self-portrait (after francis bacon)

It would be an error to suppose that the living spirit, like flame, is perpetually generated and extinguished, and is of no sensible duration. For even flame does this not of its own nature... 
— Francis Bacon, The Historie of Life and Death, [1623] 1858.
Analog vivisection mislays 
for inanimate bodies endure without repair;
let us inquire into diverse causes:

movingly associative snail
an intestinal grey smudging my face
and telling you my incomprehensible symptoms, 

vomit a sly analgesic vision 
of beloved synthetic generics, plastics;
let needles suck vessels, wires chart the lump
of organ in its kennel.

Slimy navigational viscose. 
Consider Painting of a Dog: the dog is short-lived. In 
nature there is no annihilation for every-thing passes
into air or an adjacent body, its

main vestigial convoys sail
two precursors, sent from head and heart
against the brief consuming
joy of congealed memberment,

amniotic saliva glossy vein
fatty stomach the glistening dermal lesion. The paint. 
To study myself for crucifixion,
pinned, smeared, placed, silent, screaming—to

vacillate in a vying osmosis
my bones of animals in charnelhouses, in black smoke
on tire fires, slit necks, inflamed menisci,
labyrinthine methylations, my broken blood,

aliases living my vocations; 
mere vicissitudes of the smeared gyre. We 
bandage with narrative: the measuring instrument
futile, become but cerebral insistence, 
our incisions persistent, baffled, blunt.