Growing Up Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Growing Up
When I was eighteen or nineteen, I discovered beer
Dance-restaurants and women generous with their wares
I didn`t eat sweets anymore which was good for my teeth.
Alas, beer made me talk and women laugh I was fun
but not in the morning a Jekyll and Hide character,
that woman in my bed had to go I needed peace, she had
a tarty face and dirt under fingernails, sex, was easy to
find in the sixty but life was hollow without love the kind
that is restful for the mind.
The money it is always about the money, soon I had to go
back to sea again the ocean can be beautiful at sunrise
But all that water gets a bit boring.
And so it went on tedium and fun a carousel of nothingness
Till I sat down educated me and liking it.
But as I progressed the knowledge I accrued made a distance
between my drinking friends and I loneliness was there
like a ghost of the past, but for me, the life as a seaman was over.