I
When he enters the town–

     Is it Jerusalem?

With thorns stuck sharp in his crown,

spare a thought for his ass.
When he crosses that bridge

all the light bulbs explode–

     even the one in the fridge,

in a splintering rain.
 
II
An atheist half-Jew

and a sceptic too,

I know squat about JC,

but I remember that donkey,

all sweetness and bite.

Bottoms up and etwas Sachertorte all round;

Just a raw carrot for me, said Zarathustra,

from the high moral ground,

sitting there with flypaper

waiting for his ideas to stick.

A Ladybird.

The first book I ever bought

was hardcover

Ladybird

called Ned, The Lonely Donkey.

That would be Der Einsam Esel in German

the language of Nietzsche,

who made his own sensibility the measure of all things,

and spoke about himself in the name of Zarathustra.
I've always had a thing about donkeys–

and so it seems, does Zarathustra

like Ned

leaves home in search of friends.

Guided by the twittering wisdom of an owl,

Ned tries a number of alternate lifestyles,

until 52 pages later,

Ned, the lonely donkey finds happiness

with Timothy, the lonely boy.

It takes Nietzsche 297 pages to walk off into the sunrise.
 
III
You can hear a donkey's hee-haw

over 3 kilometres away

or so they say.
 
IV
The First World War depended on the mule.

Since then, various politicos have tried

to pin the Aussie values tail on Simpson's donkey,

a beast

by the name of Duffy.
 
V
Saint Francis, Aesop, Sancho Panza

Winne-the-Pooh, George Orwell, jackets and work

associate all with Equus asinus.

Ditto King Midas of the golden touch

in another myth

Pan and Apollo have a musical play-off

the judge says Apollo's the winner

Midas says no

so Apollo gave him donkey's ears.

Midas tried to hide them under a steep-sided hat

but his barber knew

and his barber knew

he was a chatterbox

so he dug a hole, whispered the secret into it,

and layered earth

over the top.
From this spot within a year

sprouted reeds that murmured:

Midas has the donkey's ear–

              each time the north wind blew.
 
VI
Then there's Chesterton, G. K.

with his blood-moon moments

of anti-Semitism

critics say we should understand

in the context of his time–

and his time was the nineteen-20s and 30s

and they were nasty times

to be a Jew.
 
VII
After Ned

I read

Robinson Crusoe,

the story of a lonely man.
Jesus meanwhile has got off his ass

and is doing something

with the chickens that count

the horse in midstream

and the fish

in the plentiful sea.
 
VIII
Nietzsche is the man who said

God is dead

Which makes Jesus just another random bloke.

Nietzsche is the man who said

Get a-head

Be an Übermensch

Change the light-bulb, get the joke.
 
IX
Last night Googling around

I hit the wrong key

missed the donkey

and ended up at Lego For Adults:

How to build a working gun with Lego.

I'm not kidding.

Bang, bang–

You're dead

God is dead

but Zarathustra is still talking

the hind leg off the proverbial.

I picture him scrawny and stoop-shouldered,

sharp nose and not much face below.

Nature made her point

then lost interest,

leaving his face to dribble

back into his neck.

His favourite sound is the gasp

as the rubber lips of the fridge door unstick.

He leans into its cold air

and there's his hairy ass …

and the carrot at the wrong end of the donkey.