The painter
The sky this afternoon was odd clouds
looked as ice-bergs floating on pink air
the seagulls kept their distance.
A grey wolf scratches on my door
I let it in
had a leg of lamb it ate it all then fell asleep
Then it wanted to leave and, I saw it disappearing
In the dim lit hall, I asked no question.
But made me think of a Russian painter who
painted the trees black with a red background
and you could sense wolves starring at you.
The sea in the bay is dark with white spots has
the Russian gone mad painting the sky and not
telling anyone. I wonder if his name was Kalovsky
not that I know but the name sound Russians.
I go back into the hall the wolf has gone but it
left a pile of dung as prove it had been there.

The Gazelle

I met a Gazelle in Marseille
she was chewing on my jacket
I took it off to keep her warm.
She was hungry, gave her my jumper
not enough.
In Marseille I was naked
She had eaten my wallet also

Make it short

Soothing rain on slates
Heal nerves torn to tatters
Unforgiving is life.

Rain is decanting
A transparent carpet of silk
Untouchable beauty.

Rain chased by gusts
Mad dance around corners
A day fit for heroes.

Paris Sonnet
I visited Paris for a few days I have been here before
but this time I came alone.
Walked into a café selling delicious cakes had a piece
of cake, a big piece, and had a crust on top
for my untrained eyes it looked like petrified snot.
with tiny footsteps on done by a cook with a fork.
I put a napkin over the cake and drank coffee,
I could stir the coffee with tiny sticks that looked
like sugary rat tails.
The river Saine ran full that year.
Discerning rats prefer cake shops, and why not.
Who wants to live in that ***** river?
Perhaps blind lovers that only see one another.

The past are memories
Going back to my old house in Algarve was a sad affair,
we took the old road it is a bit longer but less speedy and free.
The motorway also cost a lot of money in toll and for those who use it
driving big cars, like BMW and Mercedes, for them, the trick is to
minimize the time it takes driving from A to B.
The village was empty I saw no one and nobody came out to say halloo,
except for the village idiot and his dog, the cur is always delighted to see me
I play with it strokes its stomach and play hide and seek.
The friends I had were either died, moved away or lived in an old people' home.
The idea was to send the furniture to some people who needed them
but the white van never showed up.
In the end, we decided to leave the furniture to the new owners
I was only interested in the full bookshelves, unfinished manuscripts
and a few original paintings.
We tried to make lunch at the house, but it was heavy going, mostly
we had lunch in the nearest small town.
I got an old TV going, only had a few canals which consisted of football.
Football and more football.
To think I loved living here, now it was a nightmare.
I tried to walk in the woods walking on overgrown paths, falling over
olive roots, and worst of all, the small lake where the dog and I used to swim
was fenced in, for a reason the baffled me.
We needed help; old age had defeated us.
Driving back to Cascais, we took the old road since it was slow and had
many good cafés I had to check my diabetes in case it fell too low.
The travel took 7 hours, rest breaks and food,
my wife was the co-driver, so are all women, don´t drive too fast,
There is a car in front of you and so on.
Otherwise, it was an enjoyable outing.

The ghost and a Child

I have a recurring dream I hadn´t been to my house for a long time, remember I had been happy
there with my little dog,
we used to walk in the woods, and when I was driving around in my motorbike, she was glad to see me returning.
I took a bus up, the driver didn´t ask me for money and being rather frugal. I was glad.
Outside the house, a little girl was playing, asked her If she liked living here?
Yes, she said, and I have a dog, she said.
The dog came. It was my dog; it didn´t recognize me growled when I called the dog's name.
Inside the house, a couple were arguing, she said, I hate this house. It gives me the creeps
She sat down where I sat, wriggled a bit (which I liked)
she got up, stroked the seat (which I enjoyed too) but, she was bothered and sat on another chair.
They didn´t see me, I thought they must be blind.
Outside, I asked the little girl if her parents were blind. No, she said, but they can´t see you because
you are a ghost only a child like me can see.

The way it used to be
            When I came to Liverpool in the seventies
I found a country in peace with itself,
the difference in income between workers and
the bosses were not extreme.
Living in England, I found my education woefully
lacking in substance and took classes in counselling,
philosophy and literature.
Then the catastrophe came in the form of Thatcher
or as she was called “the iron lady.”
greed is right, there is no society, and workers were
encouraged to buy their council homes and social
housing virtually stopped.
Factories closed, “get on your bike” was the mantra
and Britain ceased to be a pleasant land.
It has gone worse the Brexit came about workers
tired of the wealthy’s abuse, living on wages that were
too small to feed a family and we got the shameful
food-banks which the conservative now boats about
Like it was invented by them. Yes, it was!
It is with sorrow I see how the once proud country
Has fallen down into a beggar state.

The summit 2018

Buenos Aires was and perhaps still is a lovely city
it was here, many years ago I was thought by
a young ******* to do the tango and other exquisite things.
Right now the city is invaded by a coterie of leaders
from all over the world carving up their interest sphere,
peace talks it is called, and that is ok if they are able
to rein in a Saudi crown prince an upstart who is a killer
dripping of blood spoiling the carpet.
Mind, the nations that supply him with weaponry
are guilty too for the bombing of Yemen, pity Israel is
not on the agenda and they haven't even got oil.
Soon the show will be over the people can take over
marching in the streets of Buenos Aires, waving flags
of protests about taxes and in the night do the tango

The Photo


When I was nine, the war had been over
for about two, years, but the German army had left
behind uniforms, so we dressed up
and made a **** salute thinking this was the way
the Germans greeted one another.
I know better, know they primarily shake hands.
A picture for posterity was taken of three lads acting it up.
I had forgotten about the picture although
it is on a frame on the top bookshelf.
A tiresome anti-****, born in 1960, didn’t think  
the photo had any historical value and wanted me to destroy
the offence we children had committed.
He got upset when I refused the request and called
me a **** storm trooper, left and slammed the door.

Poetry she read

At the inauguration of Joe Biden
It was a grey affair and the new president’s speech.
In an attempt to sound lyrical, other ways dull.
The capitol looked like a military camp the fear of Trump lingered.
A young girl read a poem it was sweet and pressed
The right buttons and it also helped she was black, which
Is the colour of our time.
The only time anyone read poems is on occasions like this.
I wish the young girl well; she has had exposure and will
After this, publish a book and be remembered as a great poet.

The dawn, after the rain had trumpet its force on the old roof tiles
it ceased to a soft drizzle harmless and tender.
Yes, I know I should get up at seven steeped as I´m a protestant work ethic.
Overcome by laziness, I slept for two hours more.
In my drowsiness, thought about how our freedom has been restricted by the internet,
our thought and secrets are no longer our property but shared by authorities that want
to know our innermost thoughts.
We are prisoners of an all-embracing society that will not tolerate thoughts
other than banal comments about a friend's birthday.
What we heralded as a great instrument for communication
is perverted and spied on by our leaders.
Free speech only exists for those who have nothing to say and accept living
in the land of the convention.
Nothing can be nobler if we demand our right
not to be censured
and called seditious because we will not be trapped
in the trivial acceptance of perceived lies.

I have forgotten the name of.

My friend who knew things said it was because
the man wanted egg and bacon for breakfast preferable
of the fried kind.
It is annoying they have come to fix the internet and
I keep thinking of the painter's name especially of say
“Late night at the diner” How can I forget yes, I blame the internet?
it has made us lazy, just look it up don't bother to think.
I wonder if my friend still thinks the man in the song only wanted
breakfast?
Was it Edward Norton?

SATURDAY MORNING

The alarm bell has a modified
Saturday tone
And I murmur
give me 5 minutes more.
A good night’s sleep
A peaceful morning
I doze off.
Give me 5 minutes more.
I get up, make a coffee
The good feeling continues
The world is wonderful
Until the phone rings!

