THE ANTI-COMMANDMENTS
I saw the sky torn open above the cities.
No stars fell from the wound.
Words fell.
They entered locked rooms.
They settled on children’s beds.
They slipped into the voices of adults
before the first good morning.
The first needed no more than two words.
It said: Me first.
And I saw hands close
even though they had been made
to lift up those who fall.
The second said: Your end is my salvation.
And I saw bread turn to stone in the mouths of men.
The third whispered:
Trusting is good. Not trusting is better.
And hearts built walls so high
that even God could no longer knock
without making a sound.
Then fell a phrase as old as hunger:
Eat, or be eaten.
And I saw men fill their storehouses
while their children froze
inside houses too large to be called home.
Then the sky thundered:
If you want peace, prepare for war.
And I saw children learn to tell
the sound of an aircraft
from the sound of a bird.
At last, one black sentence
settled upon crowns, courtrooms,
markets, and altars:
The end justifies the means.
And the world stopped asking what was right.
It began asking who would win.
Then, one day, the anti-commandments came to a hill.
There was a Man hanging between heaven and earth.
And they said to Him:
“Save Yourself. Come down. Use Your power.
Show them who You are.”
He did not come down.
Not because He could not.
But because He would not leave anyone alone
in the darkest place of being human.
So they called Him defeated.
And for three days, death believed it had won.
But it had not understood.
That Man had refused to obey
the last and oldest anti-commandment:
Survive, even if it means you must stop loving.
And ever since,
whenever a hand remains open,
whenever someone forgives without becoming a slave,
whenever a person refuses to save themselves alone,
the stone before the tomb
begins to tremble again.