Fallen

Starting today I will be invisible.
I will be consecrated,
and everything corruptible, time
and the soul, will slip off me, sleek
against my skin. I will use all my good fortune
to resist the hours, how they pool
so lovingly in the light. Starting now.
Will watch without rancor
as the afternoon sharpens its knives.
Will live in perfect solitude
like the moth, whose idea of God
must be reckless attraction,
radiant and extinguishing.
And if I have ever offended God,
let the records state my doubt
is a failure of the intellect,
not the will. One shock,
one turn on the road is all it takes,
one Zen zap and the mind
is fallen, and suddenly it makes sense,
all this burning. But it is the darkness
I keep seeing, the shocked silence
between the apparition
and the saint. Something I can write over,
so I can say this night is for light
to fill. Sorrow is a vessel so deep
it can hold anything, even its own absence.
Let the demons of unhappiness
look away. Or their eyes burn
with hate as I pass by.

—Eric Gamalinda