I am writing this as
I stand -beer in hand- watching
Neil Gaiman being

Interviewed on stage in
Oslo. He has more to say
Than many, to poets

And those living lives; others.
"Writing is like composting.  
You have an idea. You

Leave it to rot... and
Things will grow
From it."

Of us wants to
Lose
Either
Of us.

I wish I hadn't made those friends
That my mother didn't want me to
(As if their mothers didn't warn them
About the likes of myself).

I would have stayed on the path
To a doctor's in psychology,
Not ending up in construction;  
I'd be neither broke nor bleeding.

I wish I had been convinced as young
That brushing your teeth properly
Will save you hours of working
Your hands to shreds to pay the dentist.

I wish I'd never gotten any of these
Tattoos. That "home made scarification
Is cool only before the infection,"
Was as given to me at thirteen as now.

I wish I'd fallen so in love with my
First girlfriend that we'd be married
With children+dog today, knowing only
The love of each other's.

I wish I hated whisky. That my
Fuse got longer with every stout  
Consumed. And with that, the certainty
That I never could dance. Jig. Ever.

I wish it was all different.
I'd have nothing to sulk about alone
In a double bed. No foot-in-mouth
Memories to still bring me shame,

No failures. No mistakes.
No painful blows or signs of poor
Judgement. Nothing to fret over.
No blame to give myself.

Nothing to cry until I shiver about.
No caring hands to have to live without.
No lost love's name to whisper,
Moan. Shout.
           Nothing at all to write about.

My concerns for us weigh
As much as the neurons
Firing the thought
Of
It.

Their footprints are
deep from carrying
cannons to
gun-
fights.

Setting clocks back that
one hour
I only see daylight through
the windows of the lunch
room.

night all day.

Oslo Skyline lets me
recall one of my earliest
memories;
from a baby seat in the
back of my uncle's
Citroën, hypnotized by
the yellow lights of a
Shell station we were parked
outside.

something so comforting
about the brightness of
a whole, little day
within the darkness of way-
beyond-bedtime.

warmth within winter.
adults in conversation.
I hope the bus driver keeps
the overhead halogens off in
here.

there's nothing unfriendly
about this lack of
daylight.

Red eyes on the morning train
Heads bobbing
I ask myself
Why do we do this
To ourselves?

Then I withdraw
And smile with
Buddah

This too is
Poetry

Your past is your story.
I will never demand you
Rip a single page
From it.

I'm a very big boy.
Tales of your yesterloves
Scare me as little as
Anything;

Only hurt as much
As they should.
Never burn a picture
To please me.

Never paint over a
Secret, never camouflage
A single regret as
Bad luck.

Skeletons. Dust and bones,
Dead and harmless.
Tell me everything.
Unsensored;

No blur nor bleep.
I want to know
What shaped you into
Someone so

Deserving of my
Interest. Let me into
Your attic. Turn out
The lights.

I'm a very big boy.
Even my ghosts are
Scarier than
Yours.

Kiel, Germany.*

I know it's not even lunch yet,
But I'm a poet, so this huge
Beer has no bad feelings

Attached to its coldness.
All ice, hugs and barley.
I love Germany this time

Of the year. Guess I should
Get back on the boat and wake up
The woman,

But there is something about
Cold drops running down
Glass to kiss a coaster that

Makes me want to read what
The cardboard says. So I expose it
With the intentions of a literary

Drunkard: Noch ein Bier Bitte.
I guess there's poetry
Everywhere

To a writing man
Who loves
Beer enough

To write about just
One. Even in
Germany.

Relax.
Cry yourself dry, then
Sleep.

Your turn to be
Child now.
Rest.

This is safety.
I am familiar
Cover.

I have no pain to speak of.
So I allow myself
Silence.

It has quiet room for
Sympathy.

Generation Playstation.
How many of you know that when it's two o'clock
The sun points
South?

I grew up falling down from trees and hills.
But I also taught myself to make fire
Without fire.
I drank too, as a teenager.
We drank around bonfires.

When we came home red-eyed, smoke-smelling and usually superficially
Cut, our fathers would pretend
Not to be proud.

We saw right through it, just like our mothers did.
They felt they had to say something.
They did, and we pretended to listen,
For the sake of peace to rest.

There was no room for drugs:

We were already
Happy.

In memory of, and with respect to the victims of the 2011 terrorist acts in Norway.
As the weather resembles, one remembers...


Perhaps if you went to *my school,
You'd have gotten beaten up for your egocentricity
Long before it grew to such deranged preportions.

As misplaced as the runes you carved into Glock and rifle;
You'd have been not only estranged, but broken.
Disarmed decades before detonation.

