Jesse Parent

Cain to his brother Abel: Why couldn’t you have been a farmer? We could have planted paradise, together, formed the earth into mighty rows, gridded logic into this chaos of soil.

The world doesn’t need shepherds. The wolves take as we do, but the fruits and vegetables will never flock themselves. Look at the honest work of land and how we can promise it into a rainbow.

Why did you have to be so different, such an anathema? Scrape the good earth from your fingernails and replace it with ram’s blood. Make yourself an apostasy. I watched the way you sacrificed and how creation Himself just smiled and let you split each wooly lamb like a ripe peach onto His table, taking His approval as a false dove that would deliver you.

Can’t you see how you deserved this death? How you turned me to wolf with your sin? What did you think as I brought the rock down again and again and again? That I would be struck down myself, cast into the abyss or face the same stone that slew you? That I didn’t just grind you into a more delectable sacrifice?

I wish I could see you, the look in your eyes when He cursed me to life, placed his mark on me and protected me from harm. Said none may touch me, that I had enough justice. Let you watch as I walk away, whole. How I am still a farmer and you are now a slaughtered lamb.

As if this doesn’t happen all the time. As if no one else uses the love of the Creator as an excuse to kill any that stray from the farmer’s path. As if I can’t call this mark a privilege and dare anyone to strike me. Watch as bullets fly 7 times faster than stones. As if I don’t see every one of my brothers as sheep without shepherds.

It can be difficult to fathom what "unconditional love" truly means. Thanks to Jesse Parent's performance of "Hotbox Love" during the 2014 National Poetry Slam, we now have a much better understanding. Quite unromantically...

The truth about real love in three minutes.