Common Sense. Ted Greenwald
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the one I did
Where I’d learned
Different social graces
Than the ones I have
Where some of the material
Values of the American dream
Had rubbed off
Enough to make me
Live it out
In the good-works sense
If I’d settled down
And settled
For the foundation
On a house
For future generations
Instead of assuming
Immediately past generations
My foundation to mine
If I’d been
A little quicker to learn
What was expected of me
And wanting to please pleased
Going on that way
Through all eternity
Fve probably been saved
From mere routines
By a streak of stubbornness
By a slow mind
And tendency to drift
By an emotional development
That requires
My personal understanding
Before happening
Feeling out the implications
An emotion has in
Form of expectation
Before trying out and
After awareness
I sense a willingness
To tell someone
I know and like
And sense the same from
Anything they’d like to know
About me
And, at the same time, have
A vast sense of privacy
Which means
There’s no way
I’ll wear out my personality
And its sense of continuity
Although sometimes
I feel empty
But talking to
Someone I like
And trust
And sense the same from
I feel way up
And after a long evening
Of talk about this and that
Feel wide awake
And feel the world
Wide and awake around me
And have a visual intensity
In memory
That, in near memory, dulls
And throbs
And grows vivid as hell
When I bring it to mind
Some time from then
What my life
Would’ve been like
Under different circumstances
WouldVe been different
With its own
Attendant ifs
And its own what-might’ve-been
But this way
Fve elected to follow
And cast my vote
Each waking day in
I avoid
The possibility
Of taking the past too seriously
Or feeling any bitterness
Or sadness
This way
When my ship comes in
FHVe passed out of mind
Beyond the sight of land
And won’t hesitate
For a second
To look back on all this
With fondness or remiss
The air’ll be clear
The moon’ll be there
And you, whoever
You are and hope to be,
Will be here with my love
FOG ROLLED IN
fog rolled in
drink rolled down
water towers
cars sixteen floors down (night)
wind in, cool off the room
seen The Quiet Man (homeric)
my brain feels homeric in its dawning
Joan up in Ithaca (my arms cool)
reading at Holly’s a week from tonight
readings reel in my brain
plans reel in my brains
to marry Joan (secretly of course)
to set up our house (better wishes bad feelings
cautions lay to rest) a place to live for two people
life a subtheme
drink cooling my throat, a new notebook underway
the night in place
the night in a place in my heart in my doubts
my fingers itch (for what) I
loosen them, the self
rests in the night it is asleep now this poem
is awake underneath the poem is a dream soon
the dream will be all over
P.S.
Enormously difficult
To explain exactly
How I feel
Clearing my brain
After seeing
Where I’m going
After resting
After taking care of this and that
For another round of works
Finished one thing
Found a solid voice
(Temporary, I’m sure)
Time to lean back
And think about life
Roughly halfway over
(Over what? Water?)
Very little
In the way of theory
Cropping up (like grass)
More and