When The Time Was A Trial Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

When the time was a trial

Woke up, the bedroom was cold under the duvet snugness
I burrowed deeper enjoying the freedom of sleeping late.
Life was hard, getting up at five and preparing breakfasts for
grumpy seafarers smoking, the first cigarette of the day.
The breaking of the fast was endlessly tedious, something
with eggs and fatty meat.
Sometimes when there was a gap between feeding times,
say, dinner at twelve, I tried to write; my hands stank of chip fat.
On hundreds of pages, "I'm a life I'm a life".
I pretended I was a robot, what the body was going through
the motion was not my concern; free to dream.
When peeling potatoes one morning, I was suddenly awake
Between fake brown gravy and spuds; there were no robots
me all along
the bed is warm, nothing can touch me now,
touch me now! ! ! !