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C. Poems of Gary Lehmann , (New York)
Cubist Nightmare
(Paris 1914)
by Gary Lehmann
Source: Public Lives & Private Secrets (2005), p. 17
Picasso returned from Spain
his arms loaded with cubist canvases,
the best he ever painted.
He filled his apartment on rue Shoelcher,
relishing walls that shouted out a new vocabulary
that explained the way people really live.
But his old apartment house seemed empty and dreary
His buddies Georges Braque and Andre Derain
deserted him to join the madmen in the trenches.
As if this weren't enough, his only remaining friend,
Guillaume Apollinaire, joined up too.
The season of emptiness descended.
Picasso moved to Montrouge
where there was at least some life
in the cabarets and coffee houses.
He skulked about like an old man
sipping cognac and coffee into the late night
and brooding on the masques of war.
He returned to Montrouge to discover that a thief had
stolen a bolt of linen cloth he had not yet stretched.
The insult hit him like machine gun bullet.
The world it seemed stood so upside down
that it could not differentiate a cubist painting
that explained the whole impending disaster
from a blank bolt of linen cloth.
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This poem is nominated Best Poem of Year 2005 for 2nd Muses Prize.
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Published with permission of the author.
Copyright belongs to author.
Poet from New York
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by Gary Lehmann
Source: Public Lives & Private Secrets, (2005), p37
He never learned to swim,
and uncoordinated as he was, he sometimes capsized.
Yet, he refused to wear a life jacket.
It was his way of making dinghy sailing a real sport.
(Complete poem available in print edition of Muses Review.)
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This poem is nominated Best Poem of Year 2005 for 2nd Muses Prize.
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Published with permission from author.
All rights reserved.