My first love affair with writing was poetry. It was a secret affair. Where I grew up, this wasn’t what a teenage boy should do. Football, fishing, moose-hunting and repairing tractors were the preferred activities.
While working with rhyme and rhythm in my songwriting, I’ve primarily written free-form poetry. This has allowed me to play around with the words and the formatting to catch the exact “colour and scent” of the emotions in the moment of writing.
Selected old poems
The following poems were originally written in Norwegian; I’ve tried to recreate them in English here.
Forgotten child (2020)
At last, I found the dreaded place
inside the most dangerous forest
from where I once fled
with a shredded heart
And I have dreamed so often
about the horrors in there
and believed they would
burn me
tear the meat from my bones
snatch the last remains
of life
from the one
I once believed was me
if I returned
Still, now
as I stand there, expecting
to see a smoking hellish pool
all I find is ashes
Around the edges, already budding
something slightly unknown
but mine
Like the distant song
of a forgotten child
Albatross (2020)
Trapped in a grey plumage
I inherited
an emu mind
a colourless prison
Until I, in the twilight of life, took
one last chance
and defiantly spread my wings
Hence I found
for the very first time
my albatross heart
Stricken by the thought that
now
I will never land again
I will sail over the foaming
breakers of the world until
the day my albatross heart burst
and I plunge
Into my last moment filled with the
joy
of truly having flown
An autumn letter (2018)
I haven’t written
no
I haven’t, but
I’m sure you’ve heard
That November seized me
that the summer night, you remember
that night, the cruel
lovely summer night
came to an end
And
the bogs we crossed
footprints in the dew
the sweat in your palm
the warmth from your mouth and
the smell of iron doesn’t
exist
now
But I remember you said
you said
It will pass
The gravel road of childhood (2018)
I tried to walk on stilts, expecting
strides like mile-long leaps, but
the gravel road of childhood was
wild, a river
rapids
Between steep banks of
timothy grass, clover, violets, I don’t know, but I
stood midstream, I remember
I believed I stood
when I went
under
(many years later
I surfaced
in a completely different place)
Age: 52
In the glaring morning light
from the mirror
the slow voice of erosion