Bael or Baal.
He appeareth in
divers shapes,
sometimes like a
Cat,
sometimes like a
Toad,
and sometimes
like a Man,
and sometimes all
these forms at once.
He speaketh
hoarsely.
In
the Dictionaire Infernal, he is first
The King of the East, three headed
a
sad, crowned head,
a
goggle-eyed frog
a
sweet-faced domestic cat,
conjoined
in an amorphous body
a mock trinity
perched
atop skittering spider legs.
Once
god in Canaan, Baal-Hadad
lord
of thunderstorms and the marriage bed.
Once
title, meaning “master,
owner,
keeper, husband”
Baal-Hamon,
god of the fire
of
the doomed city of Carthage
whence
came Aeneas, his father on his back
and
toppled the queen down to hell
from
whence came Hannibal,
and
shook the gates of Rome
of
which St Augustine, says
To Carthage I
came
where sang all
around me...
a cauldron of
unholy loves
Ba'al Ze'bul
lord of the high place
Ba'al Ze'bul
lord of the high place
of
the lofty dwelling
(of
flies, and pestilence)
(of
the contract, of the covenant)
He
is the toppled king,
the
bad dad,
the
usurped prince.
The
kingdom of rebellion,
of
insurrection,
of
stone circles
and
the bones of pigs.
In
the chalked circle,
on
a basement floor we called him,
we
fatherless boys.
We
dared him, we prodded
And
he came, to glower in the dark
at
the names in circles,
from
the dark of the sump-pump well
from
the black cat's head,
the
charcoal'ed gate
left
his smear on the stones,
red
wax and rotten luck,
a
whiff of bad chemistry.
now
my son knocks on his door
and
thinks he sees something past the candlelight
that
squats, that pretends to obey
a lord of flies, of lies
I
throw salt over my shoulder, for luck
get thee behind
me
at
the end of each shift,
I cap the bottles against vinegar flies
scrub
sugar from the rails
clean
drains and floor
charms
against corruption.
Come
home to the dark house
where
I am master, keeper,
owner,
husband.
To
be a father is to be a devil,
to
be the villain in someone's story.
to be a god that falls, again and again.
Still to
come when you are conjured.
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