'The Blind Man's Meal' by Pablo Picasso (1903)

Ranking Obsession

“Femme au miroir” (Woman in Mirror) by Pablo Picasso (1963)

An old man looks at himself in the mirror and enquires with faith 

Do I want to look poor or rich today

Because I am capable of either or

Just a thought: classy people, real classy people can look classy even when they are naked

Clothes barely dictate men into either direction of the wealthy spectrum 

The man chokes on his own wit; for the first time sees just how old he really is

Makes him mad
There's an audience for every genre, so don't you worry 

When strangers judge exteriors 

Under the uniform is a real man 
Who’s dying

Quite frequently  

Who gives 

But it’s clear who takes, because they keep on taking
It’s now the norm to be selfish and scorning, in the notion of pure freedom or what else  

The platform for striking is still open for double standards

And a burger

Minus the pickle

It’s a fashion to be subtlety fascist, except they shave their moustaches now

In this society

In that society, you say

What after all is society 

The citizens who come all circulate around the old men, with false cranes and real teeth

Like a moth dying to be dead

Or a fly invading public space, in a traffic jam when you roll down four windows

When the ancient music of the Taj Mahal is playing 

And your sister is sleeping

Peacefully that is

Until the fly lands on her face, and in her mouth

Prompts a dance

And a death threat 

The old man’s smiling in the back seat

So in respect we smile back

Cashing on Threats

“Portrait de Jacqueline” by Pablo Picasso (1961)

Guarded gates are first and foremost an indication of hostility

A guard with a smile on is rare

A guard without his guard on is even more so

How do some people wear their fedoras the wrong side around

A feud is terrifying

With your family
Bored but not dying of boredom

There are no excuses for insecurity

But old men do little to nothing to embrace the changes they seem to object to upon 

The premises

That the house is slanted  

People keep throwing shit around on Thursdays

The smell of a dying bird evaporates in the backyard

It looks like nothing’s happened whenever the rain stops

My t-shirts are worn out, hard and harsh in texture, aren’t white enough

The winged and moving are oblivious to their advantage

While worms are a phobia for some, they’re a delight for others

Fine dining under the dirt, there’s a big one slithering in one huge slump of crack cocaine

Fine, fine, fine

There’s something sliding down my back

Wriggled and compressed beneath the juxtaposition

Of skin and fabric

Boring people must learn to appreciate loud music

Two in the morning you’d think the speakers would've stopped or the cops would've arrived

But it’s not a scene anywhere to be seen

But on the television screen

But in the lyrics of melancholic people

There’s something

There’s a woman across the street and she’s watching me as I dump my garbage

In my neighbor’s bin

She cringes 

I see the delight fire up in her eyes, when she storms inside without even bidding farewell

No one needs your adieu 

Banish these Bastards

“L'enfant au pigeon” (Child with a Dove) by Pablo Picasso (1901)

Open the fucking door! Grandma yearns against her lungs and all odds to see granddaughters 

And a grandson

Instead a flock of birds fly in

With tattered feathers

A beak to chirp slogans for barfing 

Say we love you so

Much so, there’s some take away in the bag, love is a euphemism, for leftovers and shit

Shut your brag holes

Grandma’s too tired to testify

You, the material for scorn

Will show you the door

I’m high on cholesterol

But I could make a fake Rolex look real

On my wrist is, in fact, the Rolex Grandma, also known as Mrs. G,

Otherwise G Mrs.

Gave me

Cousin’s trying to make G-Ma stick

No one’s going to triumph the reference, in honour of her wisdom

When grandma was the only word she registered in regards to her  

We sneak behind a bending back 

And say slide slide, crane crane, cough!

Mrs. G is here

So here she’s coming

Seek 

The shitheads fly every now and then

It’s too late to turn our backs on the shark in the ticket booth

With tattered fins

The expired grin

Beams of pride and illegitimate cause for communication  

How the moods change faster than the seasons

There’s an ant clinging onto my arms and it suggests, humour is the solution to hatred

It says, who cares man, just smile 

But hatred, a friend, is the hungry man's solution 

The Maestro’s Muse

“Le peintre II” (The Painter II) by Pablo Picasso (1963)

