A Sense of the Ridiculous

By Arlene Corwin

Since 2010, Arlene Corwin has published twelve books of poetry hefty, 200 pagers all. She is a prolific writer, going from the sublime to the ridiculous, scribbling phantasmagorical ideas and working them until they have the rhythm, rhyme and development that satisfies her. When asked, she says she has no plan, aim or scheme to help her. A jazz musician and longtime yogini, she puts the thought to into free-flow, which then evolves of its own accord. Improvisation she trusts the improvisatory.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503574557

Arlene Corwin

Arlene Corwin is a professional jazz singer/pianist, yoga practitioner of some 40 years, and author of 11 previous books, each circling round some singular aspect of life. A graduate of the High School of Music & Art and Hofstra University, she lives, performs and teaches in Sweden.

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Copyright © 2015 by Arlene Corwin.

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.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover painting by Kent Anderson; Author Photo by Ulf Magnusson

Rev. date: 07/28/2015

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CONTENTS

A Bunion Says Goodbye

A Cover For Every Pot

A Few Days Of Anarchy

A Font

A Little Bit Julian Of Norwich, A Little Bit Arlene

A Road Without Asphalt

A Shortie About Envy

A Spate of Writing

A Tad Unjust

A Thought About Penises

A Toast

A Unity To Hang Them On

A Verb Is More Important Than An Adjective

Accepting The Flu

Advice To Women Who Have

Boyfriends Twelve Years Younger

After The Bath

After The Bunion

Aging Hormones

All That Counts

Always On Mind

An –Ence Poem

An Audience

And My Teeth Ache Too

And The World Gets Through Its Day

A Nose In My Ear Or,

Anything But The Wastebasket!

Anything Done Any Which Way

Approaching Seventy-Five

Aptitude

Arlene’s Extra Poem

Automatic Robot Time

Automatic Robot Time

Bath Talk

Before The Ego’s Fried

Bemoaning Similes & Metaphors

Birthday Resolution

Boring, But Who Cares?

Breaking In New Shoes

Broken Sleep

But On The Other Hand

Butter On My Turtleneck

Can A Plumber Get Dumber?

Catching Up

Catching

Celebration Of Admission’s Boast

Changing Hairs

Click Follow

Complaint From An Aging Computer-Illiterate Lady

Connecting

Connecting The Dots I

Connecting The Dots II

Conscious Space

Constituents of Happiness

Continuous Breakdown

Meat-aholics

Corny Stuff

Couplets

Covering The Arguments

Crap Poems

Custard and Mustard

Dangerous Room

Day After #1 (3 versions)

Dead

Defensive Modes

Desire Breeds Desire Breeds Desire…

Detective Poem

Detective Story Fix

Discovering Small Things

Don Quixote Didn’t Drown

Driving Back The Word

Ducks On The Dock

Duty Calls In 4/4 Time

Easygoing

Eating For The Niceness

Eccentrics Live Longer Than Most

Every Day That Passes

Every Step A Meaning

Everybody’s Writing Books

Everyone Should Have A Room

Everyone’s Titties

Expunging Adjectives

Faith Is Night

False Memory

Famous Author Franzen

Fighting Off Alzheimer’s

First Poem Of All

Fish Have Mommies Too

Four Airplane Two Train Crashes Later #1

Four Airplane Two Train Crashes Later #2

Fun Is Not Fun

Getting A Name

Gift For Loving (a contrapuntal poem)

Gift Of Faith

God Has No Cares

Goggling At Google

Grumblings of An Ageing Computer-Illiterate Lady

Hair Weary

Hairy Leg

Half-Full Glass

Hamsters in A Nunnery

He Hears What He Wants To Hear

Help For A Seminal Praline

His Bad Dreams

Homage To Mark Twain

Howling At The Moon

How To Tell Character By The Way He Butters Bread

I Can Write But I Can’t Speak

I Do No Longer Know

I Even Bore Myself

I Forgot

Have A Koan

I Like And

I Like The Numbers

I Live Like A Caveman

I Love Soft Covers

I Never Know What’s On My Mind Until I’ve Said It

I Tweak

I Was Saying Silly Things

I Will Not Call It Death

I’ll Never, But Never

I’m Not Funny 1

I’m Not Funny II

Idiosyncratic, Or Just Plain Inept?

I Don’t Think I’ll Eat Meat

If And When

If The System Doesn’t Work

Illusion’s Reality

Imprisoned In Jeans

Impulsion

In A Caffeinated Mania

In A Certain State

In Defense Of Couplets

In The Beautiful Sun

In The Mood For Couplets

In The World, Dear God

Inheritance

Inner Laziness Of The Mind

Inversion: A Really Bad Poem In Two Versions

Is There Anybody Out There?

It Can’t Be Fun To Be A Prophet

It Clears The Mind

It Is A Fear, I Know #1

It Is A Fear, I Know #2

It Sounds Like Preaching

It’s A Cliché: Good Deed

It’s Funny To Be Funny

Jurassic Park Unknown

K. Reads My Poetry

Laptop Blues

Late Bloom

Lazy Man’s Confessions #1

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

Leisure

Life On The Hard Disk #1

Life On The Hard Disk #2

Looking Up

Lovely Age

Magic Italic

Making Space

Many Ways To Skin A Cat

Meat-aholics

Mediocre People Are Always At Their Best

Mending Webs

Mind Never Forgets

Miniaturization And Relativity

Mission

More Greed

More Mysteries

My Achilles Heel Wears A Shoe

My Dear Outlook (Outlook: a BBC program)*

My Three Loves: Silly Reflections Of A Serious Mind

My Tongue

Naked and Ridiculous

Never To Be Photographed Again

No One Else Will Ever Be As Interested In You As You

Non-Sequiturs

Now Has No When

Oh No, Not Again

On Being Confined Against The Will

One More Time

One Step Below The Angels

One Step Below The Angels (1st draft)

Only If

Only Paper.

