Francis Bacon Told the Truth

It’s all teeth and fangs at first,
then there is the bone,
snatches of white against the blood,
that goes on for too long
and comes right out the back
and then finally the glass boxes
that you have got them all trapped in
so that their screams are echoed back at
them for a thousand years.

This is the song.
This is the only song you sung.

And I’m here, trying to scour
the eyeless heads
and the bent bodies
for the story you are telling
cause it feels like a dream
I forgot to have
like a daymare that I live some days
especially in the heat

and then it happened.
The whining child,
the bitchy mother,
the disgruntled father.
And then it escalated,
the stern docent,
the irate father,
the crowd parting
and their fangs came out.
Someone used the word asshole,
which echoed in the hushed museum walls
and someone used the word civil.
Someone said “it’s a museum, sir, please act decent.”

And I almost had to laugh out loud, Frankie
cause there it was,
come to life,
the human as animal
and nothing more,
the screeching, fang bearing,
chest thumping animal.
The baboon you made human
The pope you animalized.

This was everything you were painting.
As if the madness of you was possessive.

This was the chorus of your song.
And I stretched,
and moved into the next room
the one where you painted
your dead friend
over and over again,
his skin tacked to the wall.

The Theif.
The cruelty you knew he lived with,
desperate for you, desperate enough to do whatever you wanted.

My back cracked,
sore from wandering through your life,
and I felt my spine, come through my skin,
felt my teeth grow,
felt this glass box I was in
and shuddered.