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Phoebe Aug 2016
Last night
I dreamt of
Picasso’s cat
slipping through 
streets like an evil 
spirit with rumpled fur
3 | 31 Poems for August 2016

Feeling like an abandoned church but in your eyes I’ll always be a cathedral.
These blue skies fade to grey while I pray to ease the burden of a bad day.
My strength and happiness are gone; I can feel myself gradually fading away.
Not even Mandela money could buy me freedom in a dollar-based economy.
In a world saturated with poverty, politicians are still protecting their pockets.
They are constantly making you think that the power is in your hands but this is not a Cell C ad.
So be careful of who you give your power to because you may never see this freedom they highly speak of.
Everyone is claiming that they represent the youth but you can go back and listen to Ghetto Gospel and hear the truth.
Even with the humour of an established comedian, they wouldn’t be Trevor Noah funny.
Laughing all the way to the bank, we also aim to receive Trevor Noah money.
Give me all the best and worst parts of you and a room with a wonderful view.
Give me a blank page and a beautiful muse and you’ll marvel at what I can do.
The world is my canvas; Picasso would’ve loved to see all the resplendent pictures that I’ve painted.
I wrote plenty peaceful poems picturing politicians perpetuating poverty.
No uncertainty, this is a cold war and we all know what we’re fighting for.
In a world saturated with poverty, politicians are still protecting their pockets.
Blue skies fade to grey while I pray to ease the burden of a bad day.
Hopefully everything will be okay even if things don’t go our way.
Aaron LaLux Jul 2016
Picasso’s Abyss

In Budapest my hands hurt,
goes with the broken heart,
tried to keep it all together,
but sometimes things just fall apart,

beautiful art,
at the castle today,
Pablo Picasso,
a few dozen of his works on display,

I’m dismayed,
how lost we’ve all become,
can’t see we’re all family,
can’t see your brother only see Pokemon,

okie dokie son,

I guess the game is over,
congratulations and well done,

where are you from,
where are you at,
currently I’m in Budapest,
the Buda Castle to be exact,

looking across the Danube,
sun sets upon the parliament,
and it seems another day has gone,
did have some time to spare but now I don’t know where it went,

time must be an illusion because there’s no signs to where it’s gone,
my hands hurt my head hurts my feet hurt still I must travel on,

writing tales of futuristic history,
out in the world and on the internet,

Heaven sent,
you’re Heaven blessed,
child your an Angel,
to this I must confess,

in Budapest,
and my hands hurt,
tried to keep a good grip,
but sometimes things just fall apart,

into the abyss,
into the darkness of Picasso,
into the impermanence of all of us,
here today gone tomorrow…

∆ Aaron LA Lux ∆

author of The Poetry Trilogy
Yes Please...
"Where is my Monet?", I say
As I look through the blurred vision of an impressionist day.
A double paned view of reality
Swaying beauty through eyes once knew.

Where is my Monet  or be it Van Gough?
All beauty's vision framed newly printed Picasso.
Shadow me done, and once never knew
What others should have seen as they counted me too.

So now, I say no
Not of Van Gough nor Monet,
I see beauty no Rembrandt nor Picasso to sway.
I see a simple little girl with all she will need
To see the world lovely and in the midst of all, succeed.
April 16, 2004
31 | 31 Poems for August

(Written with Naledi Tshikota)

Write me a sonnet, point dozens of Cupid’s arrows to my heart if you dare to awaken it.
Tune into your inner Shakespeare, fantasize us as Bonnie and Clyde if you care to spend time in it.
Recreate the Titanic, recreate it with the ending of The Notebook if you can bear to believe in it.
And if that doesn’t work, cast me to sleep like the Romeo you are and let me awake next to your lifeless flesh and dagger as I pierce my soul with it.

Write me a sonnet, let every single one of those fourteen lines bleed with emotion.
Leave The Notebook next to my notebook and become the protagonist of my dreams.
Think like the wind and attain the kind of power that’ll allow you to ******* away on any given day.
Your presence keeps transforming our thoughts into beautiful poetic paintings, Basquiat and Picasso would’ve been proud.

Write me a sonnet, silence every impurity that does awaken my love.
Summon the essence of my soul for the taking of your unforsaken hands and make Mona Lisa cry sacred tears of joy.
Create simplistic glimpses that only our superior beings can understand, only then can I unleash my undying emotion towards your uncontested universe.