Pablo says the sun is subject to transformation dependent on the painter

The sun is either a spot or a speckle from the dew that drips from the brush

Every stroke is a vein 

For the life of the painting depends on the painter, who curls at his fingertips

The fate of the miracle is within but good hands

Abundance of routes to take from the wrist to the tips of the fingers a mountain

Concealed underneath

New skin

Breed life into the painting

The canvas suffocates underneath the application of ammunition

The layers of superficial control

Condemns the subject to the background in which he has only himself

The table upon which the painter places a bowl of fruit

Is but edible

So the subject starves to death

Agony is but a preference

A death is taken much too lightly on fabric

The criminal is bound to walk free by default

Banish barbed wire with a broomstick full of pink blood

The colours have but little time to arrange themselves correctly

In the queue there’s an old man groaning for release or an earlier sentence

Sign on the bottom of the premises the password to grant upon the enactment of the will

Paint ears with diligence

Determination is power

The painter squirms inside his eyeballs with the precision required to master the curves of

The eardrum’s packaging  

A clean stroke is music for the eyes of the painter

Have their interest invented only in the ambiguity

Of whether the ear painted is fixated in reality

On the right or left side of the subject

Screeches

The subject sighs 

Under the paint, there's hardly oxygen to survive 

Duplicate and Relieve

“Claude and Paloma Drawing” by Pablo Picasso (1954)

Weep through ignorance with cardboard tissues

It is inevitable when I slab off the deserter again who is the traitor to authenticity

Toast exterior greetings and let us raise our insecurities

To the loners who are left for dead who steal their friend’s signature and prose

Leave the professionals to master their own craft, please

Retire to your house and the sad office inside it

Is empty

Minus a dysfunctional lamp  

Give back the papers until you plead guilty to plagiarism

Steal from the poor his only pride

Read not for support but inspiration and theft

Grant credit where due

Exploit creativity

Survival is just an institution

Deny the influence, upon inspection

If only you’d tested your limits like your water

You’d have saved yourself from those burns of rejection

That still burns you still

You’re flesh and burns

The scabs are only reminders of why our backs are facing but the front

The concern is mutual but the privilege is all mine

So mind my business for me if you will

The enemy will not acknowledge harassment and freedom of speech as different entities

Scribbling love and darling reputations in atmospheres of total indifference

What does it imply when they’ve got genres for people attracted to intelligence

Only

What does the general population have to say

Shuteyes when the balls start bouncing towards your face

When the musician

More like the magician

Describes his music as shit

What’s the point of singing the same songs if the lyrics have expired to hold their meaning 

The goose bumps will come upon the ringtone on stage

Quarter Fever of the Furious

“The Shadow” by Pablo Picasso (1953)

Who waits for their carriage to cross the roads of narrow minds and dirty mouths

Sit here to ease yourself with a bird’s eye view of her balding head

There's an animal somewhere

In there

It's waiting for the next foul to drop its ball of bullshit

The burden is ours to share

The privilege all yours

The name of the loser goes to the round up of winners

For the next round

The parade waits not for no one

Come closer to hear the coin drop

The kidneys gasp, the jaws drop

With ten-cent coins, fasten the coward’s lips with the absence of sound 

The show is stark and slowly it swallows every ounce of energy

Inside every loyal man

There’s a drop

The racist clings onto my lungs like a leech in blood

Racism is the need to shriek because you are afraid your tranquility will contend submission

Otherwise defeat

Rest well the racist who'll squawk again

I’m ashamed

It’s a shame

It’s a mores to pair people with adjectives

To collect and colonise a free species

From the speakers spill the laughter of nonexistent amusement

People don’t stand up for nothing

If nothing they stand for what at all

Under the skin

Above sea level

Under the flag there’s a shame ripening below matured skin

Walk with stead in no direction in the pacific there’s a dear waiting to cross the road

Who beams with darkness

There's something, someone is stuck in the door

Racquet Patriots

“Face of Woman” by Pablo Picasso (1962)

Stride down the slippery slope with puss like confidence, they clap for me for who I represent

Racism is the sound of the word Jesus, slicing my syllables before they even slip out

My tongue

Stab arrogance with laughter 

Humour exploited as weapon art

Weaponry
On the grounds the troops run on red feet

Up here they sit in seats with shoulders slouched and tongues tortured

In knots of self proclamation

A scream is a scream regardless of the words belted out

Their cheeks are bloated with racism

With racism the knots in our stomachs are tied over in loops of injustice

Rewind the laughter again

Once more

Allude to defeat with the snickering of silent letters, sentence glory to the guillotine

Lay head upon heads of stubborn endeavor and pour the syrup of patriotism

Racism is a stomach titled down, and back to front, the audience squirms inside baggage