Alas. A distorted berserker you ploughed through
Establishments and hearts; an armed teenager fuelled on
Video games, soft candy and steroids.

Pity the nation that nurses such an unpoetic national enemy.
We forgot your name and face, as you never knew ours.
The symbol we chose was an ocean of roses,

Like torches held to our love unharmed.

Norwegian leap year two-thousand-eleven;
Only twenty-two days in July.

It's almost June.
Still got a fire going.

I don't see myself as one of those
Scandinavian poets who write

Almost only about the weather
Without reason.

The weather is a woman.
As angry as she is breathtaking

Around here.
Turned on and scared,

We brace for impact before
Every forecast.

Will there be a summer at
All, or dull, lightless skies of

Unblue until the rain comes
Down solid again?

I dip my pen in warm memories.
Sad that they are mostly

From abroad, I surrender the idea
Of truth in poetry.

Well, we drink around fires.
Cling to the military standard long

Underwear we stole when we were
In.

See too much as potential
Firewood.

We notice that the sun never
Really sets these months,

But there's room for cold in
The light.

We pray for summer. Hoping
This year it falls

On a
Weekend.

One hour north of Oslo
It is spring morning.
I see my bus
Through my breath.

Up here it's cold until
The sun screams in the summer day
And whimpers red and spiteful all
Night;

We've barely seen it for six months.
Winter is white ground/black air;
Colour only in the cheeks of
Dog walkers
Under thick hats and wrapped in
Yards of scarf.

Life is magnificent when awakening
From annual cryo.

I smile at it from my seat.

It's almost time for my ritual.
Friday after work.
Alone.
The one beer, and the burning of
The Long Johns.

To be able to rest in love;
Lean ones back against
The notion:

Someone wishes you  
Nothing but well.
That your every dream be

Sweet, each step you take light.
Everyday hills like pebbles,
All sleep sufficient.

No tears but those of joy.
To be able to rest in love.
I open my eyes

To morning. Untired.
Back against her warmth.
Leaning.

Birch tree's thousand little fingers wet with
Early May rain, mist kissed and still.

I know you wish I'd miss you more when
I'm here, but I'm a man of focus mastered.

For now I'll keep my eyes drinking from out
My north wall window,

This view.
These trees and humble hills,

Not even shaking from the force of
A full day's rain.

I don't miss.
Sometimes my hand reminds me of

The weight and warmth of yours in it,
And I lean back knowing you're just as

Mine as when we're touching.
I trust love.

I trust love, the way the birch trees
Trust the skies with their thirst,

The grounds with their hunger,
And my eyes to behold their majestic,

Confident
Beauty.

Little girl, your deepest fears have
Nothing on me.
Speak to me of your angst;
It's a miniscule bug to my foot.

Our pathetic misunderstandings
Are egos fighting the memories of
Each other in themselves.
Love is ***** and diamonds.

I love you prematurely when I
Sense spring on your
Skin. It turns me on beyond myself.
So let's just argue,

If that makes you feel as alive as you
Should beneath the hands of my
Unshared attention.
Little girl, your fears have nothing

On me.
I eat insecurity like sushi, wasabi
Memories of idiots telling you
You were never meant to write or

Be written of.
Grab yesterdays with the sticks of
Now-man's hands  
And toss them over your shoulder

Like salt after some you spilled.
Your deepest fear is as shallow
As a puddle.
I've shouldered ten times your

Weight, without love.
Watch me now.
You need not set a foot.
I carry you like the sky its stars.

I am completely alone.
Even threw out the cat.  
She'll just hide under the stairs and
Hope the randy male farm cat

Is in the woods. I unplug all
Appliances to **** any buzzing.
The silence is a mass in my ears.
I only hear birds. The swallows I

Love. Doves and crows. Sparrows
And a dusin unknown to me.
This is the "Off" in Time Off.

Feet so high I don't even
Think to drink.
Complete balance.

Like some future samurai
Zen master.
Unfearing of anything.

Scandinavian summer
Paradise.
Norwana.

I woke up from
(Nearly failed)
Open heart surgery, craving
Water.

In the bed to my left,
Another patient was already
Aware.
Old as stones, and as deaf as
A bucket of dirt.

Nurses all raised their voices,
Straining and struggling
To communicate.
Only every fifth word
Went through.

After a while his adult daughter
Came for a worried visit.
I only just made out their
Shapes in the post-surgery
Half-darkness and my
Morphine haze. She
Spoke to him in a soft voice; a
Hummed whisper,
Barely audible to others.

He answered in the same tone,
Not missing a syllable.

You breathe music.

there's poetry
between your every
uttered word.

you own every room you
enter.
all is a shrine in your

honour.

