Cuore di Maria (Bleeding Heart)
I:
(Male voices speaking)
“Open her up, why don’t you?”
scraping noise
“Don’t you know what happens when you open up a Virgin?”
scraping gets louder
…
Int:
“At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.”
(Stabat Mater Dolorosa)
V1:
Take me off the Tabernacle, sir, and be gentle, please.
Inside me is a Host.
Look, my eyes are hallowed grounds... (holograms)
Eat me, passion.
Crush me, lamentation.
(Male voice #1 speaking) “Throw the fat in the fire and get it over with.”
(Male voice #2 speaking) “Look at her casket, lily white as snow.”
(Male voice #3 speaking) “But look at her mausoleum- dark as Mammy’s immortal soul.”
The light is coming in…
The darkness won’t let me out.
I see my heart in the clouds and a hand over my eyes.
A dove flies so high…
It’s Him, Father, oh, Father mine…
Be gentle, please...
LET ME OUT.
Int:
“Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
All His bitter anguish bearing,
Now at length the sword has passed.”
(Stabat Mater Dolorosa)
Int:
(with building volume and intensity)
Maiden, Mother, Crone... (x7)
V2:
“I am my mother’s daughter.”
What does that mean to me?
“Love is there, love will always care.”
A Psalm woven just for me.
“They sold her down the river.”
That’s why I can’t tear my bright eyes away.
…
“If Love so kind to all, then why you dead?”
…
sound of casket rumbling
C:
Love is patient, love is kind,
(Coming forth to carry me home…)
But not to the barracoon.
Love will keep us together,
BUT IT’S TORN ME APART.
And can you hear America singing?
Telling Mary who she should be?
Well, open up my guts and let’s just see…
What you find inside of me.
V3:
“O how sad and sore distressed
was that Mother, highly blest,
of the sole-begotten One.”
(Stabat Mater Dolorosa)
Put me in the ground…
My Son, oh, my Son…
B:
(Read aloud) (“As for her death, whatever explanation one may give of it will amount in the end to saying that she died of love.“)
(Read aloud) (“This is what you really love, my young man, but you do not love beauty for its own sake.”)
You love my blood.
You love my rags.
You love my womb and how it sags.
I’m sick of living in a Frankincense box.
“If you so hated, then why you glad?”
…
sound of casket bursting open
C:
Love is patient, love is kind,
(Coming forth to carry me home…)
But not to the barracoon.
Love will keep us together,
BUT IT’S TORN ME APART.
And can you hear America singing?
Telling Mary who she should be?
Well, open up my guts and let’s just see…
What you find inside of me.
Int:
“Christ above in torment hangs,
She beneath beholds the pangs
of her dying glorious Son.”
(Stabat Mater Dolorosa!)
O:
(Read aloud)
“Listen to me when I say that love isn’t something we invented, it’s observable and powerful, it has to mean something.
Maybe it means something more, something we can’t yet understand.
Maybe it’s some evidence, some artifact of a higher dimension that we can’t consciously perceive.
Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.
Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't understand it.”