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GRIZLI777

A Dead Hospital and a

Brazilian Café
Jan Oscar Hansen
[Pick the date]

Poems, senryu and vignettes

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Blank Page

This new blank page, a word processor page, I cannot touch. I ought to leave it this

way, just look at it and dream of what I could have written on it. If I delete the words

I have written now, it will be blank again, no history, no crumbled up sheet of paper

in the wastebasket. For now it is too late but I might erase it when I come to an end.

My wife was in Johannesburg once for surgery, being born in Congo but light skinned

and travelling on a Portuguese passport, she boarded a bus for the blacks.

Great consternation, she was told by police to go on the white only bus since she

was Portuguese. Racism and anti Semitism are so stupid, it makes no sense, one race

thinks it is superior to others. Now it is the Moslems who are feeling the surge

of ignorance. We want them to be more like us and not Insist of doing their own things.

In Israel, for instance the European Jews feel vastly superior to Arab Jews, This in a state

that is an artificial construct . The culture of Europe in the Middle East. We know Israel,

as it exist today must come to an end. So there I said it, this white virtual sheet has been

befouled by an opinion no one wants to know about. So what do I do know? Erase this

page so it is blank again and I can write about the moon?

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The Past

I live in a cottage that is 350 years old, wish I could have seen a ghost,

because I believe they exist. When I moved in here part of it had been

a stable and on warm nights I can still smell hey and the mule that lived

in what is now my living room . When I first came here ancient voices

emitted from the walls, people who had lived her before had toiled

the soil and lived in poverty. One cannot erase the history of past

generations where people had lived, even if their physical bodies are

no longer here but their souls remain and speak to us if we care to listen.

The cottage seemed content that someone had moved in, no house likes

to be abandoned. New roof, plastered wall voices subsided and waned

altogether, yet on this hot night I do hear sighs, smell the mules sweat.

Is it my imagination only if I see the contour of the animal and see a man

stroking its head? And talking softly.

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How to write a Novel

I like to write a book, any book as long as it has my name on the cover.

A one day course, how to write a novel. The course leader, a published

writer, wore a long dress but I could see her ankles, they were beautiful

and much younger than the rest of her. Dyed, red hair, face very pale,

presumable from sitting in all day writing how-to books.

Beginning, middle and an end, yes, like life, capricious in the middle,

the ending tends to write itself. Sudden endings are best, run over by

a bus, or a train crash, where cell phones go on ringing in the broken

interior. Then silence. Long ending are best being avoided, hospital bed

pages after pages, endless days, exhausted relatives.

Lovely ankles, did she paint her toenails red? She wore flat shoes

sensible for any woman over fifty. Classroom empty, they had all gone

out for lunch, I went to the pub and stayed there. Beginning, middle and

an ending, what more is there to know?

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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.

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Cowboy Poetry

Cityscape, skyscrapers and hazy, smog filled sunsets; streets full

of brilliant red and white car lights. No one sleeps here.

A postcard of New York? The big apple, wormholes, steamy air,

big shows and… never mind that, admire the city as manmade art.

Prosperity, everyone can become rich here, even a bus driver can,

if he saves all his money and live with his mother, collect her

pension long after she’s dead. Go to Nevada, I knew a man there,

who won money on a lottery ticket and bought a horse,

he’s a poetry cowboy now. This proves there is no need to go to

New York to make it big. With luck you can make it everywhere

and get to ride a horse too.

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Saturday Night in Blue.

The house key was on the same ring as my car key, couldn’t find

them I had locked myself out. Car neatly parked I never drink drive,

the bar is nearby. I broke a window in the back, got in. Blinking light

outside: police telling me to open the door, I did, was wrestled to

the ground. At the station they came to their senses, let me go,

but refused to drive me back, since I smelled of booze and only had

myself to blame. Long walk home, bars had shut. Climbed through,

the same broken window, the keys, on the kitchen table. I uncorked

a bottle of wine, opened the front door, just in case, no one came,

I went to bed at dawn.

