People and horses

The Newmarket was the oldest market in town
farmers came here selling potatoes and other greenery
Their women-folk sold thick, long underwear
winter can be cold when the North-west blows.
Horse manure was quickly scooped up the town’s housewives
good for the rosebushes.
Horse **** gave off a fragrance of time gone by.
Time changed, first slowly farmers had trucks
sold orange, tomatoes and exotic fruits never heard of before
and one day the horses to had gone.
Everybody was busy not time for a wee dram and a chat.
It was the horses that made the market pretty
oddly enough the iron ring on the railing is still here
Waiting for the warm breath of the workhorses.

Another summer
Summer is over the night arrives hastily
it was a delicious season spent indoors
his cancer didn´t like to sun.
To sit there and dream of summer wine and dance
reading brochure of adventures in Thailand.
Once he travelled to Paris, walked the street
trying to get a whiff when Paris was Hemingway´s
Ezra Pound’s Gertrude Stein’s and James Joyce’s.
Instead, it was another overpriced city
but he went to the house where Edith Piaf lived
her name was on the building and the street
where she had lived had a lived-in patina.
He was not invited, to a literary salon but
Shakespeare’s bookshop took in two of his
modest book

The Ring

When I asked my girlfriend to marry me, she was thrilled
and said, now I can quit my boring job and be a housewife.
She called her parents they were coming into town
the next day, meet us at eight o’clock sharp.
I had bought my fiancé a ring of old gold with green gem,
it looked expensive but wasn´t
I put the ring in my camelhair overcoat, the coat was ****
more expensive than the ring.
Going to meet the new family, I was a bit nervous stopped
at a bar had a Rom and coke, as I was about to order
one more drink my friends, came in; laughter and talk.
When I looked at the time it was about 9, I rushed out
And forgot my overcoat
to find a cab, there wasn’t any, so, I had to walk to the house
and arrived about ten 0’clock.
Rang the doorbell, she cried and refused to let me in,
I knocked on the door, when it opened it was her father
Who angrily shouted that his daughter wasn´t marrying a common drunk?
It was the prefix “common” that hurt me most.
Back at the bar, my dear overcoat was stolen but my friends
Consoled me, we drank some more.
Two years later, I saw she was getting married in a small white church
in the neighbourhood.
I went to her wedding but sat in the back didn´t want her to see me.
I have good eyesight and noticed she wore the same ring
I never got around to giving her
That made me wonder if the bridegroom was a thief.

In defence of the Palestine people

I have complained my car didn’t start, how middle-class
I have become complaining about unimportant banality
instead of writing about the plight of the Palestinians
who has endured having their land stolen and also?
Losing the little they have left of land and olive trees
to the unspeakable settlers.
Israel has demonized the Arab and demonized us who
write about the inequity into silence.
I have noticed when I write about this conflict on other sites
It is overlooked and not commented upon.
There was a time in Norway, when my uncles fought to help
the Jews and suffered for it, torture and long jail terms.
Today the situation is different Israel picked up the mantles
of ****** and ran with it.
I have no power but, I can defend the Palestinians in
the knowledge that history is on my side.
The truth is stifled but never killed.

The shop
at the corner of my childhood
has stopped selling Danish pastry
and coco macrons
milk and cheese.
The room is bare
The cheese cutter is no longer there
And the old-fashioned weight
Doesn’t pling.
There is no butter
And no one asks why?
The bell that rang when opening
The shop's door
Doesn’t ring anymore
The shop is overtaken by time.
Perhaps someone will buy the shop
Make a wine bar
Making us into middle-class alcoholics
I have sudden hunger for Danish pastry.

The race for life

Once I was a spore trying to reach the ovaries
I ran fast (must have been athletic) and won the race
to be a living breathing human.
Had the spore lost it would not make, any difference
for a spore.
As it is, I have seen the sunrise over the Pacific Ocean
mountains high and rabbits in the woods never loved
by a woman, nor the glorious hurt of rejection
The softness of her skin, the colour of her eyes
When I swam in the lake of enchantment and walked
near the waterfall where lovers cry.
All this because I was lucky, the victor of a race where
millions of spores

Hospital workers

It has been another busy day a lot of driving
the destination is yet another hospital that smells of despair.
Busy fat auxiliary nurse, you can hear the friction of sweaty thighs
and the smell of their vaginas.
I’m not surprised the canteen sell mostly sweet cakes and drinks
and low paid, they have no other chances.
The doctors are mostly good at their trade, but some of them
would be happier as car mechanics, if it hadn´t been
for pushy mothers wanting a son with a title.
They are jolly, the nurses on a sugar high, I think.
I sit in the waiting room, the endless waiting for more tests.
My doctor is female, she talks to me softly, but there is steel
in her voice, telling me what to do and eat.
After a shouting match I lost, I gave her one of my books.
Mollified, she forgave my outburst. Yes, she is an angel.