
by James O’Brien
What’s left is stretchered on the metal frame,
A borrowed structure dominating a fetid room.
The barrelled light a stale vortex of horsemen,
Refracted from retreating flesh tinged bone.
A coronation, as she rubs soft soap into your hessian skin,
Then the anointing chrism into ruby sores,
As the cannula, an infected sceptre, draws.
She changes your ermine, the nappy soiled,
A beaded sweat crown under a 40 Watt bulb,
She sees you wilting, exhausted, beseeching
This is a man as his soul declines to vacuity,
Maybe this is what Caravaggio sought
Or what Michelangelo effortlessly depicts,
Or Francis Bacon’s mocked contortion to oblivion.