Direct Orders to Shake the Dust

Direct Orders- Anis Mogjani

You have been given a direct order to rock the fuck out. Rock out like you were just given the last rock and roll album 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, which are placed onto a breakdancing muse with legs that go all the way up. Rock out like you’ll never have to open a textbook again. Rock out like you get paid to disturb the peace. Rock out like music is all that you got. Rock out like you’re standing on a rooftop and the city’s as loud and glowing as a river below you. Rock out like the plane is going down, there are 120 people on board, and 121 parachutes. Rock out like the streets and the books are all on fire and the only way it can be extinguished is by doin’ the electric slide. Rock out like it’s Saturday afternoon and Monday is a national holiday. Rock out like somebody’s got a barrel pointed at your temple saying ‘Rock out like your life depended on it, fool,‘ 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 5 o’clock time, make pop-in-lot time. Rock out like you got pants full of tokens and nothing to do but everything. Rock out like you are the international ski-ball champion of the entire universe. Rock out like you just escaped an evil orphanage to join a Russian circus. Rock out like your hero is fallen and you are spinning your limbs until they burst into a burning fire of remembrance. Rock out like you’re enslaved in the south and dancing is all that you have to know who you are. Rock out like your dead grandfather just came back to take a drive with you in your new car. Rock out like the table is full. Rock out like the neighbors are away. Rock out like the walls won’t fall but, dammit, you’re going to die trying to make them. Rock out like the stereo’s volume knob 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 it with. Rock out like you’re playing football! Football in the mud and your washing machine is not broken. Rock out like you throwing 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 everyone, even the women, are all overweight and bald, except for the former homecoming queen, who you just found out, got divorced from her impotent husband and only has eyes for.. YOU! Rock out like you just got a date with Heidi Klum. Rock out like a shadow man passes behind you, drops you to your knees. You’re buckling in sweat, cold metal’s pushed to your forhead, the trigger’s pulled and the gun jams. Rock out like you got an empty appointment book, and a full tank of gas. Rock out like Jimi has returned carrying 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.

Shake the Dust- Anis Mogjani


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 who tormented them.


This is for the former prom queen, this is for the milk-crate ball players.


This is for the nighttime cereal eaters 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 schoolers and 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 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, the hard men who want to love but know that it won’t come.


For the ones who are forgotten, the ones the 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 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 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.


For the sweat that drips off of Mick Jaggers’ singing lips and for the shaking skirt on Tina Turner’s shaking hips, for the heavens and for the hells through which Tina has lived.


This is for the tired and for the dreamers and for those families who’ll never be like the Cleavers with perfectly made dinners and sons like Wally and the Beaver.


This is for the biggots,


this is for the sexists,


this is for the killers.


This is for the big house, pen-sentenced cats becoming redeemers and for the springtime that always shows up after the winters.


This? This is for you.


Make sure that by the time fisherman returns you are gone.


Because just like the days, I burn 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 never 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 is crash through the halls of your arms at 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 widespread greeting arms with your hands before you, fingertips trembling though they may be.

Enjoy.

 Love you guys