felonymelanie:

jacobgustafson:

Shake the Dust by Anis Mojgani

If you listen to anything I’ve posted, make it this.

This is for the fat girls.
This is for the little brothers.
This is for the school-yard wimps, and for the childhood bullies that tormented them.
This is for the milk-crate ball players, and for the former prom queen and for the retired elderly Wal-Mart 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 men who have to hold down three jobs simply to hold up their children,
for the nighttime cereal eaters and for midnight bike riders who are trying to fly. Shake the dust.
For the two-year-olds who cannot be understood because they speak half-English and half-god. Shake the dust.
For the boys with the beautiful sisters. Shake the dust.
For the girls with the brothers who are going crazy.
For those gym class wall flowers and the twelve-year-olds afraid of taking public showers,
for the kid who’s 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 that it won’t come.
For the ones who are forgotten, the ones amendments do not stand up for, for the ones who are told to speak only when you are 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 nine hundred 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 on struggling,
for the poetry teachers and for the people who go on vacations alone.
This is for the sweat that drips off of Mick Jaggers’ singing lips and for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner’s shaking hips, and for the heavens and the hells through which Tina has lived.
This is for the tired and for the dreamers. For the families who’ll never be like the Cleavers with perfectly made dinners and sons like Wally and the Beaver.
For the biggots, for the sexists, for the killers. And for the big house, pen-sentenced cats becoming redeemers.
And for the springtime that will come right after this winter.
This is for you.
Make sure that by the time the fisherman returns, you are gone.
Because just like the days, I’m burnin’ 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 ever been for me.
All that pushes and pulls, pushes and pulls 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, breathe 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 shaking the dust and making you live.
So when the world knocks at your front door, clutch the knob and open on up. running out into its arms with your hands before you shaking though they may be.
Thank You.

(Source: holdencaulfieldsucks)