I came to your hometown team
inserted in hallucinatory dreams  
inspired sweaty with fused realms
Is it real that you stole Mona Lisa?
At the heart of Louvre in 1911
Is it true that you sneaked her?
was it for a muse or a lover to use?

She would have viewed you sideways
then make love to you at the coffee table
Her beauty enthralled yours in entirely
blending on easel with pencil onto a canvas
Her palate would have swooned your palette  
Her very kiss would have paralyzed in ecstasy
abducting your perpendicular in angular zones

Then you framed it on Guillaume Appollinaire
The poet play wright whom face you just forgot
under the oath, in the sweet name of freeing art
from the prisons of extortionate museums fixtures  
the same exhibitions holding your name and fame
charging fees for a walk around the rhythm of art
a melody not each an every artist will be granted

You made the goddesses and then reduced them to dust
Fernanda soothed the childhood nightmares to lust
Olga the ballerina whom you couldn't share the assets
Marie-Therese the 17year old who hang herself to death
Dora Maar who fought so hard to get your affection
Francoise who left law school for your immortalisation
Jacqueline your passion who you wooed with a dove

I look at your work and see
an array of strokes in-between
The smiles and tears that piles
Isolated brushes in small rooms

I peep on your life and portraits
On the aisles of temptation and love
The misery of the human formations
Inside a three dimensional canvas

I think of you from symbolism realism
On the island where nature was proud
Landscapes of greenish violet spoke
Soaked romantic tinges in spiky pokes

I see your blue lonely bubble episodes
On the earth's doleful daunted pasture
Culminates of gloom, isolation suicide
Dark and blue composite of blindness

I love the painted roses of orange tosses
On the eve where mistresses and lovers
Speak accents of lust with naked bodies
Paraded games of the heart captured on ice

I seek your open mind and astuteness
On the soil of Africa celebrating souls
Dancing at the rhythm of the drum beats
Shaping,hunting,pacing, tracing, painting

I like the way you wandered and hoped
On the excitement of something a new
When cubism of browny monochrome
Shaded neutrals in fragmented collages

I long to figure you out and your gems
On that dynamic cased experimentation
Crystal periods of pipes, guitars and glass
The passion that brought you riches and fame

I love to romantasise you Pablo Picasso
On my search you were a dreamer and a doer
Falled and failed, waited and won it all
From surrealism, abstraction to classical

Arnold my dearest friend was 82
his soul has made a transition
through sands and vast oceans
to another dimensional paradise
he was chatty and I quiet
he was white and I black
he was old and I young
he was a man and I a woman
bonded with zest and humour

Arnold was strict and perfect
we met at local debating club
where we polished speeches
the little gems of impromptu
and the daunted evaluations
charming and complimentary
with an adventurous heart
and the pleasing easy spirit
of playfulness and success

Arnold and his plentiful gang
of competitive read speakers
always told me to slow down
I was a post-graduate trainee
wanting to brush my confidence
way back then when I stumbled
on that working men club
in the company of grey hairs
organised in eventful committees

Arnold saw roles changed
when after five long years
I was an elected president
the transformation of time
following radio interviews
back then when career drove
the foundations of many blocks
of habitual repetition and sweat
of sifting grime from the fire

Arnold always warmed up to me
kissed me on the  rosy cheek
he changed cars like clothes
and loved his dearly wife to bits
he has left a scent around my life
of a hope to love and build family
an ardent piano player and traveller
no wonder that church was so full
abundant with fond memories

the menace that abandoned my house
eventually came back
it used the words God gave him to threaten
everything in its path
he came back
screaming, clawing, gnawing at his prey
until there was nothing to left
its teeth would clench if his food
wouldn’t cooperate,
then he’d hold them down
to keep them from struggling

the same thing happened to you
but this was different
your menace was a real man,
someone who never quite understood
what consent meant

Have you ever counted hour by the seconds
feeling intensely hungry for life?

If for once the sun forgets to rise
this night fails to usher in dawn
what my memories tell me are lies
it's today only I was born.

If this day is filled to the brim
in a blissful child's innocence
yesterday is a bad dream
tomorrow makes no sense.

If only this night is a ceaseless flow
never short of word for a rhyme
on her axis the earth spins slow
and the morn is away longtime.

If only I'm allowed to choose
to relive the life whole night
a fantasy is the hangman's noose
calling me by first light.