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

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

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

How can life begin when you fall on a cliff?
sat on a ledge for as long as the rain remains
waving for the meandering unforgivable miracles
of allowable hesitation and tensional destitution

When you look at a face do you see in the beyond?
areas and layers that regardless appease to angels
the marvels of the new coming unstormy parables
ushered at the lengthy table of debatable ideology

Whom do we pledge the crooked ways of the men?
aisles of mean and immeasurable consequential regrets
of when the summer unfolded and winter melted
beneath the flow of the lakes in the unseen caves

Where do we bow our untold perceived reconciliations?
kneel at the pebbled mast of an eventful aftermath
till the grounds little one, sift the fertile from gravel
start again, nurture the soils and bloom to fertility

The head thunders in a stormy cloud
The nose was long gone and dysfunctional
The mouth fills in the mould with oxygen

The body has caught a dreaded fever
It chills and trembles at the night's cast
as the eyes flow with wavering rivers

The lymph nodes have gone for a rampage
Lumps on the tonsils with unbeatable abscess
It's been two nights since I was possessed

Now the hearing gone and echoey ears persist
I can't quite dance to the bird's chirping
Neither walk balanced on the dizzy spells

Rough as a scrambled sack awaiting reuse
Unpressured on all angles straggering on corners
Ohh sweet heavens what broth can soothe!

Let's go inside the vast seas
The depths of a gory yesterday
It pierces with undiluted questions
A pestering, such a continental drag
virtual pondering and remissions
Let it drown through currented waves

Let it collapse inside the dungeon
The darkness of grouping grills
The burning and frequent night chills
A ******, the convienient injustice
Ritualistic happenings and missions
Let it fade in the unseen tunnels

Let it sail with the titanic ship
The ripple of calming broken hearts
The undone meanings and circumstance
Shattered chances, the unplanned farewell
Mutual derailment, downs, loniliness
Let it drown in the dense lost shores

It was a wild night,
I left the cocoon
and peeped the moon
and it's soaked con

In the seas of unknown
in your utter flutter
just another matter
on a confusion platter

I walked this road before
where fears eats the brain
and line fillers are a grain
of a down graded train