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Where the Northwesterly Blows (memory of a town)

In the small park with gloomy trees, near where the factories used to be,

was a bust of a man’s image on a plinth. I think it was made of bronze,

the head was brown when not striped white by seagull droppings.

Mother said he had been a Mesèn; she liked using odd words, desperately

trying to keep afloat in a world of tinned sardines in oil and mackerel in

tomato sauce. I took it to mean a rich man kind to working people and had

donated this sad little park surrounded by damp factory walls; a place where

the workers could sit and enjoy the sun. The park was only open Saturday

Afternoons and Sundays, one couldn’t have people sitting there during work

week. A child climbed over its fence and drowned in a tarn of green algae.

The park was eradicated, just as the grim factories were thirty years later.

Life was bleak in my town, one neon lit advert, on the night sky “Jesus Saves.”

Competing with the stars, and a persistent rumour that the man in the suit

shop wore ladies underwear.

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A Country for old Men

I have been into town bought a paper and drank a beer,

in the café where the old men sit in the afternoon shade.

I feel more at ease here amongst other wrinklies.

On the other side of the road, near the pharmacy,

the big clock on the wall tells us it’s five and the temp is

41 Celsius, but in the shade and with a breeze blowing

it feels fine. In a few years the big clock will tell us that

time is up, but others will come and take our place.

There is a vast pool of us in deaths ante room; we are

but tiny ants on a window pane so easily squashed by

a child’s thumb. I sit in the shed, see how cigarette smoke

spirals up and out before dissipating in still hot air, and

thought of the silent sighs I heard when a beautiful girl

walked past our café. We shall never possess anything

as lovely again.
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The Red Necktie.

He woke up, fully dressed but minus his tie, on a lumpy hotel bed

It was a down and out sort of local, the last semi civilized place

before sleeping rough. It reeked of sadness and stank of depravity.

He switched on the TV news, during the night a woman had been

brutally strangled with a tie. His heart sank, he sweated, stabbed

by fear but he couldn’t remember a thing, total black out; yet he

vaguely remembered angry voices and someone running in a back

alley. Should he ring the TV channel and ask what colour the tie?

Or should he call the police and give himself up? His tie was green

with black dots on. There was rumbling from an old fridge in

the room, he opened it in the hope of finding a cold beer…. No beer,

but wrapped neatly around a bottle of whisky, a red silk tie.

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The Educated Stranger

His dark eyes no longer smile, always well dressed,

he walks rapidly through town; speaks to people

but only briefly, and mostly about the weather.

Often he disappears for weeks, drives from town

to town it is as he is looking for something that he

will only know what is when he finds it.

His family, travelling folks, a close knit society he

accidently broke out of when he was persuaded

to seek higher education, he became different.

Travelers journey and he saw his people disappear

In a haze of road dust. A natural business flair,

he made money so he could retire early, and live in

a big house. His eyes scan the horizon, looking for

the irretrievable.
12

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.

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After the Occupation

Spring, the Nazi occupation of Norway had ended and after great jubilation,

the grey everyday began. Shops had little to sell and tobacco was hard to

come by. Mother was ill gave my sister and I, a tin box and sent us to the park

to find cigarette butts. We removed the paper and put the tobacco in the box.

There weren’t many butts about so we added a bit of dry horse manure.

Mother got more ill, very pale and thin; she had tuberculosis and was sent to

a sanatorium. My sister and I thought she was ill because of the horse manure,

so we went to the police to turn ourselves in. The police officer said we had

been naughty children but gave us cacao to drink and a slice of bread each

with a thick layer of margarine and strewn with sugar. Heaven! When mother

came back she got a job in a fish factory putting sardines into tins, and could

just afford to buy a little tobacco now and then.

