Aleister: A Poem by Avra Margariti
Aleister
When your name vibrates, wretched demon,
When white chalk and black wax trace your sigil,
Your spirit summoned to my circle
In my lover’s occult workshop,
Know that it’s not for my own base benefit.
You may call me Faust, although my lover was
Much more inventive in his intimacies
And christenings, his eyes like the twin slate suns
Rising over the city of Carcosa,
His voice quicksilver cast in clear resin.
He never did manage to transmute metal into gold
But he carried his aureate aura
Wherever he went--
Even, I’d bet, in darksome death.
You will know him in your chthonic domain
By the quickening of dead hearts around him.
Sublime being, vaporized absinthe
Reforming into a solid obelisk.
Everyone wished to bask in his brilliance, but it was I
Who knew him better than any member
Of his magickal order of Thelema.
I have called to the devil once before,
My soul already doomed to ritualistic ruin.
What is one more favor,
One more deal with demons?
Bring him back to me, wretched creature.
I want my alchemist ensconced in his workshop,
Our lovers’ bed of eiderdown and bones.
Horus the Child God and the demon Mephistopheles
Watch from a distance, lambent limbs
And clawed appendages clutching the hands
Of the alchemist Crowley.
He, fresh from the ground,
Smelling of sulphur, hellfire, and the lingering dust
Of philosopher’s stone.
When god and devil let go of their charge’s hands,
Damned scholar and cursed alchemist
Shall be united at last.
Avra Margariti is a queer author and Pushcart-nominated poet with a fondness for the dark and the darling. Avra’s work haunts publications such as Vastarien, Asimov's, Liminality, Arsenika, The Future Fire, Love Letters to Poe, Space and Time, Eye to the Telescope, and Glittership. Avra lives and studies in Athens, Greece. You can find Avra on twitter (@avramargariti).
