Love on a Ladder (In Ellicott City, Maryland)

+

*dedicated to RB

Listen, I aint talking bout no NFL draft here when I talk about RB okay yall? sheesh!!!
#potus40 #rb #johnnymanziel


----------/Love on a Ladder (In Ellicott City, Maryland)

Without you love is a nameless faceless desert,
its sun setting,
and I a grandson of a magnanimous Patriarch
(promised the world, or so all men believe)
bereft of purpose, a heart cold
like the chill of the moon.  My breath an ominous white cloud
of despairing; Startled shivers spurred
by sniffing and surreptitious steps of predators- now howling.
These are my worst fears with thickened fur (snagged teeth):
that I will never find a girl, that you are too young for me
or that you’ll sidestep my existence for more verdant ground,
like a skull. 
In the morning I start for Haran my birthplace.
My heart was innocent then, lacking the capacity for duplicity
gnarled hissing of the jackal,
jaded bloodlust of the vulture with keen eyes on the weak-
psychoses of a lonely old man in his 30s…scavengers.
It is that city of teenage love that beckons my dreaming,
sleep calling forth its Ideals like prophecy
from the hard and unflinching stones of the improbable,
two or three pillows of one desperate and fading
soon to be with sore neck.
The thing is, I always dream of Christlife, of Ellicott City
of when I met you
swearing to myself an angel descended down a ladder
and hooked my heart back with it- that day*
bedazzled by your eyes as if crystals from Heaven
paralyzed me.
Your salutation like God telling me he was God of my fathers,
Divine shouts from the top rung.
Your smile was this wonderful Covenant, an oath
that our kisses would someday be as numerous as the sand
that presently causes my soul’s fretful sneezing
for its vast ambiguity, untamed.
I remember so starkly
I gazed at you: ever since, your presence
has been with me in all places whither I goest.
I often laugh for joy at this just before waking,
coming to
I always construct my desires for you as a pillar-
ever growing-
stones of destiny that in half waking and half sleeping
consciousness join us together stacked high
regarded as the golden gates of Heaven
that I pour my oil of passionate expectation upon:
An altar of yearning
where I hope we will meet again.
In Ellicott City, Maryland for eternity




(trading Haran for a place far greater)



------Genesis 28:10-18
And Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set; and he took of the stones of that place, and put them for his pillows, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. And, behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done that which I have spoken to thee of. And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.