Feeding Molek

                                                                    Picture from :http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moloch

Feeding Molek
         by Marissa Mullins

The rock still stands --
growth of bushes,
briers, and half-dead flowers
covering its north side -- 
the south side shows
its grooved-smooth-gray-top,
this ragged side, chipped,
well-worn from use.

~ * ~

For thousands of years
it was a place of
fresh-born scrub-bushes
and twisted-tiny
crawling roses. The rock

at noon, the hottest hour
of the day, so the it
would pull the seeping blood
deep into its skin.
Faster than room and space made -- 
bodies slain and pushed aside -- 
they lined up with,
the crying children
held tight to breast, shoulder, face -- 
whispering, "remember the honor,
necessity. You must die."

In this way they fed Molek
the blood of their children
for days-on-end, one-by-one.
Crying babies, death knell ringing
across a summer sky while
the hot-wet-smell of blood
filled the breeze, floated away.

~ * ~

One hundred, two hundred, three
thousand, four thousand, more -- 
slaughtered into dark-gray silence,
quiet like the years
passing after them.
Two thousand years,
countless days, and
100-millions-girls later.

~ * ~
They come to the rock,
clear the way for sacrifice -- 
the blood, child blood, warm blood
splashes on the crawling roses.
The lines grow long, filled
with crying children
held tight to shoulder,
breast, face -- whispering,
"remember the honor, necessity.
You must die."

In this way we feed Molek
the blood of our children
for days-on-end, one-by-one.
Crying babies, death-knell ringing
across a summer sky while
we pretend its an illusion -- 
turn away, hide our eyes.

The rock still stands --
the growth of bushes,
briers,
and half-dead flowers
covering its north side; 
its south side chipped,
well-worn from use -- 
waiting.


~July 2012

This poem was written for the 100-million-girls website.

Artwork Credit: Artwork by (c) Tirin, aka Tilde Carlsten. Please visit her blog (offering a variety of interesting topics and great artwork HERE.) Thanks and gratitude to Tirin for the use of this picture.

Citations:

Wikipedia contributors. "Moloch." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 11 Jul. 2012. Web. 21 Jul. 2012.

Molek - explanation from Wikipedia: 

As a god worshipped by the Phoenicians and Canaanites, Moloch had associations with a particular kind of propitiatory child sacrifice by parents. Moloch figures in the Book of Deuteronomy and in the Book of Leviticus as a form of idolatry (Leviticus 18:21: “And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch”). In the Hebrew Bible, Gehenna was initially where apostate Israelites and followers of various Baalim and Caananite gods, including Moloch, sacrificed their children by fire (2 Chr. 28:3, 33:6; Jer. 7:31, 19:2–6).

Moloch has been used figuratively in English literature from John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) to Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1955), to refer to a person or thing demanding or requiring a very costly sacrifice.


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