prying eyes. It holds itself to its own sighs. With just a hint of slide and glide, The finger moves from side to side. The finger is without pretence.

It shies away from opulence. It doesn’t tense, It has no sense. Its essence Is the very soul of innocence.

The Finger Moves 5.5.1993 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

The Great Kitchen Roll

I have no weapons; He argues by attack and joke. My only hope is history— That someday it may mock him And his name go down in infamy. That could be my victory! (But I’ll be dead. Oh, shit!)

I cannot argue mathematics, Simple sums. It is so clear: The roll each day, the saturated wads Thrown ’way; the garbage which we pay for By the gram. I figure they add up to yearly: (Mmm, let’s see,) A piece of jewelry for me, Ten lunches out, six CD’s, seven tanks of fuel— And a partridge in a pear tree.

I say “Neurosis.” He says “You’re neurotic. I just want a little bit of cleanliness!” I mention sponge. Silence. “Is it germs? I ask. “I cook the sponges.” Silence. No attack, he turns his back. Goes on to something new.

I have to get some kind of closure. Essays into open talk Have failed. I get a stomachache. Am I being witchy, bitchy? Last night was a sleeping pill. I seldom take a sleeping pill. By one, I understood that nothing could be done. I needed sleep. I must confess I didn’t give renunciation Real effort. I’ll do that when body’s not at war with mind.

Dear reader, Do you have a mate who uses too much paper? I don’t care which room (though wet is worse than dry). Write to me at [email protected] Before too many years go by, I die, And forced to lean on karma’s law Don’t get no satisfaction.

The Great Kitchen Roll 5.14.2006 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The -ish Of The Jewish

I like being Jewish. I wear my star No matter where you are— You Who May not like the Jews— It doesn’t matter. I can’t claim to be a good one, Don’t know Yiddish, Don’t say Kaddish I just like to be one. I am kind-ish; Don’t keep kosher, Go to temple, Don’t know Hebrew, But the God that said That He is One, That He is what He is

Is mine.

Jewish is knish And all the qualifying endings -ish, Seeing every side; An ‘on the other hand’ approach. Just because there are so few, A mine of rarity: I’m Jew-ish And glad of it.

The -ish Of Being Jewish 6.13.2008 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Defiant Doggerel; Arlene Corwin

The Kind Called You And Me

We need company: The kind called ‘between you and me’. Even privacy has need of company, For company is in the mind Which needs to feel it’s not alone, Not abandoned, has . There’s the rub. The body bathes, scrubs out the tub, Walks out the door, then seeks its sort, For, by itself, mostly alone, Friends to phone, bad TV Phony ends and therapy— And vetoing the voice within Ignores its twin—the voice clandestine Which, if real Is much too splendid to be true, Rewarding docile discipline By listening and quietening,

And shutting down and off the fear— By educating ear to listen, Learning to hear company That is most near, with “This is not illusion.” While your innards crave inclusion.

Yes, it is company we need— Composed of you and me Without which we just wish and yearn. Most of the day is unattended, Solitary, unassisted, on our own and un-befriended. Anyone awake and honest knows the beast. It’s just to always, always think, (Thinking words or wordlessly) Chatting up an unseen power, Waiting for the thing to flower, “This moment’s between you and me.”

Yes, we need company: The kind called you and me. For company is in the mind Which needs to feel it’s not abandoned. On our own, alone, we look for Friends to phone, phony ends, Therapy and blowing winds. And vetoing the voice within Reject the voice clandestine Which is too splendid to be true. Shutting down the fear, To hear what is most near Is company: You and me. Truth to say, Most hours in the day are unattended, On our own and un-befriended. But here’s the neat reality: Chatting up an unseen power, Waiting for a thing to flower— Will always be a you and me.

The Kind Called You And Me 9.26.1998/2.7.2013 I Is Always You Is We; Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic II; Arlene Corwin

The Leaver & Leftee

Mixing tenses: now is then. Important that you know my age, For sorriness comes with the stage: Sorriness is not a sorrow. Seventy is not contrition, sackcloth, ash. It’s something else. If I felt I had to leave, With all the faults and drives I have, I’d leave. When I felt that I had to leave, With all the faults and drives I had, I left. Lust might have been key’s ignition, But behind that, disappointment— ive and reactive. Not attrition, Hell’s perdition Any sort of hindrance.

Were they there, Still I would run. If, say IF I could have been A kinder person— Candid, stronger, Tarrying just that bit longer, Lingered, putting up with being Stung… But I was young. I’m older now, And I know how.

The Leaver & Leftee 3.8.2006 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Leisure of Chastity

After you’ve touched all the body parts, Tasted their saltiness, Mastered anatomy Used up each fantasy, Had all the orgasms— What’s left is the sweatiness, Effort exhausting, The way long and drawn To the chamber group’s climax. And if you are prone to the knee jerk Reflex of fixations that grow From the practice of pleasure, You spend all your days Never reaching the leisure Of chastity.

The Leisure of Chastity 6.16.2006 I Is Always You Is We; Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros II;

Arlene Corwin

The Longest Lasting Apology

What I think about you Is reflection, Not your portrait. What I say to you Is a collection of myself Disguised as someone you. So, don’t feel hurt, Insulted, Disrespected, Un-esteemed. It is the I That’s hurt, That’s un-adult, That feels defective, Who screams out Streams of steam That’s not the least To do with you.

The Longest Lasting Apology 3.8.2002 Love Relationships; I Is Aways You Is We; Arlene Corwin

The Marital ‘We’

He’s kind to me: When people are around, or even When we are alone, he says, “When we’ve done this”, “When we did that “, Referring to a room he single-handedly built up, A forest he took down, A garden he created, Beams he sawed. Because we’re married In the best sense of the word, Dismissing ‘I’, he uses ‘we’. And when I ask for the absurd— A special thing, a guarantee, Saying to him, “Let’s paint the kitchen, Change the garden, let’s Extend just one more room… More windows… dig a pond…” as if

I were the laborer, he’s neighborly, Welcoming syntax like the friend he is. Of course, he sometimes takes a stand: Tonto riding off the plain— “What do you mean by ‘we’ white man? And then I’m lost for words, The cost of answering too high.

