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The Poetry Of.
Jan Oskar Hansen             

The Hex

Where the village lane meets the main road there was
an ugly olive tree that looked like two crippled old men
trying helping each across the road, petrified by cars,
I used to stop and talk to the tree old but still bore fruit;
now it has been chopped down and will end up as winter
wood. No. I’m not a tree hugger but it annoyed me that
it was cut down as it was not in any ones way.
An old woman came down the lane she had a long nose
with a big hairy wart on and a sack of twigs slung on her
crocked back. "Tell me dear woman, why was this tree
executed?" "Because it was ugly looked like two old men
trying to help each other across the road", she said and
toothlessly laughed.





The Lovely Couple

In a café I hadn’t been to before I ate an omelet with
french fries, it was flat, boring the fries were re- heated.
Near me sat an old couple reading the paper together,
when he got and up walked outside for a smoke, she read
the obituary page, but just before he came back in she
folded the paper back to the page he was on before
leaving. He was interpreting to her what he had been
reading, something about the new president in the USA,
she knew of his views, she had heard them before,
she was listening to his voice, as they were old and near
the end of a blessed lane they had walked together.
Close they sat she held his arm and now they looked young.
It is odd to think if they knew they would live forever they
may have postponed their happiness indefinitely.







Collective Punishment

A bird farmer had a stroke, paralyzed saw
himself being watched by a Plymouth hen,
it sat on the sill moving its head sideways
as birds tend to do. When satisfied that
the man was lame it jumped on to his bed,
pecked and slurped up his eyes like they
should be soft boiled eggs, then left.

The farmer lived, but since he could not
see or find the eye eater, he ordered all
birds and their eggs destroyed, and hen
houses bulldozed; alas, a few birds escaped.
The farmer planted sunflower on his land,
the survivors thrive at the edge of it, one
of them is a big, red Plymouth hen.




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