Best Napkins Poems
Plastic ware is fine
Favorite restaurant to dine
Hickory smoked swine
I'm shuffling trays of food
and placing them up front.
I'm spilling on the way
in stains I'll later hunt.
I'm ever pinching napkins
and wiping spots of sauce.
Forever wiping up them
so later I can toss.
I've piled the garbage higher
with sweet and sour rags.
Left scrunched into a bow
to finish them of drags.
I'll order in more napkins
to later fill the rack.
But first I'll make some more sauce.
A dish from Sally Trac.
Need paper day and night,
nervous if out of sight,
normally you stock up,
not today out of luck,
nature makes frantic call,
no time to sit and bawl,
napkins is next of kin.
4-30-17
Box-tops, Napkins, Paper, and Old Mail…
One thing for sure, listen, will you please?
I do not write on tissue paper… sneeze!
But write upon most anything… Not walls!
My pen or pencil marks fulfilled flow falls.
And anyplace will do to write away.
In the moment inspiration comes to play,
Revealing ever-poignant thoughts, words spanned.
Whatever spark or flow falls to my hand.
I shall not allow fleeting words their loss.
Instead, must capture never-ending gloss.
Then, send a message to someone somewhere.
And dream, two hearts, shall wisdom share with flare.
Soon, Microsoft displays those words that streamed
Computer poet is what I am; oh, dream!
© Dane Ann Smith-Johnsen
January 13, 2010
She pressed on tightly
Gripping her cloth
Dusting all the dark
Arranging all the packages
She clutched at the years
At all the stillborn frozen dinners
Half parasitic blood
She shrieked at allowance
Thinking she could control
A golden son she never knew
Still, with her napkin
She went to wipe his face
Which had changed considerably
Though she clutched the image of her baby
Deathly afraid of loss
Clinging terribly to sullied napkins
Though for no apparent reason
A million lovers lines, unread on clever napkins
The only kisses felt when a wiped face happens
When I think of you, with tears streaming down my face
It's because no one in this life or the next could ever take your place
When a picture of you is all that, I have to remember
How sweet your cheek feels and where my hand used to surrender
They say you're in a better place now
I find it hard to believe and don't see how
Can napkins not esteem or honour
a history of being placed gently on laps
to catch, take hold of,
what is carelessly spilled or dropped,
used then to pat lips
before being rumpled tenderly, after eating,
and placed carefully at one's side?
At a table in a bar,
a paper napkin on my lap,
I look at friends:
they have their napkins
sitting at the sides of their plates,
on that table, folded, ignored, untouched.
Is there something wrong with me?
(11 Dec 2023)
Paper napkins and plastic straws
Ex-lax was a laxative I recall
Bananas with black seeds
Young folks saying please
Things just seem to disappear
Phone booths everywhere
Merry Christmas said with cheer
That corner fireworks stand
Frying with lard from a tin can
Things just seem to disappear
Neighbors who are friends
Promise kept by politicians
News that actually informed
Soft white bread wasn't scorn
Things just seem to disappear
Butter-Nut candy bars
When we believed life was on Mars
We used to land men on the moon
California once had too much room...
Paper napkins and plastic straws.
Fair legs aspire with striking delight.
Spellbound and geared up to run to die.
Firm sturdy steps leap to climb the treadmill.
Eyes fixed and two hands pull the safety pin.
Five minutes in, the sweaty minds unwind;
Each second tick brings new heaves of relief.
“Not so bad after all”, the mind secretes.
“To the end of time would be a bright ride”
Nine minutes in and the legs feel edgy;
Strands of strain sighted and pace declining,
The brain and eyeballs in bitter conflict.
“Are the signs real or am I mistaken”
Napkins are used to clean the sweaty eyes -
Lips clear enough to be a better eye.
Angry lines on the skin now plain to see.
But legs still run to meet up the set speed.
Fears are met and each new step feels like six.
Regrets fills the air that makes the heart sick.
The mind grows certain it’s time to call quit
But legs still run to meet up the set speed.
Grim eyes peep at the tick as it hits twenty;
Strong waves of sadness swamp the weary eyes.
“A bright ride was the goal”, quips the light mind.
Patience and pride now in bitter conflict.
“The other hand has grown cold with eyes closed”
“But I can’t quit this race with a loud oath”
“What of the fruits of the first few minutes?”
The cross of choice comes up after nineteen.
The napkins were cut and woven in her dad’s barn that he and his dad built from the broken oaks.
Each clump of cotton piled up in front of her
Leave and left
She thought
The warp was fixed on her loom
And that was easy because it stayed
But the weft was the lateral thread that moved
Leave and left
The barn was brown and gray, yellowed with hay
And dotted with specks of cotton that she lay
She was 12. She argued with her mom to wear her newest Easter dress for work that day.
She was crying as her little hands worked the loom.
She was thinking about the rock she found under the wheel of a stuck cart trying to pass by on the sandy road by the green border of her farm house.
She had removed it earlier that day so the boy driving his horse carriage could go on and get unstuck. She cried because she loved him.
She never wanted him to be stuck, so she untucked the rock from his cart. It was as tortuous as the itchy bits of cotton she forced together.
She could hear his cart still leaving in the wadded cotton she was weaving
The sun oranged the weft
in its movement from right to left
That she made as she wept
It was time for dinner. And her mother had cooked a meal.
So she folded the napkins
And sat perfectly in her bluebonnet dress in front of the cotton napkins
Ready to be opened again.