We must haste

They are so happy, the parents, grandmother’s uncle and aunts showing on Facebook the addition
to the family.
Do they not for a minute think what the child´s future will be?
The world is on the brink of total collapse, but no one takes this calamity that is coming our way, will **** them and the children.
The polar ice is melting so much sea, it is drowning smaller islands
who will become refugees seeking shelter somewhere safe?
Nowhere is safe with fire and endless tornados turning houses into driftwood.
Big cities will be unhabitable and sink under the greedy sea.
This is happening before our eyes, we build bigger airports
and larger aeroplanes; yes, and ships too.
Ah, I hear you say, we can be rid of fossil fuel and rely on electricity
to do that fields where cows grazed had to be converted into solar farms.
And we have windmills, but it will not be enough even if we built a million
of them filling the landscape with their ugly appearance.
The rest has to come from converting coal into electricity.
The hardest thing of all is to get rid of cars the clogging up motorways befouling, the air, we breaths.
We have to learn living closer to our place of work is a more compact smaller world we can't all use bicycles unless we're middle class
And use the bike for recreation.
If we do not repair what we have besmirched, there will be no future for the new generations.

Unwritten page

A blank page on the word processor I ought to leave it this way
just look at it and dream what I could have written.
If I delete the words written, it will be a blank page again.
No history on a crumpled-up sheet of paper in a wastebasket.
For now, it is too late, but I might erase the page written
if I so choose.
All poems are if written with passion, great poems
if not by the readers but by the poet, who boarded the wrong bus
as my wife did in Johannesburg many years ago
great was her consternation when stopping an available bus
to find it was for black people.
Being born in Congo by a black mother and a Dutch father
she identified herself as black.
Not so, said the authority she was Portuguese.
Racism and ignorance, now it is the Moslems turn to feel
the surge of hatred.
We want the Moslems to behave like us, but they
insist this is not possible in the name of their religion.
What do I do now? Erase the story?

the dance of the dead

Forever and ever
You will be my love.
Eternity.
On green meadows, he walks.
Held up by skeletons
On land fit for horses.
White cottontails
Burrows underground
To the bones of the dead
But they bring
Nothing up
It is not food.
Forever and ever
You will be my love.
Eternity.
The stream has clean water
Filtered through
Human bones.
Endless wars
In Europa has not ceased.
Forever and ever
You will be my love.
Eternity.
The victims
An inferior race.
Today it is
Palestine that pays
Red is the sand.
Peace is a world
The void of humans.
Forever and ever
you will be my love.
Eternity

Remembered is the loss

I sit in the sumptuous living room with my wife
we have a bed the king would be proud of
a lunch café on the first floor and den for myself
my old age is blessed.
My thought goes to the village far and beyond
the road up there is now full of petals white and rosy  
my cottage is where the road bends to the right
I see smoke from its chimney, a dog bark.
I was happy here animals and people knew me
alas, old age caught up with me, I had to leave
my almond tree and things that let my heart sing
Years of contentment more is asking too much.
Fly memories, fly to where the sun sets over
the blue mountain range and into the sea.

Tanka

Marilyn Monroe
I loved her greatly
I wedded a blond
She spoke with a scouser accent
When her roots turned russet.

Arm dealers look out
When walking on your green lawn
Watch out for landmines
The mad horde of the limbless
Are seeking a ****** revenge

The river of Benafim

A long time ago (everything is in the past)
a river ran near the houses its water was calm and fresh
it came from the upland.
Parts of the river runs quite deep
we could swim a little and frolic about.
I had a dog back then
she preferred the shallow parts looking rounded stones
like an egg, she gave them to me.
I thanked her patted her head and put the stones in my bag.
The river is dry now, only an ugly scar in the landscape.
Smallholdings must drive further up to find water.
Bigger farms have small man-lakes that fills with rain,
but it doesn´t rain so much anymore.
By August they too have to go upland for water.
The toilers of crops, tell me it was like this in the fifties
what do I know, I say nothing to keep the peace.

