THE BIVALENT SALVATION OF THE WORLD 

The devil inside is more than idealistic,
more than genuine, more than fully actualized.
The devil inside must be more all the time 
of everything I imagine I am and am not.
The devil inside is my heavenly judge, the tragic ideal made whole, 
it’s me piercing my necessary nature, restless as deflating contrast,
poking situational truth into gaps of silence and darkness to give substance 
to the expansive flourishes and light of my wishful divine bliss,
a bliss sparking on the periphery of hellish realms of rueful dreams of ideal good.

My devil is more than willing to face the risk of my sincere gratitudes,
those heartfelt terrors of thankfulness in the face of a stark reality that doesn’t sustain, 
in the light of mystical yearnings that are nothing 
but impossible in the here and now where I must live.
My devil encourages gratitude to be proclaimed in the face of despair,
loneliness, and unreasonable suffering for where else does life’s vaulted meaning come from? 

My devil inside understands the inverse miracle of me in a way the angels don’t,
in ways the humans dare not, with a passion the saints can’t express without shame.
My devil knows the only thing impossible and not desirable is me
when I fail to show up and answer for myself when I call,
and my devil calls me all the time, as me, for me, for I am all important to it.

Justice and mercy are perfectly balanced in the temptations of my devil
for my ideal judge knows my compulsive impulse, my addictive drive, my insatiable desire,
it senses all too well my aspiration to the goal when the goal is an infinite game
with one player playing all plays, making all moves in a vacuum of valued certainty.

Temptation is my ideal judge of how I interact with my potential
while doubt and certainty interchange as sacred and profane faces of my devil,
for my devil inside never lets me forget how I assume I’m authentic to myself,
it forces me to relate to myself as the contentious community I travel with across time.
My devil won’t let me escape that personal journey, won’t let me live 
in the objective moment even if the temptation promises a full life in such blessed amnesia.

My full Self and my eternal soul parley into ultimate tricksters as played by me
using the face of my devil as artful device in the act of navigating life.
My devil has four faces and six wings when it’s useful whenever it dotes
on my every ego construct with idolizing worship.
It knows me as I know not myself and it feels me as I wish to be felt
for only the ideal judge can fault one so full of such indulgent compassion,
it relates to me with an open empathy that accepts all I can possibly take astray.

My devil has me looking back to understand where I’ve been
for wherever that takes me is not the full essence of what that past could have been.
My devil has me looking forward to understand what I yearn for
for whatever that is will not be the fully realized potential the divine spark put into me.
For the past could always have been better and the future could always be more
and my devil will never let me forget this, it motivates me, inspires me
by whispering how I am enough just as I am as I always was and always will be.
No need to worry about the dubious sin of missing the mark in a place without a bullseye
for the sacred center mark is an ideal and that ideal doesn’t exist in the here and now
and it’s not likely to exist since those who are here don’t value it at all.

My devil judges me as a wavering constant without recourse, 
it implores me forward as a depreciating value without applicable measure, 
it coaxes me into life’s imprecise process without beginning or end, 
it assures me I’m a thought I must have of myself when no thought is necessary.
My devil meets me in the confessional to remind me, my wound is always my redeemer,
that all my suffering is a blessing, that every loss and regret and heartache is the way through
and no one but my devil is better equipped to guide me off the path of redemptive avoidance
so that I may live fully in my imperfection while I’m here
and be so totally wounded and qualified for salvation.

My devil rescues me from virtues too pure for this world
even as my heart aches for them with holy innocence.
Naïveté and callow aspirations of special significance sicken my devil
into torturing me with the judgments of facing facts,
for this world is not good, this world is not evil,
my devil squirms in the tension of this world being both and neither
as it consecrates me in the fires of my own willful folly and excess.

My devil, my ideal, my judge, is the lord of my shadow
and I pray to it each day with the dark side of my conscience.
My devil has me pray to be delivered from all the virtues that bring me pain,
all the sacredness that plague me with sorrow,
all the absolute values that shackle me to my traumas.

My devil knows me as a duplicitous creature of opportunity,
a raging heart of selfish emotions, a confused child of genius Machiavellian constructs,
a hopeless scavenger for endless mercy, a lustful animal of wanton desires,
a lazy consort of creature comforts, a second smiling face in front of ulterior intentions,
and my devil loves me for all of it and passes final judgment on me as human
thus condemning me to feel my irrational nature as the living beatific vision.

Pain is joy when my wound transubstantiates into the god of what must be,
for no wound is ever healed nor should it be if life itself necessitates its existence.
My devil shows me, seen from the vacant space of pure existential potential, 
there is no reference point for determining lower or higher,
and my flaunted humanity is the wound most essential in all respects and all orientations.

All the while I am told the devil inside me is my lower self, without which
my higher self would have no perspective on itself.
In quiet moments of brief numinosity, I suspect my true self is neither of these
and the doubt this places in me is encouraged as wisdom by my devil within,
for never truly knowing myself, in the end, is my sole ascension, my soul salvation.

Forever redeemed, forever in pain, forever in league with the devil within life,
a devil that must exist in me if any good is to come 
from my human days passing into void from dreamlike Earth.