My Francis Bacon essay
       

Francis Bacon's people have bacon faces. I want to heat them
on the stove and eat their misery. If you've never seen one
of his paintings, imagine a man's face being skinned
as the plane he's on is going down into the Atlantic, the lapdogs
in his eyes terrified but searching anyway for someone's leg
to hump. This is not the extent of my view of human nature,
for I feel Solzhenitsyn would have done well on stilts.
Bacon is memorable as a fist where very few of us want one,
yet these are images that wear their violence as casually
as birds wear flying. Sometimes I think Bacon is how the night
looks at us, how God would appear or the Big Bang
across from me in a bar, sipping some fruity yummy umbrella drink
while trying to decide if it's worth the effort
to tear me apart. Other times I'm sure God or The Big Bang
drink scotch and Drano, and that people, if I look closely enough,
appear oddly soft, bloody but strangely cuddly
in Bacon's work, fuzzy really in how frenzied
and multiple he painted their nervous edges
for museums to place the visual equivalent of live
and loose wires on their walls. I mentioned a lapdog earlier,
when if you've ever wondered what the child of a man
and Doberman would look like turned inside out, consult Bacon.
If you've never wondered this, we'll have little to talk about,
so I guess this is goodbye.

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Copyright © 2012 Bob Hicok All rights reserved
from Green Mountains Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission