Member Poem

On a darkling afternoon
in a once familiar street,
as you browse through dusty
stalls of antiquarian debris,
your moving hand may pause
and descend upon the spine
of a book penned to decimate
the tenets of your mind.

Bound by a pallid hide
of indeterminate derivation,
its incarnadine imprimatur
bleached through the ages
to a faintly visible rust,
at first or second glance
an undistinguished volume,
no larger than some hymnals
and often mistaken for such.

In centuries dead and past
avaricious eyes have scoured
this text to tap the powers
said to corrupt all takers,
grave voices once raised
to intone its fatal curses,
to chant its cursive spells,
now fill the cracks of Hell
with a chorus of damnation.

With seven slender signatures
stitched from the dried gut
of a white virgin feline
disemboweled in the howling
heat of first menstruation,
between the rectos and versos
of its hand scrawled pages,
poisonous leaves are pressed,
the clawed letters embrace
and deviltry awaits a maker.

And if you hasten home
with a brown paper package
clutched beneath your arm,
as night revolves on day
and need discovers greed,
you may manage a translation,
and your moral indignation
will falter and soon fail
before the promises unveiled.

Its carious vellum bared
beneath a tremulous flame,
its diabolic chapters read
and branded in your brain,
you can torch this vile book
with its ancient raft of sin,
but its presence will remain.
Once you conjugate with evil
you will always know its reign.

Appeared in my collection Faces of the Beast