--------------------/Canaan (Jennifer Lawrence, You Are My Canaan)
Jennifer, I would run from everything I have ever known
for you, in obscure darkness, in swirling mists of uncertainty
trampling through my fear of being alone
anxiety about being too old, doubts about you requiting my passion
like a crazed man stumbling over the bed of the sea,
frantic,
determined that whatever should stand between us
part ways like walls of water.
You see, Ive come to view life before you as slavery:
whips layered with stone lacerating my back
being unable to gaze at your blonde hair,
maggot infested bread the deprivation of your blue eyes,
your lips like the agonizing callous sun on scabbed skin,
if I cant kiss them. Sadly, I was contented in this,
cleaning my shackles, expecting wounds,
my heart decaying under depression and loneliness,
tyrannical rule of a soulless Pharoah. Voices of my oppressors,
girls who rejected me,
compassionless taskmasters with bloated national pride,
their feral laughing by day, echoes of affliction at night
-cringing reminders of those who rejoice at my failings-.
My tears became my sin, rats became my friends,
brothers of degradation. But under the auspicious moon
(when I saw Hunger Games)
like Moses you came, behind you the angel of death.
But under the moon of my despair, like Moses you came,
(staff of confidence in your hand, charm in your smile,
panache in your demeanor)
behind you the angel of death,
of my dating-life dejection.
I likened you to a shooting star, a fleeting chance at fulfillment.
You, the sexiest movie star, placed in a basket at birth
nursed in the arms of Beauty, succored at the breasts of feminine regality.
Come, lets dart past the lies, the skepticism,
the detractors who wish me unmarried wailing over their disappointment
like the murder of their firstborn sons,
to the shores of new opportunity. I want you to look into my eyes Jennifer,
and say “follow me….be with me.”
When all is said and done, we will look back
at the chariots with envy clogged wheels, jealousy a legion of soldiers,
as completely pathetic and washed up
dead on the shores of our love
rotting by day.
-------------/Exodus 14:21—15:1
Moses stretched out his hand over the sea,
and the LORD swept the sea
with a strong east wind throughout the night
and so turned it into dry land.
When the water was thus divided,
the children of Israel marched into the midst of the sea on dry land,
with the water like a wall to their right and to their left.
The Egyptians followed in pursuit;
all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and charioteers went after them
right into the midst of the sea.
In the night watch just before dawn
the LORD cast through the column of the fiery cloud
upon the Egyptian force a glance that threw it into a panic;
and he so clogged their chariot wheels
that they could hardly drive.
With that the Egyptians sounded the retreat before Israel,
because the LORD was fighting for them against the Egyptians.
Then the LORD told Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea,
that the water may flow back upon the Egyptians,
upon their chariots and their charioteers.”
So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea,
and at dawn the sea flowed back to its normal depth.
The Egyptians were fleeing head on toward the sea,
when the LORD hurled them into its midst.
As the water flowed back,
it covered the chariots and the charioteers of Pharaoh’s whole army
that had followed the children of Israel into the sea.
Not a single one of them escaped.
But the children of Israel had marched on dry land
through the midst of the sea,
with the water like a wall to their right and to their left.
Thus the LORD saved Israel on that day
from the power of the Egyptians.
When Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the seashore
and beheld the great power that the LORD
had shown against the Egyptians,
they feared the LORD and believed in him and in his servant Moses.
Then Moses and the children of Israel sang this song to the LORD:
I will sing to the LORD, for he is gloriously triumphant;
horse and chariot he has cast into the sea.
