Lost In Athens Poem by Jan Oskar Hansen

Lost in Athens


Athens confusing in august, what with the heat and pollution I had spent
The night sitting on a park bench, looking at a white wall on a tall building
lit up by moonlight and I had waited for a movie to begin. Forenoon,
staggered into a church, joined a queue, a priest was handing out bags of
sweet cakes, the old lady behind got none since she had been in the line
three times. I ate a cake and gave the rest to the lady. Grateful she ate
the rest blew up the bag and hit it against a tree and we were surrounded
by an anti terrorist squad. The old lady, a known would be terrorist, she had
been blowing up paper bag all over the town, was arrested, they were going
to arrest me too since I had supplied the bag, but since I was a tourist they
let me go with dire warning. Deep in the park I found a grotto, walked in and
saw baby Jesus inside a looked like an aquarium, he looked like a dead
angel as painted by Caravaggio, Jesus opened his eyes smiled like a street
urchin and began masturbating, chocked I took a step back and collided with
two nuns who laughed hysterically. Escaped the park and found a cellar cafe
drank some ouzo served by a women who looked like horse; she was a pony
that had escaped from a Swedish circus. We hit it off I have always been fond
of horses, especially since according to an Indian chief in, an Alice walker’s
poem said that they make the landscape more pretty. Midnight she closed her
bar and we bareback we rode through the moonlit August night.