Napkin poems

What then? Go fight another war
Or make art past death
Be a star which shines down
After dying in silence. for thousands of years.
Or like a squirrel keep burying nuts
That one day will be huge oak trees!
//
Go enjoy the day, you say again today.
So, I will. But so many days beat that simple joy
Out of us. Until, just to enjoy a friend’s face
In the right afternoon light, is enough
To want to die or live again.
//
In terms of sleep
It is a free cinema
With every genre imaginable
Waiting for us, like death itself
To sit in the cool dark red-curtained viewing room
And wait for the credits to roll.
//
I never wanted to go to bed as a kid
Felt I’d miss something of what the grown up’s must know by now.
I was wrong. They knew little, and I was not wise enough
To go dream. Death must be like that. A kid
Trying to stay awake, when he should be content
With dreaming.
//
I’m by now just about empty enough
To sing a real tune. He emptied Himself
To be. And me, I’m still so full.
But the longer I go, the more empty a become
Come to Me all who have empty glasses
Ad I will fill them, He whispers in the dark.
//
Moses went up into the dark to hear
The forever words….
The people were afraid—you go, we’ll stay here
At a distance. We see the lightening and hear the thunder-you go.
So he did, and told them all he saw and heard.
By that time, they weren’t staring at the mountain
All they saw was gold. And he told them
Then, how they had been tested and refined
By what they chose to look upon.
The stones broke open the words in their hearts….
Eventually.
No one wants to go up the dark mountain
And carry down the weight of the words exchanged there.
But he did. And those tablets still speak
To those willing to listen in the dark.

Moses was a weight lifter.