There really is no ‘we’, Just him and me. There can be one ‘we’ bit too much That loses touch with the semantic— ‘We’ a flawed device. But when the two of us are one—in moments Of non-conscious harmony— (Though they are rare), There’s no ‘me’ there— Just some ineffable two-onement.

The Marital We 9.1.6.1996 Love Relationships; I Is Always You Is We;

Arlene Corwin

The Mate

What now will move this slow-grow-flow In this my fourth decade? A mate. I should have found him years ago, Three mates ago, dozens to date. I found my God, the real McCoy. It’s twenty years since that occurred. The mystic child who knew no joy Has grown from loyal child to birdOf-paradise who knows no-death. Yet still I seek my br-other half; The student, teacher, lover half; A confidante whose calming breath Completes my peace; Whose soul, whose goal, Whose way discreetly makes me new. Is this a surreptitious mole Made up to seek the One through two? Old lust disguised as saintliness?

There are those who make me think so. There are times it must be true. Yes, Sex-the-subtle often fools. No, Now I seek the final man With whom to share the now freed self Without conflict. The finest hand Plays, loves, serves best with its like half.

The Mate 2.3.1981 Pure Nakedness; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Mating Frogs

Well, it’s April. And a Brooklyn girl Along her Swedish country road, Swedish husband at her side, she Still naïve and uninformed, Sees/doesn’t see the camouflaged Small gray-brown speckled frog guy Spackled on a gray-brown lady And humungous frog! (They’re in the way. The garbage truck may come today) So nudging these two pre-historic Monsters (I beg Kent to leave them be. They’re having sex. If that were me I’d be in shock. For God’s sake, it’s their yearly fuck, So stop it Kent!) But they don’t give a fig.

A fuck, a fig—the bottom lady frog humungous, Bumping, lunking, schlepping, hopping off— Is off the road, off into wood, Off towards the lake Still glued and much in love.

The Mating Frogs 4.24.2006 Circling Round Nature; Love Relationships; On The Way To The Post; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

The Morning Screw

The morning screw, Like morning dew, Wet and fresh; A rainbow jewel And fuel for two.

The Morning Screw 11.29.1995 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Morgon Kärlek

Morgon kärlek Som morgon dagg, Fuktig och ren; En juvel av regnbåge Och näring för två.

Översättning Kent Anderson

The Nature Of Labor (Is Invisible)

I left the house at half past ten. The morning sun was out again. The rain had stopped. I stood entranced. With plastic bucket hanging from My left wrist, glasses, jogging pants, I danced along to gather some Remaining berries. Half past twelve Returned with half a bucket filled. Mind you, only half was filled! I’d stooped and squatted, bent and delved; I’d climbed and walked and almost spilled… I’d strained and stained my fingers blue— The jogging pants were stained blue too. Home again to rake the leaves. Well, not exactly—take the leaves Out of the berry bucket and the spiders Climbing up it. Half a bucket Fits a pie. I filled a crust:

Two hours worth of berries plucked. Tired and hot and bored I thrust The three hour effort in its place, Baked the pie, its crust, its pulp Till crispy. Then the race Gourmand: family ate it in one gulp. “Thank you” said the kids, and ran. “Thank you, darling” said my man. Day was over. Night began.

The Nature Of Labor 9.3.1994 Circling Round Nature; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Nicer Sides Of Being Ignored

He doesn’t see I’ve cut my hair A little or a lot. That’s good! Doesn’t see I’ve changed mascara. That’s exactly as it should be After thirteen years—the married kind: Years diffuse and years refined. Years you get a bit ‘home blind’. That’s good! I say, ‘Knock wood!’ It’s freedom to go read Without the weight of feeling needed. Films depicting torrid love, Find ignore-ance a horrid love. Listen, it is bliss Not to be noticed, seen or missed. He doesn’t notice my new lines— Or if he does, he doesn’t say. And I am sensitive to signs

Of unrequited love-gone-gray, And they’re not there. I feel adored. It’s perfect to be so ignored.

The Nicer Sides Of Being Ignored 3.8.1997 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Circling Round Vanities; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Corwin

The No. 1 Question

Where are you Jim? You died at two this afternoon While I was making lunch. The operation was successful But the patient died. An old cliché we laugh at— But you did.

Where are you? Throughout the day I thought about you on and off, You lying there Not there & unaware— In care intensive.

I thought about you through the day, Not entertaining possibilities. (Well, I did)—and still

I cannot fathom yet The It of ing. And away, What does it mean, ‘to away’?

Confounding and bewildering this Disappearance, for What is it but a magic act? A permanent invisibility; Departure planetary.

You’ll be cremated. In a sense annihilated, but Where are you anyway?

The No. 1 Question 1.16,2010 Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Pair

They modify each other, He her, she him. Glowingly, they function. She, the active one, He a little lazy (which is what he told me) He restrains, she nudges; Share the reins of action. Soft demands while holding hands. She relaxed, He takes the pick and axe and digs. They’re gardening gardenia love.

My husband says, correcting me, “It seems to work”. I say, “It’s working. I can see. My senses tell me That the tender, friction-free two people

Having lunch, are happy, He, setting his seal of calm, She, reshaping, forming him. I’m willing to risk all I have The pair will weather time.

The Pair 6.18.2010 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; (E&Å); Arlene Corwin

The Point Being…

Love long sought; A resting place; Excitement too; And funny faces.

Quarter of A century, An anniversary And never bored, Never tempted To look elsewhere.

Coming home—coming together: Song A unifying; Symphony of sympathy: Dawn.

The whole point being: love Long sought, Fought for And found.

The Point Being… 8.28.2008 Love Relationships; Time; Special People, Special Occasions; Birthday Book;

The Quality Of Mercy #1

The quality of mercy is equal to The acts we do Commensurate with choices. Mercy’s grace in unseen cloisters’ Source somewhere in God. The quality of mercy is: It could have been worse, The worst curse Still worse! The moment gives—abysmal/dismal— Of its best and softest; Lenity in health’s dis-ease Searching files the mildest possibilities Itself can seize Unto the death.

The Quality Of Mercy #2

The quality of mercy is equal to The acts we do; Commensurate with choices Because mercy’s grace is always In the unseen cloisters, Source somewhere in God. The quality of mercy means: It could have been worse; The worst curse Could have been worse: A quality indulgent.

