Dayspring

by Anthony Oliveira

and you pull me up from my knees into your chest and a whooshing head-rush echo comes into my ears that does not die away but swells into the sound itself and i say or perhaps do not say break my heart as many times as you need to i am yours here at last is the thing that i was made for

and i know now that love sometimes makes a promise it cannot keep and sometimes no toil can fix the clockwork of a heart dropped from the mantel skittering glass across the floor sometimes you must say yes when you mean no

i take his piss-stained clothes and stumble into town to watch the world end

be a donkey is to know the truth: God always gives us more than we can handle

love is what ruins. love is what costs. love is a flaming sword at our backs a garden left to ruin and to wild gone to seed

for holy is the angel in moloch and there shall be nothing lost and then: a bright, white apricity, like spring caught in the hanging laundry will light an age of endless date and all shall be well and all shall be well and every manner of thing shall be well

god is love. and love is just this: it is yourself breaking apart shaken to pieces refashioned entirely and made new love is suffering for each other

god and man and life

trees that do not flourish are cast in the fire let the dead bury their dead and the rectum is a grave

and he was constantly borrowing donkeys rent-free sometimes two at a time for some reason really because matthew wanted to fulfill a prophecy (matt loves fulfilling prophecies) but he doesn’t really understand classical jewish poetry

conventions where you repeat something with elaboration of detail for emphasis: riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey like that’s one donkey, matt but so sometimes now because of this you see weird renaissance paintings where he’s on a donkey, but also using another, second, smaller donkey at the same time as like a weird footstool? seriously look it up and actually (sorry i know this is a digression) but even whether he owned anything at all is debated by the Franciscans because the robe that was ripped from him at the cross-foot and gambled for, which was seamless (his mom made it for him—so sweet!), was all he had, if he had anything (Eco is all over this)

and they came to him and asked: if heaven’s so real then what happens if a woman marries seven times like if her husbands keep dying so she had seven husbands whose wife will she be in heaven? and he said: please do not ask me stupid fucking questions

It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them

what parent among you if asked for a fish would give your child a snake if asked for an egg would give your child a scorpion the sparrow does not worry for the harvest and the flower though clothed in splendour does not sew i promise you if you will learn it: there is enough too much for you and for all and you will be ok

i don’t know what to tell you how can anyone wealthy claim to be good?

peter, who means really well all the time but could be a little slow with a metaphor, made a sheesh with his face and said “oh no—he’s mad we don’t have any bread” but even though peter was quiet, he heard it in that usual way of his how could you think i meant actual bread you have seen literally miracle after miracle i just why do i bother and he folded up, and went to sleep and like ok i get it but honestly i do think at least part of it was that he was hungry

you can’t protect me from the world oh yes i can watch me just watch me

to reproach mystics with loving God by means of the faculty of sexual love is as though one were to reproach a painter with making pictures by means of colours composed of material substances we haven’t anything else with which to love —simone weil

feel like you think that just because you are god crammed into flesh that you get a pass for being just generally deeply weird as a person

having loved his own which were in the world he loved them unto the end

for i know that we can be forgiven that even if our own hearts condemn us god is greater than our hearts that this world where you have suffered is passing away a new heaven and a new earth streak towards us and there is nothing lost