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An occupation’s Aftermath

When an occupation ends it is always the little collaborator who must

bear the brunt of peoples’ thirst for revenge. The waiter, the baker,

and the barber who had worked for the enemy and found it practical

to be members of a party they knew little about. Those who had built

airports and roads for the foe, suffered not, too astute to be in

the Nazi party, they were businessmen who also employed workers

who, otherwise, would have been on the dole. Women got the worst

treatment, those who had slept with the enemy, dragged out of their

houses, spat on and had their hair shorn, many were raped too.

For a time no women dared wear short hair in case people would think

they were prostitutes. The waiter starred at empty tables, the baker

had no flour to make bread, did he eat cakes? The barber had to cut his

own hair, but not too short. This lasted to 1950, better time beckoned

and all four services were again needed.

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Aliens, Have They Landed?

To escape the heat of my feverish mind I went to sleep under the bed, years of dust,

like resting on the inner feathers of a sparrow hawk. Awoke; to an empty village.

Drove into town it was desolate too. All living creature had disappeared in the night.

I hollered: “Halloo, is anyone here?” my echo rolled up and down streets and back

alleys till it found an outlet in a sewer and never heard of again.

True loneliness is to be the only living man on earth; who is going to bury me? I drank

beer in a bar, glass after glass till I felt sluggish and fell asleep on a bench in the park.

When I awoke it was afternoon and people were back, I was just a drunk sleeping it

off in the park.

Not so hasty now, the people I knew didn’t identify me and I knew they were clones.

They acted clumsily as not familiar with arms and legs, spilling beer and dropping cups

of coffee on the floor. To avoid being found out I appeared ineptly too bumping in to

things. And we laughed, agreed that in few days we would be used to our new bodies.

Yes, the aliens have landed they look like us, but I’m still safe under my bed.
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The written and Unwritten Law. (stealing)

There are many laws, some are unwritten. To thieve is a criminal offence,

especially if you rob a bank; the police will use all their power to catch you.

They usually do. This because the robbers have done the planning, the break in,

but have forgotten how to get away with the loot, say, put it in a safety box, in

another bank. Not splash out on a new car and buy champagne for everyone at

the local bar. If a robber offered me champagne I would refuse, fizzy drinks,

makes me dizzy and I laugh hysterically at everything. I would, however, accept

a pint of lager. When bank robbers get caught, they become famous, magazines

write about them, they are legendary and admired. This is an unwritten law.

If you must steal, safely, nick from the poor, say, Aunt Nelly’s savings, the cash

she keeps in the tin box on top of her kitchen shelf. The police are not going to

waste time on her, but tell the poor woman to put her money in a bank. If you

a small time crook and get caught, the sentence will be light, but people will hold

you in contempt. This is an unwritten law too.

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Social Equality, Who Needs It?

Haiti is now a democratic state, it waits for private contractors to come and

clear debris off streets and rebuild. Alas, it is also strewn with broken promises

of the many nations who pledged money for rebuilding, but time is hard now

there is a recession going on Haiti will have to wait a bit longer; but they have

got the freedom to be poor and elect politicians who are acceptable to USA.

The western world is bringing democracy to so many these day, thousands of

people are killed in its name. Bombs explode where they have never exploded

before, what’s wrong with those people, we have offered them freedom?

Why do they try to kill our soldiers, why don’t they just roll over and play dead?

In the world’s sandbox. We, the occupiers bring hamburger joints and obesity,

isn’t that a proof of success? Democracy, what does that word mean other

than exploitation of the impoverished, and the freedom to vote for and elect

politicians the west approves of? Or could it be, god forbid, (who’s God?) that

democracy has failed to set the people free?

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Senryu

Afghan valley

Three British soldiers killed

Beautiful poppy fields.

Relentless war bug

Spreads from land to land

Torched is earth.

Drone find target

A Taliban leader killed

His ten children too.

NATO’s policy plan

Help oppressed Afghan women

Cast off the chador.

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Sunset in Nagasaki

Forty years ago, in Nagasaki, I was watching a carnival procession,

through a window inside a bar. Most applause got men, dressed as

nuns, waving crosses about. I think they were mocking Christianity.