I see paintings in the shapes of
your blood veins; ocean universes
in your tears.

when you cry, there's no fight.
just whispered discontentment,
comfort is the opposite of

argument.

you beautiful, little beast.
claws constantly concealed.
I kiss your paws.

see right through you.
love
it

all.

Little Sun, sunshine cheeserays
Tan my pallet
Carbolishious little self-sacrificer; my mouth is
Forever an altar to your
Grace.

My stumach a womb to you; rest in the opposite
Of birth.

Vicious Monday.
Bones ache.
Heart barely bothers to
Beat.

Leave the bedroom window
Open for us.
I'm coming home to
Retreat,

Let's just eat, and find
Comfort in not caring if
We nap the afternoon
Away.

I want passive dreams
Of daytime intensity.
Bed and woman of the same
Soft density.

Nap. Little
Night between nighttimes.
Little rest between
Responsibilities.

Sometimes there is just
Too much day
In a
Day.

The five ton cast iron sheet
Hit him above the hips.

His top half survived in hospital
For a few days.

Use certified utilities when
Lifting with a crane.

Don't use a knife for a screwdriver.
Don't challenge a step ladder.

Don't use your partner as a
Lever to lift your own ego;

The half that's left will only
Live for days.

Poet or not; sometimes the meaning you form
From my words sting.

Perhaps. Sound spoken; merely
The rythmic motority

Of a machine -broken pistons, freyed wiring-
That take kind thoughts clean and pure and dispense

Words that hurt like
Soap in
A baby's eyes.

Don't drink.
Don't smoke.
Drive slow.
Don't love.

Don't pat the animals;
One in a thousand
Might bite.
You'll be safer in a pine box.

Sometimes it's the
Cure for cancer
That kills
You.

There's something in his
Eyes. That construction worker
With more dirt on him
Than the ground.

I recognize you, I say
To the reflection in the
Excavator window.
You look like the guy she

Fell in love with.
Not the one
She left.
Perhaps I should change

Back into him again, or
Just not. Me: Yet another thing
That wasn't broken until
I started fixing it.

Fever doesn't care.
She lands, tucks her wings
In and gently kisses
Beads onto the foreheads
Of children and soldiers
Alike.

I rest against a cool
Breeze, hard hat and hammer
On the concrete by my
Feet.
Back wet, muscles and joints
Ache.

I could feel sorry for
Myself, but find comfort in
The thought that somewhere
Out there,
A toddler's mother touches
Sleeping skin with a

Nervous wrist
And whispers
Into the room
Relieved.
*It's gone
Down.

They're burning the stubbles of yesteryear's fields
Before ploughing.
Walls of fire around every farm.
Smoke blends with the smell of pig's furtilizing manure,
And whenever my nose wrinkles up
I remember my father's words:

It's the result of millennia of agricultural tradition.
It's the smell of money.
It's the smell of soil to bread.
It's the smell of something far more important
Than nasal comfort.

He had me at
-Where he should have said-
*Organic.

Inside the center of her
"Now" I find my yesterself.
Blushing juvenile
Torn between nervous
And not.

"I'd rather have you for
Two hours today than four
On Friday," she sighs with the
Immediate result of my
Wednesday afternoon plans
Jumping
Down the drain
Of their own accord, laughing.

So. Wanna go out for a pint?*
That's what my dad says
Every time we board a plane
To England.

We do everything thoroughly.
Used to go every year, now
His pension only allows every
Other.

It's only right for him if he
Pays. I long since stopped arguing.
He gets tired from walking and
Sightseeing, but his eyes have that

Boyishness during it all that
Makes me believe in a God that
Rewards deserving old men with
Youth towards the end of old age.

Soft sounds of rain through
The open window. Each drop
Landing in wet grass is
A hammer to our hearts.

To feel alone is nothing new,
But I see myself through satelite
Images, afloat dead centering
The ocean,

Biting and clawing at the
Ropes that hold my raft
Together; too afraid of water
Not to drown.  

Silence like tanks rolling out
Of a devastated war zone.  
Let's wrap this up, and my
Pulse escalates to an emergency

Frequency open to recieve any
Mayday or SOS, but my hands
Are too numb to telegraph.
Instead I find myself wiping

Rain and sweat from my face
With mud covered fingers in the
Headlights of a parked car,
Digging a grave

The size of something dead that
Holds secret things, like Love's
True name, or God's, or
Those of my

Future children if ever they be,
Or the hidden meanings behind a
Brutally meaningless
Break-up.

My grandfather could barely make
Out the blond boy's head
Lost, if only just slightly|frightened
Enough still|amidst
Waves of green potatoe field.
An old man's single arm held my
Weight; I was that small.
A strand of grass to his oak.

