"This is for the fat girls."

"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.

…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.

…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.

…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."

Anis Mojgani