Black candles
Made from slaughtered infants’ fat
Grace the points of a pentagram
Writ large in virgins’ blood;
They light-up occult inscriptions
And the twisted face
That mouths their sounds
In the eldritch exclamations
Of spells that had lain dead
For who knows how many years
‘Til this purposeless & empty fool
Had flailed about & struck upon
An evil path to tread
In a spate of catastrophic luck;
He cast about & struck upon
The dark & narrow way
When belief in God & self had failed,
And if offering up their souls
To an anti-Christ could serve
As redemption in a callous world,
Then he would offer them up freely.
He knew no living thing that cared for him,
So he spoke the incantations loud
And offered their souls up
In an ancient futile rite
To gain appreciation
From a fanciful & darksome lord
Who he had no understanding of,
As he did not understand himself;
He’d read, within a thick & time-worn tome,
That souls must be consumed
In preparation for His coming,
Hence the candles and the killing spree—
But, as it happens,
Satan is merely bad intent
Personified by successive hapless fools,
Each become a Satan
In his pathetic turn,
While failing to realize
That his very own soul
Would be consumed
As an offering to himself.