Shocked? Only mildly so, but I had another beer and tried to forget

about it. Yet a feeling of hurt prevailed, like they had been mocking

my culture and its value. My annoyance didn’t manifest itself by

wishing to burn down buildings. “Death of Japan” My god hadn’t her

people suffered enough. The Danish drawing of Mohamed with

a rocket for turban, was not remotely funny and I can understand

the wroth in The Muslim world, mind some of the anger was stirred

and political. On a wall, near where I live, I saw a drawing of a gallows,

on it hung the Star of David, that wasn’t funny either. Perhaps I have

lost my sense of humour I must go look for it under burning bushes.

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Question

Five hundred thousand troops

fought in Sahara in world war two.

If each one evacuated once a day,

why didn’t Sahara bloom?

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Seascape (Turner)

I have tried to paint the sea, a thankless undertaking, a brush stroke of pink

washed off in seconds. Paint will not stick. I saw the sun painting the sea

orange and golden; the colours never lasted. A bucket full of black paint

can last for hours if the moon hides behind a cloud. But you can’t tell

nature what to do. Swiftly, black turns into electric blue, even worse, grey.

I have tried to put the sea on canvas, late at night, but it ends up looking as

asphalt on a road going nowhere. You have no talent, a voice sniggers,

when I fight against the elements and insist on being an artist who can catch

the sea and forever let it be still caught in my headstrong frame.

A painting on a wall breakers crashes on cliffs, dripping paint on my floor.

Sea foam stuck to tiles in the morning, turpentine, smells of incompetence.

The sea appreciates my willful need to be loved by it. What folly, me!

I have thrown away my pencils and palette, leave seascapes to the sun, or

failing that a Turner is good enough for me.

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Dancing all Night

The street where I lived was long, houses on both sides where people

gasped behind laced curtains. I walked the same street last night after

going home from a dancing restaurant. I waltzed with a girl who said she

loved me, I realize now she had said she loved dancing, I had been happy

going home, singing loudly waking up the neighbour hood.

I tried to hide inside my overcoat, at last I turned a corner down a road

with shops, where I ran a cafe selling soft drinks, hotdogs, burgers and

tea. Walked past bar that opens early, I ignored it, remembering a lady

who had said I was a nice man, a pity I drank so much.

Ten o’clock, I opened at eleven, but had to prepare stuff and do a bit of

cleaning. Ten to eleven, tried to roll a cigarette, but tore the paper into

shreds. This will not do walked to the bar, a double whisky and a beer;

got out of there, ten to twelve, chewing gum, struggling to look sober.

I worked hard for hours, till my hand began to shake again. Empty cafe

I quickly shut. Screw it all, unrewarding business; a man needs a break.

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One mouse, One Hundred Mice

In the shed; sat drank whisky at ease with the world, a mouse came out,

from the back where I keep useless stuff. Intrepid, I gave it bread crumbs.

Ten baby mice came out, this could not go one before I knew it there would

be hundreds of them; where was Mr. Mouse? A pail of water, the tiny ones

drowned. Took mother mouse into a field and let it lose. In my dream mice

everywhere, up my nostrils in my ears and drowning in the soft tissue of my

brain. I went looking for the mouse; the field wasn’t that big, from thorny

bushes a falcon, with satanic glint in its eyes, flew in its claws the mouse.

Blood dripped from the sky into my eyes I could not see fell into a dry well

where I was smothered by tem millions baby mice. Morning, looked for

Mr. Mouse it was drunk from drops of whisky left in the glass. It attacked

me; bit my index finger before throwing up and falling asleep on an oily rag.

When I came back into the shed it had fled into the unexplored back where

I keep futile things like golf clubs that may be useful as weapons, one day,

when we are trying to save the world by nuking it back into the Stone Age.
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First Time… in the Antilles

I walked through to certain street in Hamburg once, the harshest place on earth,

giggling youths fortified by ale, clean shaven sailors on shore leave and pathetic

old men seeking love of the coldest kind. In shop windows women sat, soft light

to hide their snakes’ shed skin, looked at ogling men with glacial contempt; yet

smiling, wriggling showing their wares. A knock on the side door, curtains hastily

drawn, but only for a few minutes, this was a place for business, no time to waste

on dalliance and talk. This was North Europe’s on its very worst and I dreamed of

Curacao. Glowing skin, white teeth, big lips, ready laughter, and they had time to

talk. It was my first time, didn’t know what to do, she took over the navigation,

but before the ship berthed, accident; she laughed and told the other women.

