Vanity Fair's Lucian Freud
A poem
marathoning into the night — only so many brushstrokes
left — terre verts mixed with umber — swift swipes
of flake white
brushwork — deft and layered — smooth around the man’s
shoulders — crusty and impassioned
along the arms
every twitch of facial muscle — caught — every bulge
of subcutaneous thigh-fat — whorled
rippled, smeared
soft sable — swapped — for bristly hog’s hair brushes
snipped to nubs — the middle son of the youngest
son of Sigmund Freud
not nudes — his insistence — but naked portraits — “best
realist painter alive” — fathered — with six women
fourteen acknowledged children
there is only — long scarf knotted — so much hypocrisy
rakishly at the neck — I allow myself — work ethic
on overdrive
selfishness — gobs of palette knife wipe-off — is what —
like seagull guano — it takes to make — his studio walls
coated with — great art
my work — big canvases — purely an attempt — unsparing — at a
record — autobiographical — of myself —
and my surroundings