The Quality Of Mercy. 5.2.1995 revised 12.30.2006 by accident Nature Of & In Reality; Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; Arlene Corwin

The Quarrel

Kind impulses, unkept promises. Which is worse? It’s like a curse upon the hearer. He can’t say I’m sorry. He lets it fade away. He can’t break through his pride-built wall. Kind impulses, that’s all. And me? Do I just crawl?

No triumph, and no one can win If neither partner’s giving in. What does it mean to turn your cheek And voluntarily be weak? Shut one’s mouth when one would shriek?

The meek shall cream the top off life, While what one really want’s a knife;

And worse, when fight Goes on inside the gut Killing T cells and your future! If one could but suture Rage to calm and fire denying…

I may be tired and hesitant, But trying. (Does it show?)

The Quarrel 1.3.1995 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Question Of Two

If you my love are meant to be My husband for eternity, Weeds must suffer love as it Applauds up ive/silently. For silently it does await; Love would not push the hand of fate. It waits in loving consciousness For consciousness does give it weight. Most wives and husbands doom their lot. To love, each one must speak and not, Or longed for heat of love in bed Turns to abusiveness instead. The iron belt of chastity Becomes like silken gauze to he Who softly, often says her name; To she, who makes his task her aim. To you my love are meant to be My husband for eternity,

We’ll have to offer love as it Applauds us ive/silently.

The Question Of Two 9.1967 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Small Things That Kill Love

He was kind. He was generous. He loved me. Then came this: He was unpredictable, Humors strangely changeable. I never was prepared. At night he’d want to love me—it. This intellectual, well read, Expecting bed-with-feeling. ion stays a metaphoric day at best. Patterns can step up/delay. After twenty-something years away, Occasionally, Guilt will sew a quilt: That bed, that place. Kindness stays, Sin, the sum of things quite tiny,

Slays.

The Small Things That Kill Love 3.3.2009 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Specialist

The specialist is one who loves. A specialist excites, Sheds light; Donating youth while all The pals are out there chasing balls, Each other, smoking, joking after school. The specialist is much alone, Plowing, seeding, watered from Some secret source; poking ’round For me to pluck his book to read Because I want to feed A platycercus elegans just right: The parakeet called Birdie.

The Specialist 12.11.2003 Circling Round Nature; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Total Balm

“I didn’t nag, I only said Your hair’s a mess. What could be less A fuss or—bore?” The sore-filled pair goes on like this, He with his hee-haw, she, her hiss. Bowel-like mouthments let go pissing Words and turds, Hate unsated by expression. Wait! What if they, we, you, I could wait a furthered ‘desecrate’? Could learn delay, Push time away, Let pustule word go by unheard? A moment’s silent sit-a-chair Can steer a pair and clear the air. Debate can dissipate vexation, But takes from love the sex sensation.

Talk, the calm analysis Can crease a piece of love: the kiss. But seated face to face, a pair Can chase the stare, erasing glare, The wary look—in calm repair. A silent mouth, a silent trunk, A silent eye, limbs that have sunk; A focused mind, a silent calm; The inside kind: a total balm.

Total Balm 1989 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Weeder And The Planter

I am the weeder, He’s the planter. He’s the leader, I, the chanter Of the mantra As I creep, grab, pluck, Sweeping steadily Headlong and down, Re-charging earth around Each shrub: Help beauty spread its orb. But sacrificing nature’s force I rip the weeds. He gives a force to fill its needs: (For beauty’s wealth, For nature’s health.)

On my knees or sitting squat,

Sweeping soil with flat Of hand, Grime ignored, This is my time.

He, my adored, (For tree and bush, For roses’ blush) Continues planting seeds.

The Weeder And The Planter 6.18.1999 Circling Around Nature: Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

The Womb

The womb is a flower Whose folded petals hide The precious pollen Till morning comes, Cajoling.

The Womb 7.25.1956 Circling Round Nature; Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Something I Must Say, My Friend

There’s something I must say, my friend, To help keep pain at bay, my friend; Specific issues, such as: you are fifty-two, He eighteen years your junior. You’ve a temper that keeps sending him away Each second day, And him still coming ’round and begging Your forgiveness, yet not giving Up the woman he resides with, egging on still further tantrums; Wild love on bed and floor— Which only makes you want him more, And binds you both: Intense orgasms, Notwithstanding giant chasms Separating, isolating. Love, more like a box of tissues: Fragile, separate and frail. Stale tomorrows lie is store.

Yes, dear friend, specific issues, Huge in scope. I hope that I undress the problems In the name of all— Here we have no mere, small Airy-fairy love affair. As always, it’s particulars Which teach the universals. His Love shared, extra-curricular— Your need, a live reversal Of the patterns set before. Don’t take offense. This may be the only chance To make you think again, Forwards towards a God-knows-when, Lead acumen to surface For a compact born of Zen.

Something I Must Say, My Friend 3.26.1997 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

Things Must Be Left To Ripen

My husband picks the berries before they’re ripe. He eats bananas when they’re short of yellow— Crazy fellow! Why would someone eat a berry Hard and sour, And banana tasting very Much Like cauliflower? Is it that I’m yin, he yang? Or is there something wrong With those who rush to judgment, Push their tastes before the others, Thinking only of the song they clang? Things have to ripen to be ready. But these days I’m open, Dampening the dowdy Points of view I’m prone to.

Things Must Be Left To Ripen 7.10.1998/totally rewritten 8.3.2005 Love Relationships; A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Arlene Corwin

Things Run In Families #1

Children, you have power to heal With will and mind. My father did it many times; His mother too, they say. I try to do it, and it sometimes Works its wondrous way. Grandpa Sam was musical— Silent films and music hall. He played behind, his task to sell And bind the silent spell To background sound. Then grandma Margy’s husky voice, A smoky, Sophie Tucker voice. She played piano (not too well), But there was talent in each cell. Grandpa Al could whistle, Play a few songs on the mandolin, Smile his handsome pipe-in-mouth grin,

Play Dixie on harmonica. You got all that Jon, Darcy, Jen. You all got that from way back when. I nearly left out great-grandma: Ethel sang, danced, read her verse Into her eighties. She’d rehearse On Brighton’s boardwalk dancing, singing— Then she’d talk,—her voice still sonorous— On Yiddish radio: Her little show. Thank you gifts, sifted from great, great grandparents. Great grandparents Bob, Arlene In every gene. From mom to dad to way, way back: A zodiac of blessings. Back to healing: Find the feeling In the ailing, failing part. When you feel it you can heal it: Birthday message from the heart.