Old ladies with veins on the outsides
Of still strong hands,
Who worked those same fields with
Him sixty years before,
Would look at me with unwitheld
Bewilderment:
You look just like him when he
Was your age...

How alien now, the idea: Someone
Knew that old man as a child,
Remembering well enough
To compare us.

And I still find myself there at times.
Lost|but not quite|yet
Worried that I am.
Waiting in the potatoe field.
Smaller than then, now that
I've grown;

Knowing that nobody's coming.

I speak the language of
The gods;
Silence.

Years of practice, flexing
Soundlessness
Repeatedly

Until its grip around
My brain's mouth became
Inescapable.

Dead center of any
Construction site;
Loud meetings,

City streets.
I carry a flame of tranquility
Anywhere.

This morning I watched the
Sun rise over Oslo from
The roof of my

Workplace. Pink touching
Blue pushing February
Darkness gently away,

As if whispering a child
Back from sleep.
Seagulls and crows

Dancing. Silences matching
Inner with outer,  
I stood smiling.

Smiling so
Hard I
Cried.

Guys.
Never ask her if she'd like
A glass of water.

Water
Is good for everybody.
Any time of day.

Bring
Her water. See that she
Drinks.

An end for every beginning.
The price of being; to one day
Not. Still some eat their cake
To keep it.

I have been more mis- than
Understood in my life.
I speak in symbols, meta-thoughts.
Poetry is

Not for the ones who imagine
Grudges so they have something to
Hold. All I know is that this ****
Plane will

Refuse to go down with us in it.
If it stops, it stays up here
Until we make up our minds to
Land and keep loving. Or jump.

I am an old dog.
Fleas are as much a part of me
By now
As my tail.

I put my head in human laps,
Warm their feet with my body.

I fetch whatever they crave,
Not demanding so much as a
Bellyrub back.
Sad old eyes always looking up
From Omega
To Alpha.

All I ask is not to be kicked.

I am an old dog.
Bruises are as much a part of me
By now
As my tail.

Old Heart. Spiteful thing;
Always jumping in

Head first, never consulting
Brain.

What have you done? I have
Asked more than

Once,
On Brain's behalf.

Seems this time at least,
You're both

Working
Together.

I want you to smile.
I see you trying; you know how
Frowning turns me off.

But you'll always slip back
Into old neuron habits,
Won't you?

You'll say this is who I am, and
You know where I come
From.

Yes, I know where you come from.
So let it go.
Every time you thought things were

Getting better, they were.
Every time you felt the world let you
Down again, it didn't.

You just
Fell
Back.

Start smiling more.
Grow from
There.

Things
Smile
Back.

My feet shift oceans
When I wade.
My fingers poked craters
In the moon when I tripped
Over the Shatsky Rise
Under a stroll to Oceania from

Eurasia. I eat from
Tectonic plates;  
Glaciers are my
Popsicles.

I shake fallen stars from my
Shoulders and walk on,
Earthquake by earthquake.
Interstellar breezes soothe the

Blisters from when I
Burned my head on the sun.
My arms can reach Mars, look:
Red bits of Olympus Mons and

Nereidum under my
Fingernails.

I leap lightyears.
I cry tsunamies over the fact that

You can't see me.

When your palm feels
The shoulder of another,

Let it be to encourage;
Not to hold back.

Lifting is rich.
Pulling is for the poor.

Growth is as human
As breath.

Her cheating on me is not what I fear.
Good men are mistreated everywhere.
It's the loathing I'd feel if it came to a fact
That she lusted and loved behind my back

That I fear -as should she; it's beyond my control-
It would tear us to pieces and swallow us whole.
To see what you treasured as holy and strong
Hang slain from a rope one last lie long.

The concept of cheating; I spit in its face.
It sickens me how it would see her erazed.
Goddess to garbage in one-two-three...
I'm praying that she remains faithful to me.

I pulled the curtains aside.
Laser sunset.
Clouds crimson through
Orange peel lit mists.  

Some city-in-the-clouds-
Sci-fi-scenery. Phiew.
Then, my focus shifted
To the crown of the much closer

Cherry tree;
Insects swirling in dance.
One score of Tinkerbells dancing
With one miniscule Peter Pan each.

One loving one
Loving another.
I smiled into the detailed sunset.
I smiled at the whirlwind

Of insects.
I smiled out of
My own everyday
Window.

How silly is the
Poet... Feasting from eyes
To heart. Tears, trembling hands
And all. At "nothing."

I don't care if your internet
Is slow out there.
I'm not spending the
Weekend at your place
To waste it on Facebook.*

She speaks my language.
Fluently.
|So much more than
Just ones and
Zeros.|