Our Secret

Part Of The DNA

People Get Tattoos

People Who Have Money

Perception

Personal Relationship With A Non-Thing

Pissed Off

Plucking Eyebrows In The Sun

Poem (first poem in the mystical state)

Privacy

Producing Pictures

Providence

Rambling Rose

Reflection On Fame

Rock Star, Star Rock

Round & Zaftig*

Sick

Significance

Sleepless Nights

Sleeplessness

Slow Learner

Small, Small Lazinesses

So Much To Do, So Little Time To Do It In*

Sometimes There Is Nothing

Sometimes When You Lose The Meaning

It Is A Movement Upwards

Sorting The Cards

Soul Of A Poet

Standing At The Sink Washing Dishes

Strange…

Subtitles Of Faith

That State And Being Tipsy 1&2

The Air Is Out Of My Balloon

The Aspidistra Orchestra

The Biggest Paradox

The Complete Yogini

The Devil, Why’s There No Such Word?

The Disposable Razorblade

The Doped Olympics

The Final Cut

The Great Kitchen Roll User

The Mental Institutions Of The Mind

The Minute That I Meant To Use

It Sometimes Strikes Me Or,

The Most Well-Hidden Secret In The Western World

The Moving Laptop

The Only Jazz Bass Playing Lady I Know

The Poem Is A Life

The Sale

The Synapse Murders

The Vulnerable

The Weight Goes Where?

The Wishy-Washy Visions That Turn Into Something Real

Turning Male

The Publisher Wanted Free Verse

Things Get Dirty

Things Must Be Left To Ripen

Thinking

This Dis- Prefix

This Shall Go Nameless

Time Ticks The Word

Tinker, Tinker #1

Tinker, Tinker #2

Tit For Tat

Training Braining

Ubiquitous Pines

Using Time Before It Uses You

Was Nietzsche Right?

What Am I Trying To Say?

What Sense Of Order?

When You’re Not At Home

Where There’s Rhyme

Who Cares But Me?

Who Wants To Be Read

Why Is He Smiling?

Winning Time

Write About The Thing You Know

Writing On Napkins

Yoga, James Bond & The Bad Guys

You Be Judge

The Most Ridiculous Of All

Afterwords Afterwards

Arlene Corwin’s Open-Ended Biography

A Bunion Says Goodbye

Poor, maimed bunion,

Like an onion

Chopped and cut;

Poor, sad bunion; painful butt

Of carping censure by the foot

To which it was so long attached;

Like a thief, some scamp or knave

Was forced to leave

By some cruel podphile with cleaver.

(Necrophile, if you ask me).

"How could Susie* have been so

Unkind as to slice half away the bump?

It wasn’t measles or a mump.

And still she made the bunion go.

"I was so used to you - your toes.

God knows, I loved you like a friend.

I loved you to the very end.

I’ll never see that foot again,

Have no chance to share in its pain.

I, martyred self, I saw my duty:

I gave Susie back her beauty!"

(Poet’s comment:)

Someone had to take his side,

Give the corpse a little pride;

Send him off to burn in hell

Or bunion heaven; wish him well,

Adieu, farewell, goodbye old chum.

As for Susie, may her comely

Foot enjoy designer shoes until such day

As both those feet have passed away

To tread on higher grounds.

*Susie: the bunion’s owner

A Bunion Says Goodbye 7.20.1995

A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Special People Special Occasions;

Arlene Corwin

A Cover For Every Pot

A cover for each pot;

Did you know that?

It’s true.

What you

Are deep inside

Attracts exactly right –

A what?

A public or a mate.

Where there’s a pot that needs a top,

There is a top for every pot.

A Cover For Every Pot 6.28.2007

A Sense Of The Ridiculous; Nature Of & In Reality;

Arlene Corwin

A Few Days Of Anarchy

A few days of anarchy;

Days of indulgence:

Given to discipline-less, only yes

To things I say,

In the way I will say them.

‘Floating’, ‘exploiting’,

‘Suffused’, and ‘effusive’ -

Words that break through

When it feels right to riot,

Breaking rules and diet,

Eating cheesecake all week,

Breaking molds.

Is this mini-anarchy

The ‘now and real’ me:

Unregimented and unpainted?

Can a few days make a saint?

A Few Days Of Anarchy 8.21.2004

A Sense Of The Ridiculous; The Processes:

Creative, Thinking, Meditative;

Arlene Corwin

A Font

I’ve found

A font

Of which

I’m fond.

I wish it had more meaning;

Superficial –

After all, it’s just a look:

A grace,

A window to a book.

A face,

A facet frontal deep;

Sufficient as a fuel;

Harmless,

Charming

Fun. t.

A Font 4.10.2004

A Sense Of The Ridiculous; The Processes:

Creative, Thinking, Meditative;

Arlene Corwin

A Little Bit Julian Of Norwich, A Little Bit Arlene

Time to write, take up the pen,

Deal with meanings: what and when

How, why, who, where,

Fear, extremes, sloth and despair:

"Two evils, which do buffet us…

Press heavily…two sicknesses…"

Now I’ve a friend who suffers pain –

His leg, and somewhere in the groin.

Oy, does he suffer loud and clear

To any person chancing near.

"Oy vey! Oy, vey! Just listen here,

There’s no one in the biosphere

Who suffers more than I!"

Still,