Inspired by Francis Bacon's Black Triptychs after his
former lover George Dyer committed suicide
Once inside the stainless-steel industrial door
you will find frozen eyes and
pink watermelon knee flesh,
but priests want to party and enact the ultimate
baller exorcism.
Hands plaster in prayer and
collars snap tight for a Quarantine church picnic to honor
the dead.
I could hop on one cured ham foot in spiritual ecstasy
if not for the vegetarian issue.
Still, my own head cheese heated and full of worm thoughts
always unwanted visitors in kitchens or coffins.
Let's blend the white and gray halves of these bodies
in half-truths and confessions, open their "O" mouths
for a new snack.
The foot-long bread is a torture chamber:
these pilgrims' fingers cannot break Jesus off
gnarled and burned from hell.
It's a sin to end your own life and
toes freeze the fastest in hell, I'm told.
The ice box crystallizes tiny soul experiments
and thigh flesh graciously opens
for the banquet's final show-stopper.
These faces cotort from cellophane and safety,
a gift of catered lust to the hungry.
Mesh the meat,
choke the gizzards,
stoke one muscle plucked from a femur.
Do you have a secret dessert wish
other than to be whole again?
The tibia and scapulae are too bony to eat
Guests enjoy the smooth intact ears,
Listen to their own eating pleasure.
The world is unsure of where
to begin and how to end,
how we are dying to feel.
