* Dedicated to Balaam's Donkey
* Dedicated to the animal kingdom
#PETA, WHERE IS YOU AT?????? #WOOOOOOO!!!!!
+-----The Passion of The Foal; Balaam’s Donkey’s Existential Crisis When Seeing the Angel of the Lord
Yesterday was straw and hay,
sheaves of grain laden on my back,
heeding a prophet’s call
as a beast of burden. I never
understood the bloody struggle
atop the fire beneath
the structures of stone that
ritualize, mechanize, the soul piercing
bleating of non-humans
that I try to disregard beneath
my pinned ears, sheep and oxen casting
helpless glances at me as gory soot
ominously falls to dire dirt, smoke
of their memories rising into the sky,
amalgamating into storm clouds.
But that was before the revelation-
before the luminous spirits of my kin,
herds of all species by the thousands,
appeared before, and flanked me during
a night’s intermittent repose
(my sleep often interrupted by my
master’s scurrilous snoring)
through a dream.
They spoke to me in ethereal tones
of an impending
sweet and sacral subversion of souls,
that all the aforementioned suffering
of our forbearers not be in vain;
One day soon, they say, God will speak
to us, divinity bestowed upon
creatures, and offer us the right
of first refusal at the chance of nobility,
the choice of whether or not
to save a human life,
or watch it burn, a charred carcass
in the image of God for the
unavenged blood of scores of bulls
and doves,
satisfying eons of unaddressed
effects of unjust causes. That
I could be a savior of Israel (of sorts),
a once unheralded donkey of
a barely heralded prophet,
carrying forth a bloodline that
eventually ushers humanity’s Messiah
to Jerusalem on His
Path to Salvation. (A proposition heretofore
inconceivable) My ancestors told
me not to worry, to let my heart lead me,
the consummation of lessons learned
from my upbringing
in the fields as a foal as a lamppost to guide
my steps when I eventually see the
menacing Angel wielding a terrible
sword of death. Balaam’s life
in my hands, the way so many lives-
the sheep, the goats, the oxen, the doves,
their families forever rent asunder-
were in his hands before…a once unknown
beast of burden now carrying an
an unimaginable existential crisis: to offer
forgiveness or vengeance,
to spare his life,
affording Israel a blessing in battle,
or to take an eye for an eye?
---Numbers 22:20-35
And God came unto Balaam at night, and said unto him, If the men come to call thee, rise up, and go with them; but yet the word which I shall say unto thee, that shalt thou do. And Balaam rose up in the morning, and saddled his ass, and went with the princes of Moab. And God's anger was kindled because he went: and the angel of the Lord stood in the way for an adversary against him. Now he was riding upon his ass, and his two servants were with him. And the ass saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and the ass turned aside out of the way, and went into the field: and Balaam smote the ass, to turn her into the way. But the angel of the Lord stood in a path of the vineyards, a wall being on this side, and a wall on that side. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she thrust herself unto the wall, and crushed Balaam's foot against the wall: and he smote her again. And the angel of the Lord went further, and stood in a narrow place, where was no way to turn either to the right hand or to the left. And when the ass saw the angel of the Lord, she fell down under Balaam: and Balaam's anger was kindled, and he smote the ass with a staff. And the Lord opened the mouth of the ass, and she said unto Balaam, What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? And Balaam said unto the ass, Because thou hast mocked me: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee. And the ass said unto Balaam, Am not I thine ass, upon which thou hast ridden ever since I was thine unto this day? was I ever wont to do so unto thee? and he said, Nay. Then the Lord opened the eyes of Balaam, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the way, and his sword drawn in his hand: and he bowed down his head, and fell flat on his face. And the angel of the Lord said unto him, Wherefore hast thou smitten thine ass these three times? behold, I went out to withstand thee, because thy way is perverse before me: And the ass saw me, and turned from me these three times: unless she had turned from me, surely now also I had slain thee, and saved her alive. And Balaam said unto the angel of the Lord, I have sinned; for I knew not that thou stoodest in the way against me: now therefore, if it displease thee, I will get me back again. And the angel of the Lord said unto Balaam, Go with the men: but only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak. So Balaam went with the princes of Balak.
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