the actor by oskar

the actor by oskar

the actor

When I was a child, my uncle played a police officer
on a stage impressed ,I addressed him as Sir?
Mother said he was an actor
When in my twenties, I wanted to become an actor
Not tiny roles and say one line, open a door
and say. "This way Madame."
No, I wanted to play heroic figures from history
not a starving cobbler in a black and white movie
there are many everyday heroes like
a man high up on a ladder painting a house should
he fall, I would break a leg or killed.
Take a cook who, after making the millionth burger
does not scream, but they never make it to the screen
Mind, I think it was Al Pacino who played a cook who
was an alphabet and couldn't read what was in a tin
it could have been rat poison.
He was sent to learn basic reading skills and met
a lovely girl, and his wonder when a magic world
of literature was his to enter, a walk-in role for me.

potatoes

potatoes

Potatoes

I was on old steamer once it was loaded with

Idaho potatoes and bound for Peru it was not much fun

with the potatoes came rats and insects

but we got rid of them, the rats when unloading a Lima

Port, but there was a plague of crabs

that came onboard in Lima, but that was not the blame

of the potatoes.

I had thought the root vegetable potato was discovered

In Peru and brought Europe, I don`t if this was a blessing

seeing so many fat children

filling their faces with Pommes Frites.

When eating out, I make it quite clear I don`t want

any potatoes having seen a thousand rat dancing on top of
them

but they still bring me potatoes; I used to give them to my
dog

she got fat and had a heart attack

I had one too, but that was caused by smoking.

During the war when the Nazis occupied my country potatoes

boiled with the skin on was the norm, my mother said the
vitamins are

under the skin, it could also be she hated peeling

I remember she was throwing up in the sink she blamed the
spuds

But she was pregnant, and I didn`t know before

I had a younger brother who was fed mashed potatoes 

tiredness

tiredness

Oh, I’m so tired it is hurting me

endless wars and commentators commenting

along the line of their conviction or

the think-tank that pays them.

I long for the autumn colours north of Portugal

a place to heal abused body and

a soul full of distress

I will go for a week or two, drive there myself

and stop when it pleases me.

In the evening at a small hotel I will drink red wine

with my meal, facing away from the TV;

lovely food up north and gentle people.

Algarve where I live has become too hectic with impatient

people buzzing me wanting to go home

to see about wars or football.

Yes, for sure I will go in September and not forget

the camera to record what I saw.  

it is a lovely war

it is a lovely war

It is a lovely war

It is a hell of a war for soldiers

running between ruined building

It is a great war good for sex the feeling of strength

running through veins

blood oozing from a bullet hole

and sometimes into the sand

but that is the other guy`s

This their finest hour defending whatever

it was, not that they care

Wonderful war even if it only

has one colour and is occasionally red

women dream of joining them

as wives only to discover

the men love one another,

 fucking a woman is
like masturbating

into a narrow fox hole

Glorious war something the survivors

can talk about when old and playing card

the name of the buddy who didn`t make it out

He had admired the full moon and lost in reverie

he was always a dreamer

Do they see the green leaves on trees?

Or the flowers

have they lost all sense of beauty

are deaths and ruined buildings forever etched

on their crippled brains 

broken dreams

broken dreams

Broken dreams

Tonight I`m happy and sad

I refuse to cry over lost friends

I`m drunk too

It feels good to up the anchor of sobriety

Let alcohol give winds to my sails.

I`m a clipper buying tea in China

 not useless toys

Sleek the line and the women admired me

let the clipper sail

I don`t care I will stay here and

make love to you.

I`m sorry I left you, my Liverpool girl but

I went to Brazil to harvest coffee beans

Guatemala I got there by chance

the beach in the moonlight

I have not forgotten my promises

one day more, just one day more

but the ship always sails to other shores

and I never got to write

the poem of my life

the escape

the escape

The Escape

A man coming home from work saw a shadow like a figure
leaning against

an olive tree it was Death, polishing his hoof and
sharpening his scythe.

The man said no, not me I`m too young to be harvested he then
took a plane

to Madrid in Spain where got employment in lawyer`s office.

At the first day, he knocking on the door death sat in the
chair and said;

from now on you are my helper. Go back home and dispose of
your parents their

time has come, greatly disturbed the man took a plane home
and death stood

leaning against an olive tree a shadow on a sunny autumnal
day. In the house,

his parents said crying the had just buried their son, they
didn't see or heard him,

and the man knew that henceforward he was Death`s little
helper.

This story is based on a Syrian story of a man riding from
Damascus across

the desert in the night to Baghdad to avoid death but a
drone picked him up

thought the horse was a jeep and fired off a rocket, the man
had to walk, to

Baghdad, but without water and dates he died of thirst and
hunger 

the incomprehensible

the incomprehensible

The incomprehensible

The sun was just going behind the westerly ridge

it had been a hot day, and the sun appeared angry

for a cosmic reason, and we don`t even know our

Mind and what influences it. A young man rents

A truck drives down the boulevard on Bastille Day

for a reason, we can only guess at as it has little to

do with Islam a faith he didn`t  strictly follow like

Most Muslims, a simple principle observed because it

is customary the way it is among Christians too.

An overheated brain little of education, reading

books how badly France had behaved in his land

once upon a time, an easy catch for those who

sow discontent for its own good.

You can have gendarmes and soldiers on every

street corner, bombs and helicopters scanning

dark windows with intense beams of light but you

 the cannot read
people' mind or their feelings.

We can reduce this absurd killing of the innocent

by including the disfranchised into our life listens

to their grievances and respect views that are not

sprung from our culture.

It is deep in the night now dogs bark something

has desorbed their peace but soon they go back

to sleep till the sun rises in the east and a coup

is in the making.