Liberal Democracy

Think if you lived in a liberal democracy
With almost restriction, except one.
If you write your sentence must be how you like
And respect women, even if you think they sound
Like the harridans in the Guardian, a bunch of tarts
Do not use words, like ****, **** and ******
As it fits women’s physiological makeup.
After this, you can write whatever you like to do,
Before I forget, never hold a door open for a woman
She will take it as an affront of their dignity.
You are now a certified middle-class person
And have *** without a ******, but ask first.

The lonely ship

Crossing the Pacific Ocean and into The Indian Ocean
is tiresome even for a ship, days of calm ****** water
we have been abandoned.
It is beautiful but, it is like watching Mona Lisa for, say,
two months without getting fed up with the lady.
It lifts the spirit seeing another ship coming up of the horizon
in front of us; positioned near close enough to see the crew
wave or criticize the rust and colours.
Blue and yellow have they no taste!
It was enlivening we were able to talk and smile again lately
we had fallen into a sulky silence, no good for the moral
and the chief steward told the cook to fry more eggs for
the evening meal thanks to the visit from a ghastly ship that
was so badly colour- coordinated.

Homeward Thoughts

When I see the white jet stream of an air carrier
high up on the blue sky that wholly cloud,
like a grazing flock of sheep
I think of the country up North, I left so many years ago
was I right leaving?
A question that remains unanswered.
A chasm of time has gone like the mist of Saragossa Sea,
mysterious and frightening.
A land that only exists in my mind,
should I go there, I would be in dreams I was young
and life had many promises.
That was before death ravaged us and took those I loved.
No, I think I will be in Portugal a little longer.

The water well
There is near the houses a deep well
you can´t stick a bucket on a rope many ropes are needed.
They used to hire a man usually the village idiot
to spend his life hauling up buckets of water.
Villagers believed the water came from the Yanjing river
A man who had gone to school disagreed; it is a deep
underground river, he said. For this, he was disliked.
One day he fell down the well, but since it was not
manmade and smooth a big stone sticking out saved him
from falling all the way down.
Broke his leg in the fall, he did.
With a dangling leg he had to claw himself up, however
they gave him water to drink, his struggle made him thirsty.
When he got out, he spoke a strange language
the villagers, thought was Chines, it never struck them
he was stark raving mad.
Now, an electric pump was installed, they saw him limping
out of the village talking gibberish.

Senryu
A cynical person
Protects his soppy heart
From mawkishness

Senryu
A lurid nightmare
Is an extension of a day
That went ******* bad


Senryu
                      They say he is rude
When objecting against old age
They expect poise

When we're young

When you are young, say, twenty-five you, say, things like
I hope not to be old not meet girls have ***, with a group of friends.
we didn't have any, sitting drinking
There used to be five of us we were at the top of the world
death was so far away.
Then the group shrank, one becomes a Jehovah witness,
one became a drifter two got married I was drinking alone
and somehow live was no longer glorious.
They are all dead now, but for some reason or as punishment
I lived on, although in another country.
Yet, I have no religious hang up, I believe that in death.

Our leaders

Men in politics don't love women but they
live in a society where one has to be happily married.
When they go to a party with their wives who a dressed
inexpensive dresses and jewellery it is to show
Their economic success. Men in politics and business
prefer to **** each other and when they watch ****,
dream of the handsome political assistant they like to
**** his ****. Political women are nuisance you can't
play golf with them and have ****** charge banter
About touching their *****. They only touch up
women to show they are the alpha male and love women,
for them, there are **** stars and wives both are
equally despised, they are not gay but by ******* a fellow
politicians they assert dominance; they have gone to
expensive universities and learned only one thing that
money matters, love never come into this equations
they are despicable unable to grasp the simple life and
they are our leaders.

