The Poetry Of..
Jan Oskar Hansen................................................
A Quiet Smoke
The train stopped at a small station on a bleak plateau,
I stepped on to the terminus to smoke a cigarette which
I deeply inhaled and enjoyed; so intensely I didn't see
the train leaving. I ran but my feet wouldn't move,
at the back of the last carriage my doctor stood, "help,
my feet won't move, I shouted. " "It's your own fault,"
the doctor said, "for eating so much chocolate."
At the kiosk- inside the station house- I asked the lady
selling newspaper if she could help, but she needed
the number of the train and whether I traveled first class
or not. I didn't know what number train, but said 112,
and yes, first class, thinking that would help. Since I was
dressed like an Eskimo, from head to toe in sealskin,
and it was seal hunting season in Canada, people gave
me dark looks and when "Guardian" readers folded their
papers into truncheons I fled, got into a car that was just
standing there, drove down the road in the hope of
getting on the train at the next station, but made a wrong
turn and ended up inside a kaleidoscope, where doctors
and people, who like plastic tables dare not enter.
A Coast of Memories
Late summer, it lasted well into September, when I walked along
the pebbled beach in the bay, and saw my uncle and aunt as they sat on
an air-mattress soaking up the last of the summer light and the sea
gently slapped around their feet. I walked passed them slowly in
the hope they would turn around, see me and give me coins for
ice cream; they didn't and I was too shy to say halloo.
My aunt looked more or less like my mother, uncle though had
big shoulders and muscular arms, something to tell the boys in
the street, but since he drove the town's beer truck, I had to invent
a story. He had been a boxer in Chicago, but had to come home
'cause his mother was sick; if not he would have been the heavy
weight champion of the world now.
Mother says that I mustn't be alone so much, but I'm here to look
at the shiny pebbles just under the surface of the sea. I used to take
them home but they lost their lustre when dry. I also like to listen
to the sea, it sighs mostly as being fed up of being so old and alone.
Often it whispers stories I repeat when going home, I can't bring
the boys here. They will only be noisy and throw pebbles about.
The Rejected
I awoke early again and with a sense of unease,
mangled dreams, slamming of doors, contorted
faces, uncontrollable rages, ingratiating voices:
"Come here boy, what sweet a boy you are."
A Christmas tree thrown out of a window, coarse
hilarity and the sound of sirens. Fragments of
dreams consigned to the dungeon of rejected
memories, from a time before colours were invented
So why does a half remembered past haunt me?
I don't want to look back, and fill my heart with
sorrow from the time I lived with one eyed trolls
and their laughter was shrieks of the powerless.
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