SELF-PORTRAIT AS A POEM EDITED BY FRANCIS BACON
Addison Williams
Sometimes I’m nothing but my inheritance
all vulture beak & father’s burnt orange wrath
twisting my guts into knives inside a tight tearin’
shroud tying this son of the red earth
this son of Adams’s apple to cliché metaphors
of masculinity & poor excuses every man’s breath
has the faint stench of their father’s apple orchard & I dream
of having my mum’s smile but instead my body is all
inescapable hunched shrug of shame &
torn out ribs poor posture of this great masturbator
on display saying look at me seated with my
grudging pen & badly written daddy-poems
with a touch of love but mostly confusion of sex & violence
begging the furies to carry me away for murdering
what’s left of my mother still inside me.
Sometimes I’m a stone flamingo on precarious legs
drunkenly gawping at onlookers in eyeless bondage
of ethanol soaked rags contemplating
their whispers don’t they know a crucifix is just
an exhibition of sticks without the presence
of god the same way an artist is just
a sad imitation of tragedy if they don’t sell
the prettiest cuts of gristle from their life
which is an expensive way of saying
my happy poems will never sell but what do I know
of money & art? after all I wrote this unceasingly drunk.
Sometimes I’m all toothy-nightmare silver pellet
grin a dentist’s elephantine cash-cow
blinding myself with wordless screams of self-propaganda
lamenting into a single ear my bestial orgasm
of masochism at the holy feet of a crucifix
malnourished cement rib-chic plucked of colour
wondering who would love this heron body
when my talon is always embedded in my reeded mouth
of a murky river saying could you love a monster like me?
realising I’ve a body only a devoted nanny
could love without sadistic intentions
leaving me with no option but to avenge
my loneliness with a slashed canvas of a self-portrait.
