Sarah Yael Ciko

The Grand Error of these latter Ages is ascribing power to Witches, by foolish imagination of mens brains, without grounds in the Scriptures, wrongful killing of the innocent under the name of witches; unto which idolatry and bloud-guiltiness (being as bad, or worse than the Idolatry of the ancient Heathen) men are led as violently by fond imagination, as were the Ephesians to the worshiping of Diana, and of the Image which (as they blindly thought) fell down from Jupiter…

…That if a man may not study and practice the discovery of Cheats without being a Cheater, nor the discovery of witchcraft without being accounted a witch, it is the way for Witches and Cheaters to play their pranks, and no man able to tax them, or accuse them, or to say who they are that are witches;…

Thus do men play with the Scriptures, preferring human traditions beyond the truth of God contained in the Scripture; and this is the cause why men a long time have been deceived by the Man of Sin, who still prevaileth to lead the World in darkness, because they love not the truth, but have pleasure in unrighteousness…

For, Deus est author Naturae, and sure the Devil cannot make more perfect or forceable that which God hath made; but such is the nature of all these Popish writers, that when they cannot strongly enough maintain a Lye, they father their Lyes upon their Master the Father of Lyes, and are forced, after all their vain argumentation, to use his name to uphold a lie, and (although they were great Scholars) have rather intangled themselves with folly in reasoning, and with so manifest errour (whereby they have exposed themselves to the lash of common Censure) than to forsake their Popish darkness, which they are ingaged to defend.

—Thomas Ady, A Candle in the Dark: shewing the divine cause of the distractions of the whole nation of England, and of the Christian world, 1655

And there is finally the report that in the months preceding his death he was given Hochhuth’s play The Deputy to read and was asked what one could do against it. Whereupon he allegedly replied: “Do against it? What can you do against the truth?”

—Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times, Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli: a Christian on St. Peter’s Chair from 1958 to 1963, 1965

emits showers of sparks

this is a summer of fireworks
the protest of a fuse, the crack of a report, and pungent smoke
towering trees bend toward the immense dusk sky of deepest blue
wind through their leaves breathes praise to its creator
make a skid mark with your bike
what's it like to wear glasses?
oh, you have freckles
down the street, they have dirt and walkie talkies
up the street, they have sweat and smell and pheromones
down the street they have sparklers in the handlebars
up the street we have kissing
then an awkward touch
up, up and then

Subway shots by Louis Mendes.