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 his 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 Sliding 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 seance 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 shadow 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 Then 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 him 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 magical guide Lit demonic pyres where once dying embers writhed Sweetest Maleficia