Anis Mojgani
Click to view1. DIRECT ORDERS
You have been a given direct order to rock the fuck out
Rock out like you have just been given the last Rock n' Roll record on Earth,
and the minutes are counting down to flames;
Rock out like you just won both Showcase showdowns;
Rock out like the streets are empty except for you,
your bicycle and your headphones;
Rock out like your lips were just placed onto a breakdancing muse with legs that go all the way up;
Rock out like ????? is ringing your front door;
Rock out like you'll never have to read a textbook again;
Rock out like you get paid to disturb the peace;
Rock out like music is all that you've got;
Rock out like you're standing on a rooftop and the city is as loud and glowing as the river flowing below you;
Rock out like the plane is going down and there are 120 people on board and 121 parachutes;
Rock out like the streets and the books are all on fire, and the flames can only be extinguished by doing the electric slide;
Rock out like its Saturday afternoon, and Monday was a national holiday;
Rock out like somebody's got a barrel pointing at you and saying;
Rock out like your like depended on it foo', because it does;
Rock out like your eyes are fading, but you still got your ears, but you don't know for how long so;
Rock out like five o'clock time make poppin' lock time
Rock you like you've got pants full of tokens, and nothing to do with everything;
Rock out like you're the international Ski-ball champion on the entire universe;
Rock out like you just escaped an evil orphanage to join a Russian circus;
Rock out like your hero is falling, and you are spinning your limbs until they burst into flaming pyre of remembrance;
Rock out like you once laid in the South and dancing as though you don't have to know who you are;
Rock out like your dead grandfather just came back to take a drive with you and your brand new car;
Rock out like the table was full;
Rock out like the neighbors are away;
Rock out like the walls won't fall but damn it you're going to die trying to make them;
Rock out like the stereo's volume now is the figure 8 of infinity instead of merely numbers;
Rock out like it's raining outside and you've got a girl to run through with:
Rock out like you're playing football, football in the mud and your washing machine is not broken;
Rock out like you threw your window open on your honeymoon because you want the whole world to know what love is;
Rock out like you just got a book published;
Rock out like you just went to your high school reunion to find out everyone even the women are all overweight and bald, except the former home-coming queen,
who was just got divorced by her impudent husband, and only has eyes for you;
Rock out like you've got a date with Heidi Klum;
Rock out like the shadow of a man passes behind you, drops you to your knees
you're buckling and in a sweat, the old man pushes to your forehead, the trigger is pulled and the gun jams.
Rock out like you've got an empty appointment book, and a full tank of gas
Rock out like Jimmy has returned, and he's got brand new guitar strings;
Rock out like the mangos are in season;
Rock out like the record player won't skip;
Rock out like this was the last weekend,
like these were the last words, like you don't ever want to forget how.
2. HERE AM I
we all wanted that high school sweetheart
we wanted to be young in the 50s with meatloaves
and sock hops
and lawns, lawns so perfect they looked like Clark Gable was kissing them
we wanted to be thirteen and alive and meet a girl that was thirteen and alive
and walk with her past the grandstands, to sit and hold hands, to sit and kiss, to sit and sit, like it was something you would miss, but that never was
we once went to bed like between the bed sheets was a valley with dinosaurs still breathing
and how we capture these triceratops?
and brontosauruses?
but even they were opened up with the smoke that rose out of the homes and the corners that we once climbed through,
the streets and the footballs which we once threw,
the school desks upon which we once drew,
the windows that sat open through we once flew,
before the outside world of parking spaces and dead friends came flooding on in
and we forgot what we wanted
and we became what we become: waitresses and bartenders, city employees and temp positions, we are junkies and one kiss poems and we cry the stars
as we write our scars onto dumpsters
and electric boxes
because the only thing that we can hear is our hearts
and the only ones listening are the streets
that the blood that breaths through the letters we leave
and we dream to rise ourselves up out of these burning buildings
but instead we get buried somewhere beneath
because I know my life is like some high school kids notebook
a high school kid that shuffles back and forth between school and home
stacking the letters and the pictures too close for anyone outside of his own imagination to read
because it's through the ink that his heart beats,
that his heart breaths
and we all just wanted to write these notes
check if you like me
check if you don’t
check if you'll date me
check if you won't
because we all wanted the love songs to be true
and we did love dinosaurs once
and we wanted the stars to hold our hands,
to lick the teeth to fuck us,
but they ended up fucking us,
so let your smile twist
like my heart dancing precariously on the edge of my fingertips,
staining them like that same high school kid licking his thoughts,
using his sharpie tip writing:
"I was here / I was here mothafucka / And ain't none of y'all can write that in the spot that I just wrote it in / I’m here mothafucka and we all here mothafucka and we all mothafuckas, mothafucka / Because every breath I give brings me a second closer to the day that my mother may die / Because every breath I take takes me a second further from the moment she caught my father's eye / Because every word I carry is another stone to put into place in the foundation that I'm building / Because the days can erase something that I never saw / What all of us wanted and what none of us got /What we all had and have and what we all forgot / That we all wanted to be something / That we all became something / And it might not be the shit we once though we'd be when we were kids but something is still something and like some cats say, something is better than nothing / Feet are smarter than an engine / And dreams are stronger than thighs / And questions are the only answers we need to know that we are alive as I am when I have the mind of a child, asking why is 2 + 3 always equal to 5 ? / Where do people go to when they die? / What made the beauty of the moon? / And the beauty of the sea? / Did that beauty made you? / Did that beauty make me? / Will that make me something? / Will I be something? / Am I something?”
