Pandaemonium

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pandaemonium

 

 

 

Lucifer's a pudgy angel now,

carrying around a clockwork hook.

He glistens like the night-sweat of

a troupe of drunkard clowns.

The hook is busy swinging in one hand,

heavy and sharp, catching this,

piercing that, while he smiles,

extending with ersatz camaraderie

 

the other flat, empty palm. I would

send him a letter, but

he's disappeared all the pens

commandeered the keyboards

burnt down the paper mills,

so it can only be written

on tombstones with a broken crucifix in

my blood, and it's doubtful he will read.

 

I need my blood

for better things, like

watering the apple blossoms

shot pink with spring fire, and

bleeding a banner with a new chorus

 for the mongrel choir

throat singing back to him the

National Anathema. 

 

 

February 2025

 

Posted For Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

Pandæmonium ...is the capital of Hell in John Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost...The name stems from the Greek pan (παν), meaning 'all' or 'every', and daimónion (δαιμόνιον), a diminutive form meaning 'little spirit', 'little angel', or, as Christians interpreted it, 'little daemon'...Pandæmonium thus roughly translates as "All Demons"—but can also be interpreted as Pandemoneios or 'all-demon-place'..John Milton invented the name in Paradise Lost (1667), as "A solemn Council forthwith to be held at Pandæmonium, the high Capitol, of Satan and his Peers" ~wikipedia

 

Throat singing

Images: Pandemonium, 1841, ©John Martin

The Fall Of The Rebel Angels, 1562 © Pieter Bruegel the Elder 

Maleficium

 

 

 

 

 Maleficium

 

 

 

 

By dark lantern, by crimson candle, in

an absence floating in wine without bread,

the Necromancer toasts in mandrake hopes

the golden miracles of his dead.

 

His chamber is fumed with dubious pasts, an

offering's smoke where the last choke occurred.

His breath has gone dry as his corpse-woman's eye,

ceremonially opened with a theurgic word.

 

But that eggshell gaze is blind as stone, her

songs of the oriole fluttered away.

The nods of owls and mnemonic howls

work a brittle sequence no cello can play.

 

The final shriek puts grit in the lens, so

it never divines what time's drown erased.

The owl and the oriole dice for his soul;

every spirit that rises wears his own face.

 

In my dream you've left fetches and dust behind.

You stand by the door of a bridge's arc,

the wild blue river in flight from your quiver,

your shades all spent arrows that killed their marks.

 

 

 

 

February 2025

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Necromancy: "..the practice of magic involving communication with the dead by summoning their spirits as apparitions or visions for the purpose of divination.." ~wikipedia

Maleficium: "the practice of malevolent magic, derived from casting lots as a means of divining the future in the ancient Mediterranean world"~wikipedia

Theurgy:".. the ritual practices associated with the invocation or evocation of the presence of one or more deities..."~wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 posted for Word Garden Word List

at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images: The Necrophile. 1965, ©Jean Benoit        Public Domain

The Blind Man of Toledo, 1906, ©Joaquin Sorolla       Public Domain