Things Run In Families 10.11.2003

Things Run In Families #2

Children, you have power to heal With will and mind: My father did it several times; His mother too, they say. I try to do it and it sometimes works Its wond’rous way. To Jonathan and Jennifer: Great grandpa Sam was musical; Silent films and music hall. He played behind, his job to sell And bind the silent spell to background sound. Great grandma Margy’s voice, A smoky, Sophie Tucker voice, Was, shall we say, a special voice. She played piano (not too well), But there was talent in each cell. Great grandpa Al could whistle, play the mandolin, A song on the harmonica, a handsome grin

To carve in wood, fantastic forms. I nearly left out great—great-grandma Ethel, Albert’s mom Who sang and danced and read her verse Into her eighty’s. She’d rehearse On Brighton’s boardwalk, Bells a-ringing, dancing, singing; Giving talks on Yiddish radio! SO, Darcy’s gifts are sifted From great, great grandparents; Great grandparents, Bob, Arlene! In every gene you got it all. From mom to dad to way, way back: A zodiac of blessings— All the best things. Back to healing: find the feeling In the ailing, failing part. When you feel it, you can heal it! Birthday message from the heart.

Things Run In Families 7.24.2003 / revised 2.16-2006

Things Run In Families #3

Children, you have power to heal With will and mind: My father did it several times; His mother too, they say. I try to do it and it sometimes works Its wond’rous way. To Jonathan and Jennifer: Great grandpa Sam was musical; Silent films and music hall. He played behind, his job to sell And bind the silent spell to background sound. Great grandma Margy’s voice, A smoky, Sophie Tucker voice, Was, shall we say, a special voice. She played piano (not too well), But there was talent in each cell. Great grandpa Al could whistle, play the mandolin, A song on the harmonica, a handsome grin

To carve in wood, fantastic forms. I nearly left out great—great-grandma Ethel, Albert’s mom Who sang and danced and read her verse Into her eighty’s. She’d rehearse On Brighton’s boardwalk, Bells a-ringing, dancing, singing; Giving talks on Yiddish radio! SO, Darcy’s gifts are sifted From great, great grandparents; Great grandparents, Bob, Arlene! In every gene you got it all. From mom to dad to way, way back: A zodiac of blessings— All the best things. Back to healing: find the feeling In the ailing, failing part. When you feel it, you can heal it! Birthday message from the heart.

Things Run In Families 7.24.2003 / revised 2.16.2006

Love Relationships; Special People Special Occasions; Pure Nakedness; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Things Are Happening In Every Family

Things are happening in every family. Death, divorce; diverse Resources and recourses. You can’t flee, There’s no escape; You’re in the group’s continuum; And since there’s no life in a vacuum, Do the loop de loop. Be happy.

Things Are Happening In Every Family 7.0.2010 Circling Round Reality; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Three Years, Three Months

Three years, three months. There is some magic in our dates: Magic in the ages reached; Magic in the distance between you and me: Sixty—seven. Seventy. You’re catching up. (I’m being silly) There will always be three years, three months Between us. Once a year you have a claim To birthday fame You say means nothing. I say it is a magic ring— Three years, three months That binds us. Let’s go out for lunch.

Three Years, Three Months 2.6.2005 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions;

(K) Birthday Book; Arlene Corwin

To Dream

To dream, To sleep— And then to sleep to dream of you, For what is sleep, if not a sweet To taste of you. Sweet taste, Sweet dream— Two lips that savor every kiss; That go to sleep to dream of this Sweet kiss anew. To dream, To sleep; And when to dream of sleep with you, And then to dream in might come true In some sweet way.

To Dream 12.28.1960 Love Relationships; Lyrics;

Arlene Corwin

To Jonathan #1

Jonathan my dear, Your mummy loves you, Wants you near, But mummy cannot be… And cannot tell you why Because self portraiture Is for self-eyes. Mummy may not see you often But her love is strong and even, Never leaving its ideal— You.

To Jonathan #1 1961/2

To Jonathan #2

Jonathan my dear, Your mommy loves you, wants you near. That cannot be.

Mommy may not see you often, But her love is strong and even. Never leaving its ideal, Mommy’s love could soften steel. Like the gentle steady dripping Of a broken tap—if let— Dents the most resisting metal, So pellets of This kind of love Can be of use to you When only Mighty Mouse might do. That is truth: Love is that real.

I mail it through my window pane, It flies along without a plane; It looks for Kelton Avenue And doesn’t stop till it finds you. (As for how, I can’t explain) I do know this: As air or gas through—unseen— Your nose and mouth and lungs and spleen, Love floats into your body Spreading evenly And storing best While you’re at rest.

The more it stores, The more is yours To store some more.

To Jonathan #2 1962 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

To My Daughter’s Daughter Aged Nine

Life has reasons you can’t fathom. That’s the explanation When your justice-seeking child insists, “It’s just not fair!” Life doesn’t share its reasons right away. The simplest you can say is: Life has reason deep inside it. Life makes no attempt to hide it, But you must accept and wait And watch. The date For understanding Sits and waits for you.

To My Daughter’s Daughter Aged Nine 10.13.2003 Definitely Didactic; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

To Obedience

Knowing what I know, Even with the women crowing Nastily about their plight, It’s nice to be a ive Individual, whose bite is Like a cream puff. Only yesterday, I learned to say, ‘Victory to ive women!’ Every woman can throw off the Yokes of autonomy, (they can be chains)—learn Obedience, and not spurn an Unalloyed and gallant care.

To Obedience: A Birthday Poem 2.8.1992 Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships; Special People Special Occasions; Birthday Book; Arlene Corwin

To The Brother I Never Really Got To Know

You were gay. You lived so far away. You ran from mother. Ten years younger baby brother— Curly-headed boy. My boyfriend said, “That boy is gay!” And you were only three. You wet the bed. So troubled; And you stayed that way. So trapped, so pretty; Bed wetter, Picky eater— (You would only eat spaghetti.) Not a wonder that you needed glasses And your teeth got capped. I’ve tapped a memory When you showed mom a bottom sore.

