Here Am I
by Anis Mojgani
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 13 and alive and meet a girl that was 13 and alive And walk with her past the grandstands To sit and hold hands with To sit and kiss with To sit and sit with 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 make 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
(via Genius.com)