Kind she, was let me try once more. Success, I was a man. We shared a cigarette

and drank coca cola.

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Moon and Poetry Reading

Moon is half full as is my glass of red wine, rays dance on its surface.

I drink moonlight my blood is rich and strong, but when I exhale, rays

seeps through my nostrils, like cigar smoke, and floats away. A giraffe

walks past, leans over the wall and eat my flowers, I don’t care roses

have lost their colour. Free white wine at the poetry reading. I bet it

is sweet and cheap. Canapés too should I get hungry? There is a lump

of ice in my glass the moon has a cold surface, but no water for Ice,

could it been dropped from plane taking burnt tourist and snap shots

going home. All those matrons at the reading middle ages and plump,

they want poetry to be romantic and about love. Maybe I will read

poems about the end of love and impending deaths? Better not,

they will refuse to invite me back, and I will not be able to stuff my pockets

with pork pies. Midnight, moon and I are alone, I wait for ghosts to appear

and disappoint me with their banality.

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The Fado Singer

Our visitor was ninety two and could see far into the past

and into a future that held no trepidation.

Unaided she got up and sang us a Fado about love that

never lasts and the sorrow of defeat...

Melancholy, that’s Fado for you, but it’s also about how

sweet love is, and the art of acceptance

She lives in the shadow land of an impending ending

and what is new and timeless.

When she left she beckoned for me to kiss her, I bent down

to touch her cheek, but she kissed my loveless lips.

I was enamoured, and her eyes was clear as heaven;

a woman is forever a woman even at ninety two.

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The Enemy Within. (capitalism)

It worries me, the economy; I watched a program about consumer buoyancy.

Consumers, yes, that’s us. If we only bought more useless stuff, changed furniture

every two years, did ditto with fridges and washing machines, the economy will thrive,

fewer people out of work and if we pay workers well they will become consumers too.

I have this uneasy feeling we have got it wrong basing happiness on consuming,

ignoring the future. It is as we don’t want to know reality, the depletion of natural

resources . Water will be the multinationals new riches; they will buy up all fresh water

and sell it to us, like coca cola. They will even claim a cut of the rain that falls in your

garden. On TV, they tell us how great they are and how much they do for us, gladly

we lap it up. Capitalist system fails us it creates pools of poverty, people doomed to

a life of want surrounded and harassed by gun happy police officers. Profit, a neutral

word that doesn’t echo of repossessed homes and poverty. We don’t know how trade

works so we leave it to multinationals, ogres who have bought all cemeteries, even in

death! Have you not got the picture yet? Our political leaders and the economic elite

are aliens, bent on destroying us, we fight their wars and think we fight for freedom.

They make fun of us through the ballot boxes, as they are behind every political party.

For them liberty and abuse are identical words.

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Chicken, Jews and Arabs

On a wall was written: I’m a chicken, chickens rule OK!

Thousands of people come here from abroad to eat us,

we don’t mind that so much, they eat us in the name

of love. I wonder if the Israelis love Palestinians so much

they feel the need to kill them to satisfy a primitive urge

to fatally embrace them in the name of infatuation.

I saw Jews stand on a knoll, applauded as Gaza strip was

strafed. Soaked in blood the spectators went home and

made love. Bloodletting, not your own, is good for sex.

The Nazis loved Jews so much they killed a few millions of

them, this proves that we should keep to killing chicken

you can’t roast a Palestinian or a Jew.

29

Long Voyage and a Chinese Lady.

Glittering ocean, there is no difference between the vast blue sky and the sea.