She didn’t have a clue, but I knew more. Fourteen. Fifteen— Prime time to become a queen. Those photos in the chest Where you wore lipstick, dressed, Of course, in bra, skirt, blouse. How could anyone not guess!

Coming out at thirty-two You told me and I told you I knew for all those years. Dad took it, I suppose, (But God, who knows?) Quite well. Family said between themselves, “We always knew… at least suspected…” ‘But who’s perfect?’ they reflected. Never holding jobs for long, Nor strong relationships—for long. What went wrong to get you murdered? What might secretly have girdered life To give you strength to live, Say no, protest—survive? You were gay, But somehow lost your way And never really found it.

To The Brother I Never Got To Know 7.13.2001

Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Mother Book; Arlene Corwin

Tomorrow Is His Birthday

Tomorrow is his birthday. It would be a shame to not , Not remind myself that he still lives With nine decades behind him. Yes, he lives—but in a Home With other folk who cannot live At home. They take. They are awake, but not awake. The thread connecting life could break At any second. But it hasn’t. Ninety years. From Warsaw, Poland To a new land. New world, New York, new band To connect him. Ninety years. What was important? Absent father womanizer; Mother no great shakes as mom—

Dancing until eighty some— All her marbles still in order. Tomorrow is his birthday. He has no idea it is. He had one wish: to see the year Two thousand. It is near. He will. But why, when all his brain is still? He loved women; carved in wood; Painted; tainted marriage too. Did not like being Jewish Yet he always was a Jew. Tomorrow is his birthday And there’s not much one can do But that it is, Never knowing what, within a life, Is true and what untrue.

Tomorrow Is His Birthday 4.14.1998 Special People, Special Occasions; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Tomorrow Is His Birthday

Tomorrow is his birthday. It would be a shame to not , Not remind myself that he still lives With nine decades behind him. Yes, he lives—but in a Home With other folk who cannot live At home. They take. They are awake, but not awake. The thread connecting life could break At any second. But it hasn’t. Ninety years. From Warsaw, Poland To a new land. New world, New York, new band To connect him. Ninety years. What was important? Absent father womanizer; Mother no great shakes as mom—

Dancing until eighty some— All her marbles still in order. Tomorrow is his birthday. He has no idea it is. He had one wish: to see the year Two thousand. It is near. He will. But why, when all his brain is still? He loved women; carved in wood; Painted; tainted marriage too. Did not like being Jewish Yet he always was a Jew. Tomorrow is his birthday And there’s not much one can do But that it is, Never knowing what, within a life, Is true and what untrue.

Tomorrow Is His Birthday 4.14.1998 Special People, Special Occasions; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Too Much Coffee

When I’ve had too much coffee I discourse too much. I touch on angels, why we’re here, The force of light, the source of love, (The force of love, the source of light,) Ways to bring light from above; A guru** Who’s come from the blue; Rules of English; schools of music. Wisdom shared comes with the brew, For, when he’s drunk his cup or two He re-designs each wall and floor, Verandah, door— In short, each room; He praises trees, the lake outside, Including ways that we can hide In days to come, impending doom Approaching even as we sip.

In the clutch of coffee’s grip, A tip: Listen while your partner rambles, Even if it sounds like babble. Pick your way through brambles Though it’s repetitious drabble. You yourself my spout more drivel Than your partner ever could. Goodness’ art is being civil, Living in his selfhood.

Too Much Coffee 8.29.1998 Love Relationships; Coffee Book; Arlene Corwin **Cid Corman

Transparent Parent

Not a riddle. I don’t want to be one To the products of my loins. It’s my hope’s desire they knew me. Nothing masked; Asked and answered; Veto-less, taboo un-feared Without the smallest need to hide, Because when I have died It may have served heart’s peace of mind To find no opaque film behind The often-opaque parent.

Transparent Parent 5.14.2001 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Trees All

I often think and sometimes know, Or always know and sometimes think, (I don’t know which,) At base and bottom of each twitch Is just one person in us all, Adjusted by the ratio Of Eva’s lust and Adam’s fall: A bit of this, a lot of that, Depending upon who gets what— With confidence, Without a fence called you and me, I am a universal tree And what I say I give for free, Because I understand you.

Trees All 3.31.1998 Love Relationships; To The Child Mystic; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Corwin

Turning The Thing Around

He doesn’t see I’ve cut my hair A little or a lot. That’s good! Doesn’t see I’ve changed mascara. That’s exactly as it should be After thirteen years—the married kind; Years diffuse and years refined. That’s good and I say, “Knock on wood!” One gets a bit ‘home-blind’ With freedom to just go and read Without the press of feeling needed. Let me tell you it is bliss To not be noticed, seen or missed. He doesn’t notice my new lines, Or if he does, he doesn’t say, And yet, I’m sensitive to signs Of love-gone-gray, And they’re not there! I feel adored.

It’s perfect to be so ignored.

Turning The Thing Around 3.8.1997 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Unaroused

It is a comfort To lie next to you And have my hand around your penis. Hold it, roll it, doing nothing. ive sexuality To bring about The closeness That was meant.

Unaroused 3.31.2007 Love Relationships; Circling Round Eros; Arlene Corwin

Uninsulated

It’s January, And I wear Leg warmers, Double socks, Two pairs of pants, (In evenings three) A t—shirt, Over that, a sweater, Over that, a cardigan And boots— Indoors! You Heat the kitchen stove with wood. It warms the kitchen, as it should. You’re happy. You can feel you’re doing something. Who complains about A man who’s chopping wood? But then, There’s still the bathroom, hall,

The living/dining room; all Too antarctic to feel comfortable. We’ll gather in the kitchen. Though I’d like to play piano Fingers stiffen— It’s impossible to play. I’ll just have to cook three, six, Nine, fifteen gosh darn meals today.