Intended to disgust

And leap from one seat to the other

Swipe off the smirks with patriotism

Scream for miles scream for desire

Scream for disaster

Racism is the lady coughing humour into bags of calories, and self-hatred

The lady whose eyes are shielded with lenses boasting fame but anything but

Connotations of her make us sick

Make us weep

Over blue faces smeared with an outrageous paint  

Treat silence like victory for the coward

Barks across the stadium

They’ll never highlight bad sportsmanship

Racism is kicking the seat of the person in front of besides and next to you

And justice

Justice is the confidence of the children who scream nevertheless

Furniture For Failure

“Mother and Child” by Pablo Picasso (1901)

As I sit in my bedroom and wear the watch my grandma gave me I am at peace with myself

Just like the rest of us

We’re just frauds

And I think

During his lifetime

Every man should be the proud owner of a fake Rolex

At least once

He deserves as much luxury as she

She who only wears them real

But realistically she is too tedious and starving on trying times

He’ll opt for something else more colloquial, and perhaps fitting, for once

But our fathers' blazers hang off our shoulders two inches, too far

There’s beer in the fridge but it’s still not cold 

Yet

We’ll drink something else for it to chill 

In mean times

We’ll freeze the show and watch the road outside instead through see-through curtains

A kid runs after his ball, too late

So the drain swallows

Stomps of self-hatred make for pure entertainment

As lousy grown-up men contemplate their own future

And discipline themselves in the black reflection of their plasma screen

On holidays

They scream internally and get burnt

By stale cigarettes stolen second-hand and sip on expired adrenaline, with alkaline water

Like we

Feel sorry for those who need to loo in the middle of the jam

There isn’t escape

Never mind famine and a fucked-up driver

Who curses at himself
Like a bitch 

His car upon instinct scorns, at the others, without quotation marks, 

Kiss my rear

So Slippery Disguises

"Portrait of a Painter, after El Greco" by Pablo Picasso (1950)

On poor diets swallow dry saliva and make silence to ancient music of the Taj Mahal

Meditate on stems of leather chairs

Too old to swivel

Any longer spin around the clock with hands, who ache in aggression

Fingers burnt from the enlightenment of tea candles

Whereas the drums keep beating

Beat on

Bodies entwined in grace to groovy spasms

Till collapsing on the dirty carpet ground

Brown and speckled with white fibers the source of which will never be known

But needn’t concern  

Cobras sup on the slide of depression wine

Heaters for throats

In drought

Dry hands are a burden to the touch

Cast spells on magic in lotion bottles

Three drunken snakes

Hissing in the corner

An ambiguous shadow

Stare in contempt or confusion, the hissing ceases to stop regardless

Summon three backup dancers from the underground

From baskets of straw seduce the serious

With flutes

Of skin or otherwise, drink water instead
But dance and swivel

On backbones of shell delicacy

Fractures by fractions

Of fragility

And lust

There is a flood streaming somewhere down the road

Inside the tunnel
Under the red light, there is a snake hissing on someone's face 

And it crawls under the skin of only the sober 

Blasted For Bad Habits

“Buste de femme assise” (Bust of a Woman Sitting) by Pablo Picasso (1960)

Because I’ve never read a poem that opens with justification I thought I’d start one myself

The way Picasso portrays a woman’s breasts is far from the goal of consistency 

Or the desire that ensures 

The artisan

Is loaded in lab coats

To paint with silicone 

The clone of the perfect human form

Comes from

But a womb

A little swelling is a reasonable price

Picasso was among those to free the nipple first  

Let’s move on from Picasso 

Indeed discuss the patient’s fright that distresses

The skin

Rough like sun-dried canvas

Complexions of strokes from stress

A woman on canvas is immortalized

Makes god jealous

Those bridges that divide the human faces in halves

Were built to stop the sweat from sliding to the other side

There are exceptions to rules of greener grass

But yellow fields do make for better backdrops and art

Which is hard to debate

Is easier than poetry for no one harasses the painter more than they’re tempted to tax the poet

On demands of curiosity 

Confusion is the cousin of confrontation

For some reason it seems more rational to question the abstraction

Of poetic obstacle courses

Yet noble to accept the nature of ambiguous art

I bet you’ll be surprised to learn that Picasso also wrote poems

Will take offence if you dare to question his feelings

But not his paintings

Ultimately, however, preferably neither 

Weaklings at War with Humour

“Femme se coiffant” by Pablo Picasso (1956)

I will never get sick of that smirk 

Neither the speech nor the tangling of limbs with skillful interpretation 

She is entrapping a charge   

But what’s done isn’t done well when she does it

Because her smirk is an indication of a darker morbid subliminal message

Of some sort of power 

I can assume 

She theories already about the orders in which she'll deconstruct foul bodies and recite

