Surgery

Surgery
I sat on the bed in the hospital bed, dressed in a new pajama-
shiny and with dragons on-my wife had bought just for this
hospitalization, reading a newspaper, the surgeon came in,
said halloo told me his team was the best, reassuring smile
told me not to worry. A girl, in blue came, served me soup
and there was a sign on my bed that the patient should have
no breakfast. Triple bypass I struggled to think of something
grim like the hereafter and god, but was more alarmed about
this stupid war in Iraq. At dawn they gave me a pill, I read
a poem I had written about Marilyn Monroe which I liked;
then of for hours I was suspended in dreamless nothingness.
When I awoke I had lost the last trace of any religious beliefs.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Dry River

River of Doom

Sad sight dry river, and twenty years ago it was
three metre deep and had trout. We caught some
with nets and, fried them on a small fire and felt
like cavemen. Delicious fish meat we ate with our
fingers. Every year I have seen the river getting
smaller even in the winter when it rains irregularly,
it is no more than a beck. There is no fish not even
the skeleton of children caught by a wall of water,
when it had been raining upland and into the river.
Their father was arrested it was said he had killed
the children, fed them to the pigs, but for a single
button in the sty they sat him free. Terrible rumors
every summer I see him walking along the dry river,
muttering to himself trying to find his children

poem by Oskar Hansen
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The Apparation

I saw a man kneeling beside the dead body Gadhafi
with a smirk on his face holding thumbs up… eleven
months later he was slain just like the tyrant….
He became an envoy a friend of the wrecked country,
a buddy working to make the country a rational state
the US way; a client state to help oil flow freely to
the west. But he forgot, as many do, the infamy Arabs
has suffered in the hands of the west… even if people
were glad a tyrant was gone they still found the picture
offensive. For they see the inequity of the selective way
the west pushes democracy on the weak.
A ghost looms, a cuckoo in the nest, it will not give up
until it has full power of the defeated and we blindly
follow this cuckoo´s call into the abyss.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Spectre

The Spectres

In the olive grove I see a group print of ghosts,

stumps of amputated boughs painted white;

I look for a pen to draw eyes noses and ears,

to bring life to expressionless, pallid faces.

I have a ghostly photograph on my cottage's

wall, it's from my merchant-navy college days,

the group of smiling youths are all dead now

except for two, we're old timers spit and wait.

[...] Read more

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Name The Rose

Name The Rose.

All those bloody roses I’m, weeding my garden and
around the house, but they keep coming through.
The slightest cracks in pavements and up they come
ruining the best laid walkway. Unstoppable blowing
a raspberry to any guard who tries to challenge them.
On the track where I walk blue weeds try to break
through and get a bit of sun light, but gory roses
have stolen, occupied all the best air and land. It has
happened before, will happen again, they eventually
will be cut down, but history mostly written by roses,
will call it a calamity and tell us not to forget. For a few
years lesser blue weeds can be free and pursue their
freedom, but they must never forget roses scents can
overwhelm the strongest mind.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Kabul Weather Forecast

Weather Forecast in Kabul.

Rain in Kabul, the weather woman on TV said.
and I wondered if that was a good or bad thing.
Slippery roads and confused drones, what do
I know? Perhaps the rain is just what the poppy
fields need right now. Weather forecast on T. V
is pure entertainment, all respectable channels
have a person with a map who looks confident
when trying to predict the tomorrow. Danish
bomber pilots listen to weather forecast too,
will there be sun over Libya? Kaddafi hasn’t any
more planes left, we are now bombing his tanks.
No-fly –zone? I didn’t know tanks could fly. Rain
in Chad, that’s sad, they like Kaddafi he has been
helpful to this poor country. Never mind all that
he’s a despot and so says all of us.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Summer And A Dog

Summer and a Dog

Pure sunlight on a forever blue sky, wasn’t there s a song by
Cliff Richard about “Happy Summer Holiday? ” Beaches full of
laughing people. Yes, I remember it well. Out of the sun glare
came an emaciated dog, lost, it must have walked for weeks,
but in the summer light no one had seen it. Near the houses it
collapsed under a bush, I brought some water, left it alone.
When the shadows got longer I brought food for it too, but
it didn’t need food anymore. The villagers came, no, no one
had seen this dog; an untold suffering had come to an end.
Wrapped the dog in a plastic bag, put it in the bin by the road.
The sun was blood orange now and shadows so deep that we
could see again. Too much sunlight is blinding.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Despotic Dynasty Part Two

Despotic dynasty part two
And when we entered the shiny city…it was on marshland
and there was smoke from chimneys of factories, but there
were streets of light and stores selling lingerie’s we could
not resist, there were beggars in the street which disturbed
us greatly, and workers we had fought for were working long
hours for little pay and no rights. But we the middle class
and intellectuals had won our freedom, in liberty to voice our
discontent into a void as we’re ignored by the new rulers who
had found a new way to disregard our demand for equality by
cosseting us; and we succumbed to this sparkle of light after
all life is better now than under tyranny; we know the masses
are fed, and we don’t need to know anymore.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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Interlude

The air was still and trees in the forest stood in frozen silence.
A rare day, animals listened to the echo of last summer.
Hare trails in the snow made without haste, the persecuted
had nothing to fear on a day when mountain lions dream.
The bear in its den deep under an oak tree, dreamless sleep
whether still or storm, but do not wake him up before spring.
Tranquillity of peace is only a brief interlude, kill or be killed,
eat or starve are wild life’s merciless destiny. Calm cracks as
the cold intensifies; there will be a toll to pay if spring is too
late with its promise of continuity. Behind the forest, where
the blue mountain begins, a pack of wolves howl to the moon,
the soul of hunters lied bare in an endless nocturnal dream.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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after coronel Kaddafi

After Coronel Kaddafi

Who are the freedoms fighters in Libya? Except for young men
who loves a war? What is going to happen to pro Gaddafi
civilians, those who genuinely think he has done much for them.
Lifting them up from poverty, they used to live in mud huts, now
they live in proper houses and most of them have cars.
we know nothing about the rebels, they cry freedom,
but freedom from what? I will not shed tears over Kaddafi’s demise
but we may get a regime that want the riches Kaddafi had, with
no regard of the common people. It is naively absurd for western
nation to blindly take one side in the struggle without any
political consideration... not to speak of humanity, just because
they have been blinded by the call for freedom

poem by Oskar Hansen
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