Family Man
My father was a weird figure, sat under a bridge
with a bottle, in a paper bag, looked at the river.
I think he was looking for something he had lost
when he was young. When he had sat there long
my mother, sent me to pick him up. Father never
spoke it was like he had given up on conversation.
At work he was known as the silent man. When he
retired his employers wanted to give him a watch,
for long service, but he didn´t show up preferred
to sit under a bridge with his bottle. One day when
I came to pick him up, he wasn´t there but was found
floating down streams. My father was a dreamer,
he had wanted to be an actor before he married,
mother thought that was a stupid idea, instead he
got a steady job at a factory making plastic ducks
and garden gnomes. When knowing this I mourned
a man who gave everything up for his family.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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The Doll
The Doll
When mum went to work at the fish factory, there was no
money for baby-sitters; she gave me a black rag doll, to play
with. The doll, called Tom, was a caricature and today would
be seen as an insult. We had no radio or TV, and in the long
hours, when it rained and I could not go out, Tom became my
friend. Mum didn’t believe me when I said Tom could talk, but
only when we’re alone. School began I had new friends, and
boys don’t play with dolls; Tom ended up at the bottom of
a drawer. Forty years later I found Tom, in a shoe-box in
the basement, his fuzzy head rested on a pillow. I thought of
the time when he could talk. I put him back in the box and
taped the lid. Tom is dead, so is my childhood. In the stillness
I hear winds of coming chill, blow leaves along the asphalted
lane and far from where it all began.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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The Escape
The Sad Escape.
I sat by the table, near the window, reading. A woman and her man sat
on a filthy sofa, eating smoked sardines off an old newspaper.
This room stank of unwashed bodies and lack of hygiene. Dry washing
that should have been ironed weeks ago occupied a chair.
The pair rolled their own cigarettes and had nicotine stained fingers.
It was raining heavily I could not go out and felt a violent despair, like
a trapped animal that attacks its rescuers.“Use fork and knife” I snapped.
They both giggled. Rain had stopped I walked out, light shone out of
miserable curtains…and I knew. I must leave now. Get out! It was too easy
sink into apathy, and ignorance. Yet, I loved them, they were my flesh
and blood, good people who had never been encouraged to seek anything
better. But I must leave… and I left never to return.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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The Field Of Mortality
The Field of Mortality
On a field, not far from here, I see millions of lit candles in long rows,
but only at night; in daylight it is a potato patch. A man, you may call
him god if you like, walks among the candles every so often he stops
and with his thumb and index finger snuffs out light; the skin on his
fingers are corned from this arduous work. Behind him new candles
spring up, sometimes he turns and go back waste some of them too.
He is heading for the part where the candles have been burned out,
only the wick flickers. He uses he thumb to bump them off; a spiral of
grey smoke in still air. He is old as time, sometimes he misses candles
that keep on burning, although they have no wick. As dawn begins,
behind the easterly mountain, the field of mortality turns into a potato
patch again, where an old man is harvesting spuds.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Business Of War
The Business of War.
In this clearing in the woods so full of butter coloured flowers
I know there is a mass grave underneath, a forgotten war,
bones of the nameless that died for a cause that was not theirs,
but they were loyal and when told to fight and they often died,
many never knowing why. At the edge, of the yellow field,
there are pale poppies the dead have no more blood to offer.
I think of Afghanistan, poppies there are more deadly, I wonder
if western soldiers who lost their life in a cause that is unclear,
will get their own graveyard and have their crosses there,
in a Moslem country, tended to with fresh flowers, but go easy
on the poppies. The skeletons under my feet, died because of
salt that, once upon a time- before oil- was big business, but I’m
sure the soldiers were told lies about nationality and freedom.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Death Of Peter Pan
The Death of Peter Pan
Peter Pan used to be black, he could sing and dance
and make jazz hands. He was so good that it made
sense to make him white, the world embraced him.
Everyone had a stake in him as he was transformed
into a pale ghost with a plastic nose, no one laughed
too much money at stake. Peter Pan liked children
too much for normal society to tolerate, but money
smoothed the way, but do not do it again.
Peter Pan was fragile doctors were always at hand to
give him injections that lifted his spirit and made him
feel good, and he needed more of it now that he was
middle aged, yet trying to look fourteen. His handlers
thought there was more money to wring out of his
tortured body. One, two, three, Peter couldn’t breath
collapsed in heap, and that’s a pity now that USA has
a black president and he could be himself again.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Monuments
Monuments
They have gone now not a trace left but hazy memories.
Leaves are getting yellow there is no denying fall is here.
I’m the sole survivor standing on a plateau of nothingness
where dust of wasted years, blows in the wind. But it was
the wasted years that brought you here, a voice whispers.
I shall not now climb the Eiffel tower from the outside in
honour of the army of welders; whom are all but forgotten.
The name Eiffel lives on, but the man himself lost his crown
when trying to construct the Panama Canal. This long hall
I must walk so many doors on each side, I will not enter any
of them to see what’s inside, my curiosity is gone I need not
know. My object is to reach the end of the corridor where
I see shadows, perhaps the great man Eiffel is there, if not
I hope they are, the welders of the monument made of Iron.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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another War?
Another War?
The young prime minister is declaring war he looks righteous and
proud, his historical moment....We fight for the Libyan people,
but something disturbs me, the braying for one man’s blood.
The excitement of going to war, this lust for action sits deep in our
mind, jingoism brings its own political reward.
A just war? The man Kaddafi is an odious bully and oil supply must
be secured. But is it not also a selective war? People are being killed
in Yemen, an oil poor country; why not declaring war against their
repellent autocrat?
For now the Israeli are busy building settlements on occupied land,
they know a democratic Middle East will shift the balance of power,
a united Arab world will demand it. So let the war commence, but
I regret our leaders look of, almost, sexual excitement when issuing
orders kill the enemy.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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The New Knowledge
Early September, days are getting shorter and evenings longer;
the breeze that blew had pockets of cold air, a reminder of
things to come. Dawn when I got up looked into the mirror
and saw my father’s aged face. Lucid now and for once fully
conscious I had been asleep for forty years and lost the time
between youth and old age. In a foreign country and I could
no longer remember how I got here, or how to leave.
I pressed fingers to my cheeks, in quiet despair, finger marks
on inelastic skin that only slowly faded. Father, why did you
let me sleep so long, how can I now recapture my adult years?
A rumbling through the house, a picture in the living room
fell off the wall; it was of my mother and she looked so young.
The intensity of my reawaken consciousness overwhelmed me,
walls fell and naked I stood in the ruins of my unlived life
poem by Oskar Hansen
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Tango For Two
Tango for Two.
On internet I looked up dancing in Algarve, got ballet
dance and dance schools, those were out, lap dance
too which is even more embarrassing, a girl on your
lap jumping up and if you don’t get an erection due
to your knees hurting the girl will feel offended and
tell the audience that you are impotent; and it beats
me why she want to humiliate the poor punter who
has paid for this salacious make believe intercourse.
Maybe it has to do with pride, professional honour,
the woman may feel that she is a failure if she can’t
get her client exited; so why do I care? I just want to
go to a place and sway to the tango remember
a warm night in Buenos Aires 1945 after being stuck
on German u-boat for months knowing the war was
lost, and get some exercise too, is that too much to
ask a wintery Saturday night in Algarve.
poem by Oskar Hansen
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