Uninsulated 1.3.1995 Love Relationships; Circling Round Nature; Arlene Corwin

Valentine’s Day 2010

Hand written, Computer printed, Still as smitten, Bitten by the cupid bow, In cupid’s glow Of twenty-five love years ago, It’s just turned midnight— Perfect time to write A corny, horny, kitchy line To, for my only Valentine. So, if you will be only mine I will give you love a-plenty For the next five years and twenty. Your Valenteen, Arlene

Valentine’s Day 2010 Love Relationships; Special People, Special Occasions;

Arlene Corwin

We Feed Each Other

Sometimes he cooks, sometimes I. I don’t have to think about it. While I lay in bed this morning, He made oatmeal; bowls for two— “One for me and one for you”. I made soup this afternoon: Chicken, cheeses, breads, paté. “One for you and one for me” We feel filled with satisfaction— Full and nourished by the other. There’s a symbol!

We Feed Each Other 3.17.2005 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Welcome Home

Home is anywhere I am. Home is anywhere we are Together. A hotel room, A wintry day in some foreign city. And when you come From where your were, It’s ‘welcome home’. My arms are there, My heart is bare. I’d wait for you In God-knows-where, ’Cause home is anywhere-place-time We are together. Welcome home.

Welcome Home 2.4.1984 Love Relationships; Special People Special Occasions; Arlene Corwin

What Could Have Been So Nice #1

This is a song, a definite song; Not a poem or a rhyme Where the tune can go wrong And the rhythms and time Can go free. No ‘goody’ or ‘baddy’, no good or bad luck; This is a song about love’s tragicomedy, Meeting and drowning in love; Abandoning all for the newly formed bond That lived out clichés: all used up and beyond. The differences winning, The love dance beginning, Not yet awake, Soon prosaic. Small jokes evocative, Stories you told— Tiring and old. Even the ion, romantic and wild—

ed to desiring vapid and mild. This is a song that is set up to mourn What could have been so nice.

What Could Have Been So Nice #2

This is a song, a definite song; No poem or rhyme Where the tune can go wrong And the rhythm and time go free. No goody, baddy. good/bad luck. This is tragicomedy.

We met and fell drowningly In love that lived out Every wrong cliché: Laughter, ion all é. This is a song set up to mourn What could have been so nice.

What Could Have Been So Nice 4.7.1998 Lyrics; Love Relationships; Vaguely About Music; Arlene Corwin

What I Got From My Husbands

From Bob I got bass line and chord, Key standards I still use: Measure sticks to please the muse; A boy child as reward. From Robin I got teen-charged sex, Complex, but strangely pure. Worthy of more lines than four; His inner war so immature, His love so full of flecks; This charmed allure, This flushed amour Still fated to be ex-. From Jim the love of all that’s book: Binding, publisher, the look, The browse, the trace, the bookshop nook, Great art, great names, The joy of visiting museums; Eighteen years of Oxford life—

Its spired academic dreams; A blue-eyed pearl of baby girl. Then from Kent, the love of tree And sea and nature ecstasy, Ordered, balanced energy Systematic, un-emphatic, Ne’er fanatic, never mean, How to work and how to clean, Harmony and gentle impulsivity: “Let’s drive to town for cakes and tea.” Romantic and parental. If pleasure is a measure Then at last, I found the treasured Life companion best for me.

What I Got From My Husbands 9.3.1999 Love Relationships; Pure Nakedness; Arlene Corwin

What Works

As far as I can in life, There are two ways to be a wife: To see the flaw, reject the deed, Or take the whole darn thing And walk away without the need To shout: A blind acceptance without doubt. No crying criticizing, Analyzing— Just accepting.

What Works 7.19.1996 Love Relationships; Circling Round Woman; Arlene Corwin

What’s Good For Me Is Good For You

As old as Buddha: Everyone and everything Contingent. If I get a job And you don’t like That I’m away And you can trust That I won’t stray, I say to you— What’s good for me Is good for you. Lines of influence and knowledge, Lines invisible Reach out to your well-being; Lines uncanny, Unexpected, Reaching out To bless you being in the world.

We’re both connected And what’s good for me is good for you Is good for us.

What’s Good For Me Is Good For You 3.3.1999 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

When Light Bulbs Blow

Did he really not understand, Or was he playing dumb? A car ride could be torture, With the simplest things misjudged: A word, a gesture, an inflection— I can scarcely bring them back: Rage, retreat, caged defeat— Or vice versa, and amnesia’s self-destruct. Twenty post-him-years reflection Finds a recollection of his issues; unresolved, Twisting harmless conversation. When perversion seemed to sleep, Needing waking for its closure, Would an answer really help?

When the light bulb blows, Do I ask why? I go and buy

A new one.

When Light Bulbs Blow 6.10.2004 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

When Loved Ones Die

I was thinking (apropos of now) You cannot always be around When loved ones die, Their karma being theirs. Prepare long, long ahead— A sudden heart attack, an accident; You’re at a meeting, Visiting. Not there in time to see, to say? Missed by minutes. Listen, Perfect chains incorporate Mistakes; Un-patterned patterns don’t exist, The strings of chaos binding all, Reasons you can’t analyze Wind up the string ball. You can’t always be around

When loved ones die. That die was cast pre-birth In some strange realm to do with earth. The thing to do is think about it Long, long, long before. Bad poetry, maybe, But meant to comfort As a thought Thought through.

When Loved Ones Die 2.15.2010 Birth, Death & In Between; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

When We Argue

When we argue He gets active, I get ive: Yin and Yang. He plays piano, Chops the wood, Runs in and out, Says not a word. I lie in bed, Take up the pen, Turn on the BBC again. My sadness is deflected slowly; His deflected swiftly, wholly— Maybe. I don’t know. Who ever knows How anger goes? Anger, sadness:

Synonyms. Am I really writing hymns To those? Should the hymn not be to action? Or is action just a fraction Of the answer?

When We Argue 1.3.1995 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

When You’re Not At Home

When you’re not at home I do my yoga, learn more tunes, Play piano, listen to The radio, Write, edit, closing wounds To grow, Expressing sounds That no one hears but birds and cat, And God knows that.

When you’re at home I fall into my housewife mode: Planning meals, peeling onions, Taking care to find your mood Without intruding, Asking what you’re feeling, What you want, including What you’d like to watch on TV.

I become good company. A not-so-simple difference, oui?

When You’re Not At Home 5.3.2007 A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Love Relationships; Circling Round Yoga; Circling Round Woman; Arlene Corwin

Why Do We Need To Reveal Ourselves?