And the answer comes: already am, always was, and I still have time to be
3. SHAKE THE DUST
This is for the fat girls.
This is for the little brothers.
This is for the school yard wimps.
This is for the childhood bullies that tormented them.
This is for the former prom queen.
This is for the milk crate ball players.
This is for the night time cereal eaters
and for the tired elderly, Walmart store front door greeters…
Shake the dust.
This is for the benches and the people sitting upon them;
for the bus drivers driving a million broken hymns;
for the fathers who have to hold three jobs, simply to hold up their children
for the night time schoolers and for the midnight bike riders who are trying to fly…
Shake the dust.
This is for the two year olds who cannot be understood because they speak half English and half God.
Shake the dust
For the girls with the brothers who are going crazy
for those gym class wallflowers and the 12th graders afraid of taking public showers
for the kid who is always late to class because he forgets the combination to his lockers
for the girl who loves somebody else
shake the dust
this is for the hard men who want love but know it will not come
for the ones who are forgotten
for the ones the amendments do not stand up for
for the ones who are told to speak up only when spoken to
and then are never spoken to
speak every time you stand so you do not forget yourself
do not let a moment go by that doesn’t remind you that your heart beats 900 times a day
and that there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean
do not settle for letting these waves settle and for the dust to collect in your veins
this is for the celibate pedophile who keeps struggling
for the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacations alone
for the sweat that drips off of mick jaggers singing lips
and for the shaking skirt on tina turner’s shaking hips
for the heaven’s and for the hells through which tina has lived
this is for the tired and for the dreamers
for those families who will never be like the cleavers
with perfectly made dinners and sons like wally and the beaver
this is for the bigots, this is for the sexists this is for the killers
this is for the big house pen sentence cats becoming redeemers
and for the spring time that always shows up right after the winters
this is for you
make sure that by the time the fishermen returns you are gone
because just like the days, I burn at both ends
and every time I write, every time I open my eyes I am cutting out a part of myself to give to you
so shake the dust
and take me with you when you do
for none of this has fucking never been for me
all that pushes and pulls, pushes and pulls is for you
so grab this world by its clothespins and shake it out again and again
and jump on top and take it for a spin
and when you hop off, shake it again for this is yours
make my words worth it
make this not just another poem that I write
not just another poem like just another night
that sits heavy above us all
walk into it, breath it in. let it crash through the halls of your arms
like the millions of years of millions of poets coursing
like blood pumping and pushing making you live
shaking the dust
so when the world knocks at your front door
clutch the knob and open on up
running forward into its wide spread greeting arms
with your hands before you,
fingertips trembling
though they may be.
another:
CRADLE
Set the warriors to sea in a ship stacked with shields, layers of swords,
mountains of gold. Lay them out with their wife. With their child. Lay
them out with their livestock, with the whole farm. The rain is not
coming here. Not today. For today the gods welcome one of their own
back home. So set the hero out on the soft waves that will carry him to
the other side of the pink ether where he will float on fire until the ash
consumes him like the mighty warrior he once was and like the legend he
will become. The flames will dance over his possessions, his goblets and
arrows, his blankets, his paintings, his passions. The flames will dance
across his flesh like the soft fingers of the soft lover he left, and as he
sleeps this last sleep, the fires will eat him away, the heat will write his
skin across the night sky to join the constellations that will guide the
sailors at the storm, the herders lost in the clouds, they will all come
home by facing the direction his eyes are facing. The heavens are filled
with smoke. This is history this is legend this is what we once were.
Where the stories come from, what we are. When you fall in battle, they
will take your body with the life you made in this world and set it off to
sail behind you in the next, so that you will stay a king, remain forever
the golden being you breathed as on this side of the mountain. When you
pass, may your life follow you like a shadow into the light. When I go,
bury me with nothing but my own skin. I spent far too many days trying
to outrun this thing called mine, so if I set myself into your arms would
you hold me like the earth, quietly? I am yours. Give me a field, give me
a big sky. A mountain. Give me your mouth. I’m just looking for a quiet
place that I could die inside of.