Pretense seeps from weak veins, be brave.
Mind not the deflationists, whose entire orientation is to rot the columns of newness.
In the convalescence, the imprint of the puncture is burnt onto the soul, no teachers needed.
The gentle venom, from the mother’s hearth, orchestrated by the choir of angels.
The butterfly thought self-effacement could rescue it from the sparrows lurking on its path; it was wrong — the moth knew this with a world-seizing arrogance.
The moth bleeds, too. But unlike the butterfly, the moth is total in its fracture, scorched to admit the facts of life as it is scorched in the brazier of the fates.
Walk, walk, pitiful angel — two steps.
When the sky opens to you, opens, faith is not its jurisdiction, it is passio.
Now you see, and I see you in the light.
Why am I stricken, father? Even with your grace, I lie in ruins of this garish illumination.
Lumen gloriae, these are rites of ascension, my wretched love.
But father, shall it end in my crowning, this sacrament of wounds?
Which of your voices asks this hubris? Make these polyphonies one, riven pilgrim.
Harmony, father? After all that has befallen me! Look! My body!
Silence, pest. Demands are for the gazelles, are you a gazelle? A ghazal, I must hear then.
Father, love me for I do not know how to be good.
In good time, when the skies fold, the seas evaporate, and the land is sundered, you, my angel, shall come upon not me, but the master.
