Let There Be Darkness

Bend your knees in solemn prayer,
Bend down, closer to humble earth's embrace,
For only when we are this close to devil's realm,
will the Gods answer our desperate pleas for grace.
How far will they let me fall, not from nobility,
But further down from recurring pride and sin and envy?
Because when the heavens conspire against my weary soul,
I shall begin to answer to the devil,
and beg that my skin be peeled whole.

I imagine he will say, 'Let there be darkness,'
and only in the abyss, will I be blessed with sight.
Don’t you wonder what lies beneath
the humiliatingly fragile human flesh,
that throbbing, oozing liquid that always
fell short
of proving to me my wealth?
Not those material in silvers and golds,
But the trembling sense of what my worth holds,
Only then in darkness will I be able to spot the dim light
looking translucent behind strings of meat and tissue. Flickering.

Suddenly I could breathe with greater fluency,
offered a song that echoed my name,
But already I am of fire and brimstone.
My living torment has ceased at the cost of an eternal one you see,
Still, tell the angels to look me in the eye and deem me a liar when I say:
It was the demons who salvaged me.

What is the promise of God worth, when one has to reconcile with the devil in order to find
themselves?