Bacon's Popes, by Prue Chamberlayne

         
Bacon's Popes

Tate Britain, Autumn 2008
                              
The violet one, roped in, from black of mouth
emits a silent cavernous scream, 
staring so hard his glasses disappear 
from doubt of power about itself,
 
ineptitude and loss of will dressed up
in lavish robes, hands shrunk and puffy;
swirling floorboards threaten to engulf
a Führer wretched and non-plussed.
 
Amid debauchery a childhood fouled 
by father’s power propelled all this,
but Bacon savoured Nietzsche, noted those lenses 
splintered on the wounded nurse.
 
Enigma of why the countless canvasses 
were slashed, clogged paint, an endless search 
through horror and disgust, hurls us 
to face our own internal writhing.
 
The scream obsessed him, its saliva, gums,
a scream we recognise inside ourselves 
as what we dare not utter, dare not think,
until we step in Dante’s pit.

Prue Chamberlayne

​Prue Chamberlayne grew up by the river Severn and lives in London and the Aveyron in France. After feminist comparative social policy, biographic-interpretive research, and a rural project in Uganda, came poetry, with a collection Locks Rust in 2019, and a corona chapbook Beware the Truth that’s Manacled with erbacce-press in 2022, on the psychic underworld of racial experience, particularly regarding "whiteness." She has a ready a pamphlet Love’s Pendulum on inter-racial love and parenting. A forthcoming second collection is called Lizard Looks. Recent journal acceptances include Dawntreader, Green Ink Press, Galway Review, Wild Court. You might like https://poetrywales.co.uk/prue-chamberlayne-on-how-she-writes-a-poem/.