Common Sense - Ted Greenwald Wesleyan Poetry Series

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time turns to practice

      The sense of unity

      I feel should be somewhere

      I guess’ll be there

      Long after I’m gone

      And someone else

      Looks back on all this

      And talks to me

      Across the ages

      With me talking

      Through my poems

      Up to a certain point

      (A hundred, two hundred years)

      Language (the ass) carries

      The burden of meaning

      While after (say

      Around five hundred years hence)

      A flipflop (oops, a pothole!)

      The meaning carries

      The language

      By then (like me)

      Changed beyond recognition

      And to think

      This doesn’t even require

      A grand plan

      Although, if I recall correctly,

      At one time

      I thought it did

      And had one

      Ready for anything

      Nowadays I’m more or less content

      To let a lot

      Of things take their own courses

      Like amiable rivers

      Making blue lines

      Down the map of history

      I’m not saying

      That some things

      Don’t infuriate me

      They certainly do

      But I’ve learned

      Mostly through stupid repetition

      The same patience

      I apply to my own works

      Moving them out of range of good and evil

      Is applicable

      (In a romantic way, I guess)

      To things (natural and unnatural)

      Outside myself

      I’m on better terms

      (Though still able to bear grudges)

      With most things and people

      More sociably amiable

      (No longer stand

      In a corner at parties

      Facing into the wall

      Smelling the school-like plaster

      Getting plastered)

      Now I talk it up

      And even when down

      Never talk down

      But remain subdued

      Fve learned to like

      Winters more

      But hate the end of same

      Feel relief at spring

      Crave sun on body

      Enter through the lobby

      Of annual depression

      Have greater sense of

      Personal comfort

      Expanding horizons

      Ability to survive

      (And know how far I’ll go

      To do)

      In this year of famine

      And pestilence

      Have learned

      To keep my mind and ear

      Cocked (like a gun)

      For the true poetry

      Of the language to go off

      And fill

      The sky of the mind

      With angels conversing

      And have

      Enough memory left

      To remember

      And write the angels down

      Without pinning

      A single body or wing

      I have finally

      Returned to the cheerfulness

      I had when very young

      Before the bubbles

      In my personal seltzer’d

      Gone flat

      When the fingers of school

      Having opened my thinking cap

      Kept the bottle open

      Long enough

      To let the fun out

      Amidst a multitude of others

      Asking one way or another

      ‟Whatever happened to you?

      You were such a cheerful kid”

      And that I am

      AIRY RUSHES PUNCH

      Airy rushes punch my shirt

      Through a window of sunset dirt

      And send me reeling like a lure

      Through the water nerves of America

      Once on the other side of somewhere

      I relax and become someone else

      Not that I behave different

      Just behave less often

      The sky offers me solace and office space

      And stars I keep in drawers

      Wear nothing

      But a little mist and halo

      I will imagine myself

      A sympathetic headlight

      Knocking on the door of the night

      To borrow a cup of sugar

      From the beautiful neighbor

      Who’s moved in

      Without even the clothes on her back

      ‟Would it be possible

      To borrow a cup of sugar”

      ‟Sure Sit down, honey

      Make yourself comfortable”

      I ease down in the big dipper

      BLEEP

      Somewhere (where) in between say

      Index and middle fingers, to one day

      Wake up and find growing a new rather

      Radish vestigial finger

      Little do you know little do you too know

      Questions. Eyes picking off barrages of mirages soberly.

      Lone. Drinking on an empty beach. Sauterne

      Bottle

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