I’m in a bubble, there is no escape. I walk on a rusty deck know this voyage will

never end. Time is reduced to a trickle. The ship is bound for Nagasaki but we

will never get there. I feel a wave of dread, the difference between sunset and

dawn is but a whisper. Magazines, books and old newspapers have been read

and reread a thousand times, playing cards are filthy by overuse, I have fallen in

love with the print of the green Chinese lady in the salon. When voices are still

I sit and watch her and will her to smile, but she’s inscrutable. Seagulls, the sea

has changed colour, grey and foamy, air is no longer pure. Nagasaki has come

to our rescue and saved us from mortal weariness. The city will dock alongside

us in the afternoon.
30

A Brazilian Café.

The hotel where I stayed served lousy coffee, insipid and milky.

I knew there was a Brazilian café nearby, on my way there walked

past the closed down city hospital. Grey walls dripping of uncured

diseases, graffiti and dead windows. Convert it into an office block,

but who wants to work there, a place haunted by cynical doctors and

indifferent nurses who stalk the halls at night waiting for their shift

to end so they can get out from this place of horror, and patients

they have lost interest in and can do nothing for. Tear it down and

throw the debris into a gully. At the Brazilian café the coffee was

strong and healthy; the staff, young, moved as dancers to the music

in the background. There is much of Africa in the Brazilian soul,

passionate, courageous; yet, sometimes, viciously moody.

The girl who served me coffee, smiled with lips and eyes, her skin

dark, glowing… fit. And the sad hospital faded into oblivion.
31

Haiku (August)

Blast of open furnace

Brings utter indolence

An August day.

Bougainvillea moves

in the wind of dead heat

The only sign of life.

From a white wall

Bluebottles drop ready fried

On the terrace.

The wind too has died.

Sun takes cruel revenge

Curled up pale leaves

32

Senryu

Behind the bushes

Between skeletal twigs

More bushes

Under the carob tree

A lone mule sees tractors

Its race’s demise.

Beautiful horses

Only the rich can buy one

Mercedes, so common.
33

A tin of Sardines.

Mother by an assembly line putting tiny sardines into tins,

a machine did the rest, a squirt of oil and a lid stamped on.

Sardines side by side, in total darkness, wait to be eaten.

But first of all the sardines had to be smoked, the smoker

my mother’s lover, he visited her every Sunday afternoon,

and I was sent out to find a place that sold ice cream, even

when it rained. Rusting sardine cans, littering the wayside,

don’t walk barefoot in the grass at summer time. Mother

by an assembly line, putting sardines into tins, the smoker

had another girlfriend now and I got no Sunday ice cream.

34

Air Travel in a Dakota (1956)

White as sheet, the virtual page in front of me, I want to compose a gentle

whisper of a memory. Thought of my first flight, an old Dakota plane, that

looked like a diesel stinking bus inside. I looked under the seat to find

the parachute, but the steward said there weren’t any. Disappointing I had

seen myself jumping out off the burning plane land safely and be in

the newspapers. The steward handed out sweets I pretended to eat one,

thought it might be a drug to keep us quiet, this made sense since many of

the passengers were drunk. Turbulence, like driving on a bad country lane,

I threw up in a paper bag. The plane landed in Sweden, the flight had only

lasted an hour. Walked tall across the grey tarmac, nonchalant presented

my passport to an immigration officer. Here comes a seasoned traveler.

35

The Photo Album

An abject August wind, full of melancholy, blows,

my siblings and parents are bones in the ground.

Thighs, skulls and hip bones turning into soil and

stories go untold. I close my eyes to see them but

see only skeletons. Sepia photos in an album

that’s all what’s left of my family.

How things have changed, my father I thought

was very old, looks young. My mother, a film star,

siblings are mere children dreaming of castles

In the sky, I am their grandfather now. Christmas

parties and weddings, I was not there the sea took

my youth, the rest is a smile upon old lips.

36

Haiku

Yellow butterfly

Flits about the rose bush

And life continues.