The sins are thicker on our skin

Like grime and the poison that gives the frown its fury  

I can’t stop thinking about that damn smirk

She wears with admirable expertise the impact of implicit intention 

But her clothes are on backwards, like her front of indifference 

Buttons aligned in crisscross notions of rage

A rally is evident in the silk collar that binds together the blouse 

The green is soothing on eyes 

Yet torture on the tongue  

Her face is but man’s estate to obstruct 

Where ruins have spilt from those foreheads of one thousand odd years 

Somewhere along those routes 

There’s a wire assembled for self-destruction 

When the grin speaks be careful  

But hardly audible for indoctrinated participants 

Caught in clouds of delusional comfort 

There is a spear in the stuffing and that’s the stock of corruption 

Is what I want

A stomach filling too fast 

Would rather stay full than throw up 

The flags of surrender 

Are ashamed in hands 

Thrown every arms on the ground 

And nurture those gun wounds before they bleed explicitly 

Is there more to come off that grime 

Illness and Illusion

“Woman in Hat and Fur Collar” by Pablo Picasso (1937)

My brain is hairier than my head, and these shoulders are stiff

My face hurts from falsely smiling

The camera is corrupted

I’m too tired to act for too long

I can’t smile

I am distracted by the waiters carrying their tall champagne glasses on those greasy trays

The bartender is a real awful bitch

And I’m still smiling

Because the photographer is flirting with his flash  

While I’m still an aching, melodramatic catastrophe

With no future 

I want to go home 

It is the second day of dread and domestic drama

Except the walls are painted and the floors are freshly tiled

But still somehow greasy and gross

Like my hair under the green fedora

There's a mosquito bite on the left side of my face and it is going blue

There is a bomb going off inside

And it stinks

Spilling their secrets and therefore threats

Will you please trust me 

That’s all I ask of you

Is to trust me, if I am willing to trust you

Trust is something you teach yourself

Or so I have been taught... By who you ask

By myself… As if that wasn't obvious enough

I brush my teeth in the shower now, because I can’t bear to see myself in the mirror

Some have said I am always green

And gross

Apparently people just go green when they are sick

But I am not a vegetable… yet

While the photographer is still fucking his camera 

I can't do this anymore 

Salty Tumors

“Mother and Child on the Beach” by Pablo Picasso (1902)

At sea the winds beat the boats

The corpse-to-be is decaying on the deck and the date is somebody’s birthday

For sure, the ocean employs a drum and an earthquake

Under the boat, danger is ready

To fish from the surface, a limb  

If generous, that is the mercy

A random colour

A scavenger dressed in costume and worn human flesh, chokes on his hound 

Then wonders why the moon is halved

A fraction for who

Tomorrow seems impossible, when the clock ticks on time  

A count down is enjoyable, if only there is spare time

To smudge on faces some numbers to dictate the rest of life and win the lottery

With milestones, marked as haircuts

Identity as flexible as red curves out of nowhere

The smile on grim faces by default

Always find someone to blame

As a form of release, the ocean is forced to give itself to the shore

So they chuckle

Asking

Why are fireworks 

Also a sign of tragedy

There’s no point waving hands

Or shaking them

In cold temperatures, blood will freeze

Inevitably reserve those questions for the people on different occasions

Perhaps at a memorial

They will mention something about this

Something about the boats that kept those tears flowing

Like nerve-racking rivers 

That swept the appetite 

They're inside the casket 

Who love for nothing 

Diffidence and Other Difficulties

“La Femme au pot de moutarde” (Woman with Mustard Pot) by Pablo Picasso (1910)

She says, the only flaw she has isn’t having any

And she chuckled and greased at her own arrogance

The arrogance that makes her the most loving person that she adores

This confidence manufactured, on fickle foundation

I am the prey of threats too vulnerable for a praise-worthy hunt if even successful

Not worth a bragging about

Even if I were hesitant  

I said to the medical student, I would be a good doctor because of my morals

She said, but did not say a thing

In her silence there was acceptance

And I was surprised

Whereabouts does the brave man live

Cause we can’t stop thinking about him

My throat is dry and her lips still saturated from the salt and vinegar chips

Why do you do this to yourself

We ask ourselves personal questions

And hold them stupid before we stare into the darkness

The mirror couldn’t swallow your reflection without the sun’s help

It’s always easier to talk

For now, I love you better than I do myself

Because when we laugh

We laugh in depression

We lie on the mattress and to each other

About good times in early hours of history

There is still a loner

Somewhere out there

He could be lying

In the corner of the room the blue light keeps on flashing

I almost feel like someone is inside of it

Just looking

And just judging

And I would’ve liked to say you’re welcome 

Because it feels so good to have someone else worry about your future as well