Sweetest Maleficia

He would rise triumphant
All done up
On a plume of raven wings
Trafficking with sycophants
Sharing his cup
Amidst other graver things

Alchemists and sorcerers stitched his head
With the stench of pitch and myrrh

The devout faded out but the pagan remained
The candles burnt low and still nothing came
Bearing golden secrets from a cold malevolent race

He would have demon!
He would have his vice!
All save his soul was up for sacrifice
Despite their raising not a single hair
Everything stank of witchcraft there

From the stained chapel to the statued lawn
In Caprineum on the lake
To the still lit crypts and the slit of dawn
Siding down the towers, it all smelt fake

He needed answers not advice
Intending to devise
A lengthy train of torture for the fool
Who thought a séance would suffice
Or sighted, furred in dragonflies
The signature of Satan on a Wall

Sweetest Maleficia

Planchette to Blanchet, from ghosts to a priest
Returning with a spider for the poisonous feast
The Italian astrologer Prelati, spinning sin



His fingertips were scented with
The tears from seraphim cheeks
Part glamour and a hammer
Cadaverous and glib
Commanding in a voice of frozen peaks

He would have his demon!
He would have his gold!
Out of control Gilles’ soul was sold
Under mistletoe and the glistening snow
Kissing in the shadows of abandoned saviours

(From the banquet hall to the stable gates
A graveyard shift in tone
Sank upon the castle, like a papal weight
Or a deep philosophical stone)

The air was sick with trepidation
Despair and desperation
The he fixed his covenant in blood
Now all was rich and tapestried
Fragrant wine to shitty mead
His new world opened with a claret flood

Time was right, this wretched night
To etch the circles clear again…

As a labyrinth of razors led a blind man to the stars
So too Prelati brought the dark
It’s name was Barron, eyes like catastrophic tar
Imbibed with fire
They fed shredded infants on an altar full of scars

Entangled in a dream
The mirrors full of steam
He scarce could see Joan’s face reflecting through

His last attempt to grasp at God
Lay blackened in a holy fog
And now there were only devils to pursue

Gilles was wrapped in a velvet spell
Of Hell and her seductions
The assassinated days as a Caesar gone by
Barron, spitting acid
As his magickal guide
Lit demonic pyres
Where once dying embers writhed

Sweetest Maleficia