Write me a sonnet, the kind that will make me realise that your heart isn’t filled with any doubt.
The day I realised that words could touch you, I wanted to become a poem.
The kind of poem that Maya Angelou’s ink always dreamt about.
The taste of your smile still lingers on the edges of my lips.
I see galaxies in your eyes, it must be in the way I love you like I do.
I could’ve settled for less but I don’t want anyone else but you.

Write me a sonnet that speaks to the heart of my mind.
Because I always hear your heartbeat when I think about you.
Write me a sonnet that intertwines our inner intuitions.
A sonnet that makes you believe in shooting stars if you’re into wishing.
And finally that captures the very essence of the unknown soul that’s unspoken of.
Because it’s within your golden silence that I hear the loudest cry.
Virginia Lore Jan 2016
Today I am drawn to Picasso's blue period.
looking for beach-side tragedies in grey fog,
seeing backs where I should see faces.
Everything is askew, backwards, sad.
There is no reason, just rhythm, a muffled drumbeat reminder:
You don't belong here.

You were never whole and don't know what that's like.
Where you are marching,
something at the edge pulls you toward
something else
and that's why you chase it.

My father says we are all part of the same hand.
The distance is nothing.
He pulls his fingertips together, pads kissing the tip of the thumb.
Separateness is an illusion, he says.
It can disappear in an instant.

I am the missing finger
the one lost in a thresher or blown off by a misfired gun.
There isn't even bleeding anymore.
I'm the itching ghost where the finger used to be.
What can you do?
Piece together a life, as if it matters.
Put one foot in front of the other.
March, march, march
Until the moment it slips.

Soften the focus, dim the lights
and maybe you're not such a ghost anymore.
It's that other life, the one on the other side,
and all you have to do is fall.
Katie Elzinga Nov 2015
His intricate fingers
shadowing your soft cheeks,
and picking apart rainbows
to mix with your eyes.

He studies your lips
and knows exactly what shade,
defining your dimples
and sprinkling on freckles.

Strokes of a dark brush
running from your face,
like a chocolate river
or a wild bear in the woods.

He captures the way
you stand with the moon,
longing to live with the stars
and deny the force that holds you.

He draws the veins on your wrist
like blue broken tree limbs,
with scars that resemble
the night sky.

Shuttering greys
leave with dark shadows,
a landscape full of black;
he portrays you as the sun.
help me with the title please? because this one kinda *****.
dafne Oct 2015
at age thirteen,
Picasso could surpass the talent of his teacher,
drawing at the level of Raphael, the prince of painters.
at age sixteen,
Picasso skipped his classes to explore gypsies,beggars, and prostitutes,
and at eighteen,
became exposed to anarchists and radicals who were artists and intellectuals
when his eyes were unveiled to a world of color, pinwheels of ideas, and a milky-way of lifestyles,
he unleashed a new form of art.
abstract, colorful, broken up into chunks, scribbles and slashes,
a child's coloring book,
from the five year old who couldn't seem to find the lines.

in this chapter of his life,
Picasso said:
It took him no time to paint like the prince of painters,
but decades to learn how to paint like the children.

one hundred and sixteen years later
i sit in the whirling emotions,
of the "i don't know yet"
and the "i have no idea"
and the "what am i going to do"
and the "why am i even doing this"
and the "who did i become"
and the "what will i be"
and the "who will i disappoint"
and the "honey you can't please everybody"
and the "what am i here for"
and the "is anybody out there waiting for me"
and "what capacity do i have to connect the constellations that form my dreams?"
and "what amount of this enormous world will i see with these mere two eyes and one small body?"
and "will i be the radical or the anarchist, or the artist or the intellectual, or the beggar or best of all,
the Picasso?"

and i can't seem to find the lines anymore
and everything is becoming a muddled mess of colors,
there is no symmetry, there is no balance,
there is not one face to a person,
there is not one specific meaning,
not one correct answer or distinction,
not a single definition.
and all though there are periods,
and I've been through the blue,
and I'm on the pursuit of the rose,
all i see is commas,
and as time goes on,
i understand more and more,
exposure to this world,
brings more questions and more blurs,
more pigments, and edges,
and adds miles from the distance,
of the lines.
C E I A Jul 2015
My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.
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