The Unbiassed Media

Bombs rain on Gaza, the youth throw stones, the Israeli soldiers killed
or maim stone throwers, a dance of death.
What do the leading media say? Not very much,
the Gazans must be partly blamed; the victims are guilty
of the strength of being Palestinians defending their right.
In Hebron, the settlers are razing houses, killing goats and setting fire
to olive trees and daily is the death of those who get in their way.
The media might have a byline about it, that’s all.
If Israel is criticized, it unashamedly invokes the sacred Holocaust
and calls us antisemitic
Should a Jew speak up, he/her is called a self-hater
and be banned from entering the stolen land of Israel forever.

A one-sided coin

When Germany was invaded and ruined
every German claimed they knew nothing
of the atrocities against the Jew.
The same thing will happen to Israel and
her people will say they knew nothing
about the barbarism committed against
the Palestinians.

Hunting for sport

  It is hard to be a little fox
They have many natural enemies in the forest
Where they live in the hole of an uprooted tree
They have no umbrella for when it rains
No sofa and a TV, but they do have a loving mother
That tries to protect them till adulthood.
Now men on horseback and howling dogs try
To **** them for sport.
Who are these unsightly people chasing a fox?
Till it can run no more and is torn to pieces by
“Man’s best friend “
For this sport, the hunters dress in a red coat
At the table boat how successful they have been
And no one calls them stupid.

The visitors
A knock on my entrance door, I opened up
and seven people came in one of them looked at me
like she should be in love, perhaps she remembered
me 40 years back in time. The house had been rebuilt
the steps leading up to the second floor were outside
the girl when they marched out kissed my hand
and I thought: am I a pope now?
She looked like the Palestinian girl – unarmed- had been
shot by a female ****** who did this foul deed in
the name of her country she had been told  Palestinians
were out to **** them, the female shooter was defending
her blood dripping country.
I knew the six others too one was my brother
the other my sister and the rest old friends but none
of them recognised me.
The ladder up to the second landing was long I saw
them disappearing into a cloud, closed my door

The day that wasn't
  
When I awoke
It was dark waited for the day
It never came, back to bed.
Later I got up, still dark
The day refused to be born.

Switch on the computer
When it came on
It showed yesterday’s news
Wondered if I could find
A ***** channel
But I’m too much of a *****
*** is ok for the participant
For an onlooker
It looks ridiculous.
*** for its own sake ends up
Being sordid and ends in tears
“I thought you loved me,”
Back in bed
When I stirred was met
With a new day
My worries were over.

The orchard

It was a beautiful apple tree with low hanging fruit
shaped by a gardener whose parents had been Jehovah witnesses
(His parents didn´t believe in Christmas)
made to look like a decorated Christmas tree as seen on postcards.
On the tree, a twig stuck out that had no apples appeared dead
as I reached up to pick an apple the twig was a snake and said:
“Don´t steal the fruit that belongs to the old people’s home.”
Have you never heard of Paradise when the snake tempted Eve?
“Yes, I know I was there, but have changed gone woke now speak
nicely, before we strike with a drone, the twig said”
I picked an apple anyway; it began raining, and I had no umbrella
I got soaking wet, and the next day I had a nasty cold.

Loving thought

Love is a delicate Spanish bluebell
In a field of thistles
You pick the flower at your peril
It may die in your hands and leave you
With a prickly **** of regrets

The Genetic pool

I'm my father's son I carry his genes
He is a part of me this is inescapable
If I hate him, I dislike myself.
Now that I'm older than my father
He is my son you can't help but loving
Your son
Once I saw my father on a bus going
Into town, he reached out to say halloo
I, misinformed, looked out of the window
I saw his tears.
Wish this moment would come back
It is my eternal shame.
My father is my son I think of him gently.

The Nothingness

All live forms end in nothingness
That is not negative but a spent force.
What was said and done continues
Like an echo through time.
That force springs to life when time ripe
And continues in an altered form
Till the end of humans ability to invent
And renew her; therefore one can say
“Nothingness” is the hidden life form
Whence live springs.

