The Ballroom
In the grey morning light the great ballroom looked forlorn smelling of
perfume, vicarious human passion and expensive Havana cigars. The toilets in
the big house were all blocked
and stinking of overflowing excrement, some had used towels to dry them
selves other their fingers which they then dried
on walls. In a society with many unwritten rule about how to behave with
grace and decor the toilet was the only place they could let go and feel and
for a few minutes rebel against stifling norms. A plebeian wouldn't have
liked it here unsure
of etiquettes and disgusted by stools in bathtubs.
The great door to the ballroom opened, men came took chairs and tables away
and filled the floor with straw and sawdust it was time to show the great
house's purebred horses which
could spring in the air and do, for a horse, complex dance steps and the
ballroom was soon filled by of horse manure that unlike human excrement was
aromatic. The horses, although beautiful, were tightly reined by riders in
splendid uniforms,
a plebeian here, where form and elegance outweighs content, wouldn't like it
he might have been tempted to let lose ride
out of the big door and head for open land till he came to
a meadow lush meadow were he and the horse could rest,
but that would have been seen as an Unforgiven gaffe and he would never be
invited to dance at the great ballroom again.
The End Of Dreams
My house, near the bay three floors, didn't know it was
that big, was full of people met in dreams over years, on
the pampas of Argentina, in New York and on the plain
of cold, endless Siberia. Some were swimming in the bay
and they were the same that swam in other dreams. They
came up from the sea towelled, dressed, walked up to
the house, strangely silent as they didn't wanted to disturb
the peculiar peace that floated and enveloped the house.
I could not compare these people with any I had met in
"Real life" they were all a product of the odd reality that dreams
make when
you know that they are real even though that they are not born and are not
of flesh and blood, but
beings not burdened with human needs such as emptying
of bowls, hunger and thirst, yet they are sensible and can easily be
emotionally hurt, therefore I didn't wanted to
prey and ask what they were doing in my house that had grown in size to
accompany my many friends from the land the untouchable the abstract beings
of a mind's loneliness
and hunger to understand. I went for a swim in the bay
I was alone and swam deep to the very but discovered
nothing other than fishes unafraid of me, who was an intruder into their
world. When I came back to the house, the people
I used to know from dreams stretching back to my childhood had gone back to
their own world, the house was empty and had shrunk. Back to its own modest
size, I felt a deep sorrow
a feeling of loss knowing that I would see anyone of them again as I got to
the age when old men only dream of childhood and their mothers
Sleeping Girl
She is asleep sit leaning against the trunk of a tree,
wears a green cotton dress with printed flowers on.
I think she's sixteen her aroma is of newness, firm
her breasts, thighs and legs. I feel dizzy hold on to
the branch of an olive tree, look around, no one
about, my lips are dry and my heartbeats hammer
holes in my eardrums. Am sure that I've loved her
once before, but that can't be right it was a summer
many, many years ago. "What are you thinking of?"
"But I know her." "Doesn't make a difference"
Nature is silent.waits, will this be another act of
disgrace? She awakes, smiles, totally unafraid of
my presence slowly gets up walks away.
Where the Wind sings
There is a tragic vastness in nothing, the unsaid
unheard and the unseen. Under a colossal sky
an elderly couple pray beside and open grave
their son is dead and I can see his white face.
The earth is a dark and stretches way beyond
the horizon, snowflakes fall, not many, just
enough to cover a cold face. So small they are
their grief is insignificant in this immensity.
A treeless plain, birds fly not here where only
the wind sings of nothing.
The Jacket
The dark green jacket the widow who has
long since stopped grieving, gave me has,
although made in Swiss and expensive
( according to the widow) a military cut.
When wearing it I tended to click my heels,
salute smartly and dream of invading Sweden.
I haven't got the jacket now the griefless
widow took it back (dry cleaning, she said)
Yesterday I saw a man standing by a corner
wearing the cleaned jacket and involuntarily
clicking his heels. Just as well I'm a pacifist
now and have joined an anti war poetry site.
Forenoon after Rain
In a pothole, after rain, a tiny fish swam in circles
looking for a stream when not snapping at minuscule
flies. Quite safe for now as long as drivers were alert
and steered clear and not ploughed into the hole with
a murderous front wheel if I swallowed the fish whole
would it swim around in my belly till I went angling
and sneezed into the sea? It would then have story to
tell and other fish would say:" Lies and bloody poetry"
It's best chances would be if a whirlwind came twisting
along sucked it up and dropped in the nearest river so
it could find its way to the ocean, grow to be a big fish
that eats tiny ones.
Haiku (Sex)
Poets are hopeless
Sex clad in shiny lyric
Neglect the real thing.
Perfectionists
Are miserable at sex
Hate the floppy bits
The romantics
Think of sex in a glade
Shun untidy facts.
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Jan
Oskar Hansen is a Norwegian poet who lives in Portugal and borrows
the English language when writing poetry.