because Picasso could draw .. . 

..                                                      

the battle scene lay behind us 

the colour of his blue

the landscape of the Guernica

where our senses are distilled

I take to analysing

    the dismembering of torsos

with subtle forms of beauty    

    lithe lines of muscle, angled shades

don’t bury me on my own 

bury me in this mass grave 

with others who have died 

alongside the bony lonely

we will wrap our arms 

    around each other

appreciate our common stench

    grasp tightly with mortis clench 

  ..           

bury me in a grave with women

    beautiful women who have died

they are not forgotten

    I’ll lie forever with Monroe, Garbo

not on my own, not left alone 

    when I rise I will cling 

forever to their ashes

wearing naught but heaven’s sashes

intelligent women when they are dead

Marie Curie, Mary Astell

Maya Angelou, Daisy Bates

Malala Yousafzai, Ban Zhia and Myia

caring women i will lie with

    in the cleft of bosom 

with my mother, my only wife

    I’ll not leave them lonely or assaulted

by ravages of corruption 

    our bony fingers reaching out 

to caress and comfort the lasting night

    o’ poignant, happy sight

..

then bury me with men who wrote with pen

held within their rigid digits

Whitman, King David, Rachmaninov and Tolstoy

Aristotle, Gaius, Tennyson and Proust

where is the music for the dead poet

and their deft society 

who congregate to pontificate

sing boldly in the afterlife of their choosing

I’ll listen with a rotting cartilage of ears

spirit running down my clotted vertebrae 

which have lost their cushions and their ease

    boned legs, knobbled knees 

laid out within the sands of time

  next to bloody evil’s grime

lay me next to sweet young things

  those mourned by loving parents

who privileged to watch them live 

    but also die of ailment, of disease

of sadism and of torture

    Auschwitz – alway bring me to my knees

 in reverence, respect and disorder

    I will lie with my arms 

hung out above them as wings 

    to their mercy and their love

..

I’ll lie down with artists 

    who smote canvas for a living

watch the earth spring forth in paint

    of anger, blood, filbert hair and feeling

 flashes of the mind caught in mud

    chiselled out of crumpled rock

these are Picasso, Vermeer, Rodin 

    drawing their deaths in sepia tone

Macbeth, Hamlet, Annapurna

  Picasso, a scientific butcher

without thread or needle

    sewing skeletons together in different order

played with wooden cubes

    and the lives of marionettes

hanging in their chambers

    Braque, Metzinger, Gleizes, Juan Gris

juvenile of true Picasso anger

    waiting to be devoured

to be consumed and exhumed 

    by nations of our future 

learn well Pablo’s secrets 

    techniques of indivisible suture

a new jealousy, a new art and culture 

  Picasso born of different mind

intensity, colour and temper

  walked a cat-gut rope

who was a cellist fiddling

     an old man playing at a violin

‘a weeping woman’

     he could draw long before he saw

..

WRITTEN 05.06.2021 EDIT 21.04.2023