The occupation

There is a small house in the sticks of the Algarve
It has been alone for a month and has taken the looks
Of an ignored older man who needs to change his shirt
Moreover, a hot shower.
I take it mice have moved in feeding on my duvet,
Moreover, I have to get rid of them don’t know-how
I could gas them, but I’m no sadist, I could catch them
One by one, release them in the woods but they will
Remember the good life and return.
I have to become concerning only mice can prove
They have lived here the last ten generation are allowed
In the rest, it will be expelled.
I could see the Us air force, but they bomb everything
In and ask question later.
So, I have to be a Swedish liberal and embrace the mice.
I digress as it is as I live on a traffic island and like to go
Return home.

Destiny
The majesty of the vast ocean
denied.
If you are lucky, you might see
choppy water
in a summer lake.

Green Umbrella
We were out driving it began raining and the window whiskers didn’t work.
My wife went out of the car walked in front
I could see the umbrella it was green, but the progress was slow especially up the hill and we had to stop many times.
At home, I dried her hair and washed her tired,
sore feet made her a cup of strong tea till she
was ready to make my evening meal.
Green Umbrella
We were out driving it began raining, and the window whiskers did not work.
My wife went out of the car walked in front
I could see the umbrella it was green, but the progress was slow,
mainly uphill and we had to stop many times.
At home, I dried her hair and washed her tired,
sore feet made her a cup of strong tea until she was ready to make my evening meal.

Spawning


  The children, in the street near the factories, looked unfriendly
  avoid them, and my brother said their mothers where ******
spawning Nazis during the war.
Their mothers had haircuts at the police station, bald as eggs
serves them right they and their children should be
sent back to Germany.
The street, also ours, was typically working-class no gardens
no colour anywhere like living in a maze of greyness and damp.
My brother had his knowledge from listening to the adults,
men who had done nothing under the **** occupation except
trading with the enemy for cigarettes and ***** and using
their wives as bait.
Now they were heroes pulling the headdress of the unlucky
calling them ******, but like so many things that too ended.
Hair grows back beautiful women in the street, and the Norwegian
are blessed with short memories.

The pursuit


Three blackbirds
Are chasing a young seagull
In circles, they fly
Until the gull
Find an opening
It flies
Toward the ocean.
The blackbirds
Cannot
Following the gull
There.
They return
Sit in a tree
And squawks
Among
Themselves

Not the same

The result is another poem unlike the one
I wrote in my head.
The poem that has another conclusion
this because the inner voice changed my opinion.
I try the Grammarly that informs about passive
the sentence, well it was meant to be passive, worst
of all, it suggests a change of words which is
Ignored I’m not writing a document.
The Grammarly helpful with my lack of commas
I then correct the poem and send it on its way,
but it is not the poem I wrote in bed.

The virus

This forenoon
is like a new summer day
people smile
behind mask.
their eyes sparkle
like the worst is over.
Superman,
not the movie one,
is in hospital.
the hope is, up from
the sickbed
the Phoenix will fly
on fluttering wings of peace.
failing this
we put our hopes
in prayer
that he might not suffer.

from a day

Remember there a good time when we thought “Reader's digest.
Was high literature, the teller of the truth?
When I was propagandist luring us with fine words
in lies.
When we got older we learned and these days even the Guardian
follows a political policy skirting the truth.
There are the lie and the truth, but convention stops us from telling
anyone how it was.
I wrote a story of sea life and young men the story was met
pith d deadly silence because I used the language of a time gone
when a ***** was not a ***-worker.
People feel offended when met with untarnished truth,
write about the green sea and not of mass- ****** of old people
in Sweden.
An editor wrote me a long letter of refusal when to simple
words like “******* “would be better and less insulting.
But that is the way it is better to be kind than truthful.