A friend writes his memoirs, His wife writes her volumes of verse: Painful, funny. Stars full of Saturn and Venus; adultery Handled with lightness and pain, Depression and mania: lightness again— There for the world! Why do we need to reveal ourselves, Seed the world’s soil with kvetchings and problems, Conflicts and tears? To work out our fears? Leave little gems for our children and theirs— Gems which help them understate all their cares?

Our lives and our lies: Why do we need to reveal? To brag and to name-drop in ways that conceal Our boasting:

He was a stag with his flag ever flying… A wag with the gag ever shallow; Life dragged if lag of the minutes was slow… She ate her pills to stay slim in her rhyming. Once there was time… Receding, retiring, running away; Perhaps we reveal to expel all the slime, Casting bronze busts which fill space in eternity. Isn’t that silly— And futile?

Why Do We Need To Reveal Ourselves? 4.4.1996 Love Relationships; I Is Always You Is We; Special People, Special Occasions; Circling Round Vanities; Arlene Corwin

Why I Left You

I’ve tried to figure out the reason Why I left you. Blazoned on my brain’s your treason. It was that you used to anger, Flaring up out of the blue, Which caused me in its turn to smart, To cry; finally flare up too. And then you’d stop, expecting that I’d been uninfluenced by what Occurred—what we’d been through. But I’d been changed that little bit, No longer trusting it Or you. The issues were so small, so weeny; You’d become a monster meany— And irrational, to boot. I, with not so high IQ as you But with integrity my root,

Stood out no more And closed the door; And after eighteen years of shouting, Pouting, sometimes clouting, Locked my heart and walked on out.

Never have I felt remorse, Or even housed the slightest doubt. I’m back to where my nerves are healed, Since I know now what caused the rift. The truth about our strife revealed, My brain has got that little lift To justify the shift.

Why I Left You 7.19.1996 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Why Pine?

A man is dying. My father. It is his moment. It, my moment. While he dies, Does he think? I think he doesn’t. Al’s about inside himself. He is inside himself. His dying is his moment. It is my moment. When he is dead, When it is over, Will it be over For Albert S. Nover? If it’s over for Albert S. Nover, Or if he goes further, It is still his moment.

And if I shall long for him, Miss him, evaluate, Then it is my moment. He and I, each in our moment Weaponless to overlap, not even share, His never to take part in mine, mine his, Mine here, His Absolute Forever there: Bubble-fizz air. No father/daughter moments paired Moments. People. Monad bare. Singular. His. Mine. Why pine?

Why Pine? 9.11.1996 Birth, Death & In Between; I Is Always You Is We; Nature In & Of Reality; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Will You Come Home To Me?

Waiting for the spring, Waiting for the fall, Waiting for the winter Hoping anytime at all That you’ll come home perchance. Ordinary girl, ordinary man, Ordinary problems. Ordinary’s harder than The first days of romance. Two alone is hard to hold. Two must work to make one life unfold. The simple fact is You have gone away. I am left to stay, Leaving me to ponder. Will you ever wander home? Will you come back to me? Will you ever wander back

Will you come home to me?

Will You Come Home To Me 5.1.1997 Lyrics; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Without Him I’m Nothing

Women talk about a love affair, The lover her beloved—as if he were God. “Without him I’m nothing!” “I can’t live without him!” Illusion’s reward! Women that know, know that love affairs end. Know that ‘without him’ is really ’bout me. Treating the lover as savior and saint Is fine for the character, softening will; Still only metaphor, spiritual drill But void of arithmetic; useless as nil. If woman’s mind weren’t deaf, dumb and blind When in love… Oh, my sisters, Without him you’re something— The most valued thing.

Without Him I’m Nothing 3.25.1999 (Re-written 5.23.2005) Circling Round Woman; Love Relationships;

Arlene Corwin

Without Love

Verse: I’ve lost all ambition, I’ve lost all my drive. I’ve tossed all ambition out the window Now I thrive on nothing— And it will be that way Until something comes along to inspire me. I’ve lost all my feeling, I’ve lost all my want. I’ve tossed all my feeling out the window, Now I’ve want for no one— And it will be that way Until someone comes along to desire me.

Chorus: Without love I don’t exist. My confidence is gone and I enlist None of my faculties to help me.

Without warmth my blood runs cold. My ninety-eight point six loses its hold, And all my faculties don’t help me. But yet I’m on the run, I’m one big ball of fun, So who’s got time for love and all that stuff? Ah yes, I’m on the run, But haven’t found the one Who’d give me time for love— I’ve had enough! Without love I won’t subsist. I’m so sick and I’m so tired, I haven’t kissed or been desired These many years. I don’t want to be alone, So before I turn to stone, Someone love me.

Without Love.8.1955 Love Relationships; Lyrics; (music Brian Priestley) Arlene Corwin

Words I Love

Serendipity; Synchronicity; Put together I feel Nothing’s ever Going wrong. That it’s timed And working out; All timed, And most of all, A gift from nowhere.

Words I Love 8.4.2008 Love Relationships; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Arlene Corwin

Write Me A Love Song Or Something

I’m feeling unsure, insecure. I see no allure in that girl in the looking glass, So Write Me A Love Song Or Something, Tell me I’m lovely and loved. Write me a love song, or anything else That make sel-pity go. How can I fathom a see-sawing temperament, Whimsically willing my feelings? Just when I’m stilling one mood, An opposite feeling comes stealing. Write Me A Love Song Or Something. I know that you love me, but something is wrong. Something inside longs to know what I know, So, Write Me A Love Song Or Something.

Write Me A Love Song Or Something 1961 Love Relationships; Lyrics (words&music Arlene Corwin) Arlene Corwin

Yes, My Love And Always Yes

Yes, my love, and always yes To everything you would request. Your happiness is happiness To me as well. Yes, my prince, My manly dove. Yes, to all That hints of love. If you would fly, Then fly you must, and I’d stand by Adjusting all you gear-to-go: I love you so. Your gain is gain To me as well. My pain would go If you were well. So trust me with The fine, the coarse. My destiny Is mine, yours yours. I do not know Where I’ll expire, Or if I’ll ever reap desire. Consumed by fire am I, your soul. With yes I’ve filled the begging bowl. I offer it, my love to you.

