This week let’s write a poem about common sense. I’ve found that common sense is anything but common. Of course, that might just mean I’m the one that’s lacking. Post your results in the comments below.
About Bartholomew Barker
Bartholomew Barker is an organizer of Living Poetry, a collection of poets in the Triangle region of North Carolina where he has hosted a monthly feedback workshop for more than decade. His first poetry collection, Wednesday Night Regular, written in and about strip clubs, was published in 2013. His second, Milkshakes and Chilidogs, a chapbook of food inspired poetry was served in 2017. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he lives and writes poetry.
Living Poetry 
I wrote this in Virginia last spring, anticipating my move to Arizona.
Common Scents
When someone says the words “common sense”
they are about to say something crazy.
– K. J. DeVries
Scent has always been my favorite sense, and since
my others have become duller, the essence
of my memories is reduced to fragrances,
a kind of travel without spending a cent.
It’s crazy how a whiff of pine transports me
to another place, a long-past time;
although I have the sense to know the science
behind that trip, I’ll take that flight.
Common seasonal scents in my back yard
bring advance nostalgia for the day
that rain-soaked creosote is all I smell,
and I will miss the honeysuckle and rose,
when mint is no longer an invasive weed
that leads me to sink my arms in thickets
hiding poison ivy and biting ants, when
grass is not a nuisance growing in the drive.
I already miss the day in the future
when a wet lawn brings back bitter-
sweet memories of acres of grass
studded with buttercup and hyacinth,
grape hyacinth with its strange mildew smell
overwhelming the violets hidden nearby,
and dandelions waiting to strike
unwary toes with green stains.
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Posted by bilocalalia - talking about living in two places | November 27, 2017, 10:17 AMI see what you did there, with the homophone. Well done Poet!
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Posted by JeanMarie | November 27, 2017, 1:46 PMFun opening. Nice work!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | November 27, 2017, 6:39 PMHere’s a link to my poem https://bartbarker.wordpress.com/2017/11/27/common-sense/
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | November 27, 2017, 6:40 PMMy most popular poem is not spoken about as being about common sense but that is exactly what it is. The last sentence came to me out of the blue – I had no idea where it was going until those words appeared, but then it took me a long time to decide on how many lines to give it:
Physics
I’m still frustrated by
gravity—
things falling
down.
But I’m OK with entropy
now.
And I’m OK with the arrow
of time.
If the arrow suddenly
switched—
and it all headed crunch-ward
(galaxies, the universe, etcetera)
and the shattered glass really did
jump
back from the floor
up on the counter,
whole,
I’d be perplexed—liking
the one change, but maybe not
the other.
You can’t have
everything
your
way.
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Posted by Cal Nordt | November 28, 2017, 7:17 PMThis one starts strong too. I love physics poems. Well done!
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Posted by Bartholomew Barker | November 28, 2017, 11:21 PMI like your poem on your blog – it’s very commonsensical! “Physics” is not only a stand-alone award winner but also was part of a semifinalist trio of poems about physics, sort of, and second and third cannot be said to be about common sense without stretching, although I think “Relativity” actually does explain what relativity is before it careens into an eerie ending.
Dark
I read the universe
consists mostly of
smoky stuff we can’t
see, maybe can’t
understand, our brains
not evolved enough
to ever understand.
I should have known this
after all that time spent
looking into your eyes.
Relativity
The Fourteenth
Dalai Lama and the first
Albert Einstein say
everything’s related.
Yet we feel no movement,
no planetary rotation, no sense of
ellipsis, riding this rock around our star.
Nowhere on Earth
is the illusion of relative movement
more profound
than this self-serve carwash, equipment
going back and
forth, pitching up
and down, while I sit
again, childlike, feeling the car
move
when it’s not, my
gyroscope confused as easily
as a moral compass.
Big cloth rollers knock
the mirror askew: I see
that twin, who left on the spaceship
in 1969, has returned, not aged
in 40 earth-years. I’m
wondering if he’s
come back
to take my place.
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Posted by Cal Nordt | November 29, 2017, 12:30 AM