Fourth of July

So I thought first of July was the US,s national day
I guess I was thinking of Trump and America first
histrionics and naively hopes the virus killing his nation,
will fade away like the morning mist.
No such luck Mr President and you have nowhere to go
except for down and into the sand of times
that will remember your cowardliness and buffoonery
echoing as Homeric laughter in the sky.
But as I said I wish America well and hope the virus
leaves some alive to tell how Lovely the country was
before it was caught in a tidal wave by the enemy
within, and suicidal behaviour by those who cry freedom
at the cost of the individual.

The freedom of the media


Freedom of speech and freedom of information
have now been restricted unless you watch the news
from approved channels.
I watch the news from the USA channels, from BBC
and Portuguese news; not to forget France 24.
I watched Russian TV since it carries alternative news
Take the news of Donbas, did you know the Russian
speakers tired the Ukraine army shelling has fled to
Russia, hundred thousand, by bus and rail.
This the western media keeps away from us because
we might consider Ukraine in a more sober way
The nail in the coffin of freedom of dialogue is shut.

Cloud


What can we say about a cloud
to say it is gloomy is patently wrong
you can say it is white, grey or black (dark)
but a cloud doesn't know it is a cloud
it is the few things in nature that are soulless
but not wholly so, it came from somewhere
it could be the residue of a **** expelled by
the cosmos, well, it has to happen you can´t hold
in a flatus forever if you try a disservice to
nature itself and your stomach.
Which tells us that nothing is quite a lot.

Astonishment

The queen in her gilded coach pulled by white horses
Came gliding on the sea, towards the sandy shore
Where men stood waited to be knighted.

They had done their duty to keep their mouth shut
And averted their eyes to the state’s illegal activity
Now, payoffs a title and membership in a pash club

The queen came ashore, she had a white lion cub
In one hand and a hammer in the other hand
She hit the men over the head; they fell and died.

The queen, a Marxist revolutionary had been silent
for so long, now she was, old the truth had to come out
no horse carriage for her, but she kept the lion cub.

…And It Was Her Summer


“Go back to the children’s home, she said I have no work and
can’t afford to keep you” Late June afternoon she sat on a bench
with a man, I didn’t know. The man smiled I didn’t like him, but
took the coins he gave me to buy an ice –cream for; I was still
hanging about so mother got up and slapped me across the face.
” Get lost you, stupid boy!” My face was burning I threw the coins
into the lake and ran away. When I stopped running it was night
and I could see sheep in a field, I was tired and cold, thought of
seeking shelter in a little wooden church, but it smelt of fear and
I thought of ghosts, so I walked on till I came to a workman’s hut
near the road, it was easy to get in; here the smell was of coffee,
and kind men in overalls, perhaps one of them were my father?  
It was morning and warm sunlight when they came, they were not
angry, but gave me milk and bread and showed me the quickest
way to get home. The sky that day was enormous and from a hill
I looked down to the town, I could see the school building it must
have been early, no children in the yard; but I just sat there and
could not understand why my mother didn’t want to see me.

the diminishing

we have not noticed yet, a few old folks dying
they are not being replaced by new births
and then there are fewer people than before the young
remind unborn as older people die,
we take no notice at. First, farms are unattended and
the vegans are first to ring the alarm bell
not be a cause of no cow, but the lack of grain.
The world population is shrinking, like the rivers
and lakes were we used to swim.
The emptying of humanity is unstoppable we are
on the way out we made a mess out of the world
and now the piper wants to be paid.
When only a hundred peoples are left, they will
commit suicide as no one wants to be the last
the person in the vastness of nature-

A moment in time

I remember a hot summer night
unusual hot for a Nordic country
all windows were open.
My mother, brother and sister sat around a table
drinking coffee.
It was a glorious moment
my happiness was so intense I cried
I knew this moment would not be repeated.
My brother kidded me, I take so quickly to tears
but I could not tell him the why
Without them, I feel so utterly alone, and they died too early
there was no time for a farewell.
I live in a foreign country the past is a treasured memory.