Clubbing It Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Clubbing it
Once I went to a night- club in Albufeira a dreadful place with
garish colours and a man with a Hammond organ also played
many instruments with a total lack of talent, when he rested
a jukebox took overplayed so loud the windows shook.
Around the dance floor – arena – skeletal women sat crows
that looked at men’s crotches and piercing eyes looked into his
wallet the three ugly sisters had felt at home, their fairy-tale
opulence could have lent this place dignity and humour.
Driftwood from all over Europe men swarmed around them
like bees around a jar of honey, a few caught a bee in time
a dream come true golf lessons swimming pool and garden-
Then they got old eating a lettuce a day, slept the afternoon
away in the evening and hungry they had the nails and hair to
do and still dreaming of the right man to rescue them of this
ennui, prisoners of faded beauty and their former lovers
lived at the old folks home up the hill in the interior of Algarve
Yet I could not help feeling sorry for them helpless old age
stuck on a slow liner and no life raft, as they resignedly
waited to be engulfed by cold green sea and
Albufeira continued its dance around tourism a place for
the “hard working worker, ” erasing what once had been
a peaceful fishing village along the coast of romance.