His final hours were happy ones, remembering.

Back in the days when he was a lauded YBA

in black framed glasses and gold lame.

His style and his Yorkshire tongue

incongruous in 1961.

 

His mind drifts back, he’s there again

painting portraits of beautiful friends

with their hounds lazing at their feet.

On opulent Chelsea afternoons.

And then those crazy LA days

of swimming pools and luscious men.

Splash!

 

One man he loved so much

painted him in the pool most every day

zooming beneath the water

like a homoerotic missile.

The reflections waver, swirl

and curl away.

Splash!

 

Whatever happened to the guy?

He can’t recall.

And yet his beauty is still here

at the forefront of his mind’s eye.

Splash!

 

He wants to paint it all once more

to make it real.

The blazing sun.

The dazzling swimming pool.

The dazzling man.

Magnificent in wavering reflection.

Splash!

　

His canvas waits.

His sight is poor.

The pot of blue paint

on the floor.

He’s clumsy now.

He knocks it over.

Splash!

 

He slips and falls

helpless he lies

as helpless as in LA days

When to the beauteous man he’d say

“Do you love me?”

Splash!

 

And as he loses consciousness

it seems his love,

in last caress

whispers “Yes I do.”

Splash!

 

They found him in the studio

lying in a splatter of blue paint

that fanned out from his body’s outline

like rays from a cobalt sun.

But it puzzled everyone

because there was the loveliest

of smiles upon the artist’s face.

Splash!

 

And when his body was removed

an outline lived upon the blue.

It sold for millions to the Tate

and now there’s queues,

you’ll have to wait.

To see his masterpiece

The Biggest Splash of all.

Splash!

 

 

 

 

 

     with apologies to David Hockney, still alive I hope!!