Yes, My Love & Always Yes 4.1969 To The Child Mystic; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

You Can’t Be In Two Places At Once

Your children call, Your childhood calls; Your job, you mother, Friends et al; They call to you, on you, for you, Demanding notice. Things that pall, that gall, That push you up against the wall Till you’re ‘all in’, All in the name of duty; That cajole, enroll you Till you give; a hall Of mirrors, crooked, Multiplied and split, And none of it The real you.

To know your calling—

That’s the thing. The role you bring To your reality, What ought to be, What is your real ‘cup of tea’ Et al., Et al., Et al.

You Can’t Be In Two Places At Once 7.22.2000 Love Relationships; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Corwin

You Can’t Fool Your Friends

You can’t fool your friends. You write a poem. You write a ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. It smacks of insincerity Your friends are sharp and sensitive; They know a compromise On palette or in word: The visual, the heard; Straightforwardness and honesty, Too little or too much.— They’ll give you all the That’s required to re-touch. But if, in your travail and sweat You’ve made your peace with what you met During conception and inception, Working-through To a conclusion that convinces you, Then stick to it now matter what—

And thankful for the friends you’ve got, To thine own self be true.

Allowed to bash at faulty views, And at your pace (Which can take years, for after all, It’s not a race). You cannot fool your friends, but still, They’re not inside your soul Seeing the whole, As you perceive it. They have their ways to receive it— And that’s lovely. But an artist’s life’s reflective, lonely. Seen from that perspective, Friends are not the folk you pool Your art’s results with, but a tool For transformation, Further change, modification. Cruel they may be, Fuel they are Gruel for future art. And jewel—

For the friend you cannot fool And ought not to resist— The catalyst— Is your most loyal propagandist And reminder.

You Can’t Fool Your Friends 10.14.1997 Special People, Special Occasions; I Is Always You Is We; Love Relationships; The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative; Definitely Didactic; Arlene Corwin

You Told Me A Story

You told me a story. You cried And I cried. Your tears were my tears.

You Told Me A Story.2.24.2004 Love Relationships; Small Stories Book; Arlene Corwin

You Won’t Eat Spaghetti And I’m Tired Of Potatoes

In June you say you’ll fix the house. It’s January. Was it talk? We cannot talk. You interrupt. Enraged you throw insults unfair And only partly true, but mostly, You don’t let me finish. I Can only cry. Of course I try To keep the conversation level, Logical. It’s reason that I’m sure I want, and if I’m wrong I’m open. You are not, it seems. You weld your armor, all its seams. I creep to bed. I’m paralyzed Because I have no place to go. All I can do is wait, Re-motivate, re-activate. The old way out was going out— Running far, not coming back;

For going out meant blowing out The pain and ultimately past; But now I’m glad the bed is warm, The food’s around if I should hunger. Yes, I’m grateful. I’ve a roof, And warmth and clothes. And still I suffer. Am I wrong and unforgiving? Shallow, stubborn, really stupid, Will-less, spineless, prideful and Inflexible? I must be something Or I’d win. I’d know how I could influence Your interrupting, sharp insulting, Welded armor, un-kept words. If I were something worthy-smart I could make spaghetti, And you’d eat it.

You Won’t Eat Spaghetti And I’m Tired Of Potatoes 1.3.1995 Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Zapping Accusations, Issues, Priorities

You miss the specific, go to the vague; Avoid the particular, go to the general. “Isn’t this exercise good for the leg?” You answer, “All exercise does you some good.” Echoes that sidestep the other’s selfhood. Do I feel fatigue! I say that the water is turning me green – We must fix a filter to make the pipes clean. Your retort is, “Other things come in between, And aren’t I doing enough!” I think you must mean your priorities. You file all my cares in minority’s cubicle, Miss the particular, skip to the general. Could be your funeral, ethically, morally. I’ve become patient, really un-quarrely; Building or buying, fixing or playing, I understand all, hear what you’re saying, Accepting and waiting till my turn’s on call.

To say, “I was kidding, it was just a joke!” When you were not kidding, and it was no joke Is integrity’s cloak, smoke and lie’s masterstroke. I’m convinced that humility, mental mobility, Lack of pretence the essence of issues, absence of blame Is the name of the game. Face yourself darling, and I’ll do the same.

Zappings Accusations, Issues, Priorities 11.27.2002(3.12.2004) I Is Always You Is We; Love Relationships; Arlene Corwin

Before & Afterthoughts

1.10.2007

My love relationships have come in all shapes and sizes. Some have had the quality of anger, some of reverence, some of lust, some of friendship. All have found resonance inside me in the end.

I can’t imagine that I’ve been unique or that my relationships have covered anything but the universal experience. Poetry is never written for publication. It is the most personal of the personal. Yet, there is this drive to see it out there, shared, confirmed. Poetry is never a finished product. No work of art is, perhaps. It’s always open to be picked at, tampered with and contradicted. At least, that’s what I’ve experienced. Does the perfect thought or form exist?

So however many levels these are reaching—both up and down—so many levels have they been worked through. I’m almost embarrassed to release this: but as I say, there’s this drive. All resolved themselves, sooner or later, into love.

My love relationships have divided naturally into sections: husbands, parents, lovers, friends, children, God. And whomever and whatever feels as if it belongs.

2.4.2013

Love Relationships is a personal book. Nothing abstract. As I sit and edit, how surprised I am at how much I’ve written about other’s lives; impressions, opinions, commented upon, philosophized.

3.4.2013

Writers write from themselves. Incapable of creating fantasy, my peg is anything onto which my mind fastens: a phrase, a news item, a new/old/first or secondhand relationship. But always, the mind—mine. expressing and projecting itself through experience. Is it all projection?

Love Relationships is precisely that: 222 poems written over a period of 60 years. A hundred nuances of relationships, each with love—for even lack of love is love, if you know what I mean—as the fundament.

I am a quintessential recorder. Hence the 60 years.

Arlene Corwin,

Härryda, Sweden

April 10, 2013

Almost Ready

Almost eighty;

Not the perfect

Bard or artist:

Paradoxically,

Calm, safe—yet heady;

Almost ready.

4.8.2013